Woman's work in municipalities

by Mary Ritter Beard

Societies

The recent merger of the American Vigilance Association and the American Federation for Sex Hygiene into the American Social Hygiene Association will doubtless increase the efficiency of the work attempted by the two former societies and prevent duplication. Charles W. Eliot is president of the new society and Jane Addams is an honorary vice-president while the directors include Martha Falconer, Mrs. Raymond Robbins, and the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer.

The purpose of the society is thus stated: “To acquire and diffuse knowledge of the established principles and practices and of any new methods which promote or give assurance of promoting social health; to advocate the highest standards of private and public morality; to suppress commercialized vice; to organize the defense of the community by every available means, educational, sanitary or legislative, against the diseases of vice; to conduct, on request, inquiries into the present condition of prostitution and the venereal diseases in American towns and cities; and to secure mutual acquaintance and sympathy and coöperation among the local societies for these or similar purposes.”

The Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis in New York City is one of the local societies that is doing much to arouse a public sentiment of a constructive character. While the officers are men, the list of members includes 579 women, a large number of whom are either physicians or school teachers and active and valuable members. The lecturers for the society are chiefly women and the work done is more among women than among men. Olive Crosby is the office secretary.

The New York Society is one of twenty branches similarly organized in different cities and states. The work carried on by it is educational; through lectures, conferences, pamphlets and agitation for better legislation and proper sex instruction. Among its educational pamphlets are some prepared by women, like that for teachers on “Instruction in the Physiology and Hygiene of Sex” by Dr. Helen Putnam, of the American Medical Association.

The Juvenile Protective Association of Chicago, of which Mrs. Louise De Koven Bowen is the head, emphasizes the need of labor and other legislation as a basis for some solution of the social evil. Among the preventive measures suggested are: the minimum wage law; publicity for the owners of disreputable houses by means of the tin-plate or card in the hallway; a law similar to the Albert Law in Nebraska which declares property used for purposes of prostitution a nuisance and the owner punishable for maintaining such; better regulations of hotels; medical certificates before the issuance of marriage licenses; and wider labor legislation. Mrs. Bowen has made a special study of the department store girl, among other types of workers, and she agrees with the Illinois Vice Commission that the economic conditions which surround the department store girl tend to her moral as well as her physical breakdown and need remedying as the basis for greater stability.

In November of 1912 a federation was effected in Chicago of nearly forty societies interested in social well-being and united against the social evil.

While concentrating on preventive measures, women are not neglecting what is known as “rescue work.” The name of Dr. Kate Waller Barrett is known to thousands of girls who have passed through the Florence Crittenton homes scattered throughout the country. Twenty-two thousand girls, it is claimed, entered these homes last year. In these places of temporary refuge, efforts have been made by the women in charge to accomplish the individual reformation of the girls under their care. Some effort is also made in these missions, under the direction of Dr. Barrett, to give industrial training to their occupants. The equipment, however, largely provides for the traditional cooking, sewing, cleaning and nursing. It is a question whether domestic service or nursing are the most suitable occupations for this type of girl.

Miss Maud Minor, of New York, who is head of Waverly House, a detention home for girls, is another woman deeply interested both in the probationary character of her work and in some of the larger preventive aspects of the social evil problem.