The family and its members

by Anna Garlin Spencer

3. Philanthropy, or the social care of the dependent, the poverty-bound, the defective, and the juvenile delinquent.

4. Penology, or the laws and their administration which deal with crime and criminals and with both the victims of and the panderers to vice.

5. Recreation and all manner of publicly provided opportunity for helpful use of leisure time.

6. Conservation of natural resources in the interest of common wealth.

7. Checks upon economic exploitation by the greedy and strong of the young, the weak, and the ignorant.

8. Checks upon those commercialized forms of recreation which tend to despoil childhood and youth of innocence and refinement.

9. Official standardizing of ways of living found to be conducive to physical, mental, and moral well-being, and social aids toward vocational training and guidance.

10. The union of Federal with State and Local efforts for the general welfare.

The Interest and Work of Women in This Process of Political Change.—In every one of these new forms of approach to individual life by the general public through law, tax-supported opportunity, or special grant of official aid, women have played a distinct and a large part. When, therefore, women entered formally into the body politic of these United States, they entered into a place of power already familiar to them in many of its activities. Indeed, they had helped to outline and to make effective many of those activities and came into a new relation to them only by virtue of a recognized access of control over their administration. When government was merely a restraining or a military power over individual life, there might be to many minds an incongruity in women assuming voter's privileges and duties. When government became a means for conserving and nurturing and developing individual life, mothers, at least, could be easily seen to have proper part in its functions.

Health a Social Enterprise.—To briefly rehearse this list of political activities is to show marked changes in social ideals. We have entered upon a crusade against preventable disease and for the better physical development of all citizens and potential citizens. This crusade now makes the official Boards of Health, the hospital and medical service, the nurse's vocation, and the lay volunteer support of all these, the outstanding features of our community life. Epidemics used to be considered visitations of an avenging Providence for the people's sins. So they are in essence and in modern translation of old ideas, a punishment by Nature for broken laws; experiences to be ashamed of now that we know how to prevent them. Deaths of babies, once mysterious dispensations of Infinite power, have come to mean indictments of community and family for failure to furnish right conditions for infant life. Deaths of mothers in childbirth, leaving older children without suitable protection and care, once thought events to which to be resigned, however sad and pitiable, are now seen to be preventable calamities for which society is to blame. Avoidable cripplement and invalidism of workmen, once considered either their own fault or unexplained misfortune, are now listed as cause for receipt of sickness and accident benefits under Workmen's Compensation Laws. Premature old age, due to overwork and undernourishment, is on its way to be proceeded against as a record of social neglect. All waste of life's vigor and happiness which is indicated by lower levels of health and strength in any class or age than can be secured by the more favored is from now on recorded as social failure and social fault. Hence, the state and all manner of private agencies are at work to make physical standards higher and physical conditions better for all. When we remember that the pioneer worker in organization of Boards of Public Health and the founder of the American Public Health Association, Dr. Stephen Smith, has just passed away after reaching the hundred year mark of life's usefulness, we can readily see how rapid has been the growth in scientific attention to health and social agencies for its advance.