Woman's work in municipalities

by Mary Ritter Beard

Mothers’ Pensions

On account of the fact that the major portion of charitable relief has always gone to poor widows with young children to support, family rehabilitation has been a main study of social workers. Charity and institutional relief have combined forces—orphan asylums taking the children in many cases of destitution while work for her own support was found for the mother. The slight assistance that could be rendered in each case to supplement the mother’s earnings and the necessity of her putting the children to work too early or overtaxing the oldest child in family labor soon showed the ineffectiveness of this method of family rehabilitation, for broken-down physiques, undeveloped minds, wrong associations and delinquency were recognized as the outgrowth of the enforced neglect of home care and training by mothers.

Thus arose a general demand for public aid for mothers as a preventive measure, for the sake of the family, and for greater economy, much of the institutional care of delinquents, sick, orphaned, in day nurseries and the like being saved thereby. Mothers’ pension laws now exist in seventeen states, the great majority of which passed the laws within the past year, a year in which women have been their busiest in urging this legislation. In Pennsylvania the law creates an entirely new set of administrative officials—unsalaried boards of women, from five to seven in number, appointed by the governor—in all counties which elect to make use of the act.

New York passed a bill for a commission instead of the pension act itself, being conservative enough to desire further investigation. Two women who have worked for mothers’ pensions in that state are on this commission—Mrs. William Einstein and Sophie Irene Loeb. The New York City Federation of Women’s Clubs asked for this commission.

The Federal Children’s Bureau has taken a great interest in state aid for dependent mothers with children and has published a study by Laura Thompson of laws relating to the same in the United States, Denmark and New Zealand, with all the legislative technicalities so much discussed.

Perhaps more women have agreed on the wisdom of mothers’ pensions than on any other single piece of social legislation. They have even been accused of rushing heedlessly into the support of such laws on purely sentimental grounds, and they are vigorously opposed by many charity workers. Public relief for mothers strikes at the very vitals of private philanthropy which makes its most effective appeals for funds for dependent widows. Dr. Devine, of the New York Charity Organization Society, vigorously opposed the idea of public pensions, and published in The Survey his views on the matter. The following spirited defense by Clara Cahill Park, represents the attitude of a large number of women workers who support the measure:

Dr. Devine’s article[^[40]] on mothers’ pensions seems to show that even the learned doctors of our social ills may disagree as to this matter. So perhaps it is not surprising that a plain mother may still go on thinking that such aid is in reality preventive in that it reaches the affairs of the home at a crisis, and tides them over without loss of self-respect. You see, mothers, in spite of the sociologists, feel themselves, for once, on their own ground in this matter; and in possession of all their faculties, will continue to think that, as far as children are concerned, not they, but the learned doctors, are in the amateur class.

As far as care and time and money for children’s needs are concerned, they, and they alone, feel that they know how imperative those needs are, and from the mere fact of being able to gain more aid for more mothers by state subsidies the idea seems to them of value. They, and perhaps they only, can also feel the importance of preserving self-respect as an asset to be saved by the new attitude of the states. It is not, for them, “a mere sentiment and solemn pretense of changing the names of things.”

Why, to most of us, is a marriage service a wholesome formality, if changing the name, if deriving comfort from legal sanction (even sometimes of a bad husband), is merely “a solemn pretense”?

The question seems to me to touch the social evil and the housing problem (as shown in Chapter IV of Miss Addams’ “A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil”), the menace of child labor, of the sweat shops, and neglected childhood and starved motherhood on many sides. Why is a free chance to live and grow, for a child, any worse than free education? A child does not ask where things come from, at first. He only knows that he is cold, or hungry, or neglected. In the nature of the case he is dependent on someone.