Dr. Devine asks one question, which I should like to try to answer. He asks: “Who are the sudden heroes of a brand-new program of state subsidies to mothers, that they have grown so scornful of poor relief administration, of religious alms, of a thousand forms of organized benevolence, of the charity which, in all ages, organized and unorganized, has comforted the afflicted, fed the hungry, succored the widow and the fatherless?”
They are, if I am permitted to answer what I believe, the old-fashioned givers, the passing of whom Dr. Devine goes on to deplore. They are the people, too, whom Dr. Devine and The Survey are waking up, who are not satisfied to go all through life having their ideas predigested for them; more than all, they are social workers, who have come to distrust some of the methods of social work. Starting out with a blind faith in philanthropic methods, I have found, time and again, not that the work was so much hampered as some have found it, by “investigation, the keeping of records, discriminating aid, etc.,” but that the work was not exact, and not careful and that its faults were not mitigated by that human sympathy which would atone for human faults.
This is not always true, but it has become proverbial, and we see why. If we could have always with us the great people of the earth, like Miss Addams, Miss Lathrop, Judge Mack, and others, there would be no such proverbs as those the poor now murmur among themselves.
State aid, to my mind, is an advance, as showing the policy of the nation, to conserve its children and its homes, and in recognizing the mother as a factor in that campaign, for the welfare of all.[[41]]
Mrs. Park is a member of the Massachusetts commission on widows’ pensions which proposed legislation on the subject, not all the members agreeing on public aid, however. The existence of this commission was largely due to Mrs. Park but Miss Helen Winslow helped by lecturing on the subject before more than sixty women’s clubs in Massachusetts.
All women, however, are by no means committed to the policy of public aid for dependent mothers. Grace P. Pollard, for instance, president of the Liberal Union of Minnesota Women, objects in these terms:
With indications that the “public” is being swayed by appeals to protect motherhood through pensions, the presentation of “Motherhood and Pensions” by Miss Richmond is a relief. Aside from the economic waste of human energy which a “pension” system may induce, it is likely to lessen individual initiative, to reduce its possible recipients to the condition of petitioners for favors, and hence to weaken the social structure.
It is unfortunate that our city, state and national treasuries bear so impersonal a relation to the members of society. Intelligent citizens know that the poor and ignorant pay an indirect tax out of all proportion to their resources, that this condition is fostered by those who have in hand larger resources, and that poverty and ignorance are necessary factors in the explanation of human energy. The poor and the ignorant are paying the price of that which is to be returned to them as pensions.
If the time, money and energy now being used to establish pensions could be directed into the establishment of fair conditions of industry, of sanitary conditions of living, of greater opportunities to acquire knowledge, of equal privileges and duties for men and women, might not the nation’s integrity be better safeguarded?[[42]]
Where mothers’ pension laws are enacted, women are called to aid in their administration. Massachusetts has a “Mothers’ Act,” the enforcement of which is under the Special Committee of the State Board of Charity, with Ada Eliot Sheffield as Chairman. Overseers of the poor administer the law under the direction of this Special Committee, and Emma W. Lee has charge of a corps of women who will work with the overseers. Caroline B. Alexander is a member of the New Jersey State Board of Children’s Guardians which administers the State Mothers’ Pension Law.[[43]]