The larger plans for meeting these general needs can only be carried out with the consent of all the people and the wisdom of such plans must be submitted to them during a political campaign.
Certainly woman’s rôle of non-partisanship needs to be examined afresh when a multitude of men and women have come to challenge the sincerity and moral value of that combination of reverence and disregard which does not permit a woman to fulfill the traditional obligations to the community simply because to do this she must participate in political life.
If women would bear their share in those great social problems which no nation has yet solved, but which every nation must reduce to political action if it would hold its place in advancing civilization, they are fairly forced to choose between standing for an impossible ideal, quite outside the political field, or upholding moral standards within political life itself.
The entrance of women into the political combat in Chicago helped to defeat the régime which was undermining the Juvenile Court. A temporary setback was threatened by the decision of the state court that probation officers were not included in the officers under the civil service law, but until their position under that law could be strengthened the situation was met by an advisory committee, appointed by Judge Pinckney, in whose hands lay the appointment of probation officers, to examine and pass upon all applicants. Louise De Koven Bowen, president of the Juvenile Protective Association and of the Chicago Woman’s Club, and Leonora Meder, president of the Federation of Catholic Women’s Charities, were on this advisory council.
In summing up the efforts of women for, and their attitude toward, the Juvenile Court, Julia Lathrop, chief of the Children’s Bureau, says: “Important as are the immediate services of a Juvenile Court to the children who are daily brought before it for protection and guidance, painstaking as are the Court’s methods of ascertaining the facts which account for a child’s trouble, his family history, his own physical and mental state, hopeful as are the results of probation, yet the great primary service of the Court is that it lifts up the truth and compels us to see that wastage of human life whose sign is the child in the Court. Heretofore the kindly but hurried people never saw as a whole what it cannot now avoid seeing—the sad procession of little children and older brothers and sisters who for various reasons cannot keep step with the great company of normal, orderly, protected children.”
Women Judges
In view of all their interest in juvenile courts, their labors to procure their establishment, and their protective care for the children passing through the courts, it was only natural that women should take the next step and mount the bench to deal, particularly, with cases involving children and girls. Fourteen years ago, Judge Lindsey, in Denver, called a woman to his assistance, in cases pending before him, and the experiment was eminently successful.
The St. Louis Juvenile Court has two women assistant judges to hear all cases of girls. The change took effect January 12, 1914, and was established by Judge Thomas C. Hennings, who appointed to these positions two women probation officers, Mrs. E. C. Runge and Catherine R. Dunn. No legislation was necessary to make the appointments. The girls are heard by these women privately and then their findings are submitted to him and entered as orders of the court. Only in cases of disagreement between the two women will the judge be called upon to hear the case.
St. Louis was the third city to take this step. Chicago and Denver had already appointed women assistant judges, but the “move” in St. Louis came quite independently as the direct result of a baffling case which Judge Hennings had to meet. Four girls were brought before him, from whom he was unable to get truthful statements even after searching inquiry. He put two women probation officers at work on the problem, and they got the facts truthfully from the girls at once. When Mrs. Runge asked one of the girls, “Why didn’t you tell this to the judge?” she said, “Why, I couldn’t tell such things to any man.” When Judge Hennings heard this, he was moved at once to the decision not to hear any more girls’ cases himself.
Mrs. Runge has been a probation officer in the Juvenile Court six years and Miss Dunn four. Both of them had previously had long experience in social work. It is hoped in St. Louis that these appointments will lead to the appointment of a woman assistant judge to give her whole time to it. At present these women are still probation officers.[[48]]