Since sanitary and hygiene inspection are so closely allied to fire protection, a single inspector when trained can care for all three needs if necessary. Women who make the former inspections well can readily add the third.
In smaller towns, where lack of fire-fighting apparatus is the chief trouble, we often find women working to make good the deficiency. A little club of women in Vallejo, California, for instance, owned and managed a fire engine until the town authorities grew ashamed and decided that the city should have a fire department.[[49]]
Women have helped in the work of the American Museum of Safety of New York, the motto of which is “Now Let Us Conserve Human Life.” Mrs. W. H. Tolman, wife of the Director of the Museum, inaugurated the safety campaign among the school children in New York City. This campaign was conducted under the Museum’s auspices in coöperation with the Board of Education. Mrs. Tolman trained the lecturers in this work, and herself personally lectured to many thousands of school children on the importance of thoughtfulness and caution in protecting their own lives and those of their playmates upon the congested streets of our city. In connection with this school campaign, Safety Stories and Safety Buttons were distributed by the Museum, with a view to strengthening the instruction given in the safety talks of the lecturers.
After instruction by lecture was introduced in the schools of New Jersey, accidents were reduced 44 per cent. within a period of six months as compared with a previous period before such instruction was given.
The traffic problem is one of the most troublesome of all in a great city. Fortunately, upon it, too, women are bringing a salutary influence to bear. Frances Perkins of the Safety Committee of New York is generally admitted to be a moving spirit in the safety agitation that is beginning to produce certain visible results in that city.
Industrial safety is one of the most important aspects of safety in general, but, aside from the fire and sanitary protection of workers, and even there, it is largely a state matter rather than a municipal one, and has to do with laws relative to mechanical devices, age limits, and other requirements. Industrial safety is, therefore, a larger topic than can be justifiably introduced here. It is an element not ignored, however, by women who think of public safety, for luckily in practical life and in social work there are no page limitations.
CHAPTER X
CIVIC IMPROVEMENT
The humanitarian and wise planning of beautiful cities and towns is the climax of municipal endeavor, because it represents the coördination of all civic movements looking toward the health, comfort, recreation, education and happiness of urban people.
City planning like all other interests has grown in purpose and scope. From desire for ornamental lampposts has grown a desire for effective light, and not too expensive either. Well-lighted streets become recognized as foes to crime, and out of interest in the lamppost comes an interest in the causes of crime; proper housing, wholesome amusement, and employment may thus be intimately connected with an artistic street lamp.
City planners have not all begun with a lamppost. Some of them began with billboards and thought of billboards exclusively for a long time; then they moved on to municipal art, education, censorship of movies, recreation, housing and labor. Some began with parks and advanced to health and transportation.