Woman's work in municipalities

by Mary Ritter Beard

In 1896 women appeared before the annual meetings of the National Civil Service Reform League to make addresses. In that year Mrs. Charles Russell Lowell spoke on the “Relation of Women to the Movement for Reform in the Civil Service,” and her speech helped to stimulate the belief in men that the help of women was of importance, and to inspire women to a sense of their own usefulness in this direction. Soon after that women like Mrs. Oakley of the Federation of Clubs appeared at the sessions to report work of clubwomen and carry back to them from the National Civil Service Reform League some inspiration for further effort. It was not long before women as well as men began to urge greater interest in civil service reform at conferences of charities and corrections and similar assemblies. Women’s auxiliaries to civil service reform associations are now quite common. There are also committees on civil service reform connected with the Association of Collegiate Alumnæ, patriotic societies, and kindred associations. The Women’s Municipal League of New York and the Women’s Auxiliary of the National Civil Service Reform League have a joint committee for the promotion of education along this line and for the continual study of the problem.

A definite impetus to join in the movement for civil service reform was given to club women in 1900 at their Biennial Convention in Milwaukee when the following plea for their activity in this direction was made:

How cowardly and shallow a cry is this one we raise from time to time—“Keep out of politics our school systems, our public institutions for the dependent and unfortunate citizens of our cities and states.” What does this mean? It means, keep these great moral responsibilities out of the hands of those elected to assume such responsibility.

Is this the attitude of a people free to choose those who are to serve them?

Even if you should deliberately plan to withdraw from politics the great interests of which we have spoken, responsibility for which is the training of the individual and the race; if you could wish to condemn our political life to dry rot, you cannot do it. The tendency is to put those things more and more under the jurisdiction of governments.

Let us change our cry. Let us say, “Purify and strengthen our political life that it may be the worthy custodian of our deepest interests.”

It was such a natural, inevitable step for the women who had taken such an interest in industrial and sanitary problems to see that the enforcement of the laws relating thereto must be in the hands of competent men and women. A Committee on Civil Service was added as one of the standing committees of the general federation and it was not long until each state, as well as some of the city federations, had its civil service committee.

While individual clubs have continued to report that this movement proceeded slowly owing to the insistence of many women that civil service work meant politics, an ever-increasing number of women, whether they believe in women entering politics themselves or not, have felt that they must agitate for proper responsibility on the part of those chosen as guardians of every interest the women have developed.

While insisting upon proper civil appointments, women have not been indifferent to the need for trained men and women for public service. The Women’s Auxiliary of the Civil Service Reform Association and the New York Bureau of Municipal Research have taken up the problem of a closer relation of the public educational system and public service with a view to the development of the training for public service in municipal schools and colleges.

Naturally such movements do not ignore the opportunities for women in the public service and the necessity of providing adequate training for them. Indeed the work of women in bureaus of municipal research in New York and elsewhere is an evidence of the desire on the part of women for training in public service and demonstrates woman’s ability to adapt herself to the requirements of that training. The New York Bureau has had nineteen women in the two and a half years of its existence and its last report (1914) tells of their assignments and the positions they now fill. As city positions are generally accorded first to men, their present offices are no final estimate of comparative efficiency. The “Budget and the Citizen” by Mary Sayles and “Helping School Children” by Elsa Denison are two of the noteworthy contributions of the New York Bureau. Finally, it is to a woman, Mrs. E. H. Harriman, that the Training School for Public Service connected with the Bureau owes its origin.