Woman's work in municipalities

by Mary Ritter Beard

In New Mexico the Woman’s Club of Roswell behaved in much the same way. It was irrigation that seemed the crying need of that region. The club had a well dug and erected a tank which holds several thousands of gallons of water. As the women had previously planted some hundreds of trees in their town, they were thus able to maintain them also in a healthy condition.

One who reads the following somewhat casual report of a victory in a fight for better water might have no appreciation of the fact that it was the women of New Canaan who did the fighting, and hard fighting it was, for the filtration plant in their vicinity:

Agitation by the local Civic League for an improved water supply for New Canaan, Connecticut, recently won, through the Public Utilities Commission, a victory which may lead to important results throughout the state. The League, aided by an engineer and a sanitary expert, after a three-day hearing at Hartford, secured an order directing the private water company to install a filtration plant and equipment to purge the water of all odor and color.

The lawyer for the water company in his brief declared that if the request of the petitioners were granted the previous railroad work of the Commission would be small in comparison with what was ahead in adjudicating similar appeals relating to water supply in other towns. “The Commission,” said one of the petitioners after the verdict had been handed down, “has rendered this decision, so let us hope that good days are ahead for Connecticut in regard to water supply, and that it may lead to an efficient system of state inspection.”

It was the women who refused to accept the findings of the male authorities with reference to the purity of the water and proposed methods for its control. Experts were engaged by them and their activity at the hearings at Hartford made their determination to have better water so clear that the men yielded and now New Canaan is proud of its achievement—so proud that notices of the same necessitate an inquiry into the personnel of the Civic League for a complete story.

Public Baths

Women were instrumental in establishing public baths in several cities; notably in Pittsburgh, where The Civic Club of Allegheny County led in the agitation. The Woman’s Institute of Yonkers campaigned for baths in that community and some were secured. In cases where women have been directly interested in having baths arranged for the people, better sanitary conditions seem sometimes to have prevailed than in cases where they just passively approved and the city established the baths. In Newark, New Jersey, for example, a few women made an examination of the conditions of the public baths which had been established in that city for some time. To their horror they found them in a positively infected condition and their task therefore was the purification of existing bathing places. This they had to bring about by public sentiment and its concentration on the officials responsible for the condition of affairs. A water supply in every home, therefore, interests many women far more than any public bath proposal.

Public Laundries

There is more foundation for the arguments in favor of public wash houses than for the arguments in favor of public baths. Whatever the equipment in individual homes for bathing, and however excellent the individual water service, there are health considerations of a very different character to be met in connection with the family laundry work. In large towns and even in small towns in congested areas there are no facilities for drying the clothes and the sanitary conditions which result from indoor home drying are deplorable and dangerous. In addition to health considerations, the mental effect of sitting in rooms filled with damp clothes is so depressing that many a man and many a boy or girl has fled from home to the saloon and dance hall as a more cheerful place to spend the evening. The poor mother who has done the washing must bear its company in solitary submission.

In an effort to alter this pathetic condition of affairs, some attempt has been made to establish public laundries with drying rooms attached and every facility for rapid and sanitary disposal of the weekly laundry. There are economic features which add reasonableness to the agitation for public laundries, for the waste of fuel and energy involved in individual fires for washing and ironing is incalculable and useless, for the most part.