Woman's work in municipalities

by Mary Ritter Beard

In Detroit recently the club women persuaded the city officials to coöperate with civic organizations and order disorderly houses to close and stay closed after a certain date.

A peculiar phase of the situation is that no provision seems to have been made for the women who will be turned out of these resorts. Being human, even if immoral, they are likely to continue living and the presumption is that those who profit by their traffic will remove them to some other city—which is not exactly a final solution of the evil.

The club women who have labored so earnestly to improve the morals of their city are not to blame. They would be glad to see an asylum provided where such women might be cared for and given an opportunity to return to a normal life, but the State has not provided any such shelter, although the matter has been before the legislature more than once. Possibly some effort will be made by private subscription to do this work which the State should look after.

Michigan is no worse than many other States in this respect and Detroit shows courage in attempting to stamp out an evil which is usually allowed to flourish without restraint. The case only illustrates what confusion exists when practical measures of reform are attempted. The study of social hygiene and eugenics inevitably leads to the consideration of the ugly problems of life. Any attempt at their solution is certainly better than the ignorant or indifferent attitude which women have hitherto been encouraged to take. Women are beginning to revolt against the atrocities of commercialized vice. They do not believe that all this degradation is inevitable. Every protest brings us nearer some right solution of the whole problem of woman’s place in life.

Congress of Mothers

The Congress of Mothers likewise refuses to ignore a matter so vitally related to motherhood. This organization has for one of its chief aims the promotion of high ideals of marriage “and the maintenance of its sacredness and permanence.” Its attitude toward life is primarily religious, and the leaders believe that more religious education in the home is the crying need which will prevent immorality. The Congress of Mothers is active and successful in forming mothers’ circles, fathers’ circles, and parent-teacher associations for the purpose of discussing the needs of childhood and increasing the sense of responsibility among parents.

Such responsibility undoubtedly can be improved and needs to be improved. The social evil is not solved thereby, however, for economic conditions affect that responsibility in varying degrees. The mother who must work out of the home long hours, or the father who toils on a night-shift or for ten, twelve or fourteen hours a day has no time or strength to devote to children, however great the inclination.

Parents who have themselves grown up in a congested area, who have been overworked and underfed and surrounded from infancy with a vicious environment cannot be reached always with a religious or moral appeal and, even if they are, they cannot always persuade their children to forsake the attractions of the street and the saloon and the resort for a quiet evening of prayer at home with the father and mother. Many women accept the judgment and observation of Dr. Abraham Flexner that the social evil swallows up in greater proportion than any other “the unskilled daughters of the unskilled classes,” and they would therefore substitute for, or supplement, the instilling of moral precept, by industrial training, housing reform, regulation of hours and conditions of labor, control of recreational facilities, the minimum wage, mothers’ pensions and many other reforms.

In these articles of a social program, the Congress of Mothers would join forces part of the way. It is when suffragists insist on the need of political power for mothers that the forces separate, for the Congress of Mothers inclines to the individualist theory of causation and responsibility.

The value of the agitation carried on by the Congress of Mothers lies in its appeal to middle- and upper-class men and women who often lightly ignore their family duties and entrust the care of children to incompetent nurses or maids during their formative years. The organization of parent-teacher associations increases the knowledge of both of these important agencies in the molding of the child’s character and is of inestimable value in the sphere where it can be employed. Just as hospital work has to be supplemented by family treatment of an economic character, so this work has to be supplemented by social-economic work to cover larger sections of the community.