Woman's work in municipalities

by Mary Ritter Beard

It had been left to my discretion whether it would be worth while to go to Madrid, but this decision was practically taken out of my hands in London when, upon talking with the European men and women who had attended other international conferences, I became convinced there could be no doubt as to its being a duty to go.

It is a matter of surprise to the leading Jewish men in Europe who are so actively interested in this matter to find that the Council of Jewish Women has stood alone for so long in this work, that the Council of Jewish Women was the only one of the organizations of Jews in the United States which thought the matter of sufficient importance to send a delegate to confer with those of Europe on the subject.

Attitude of Settlements

At the Inter-city Conference of Settlement Workers in Boston last year it became very clear that some of the leaders were anxious to make their work among foreigners count for more. Dr. Jane Robbins took the position that assimilation would be expedited and rendered more stable by means of the training of young foreigners, Italians and the like, as social workers in order that they might contribute their own enthusiasm and knowledge of the traditions and prejudices of their people to the task of Americanization. Miss Lillian Wald, the president of the National Federation of Settlements, maintained that the best assimilative work of all could be done through the settlement which she called “The House of the Interpreter.” The inculcation of the neighborhood spirit, she added, stimulates a wholesome rivalry and promotes better housing and social standards than can be secured by other means. Vida Scudder insisted upon the vital necessity of rescuing settlement work from philanthropic tendencies. She suggested that truer democracy and helpfulness in the work of assimilation of all elements of the national life could be brought about by greater attention on the part of settlements to all the forward movements of the working class for whom settlements exist. Miss Scudder argued that settlement workers ought to perfect the technique of the settlement organization in such a way that they would be free in times of crises to assist in all working class movements which have as their aim the improvement of the conditions of life and labor. In this position, Miss Scudder would sympathize with and encourage work along lines similar to that pursued by Miss Cross in her Rochester work, to which we have referred.

The Negro

The problem of fair citizenship for the negro is receiving no little attention from those women interested in the assimilation of races. The National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes is an organization of men and women with headquarters in New York, formed “to help in counteracting this migration to the cities and to make efforts for improving the serious social conditions growing up among the negroes in the cities.”

This League is a consolidation of the National League for the Protection of Colored Women formed in 1906, after revelations were made of the abuses in the employment agencies connected with the emigration of negro women from the South, and of the Committee for Improving the Industrial Conditions of Negroes, in New York, which recognized the industrial and educational handicaps of the negro and sought to equip him better for life.

The consolidated body is making studies of negroes in cities, seeking to secure wider recreational, educational, and industrial facilities, and, what is perhaps most important of all, training negro social workers to do themselves the needed work for their own race. Among the effective women workers in this organization is Elizabeth Walton.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is also a body of men and women. It seeks to secure for the negroes “full enjoyment of their rights as citizens, justice in all courts, and equality of opportunity everywhere.” Among the women who are earnest supporters of this society are Miss Mary White Ovington of Brooklyn, Jane Addams of Chicago, Mrs. Florence Kelley, Miss Lillian Wald and Mrs. Max Morgenthau of New York. Miss May Childs Nerney is the secretary.

It is to a woman, Mrs. Louise de Koven Bowen, that we owe one of our best brief studies of the colored people’s problems in a great northern city. Her article published in The Survey, entitled, “The Colored People of Chicago: Where Their Opportunity Is Choked—Where Open,” is such a trenchant presentation of this problem that it deserves quotation at length here. She says: