Congestion in cities should not be permitted. In the seaport cities many immigrants from other lands have not the means to go farther, and if they had the means, do not know enough about the country to place themselves where their qualifications would fit best. The cry against immigration is one with which I can not sympathize. The Americanizing of the immigrant should be placed in other hands than the politician’s, who uses him en masse for a manipulated vote.
The special education of immigrant men and women would be an important service to good home-making and the ability to train the children to be useful citizens.
The proper distribution of immigrants by careful information as to opportunities for work and the earning of a home is greatly needed. The proper assimilation of our immigrant population is still in its infancy, but is of vital moment, for they also are the future citizens of America.
The city home of the American citizen should not be left to the will of builders whose only thought is to build houses for sale. Many apartments are built today without the amount of light, sun or ventilation necessary to health. Some cities and towns are realizing the need for regulating this.
The Conservation of the home demands that every State should have requirements as to building homes. The problem of a comfortable home for the family with a moderate income is a serious one today. Few cities or towns are giving the thought necessary to make a city of good homes for the average family at prices possible for them to pay.
The country home is equally in need of study and help. The opportunities for social life and educational advantages equal to those given to the city home should be supplied. That means larger appropriations for schools, the employment of the best teachers, the consolidated school, the use of the schools and churches as centers of educational and social life, the making of good roads between home and school and church and market place.
The Government Department of the Home should take all these things into consideration. It should bring to the overworked farmer’s wife better household facilities and more help. The greatest drawback to country life today is the overworked wife, who can not get needed help and who goes beyond her strength in cooking and doing housework for farm help as well as her own family.
No one who knows of the terrible results of hook worm in the South resulting from the unsanitary, poverty-stricken hovels, where physical weakness had for years sapped the vitality and energy of men, women and children, can gainsay the fact that Government study of the causes and the remedy has done a service of inestimable value to thousands of homes. Seven years’ life among those people proved that many of them were in quality equal to the best American stock, but that disease had brought upon them the unjust stigma of laziness with resulting poverty.
The Government could study and publish the results of its investigation, but Dr. Stiles had to get contributions from individuals to do the educational and medical work necessary to uproot this disease. That is not as it should be. The power to help should go with the power to investigate, for the condition was of much wider interest than to the individuals directly affected.
The National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations have made the subject of the home, of parental education and of child welfare its special study and work for seventeen years. It has worked steadily to build up a united system of parent-teacher associations in connection with every school, to bring about the co-operation of home and school in child nurture.