It has required that these associations should be for child study so that parents might have guidance and help in their problems. It has instituted study courses and provided educational material for the parents. It has headquarters in Washington and has valuable co-operation from Government departments. It should be the Homes Department of the National Conservation Congress because its work is well established, covering every State and reaching to other Nations. It is the only national organization whose membership is composed of parents and teachers and whose educational leaders include the greatest specialists in child nurture and child welfare in home, school, church and state.
I would suggest to the National Conservation Congress that it make the National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations the Homes Department, because in that way it will have consecutive work of high standard, and will bring a strength which could be secured in no other way. Co-operation without duplication brings results.
The National Congress of Mothers offers its co-operation in every phase of conservation for which the Conservation Congress was organized. It also asks co-operation of the Conservation Congress in its international work for home, parenthood and child nurture.
It invites this Congress to be always represented at its annual conferences and at the Third International Congress on Child Welfare in Washington, D. C., in May, 1914.
Life, health, character, all depend on the home and its efficiency. To equip every home for efficiency in its special work is the greatest need in Conservation.
President White—That is surely a fine paper, in a holy cause.
The topic of the next section of the program is “Conservation of Human Life.” The subject, “Saving Miners’ Lives,” will be discussed by Dr. Joseph A. Holmes, of Washington, D. C., Director of the National Bureau of Mines. (Applause.)
Address, “Saving the Miners’ Lives”
Dr. Holmes—Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: Those of you who have endeavored, even in part, during the past month to attend the Congresses in session in the United States, have found the time all too short to make that possible for you to do. These Congresses have covered all subjects. There is a feeling of unrest, a feeling that we have not done in the past the things which we ought to have done, and that it is high time we were trying to find out what are the best things to do. For some two hundred years in the development of this country we have allowed the individual very largely to take care of himself. We started out with the government theory that each man is entitled to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” and the individual was left to himself to accomplish the purpose he had in view. The country developed rapidly through that system, and we built up a great Nation, but we have in the meantime neglected the public welfare. We are in a state of unrest today in regard to the future, feeling that it is time we were doing what we are trying to do—look after the question of the public welfare.
We have had, furthermore, a period of most rapid progress. When you, Mr. President, and others of us here, go back today to the schools where we went years ago, we hardly know the place. Buildings have changed, new ones have been built, and the teachers of today are different from those we were accustomed to. We see the great system of transportation built by the railroad men of today; we see the means of communication, some fifteen million miles of telegraph and telephone lines, enabling the people to talk with one another. Yet even that is not speedy enough, so we are using the wireless. And so along all lines of industry, we have developed at a tremendous rate. But it has been a one-sided development, and now we have come to look particularly at the other side—the public welfare, and we are trying to find out what is best, from the experience of all countries, so that the American people may do the best that can be done for the welfare of this country.