His chief work in the academic world was the significant one of beginning and developing systematic instruction in the application of principles of ethics to pressing social problems. Just thirty-three years ago he began a course of lectures on that subject in the divinity school of Harvard. Four years later it was made a general university course for advanced students. In this said Mr. Peabody, there is “a new opportunity in university instruction. With us it has been quite without precedent. It summons the young men who have been imbued with the principles of political economy and of philosophy, to the practical application of those studies.”
That course at Harvard, with the instruction begun at Cornell in 1884 by Frank B. Sanborn, under President White, was the beginning of academic work in this country, specialized and practical, in that field, and at Harvard it has continued, a systematic development. It is within the division of Philosophy. This means no lack of appreciation of the economic forces in society, but it points to the broad highway to solving vital problems though the field of ethics. This teaching so won the confidence of a generous donor, prominent alike in business and philanthropy, that the erection of Emerson Hall was made possible, with ample quarters for the Department of Social Ethics. Thus Mr. Peabody leaves the department which he has built up on the solid ground of continuity.
Among the hundreds of young men who have taken Mr. Peabody’s general course and his seminary courses, many have been helped by him to be better citizens and neighbors. Not a few have carried stimulus caught from him into professional life in social service the country over.
The recent and really remarkable activity of Harvard students in social service, centering at Phillips Brooks House, was largely founded and fostered by Mr. Peabody. He has been identified with Prospect Union from its opening in 1891: a piece of university extension, in whose evening classes the teachers are college students and the students are all sorts and conditions of men from mercantile and industrial life in Cambridge. Long ago, he helped to start co-operative stores, a method of bringing forward democracy and thrift—which is none the less sound because many persons were not ready for it. He urged the trial in Massachusetts cities, under local option, of the foreign system of government administration of the sale of liquor—to which worse systems may yet bring us.
He was a leading founder of the Associated Charities of Cambridge. In these and many other ways he has brought the knowledge of a college professor, with warm interest, into the affairs of the community.
Jeffrey R. Brackett.
The social survey is gaining recognition as an instrument for community advance so rapidly that the new Department of Surveys and Exhibits of the Russell Sage Foundation, which was established last October, has found it necessary to increase its staff. The work of the department during its first three months has been largely advisory—defining surveys by specific illustrations, outlining the steps for selecting a representative committee to back a survey or an exhibit, assisting in the choice of subjects to be covered and estimating probable costs. The increase in the staff will facilitate an extension of this service and make more field work possible. The new members of the staff are Zenas L. Potter of New York and Franz Schneider, Jr., of Boston.
Mr. Potter is a graduate of the University of Minnesota where he specialized in administration of governmental problems. This was followed by a year’s graduate work at Columbia in economics and social economy, where he received the Toppan prize for the best work in constitutional law. After leaving Columbia he was field secretary of the New York Child Labor Committee for two years. He investigated the work conditions of children in the state, and in 1912 directed the cannery investigation for the New York State Factory Investigating Commission. The findings of this inquiry are being used in the campaign for better laws regulating child labor conditions in New York state.
Mr. Schneider, while taking courses leading to his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, gave special attention to subjects in the field of public health and sanitation. Since 1910 he has taught in the institute, and will leave the position of research associate in the sanitary research laboratories to join the Department of Surveys and Exhibits. In the summer of 1911 he was employed in Kansas on special investigations into the bacteriology of the egg-packing industry, and during the summer of 1912 on an investigation into the fundamental principles of ventilation. For the last year he has helped edit the American Journal of Public Health and at present is health officer of Wellesley, Mass. The latter work is part of a plan which is being worked out with Prof. E. B. Phelps, also of the institute, to build up an organization to operate the Board of Health work of small towns in the neighborhood of Boston. The aim is to give these towns a service comparable to that of the large cities, a service which they alone could not afford.