John L. Elliott of the Hudson Guild held that it should more and more be the final effort of the settlement to bring the mothers and fathers into the streets, into the schools and into the dance halls that they may come to understand the conditions under which their children live, and contribute of their own experience and power in reorganizing communal life.
The meeting on Monday morning was opened by Abraham Rosenberg, the president of the Cloak and Suit Makers’ Union, who spoke of the work of the various settlement leaders in securing the New York protocol. He admitted a growing recognition on the part of labor leaders of the factor of public good will and service.
Mary P. Follett of the Roxbury League urged the continued necessity for social workers in the civic centre, and Gaylord S. White suggested the need of such influence in enlarging the scope and horizon of church work. Robert A. Woods summed up the more telling lines of interest opened up in the meeting. He urged that the significance of the settlement for the future, as for the past, lay not in any specific type of service or reform—valuable as nearly all such effort is—but in the development of social self sufficiency among the people from neighborhood to neighborhood throughout the country.
The use which the younger element made of a question box as the meeting ended led to the motion that at future conferences the junior speakers should have the floor for at least one session.
“BOXING” THE COST OF LIVING
The cost of living was the very live subject taken up by the seventeenth annual meeting of the American Academy of Political and Social Science held in Philadelphia in April. With the exception of the tariff, which was omitted for lack of time, the session may be said to have covered the whole field.
The first paper in the session on Family Standards was by Prof. Simon N. Patten of the University of Pennsylvania. His analysis of changes in woman’s dress is worth quoting:
“In the early history of America, the dress, the habits, the morality, the relations between men and women could be predicted with certainty. This uniformity has been broken up by recent industrial changes through which the working population has been transferred from the farm to shops and factories. City life makes new demands and excites new wants.
“A new woman is appearing who differs in many ways from her predecessor. She is stronger, more healthy, more ambitious and with moral qualities that match the new vigor. With greater physical vigor and more ambition, women love activity and cut out the contrasts in color and design in which the primitive woman indulged. The man-made woman dresses to emphasize her sex; the self-conscious woman subordinates her clothing to the needs of her own personality and her activity.
“The active, healthy woman creates a spiritual impress by simplifying her dress and thus enhancing her facial beauty. Her less advanced sister clings to the older dress forms, through which a lower appeal is made. Out of the struggle is coming a new womanhood with higher morality and more beauty. Dressing is thus more than an economy; it is the essence of moral progress.”