Part 4

Man is so constituted as to require above all else food and drink. So it is no wonder if I speak of victualers, whose principle it is to deceive and to practice fraud. I will begin, as an instance, with the tavern-keeper and his wine-cellar.... If his red or white wine loses its proper color, he mixes it freely to procure the proper shade.... If I stop in to fill my flask, he gives me of his best wine to taste, and then fills my flask with some cheap stuff. He pretends to have any foreign vintage that one desires, but under divers names he draws ten kinds from the same barrel.... The poor people complain with reason that their beer is made from an inferior quality of grain, while good beer is almost as dear as wine. If you give an order for beer to be delivered at the house, the inn-keeper will send a good quality once or twice until he gets your trade, and then he sends worse at the same price.... Every one in the city is complaining of the short-weight loaves the bakers sell, and wheat is stored with the intention to boost the price of bread.... Whether you buy at wholesale or retail, you have to pay the butcher twice the right price for beef and lamb. Lean beef is fattened by larding it, but the skewers are left in and ruin the carver’s knife.... To fetch their price, butchers often hold back meat until it is bad, when they try to sell it rather than cast it to the dogs.... Poulterers sell as fresh game what has been killed ten days before(!)... For my own part, I can dispense with partridges, pheasants, and plovers. But capons and geese are almost as high nowadays as hens.

Yet, if all those of whom I have spoken agreed to be fair and just, there would still be unfairness in the world. For even laborers are unfair, and will not willingly subject themselves to what is reasonable, claiming high wages for little work; they want five or six shillings for the work they formerly did for two. In old times workingmen did not expect to eat wheat bread, but were satisfied with coarser bread and with water to drink, regarding cheese and milk as a treat. I cannot find one servant of that sort now in the market (_i. e._, intelligence office!). They are all extravagant in their dress, and it would be easier to satisfy two gentlemen than one such ill-bred servant. They are neither faithful, polite, or well-behaved. Many are too proud to serve like their fathers.... The fault lies with the lethargy of the gentry, who pay no heed to this folly of the lower classes; but, unless care be taken, these tares will soon spring up, and the insurgence of these classes is to be feared like a flood or a fire.

The trouble is that no one is satisfied with his own estate; lord, prelate, commoner—each accuses the other. The lower classes blame the gentleman and the townsman, and the upper classes blame the lower, and all is in confusion.... The days prophesied by Hosea are come to pass, when there shall be no wisdom in the earth. I know not if the fault lie with laymen or churchmen, but all unite in the common cry: “the times are bad, the times are bad.”

* * * * *

Annie Laws (_Kindergarten Review_) believes that she can trace the social spirit of the kindergartner as an important factor in stimulating, and in some cases, even initiating, many of the social movements of today, among them playgrounds, social centers, vacation schools, public libraries, mothers’ clubs and school and home gardens.

The relation between the kindergarten and the big world outside the kindergarten Miss Laws states as follows:

Some one has said that “the primary aim of the kindergarten is to create a miniature world which shall be to the child a faithful portrait of the greater world in its ideal aspects.”

If the kindergarten can bring to each and all of us its aid in helping us to create for ourselves a miniature world, which shall be a faithful portrait of the greater world in its ideal aspects; and if it can aid in making us content to give to our communities the service for which we are best fitted, and can teach us to so live that not so much social efficiency as social reciprocity shall be our aim and purpose, then we shall all agree to give to the kindergarten its true place as one of the most valuable factors of social life and social work of the present time, one worthy of our best thought and effort.

* * * * *

A CONTRAST

LAURA SIMMONS

Across the gloom a shadow flits; I glimpse a sodden face Wherein the years of sin and toil and care have left their trace: A wanton laugh—I mark no more, for yonder in the glow One waiteth me—my love, my star! with welcoming, I know: Tender and fine is she: withal so stately sweet and fair My grateful heart thrills to Heaven, to see her standing there! If this be Woman—pure, benign, Man’s blessed beacon-light, Then—Christ! What that poor outcast soul that passed me in the night?

* * * * *

The following striking comparison is from The Road from Jerusalem to Jericho (_Good Housekeeping_), a plea by Frances Duncan for votes for women on the ground that woman is the ideal samaritan; man the priest and the Levite who at the present time alone has the power, but lacks the inclination, to stoop to care for the injured by righting social wrongs, especially those affecting women. Miss Duncan tells of a haunting drawing by Frederick Remington:

The central figure is that of a man who has been taken by a band of Indians; four or five of his captors are about him, and you see the relentless faces lit with the grim joy of capture. Around the man’s neck a noose hangs loosely; about him he sees only the inexorable faces, the wide stretches of the plains, the silences in which there is no help. The man looks past the plains into the ghastly future that is just ahead. The picture is called “Missing.”

In this country hardly a day goes by but in it is enacted a tragedy worse than that of Remington’s picture; and it’s called by the same name. Take up a paper almost any day in New York and you read of the disappearance of a girl of fourteen or fifteen or sixteen, or of the suicide of a girl who has been caught in the horrible undertow from which, as far as society is concerned, there is no return. Within the last year, on the various routes between New York and Chicago, no less than nine hundred and sixty girls have disappeared.

* * * * *

THE UNDER DOGS

HORATIO WINSLOW in the _Coming Nation_

If I had not heard the bitter cry, If I had not seen the bleeding feet— I think I should echo the salving lie That toil is jolly and chains are sweet.

If I had not walked the bedless night, If I had not lived the mealless day— I think I should censure the appetite Of thieves that pilfer and fools that slay.

If I had not heard and seen and felt And wept for lack of a pathway out— Most like I should pat an expansive belt And say nice things of the Russian knout.

* * * * *

A woman of philanthropic tendencies was paying a visit to a lower East Side school. She was particularly interested in a group of poor pupils and asked permission to question them.

“Children, which is the greatest of all virtues?”

No one answered.

“Now, think a little. What is it I am doing when I give up time and pleasure to come and talk with you for your own good?”

A grimy hand went up in the rear of the room.

“Please, ma’am, youse are buttin’ in.”—_The Delineator._

* * * * *

The _Ladies Home Journal_ believes that, no less than factory and commercial worker, the oldest of home workers—the “domestic”—should be protected by standardization of wages, hours and living conditions. An editorial in the March issue says:

There is today practically no standard of wages for domestic help. The wages vary in different cities: in fact they vary in a city and a neighboring suburb. One “employment agency” fixes one wage: another settles on a different wage. There is no equitable fairness either to mistress or servant. No one really knows what is fair. The same haphazard system applies to hours of work. Neither employer nor servant knows what constitutes a fair day’s work for a cook or a maid. The whole question should be threshed out and adjusted to a standard just as are other branches of labor. Whether the eight-hour idea can be effectively worked out in the home is a question: more likely we shall have to begin on a ten-hour-day basis and gradually adjust ourselves to an eight-hour schedule with extra pay for extra hours. Employer and helper should know exactly where each stands on both questions of hours and wages. There is no further reason why, gradually, the system of our servants living outside of our homes should not be generally brought into vogue—the same as the working women engaged in all business lines. It is now done in “flats” and “apartments” where there is no room for servants’ quarters, and there is really no reason why the system should not be followed in houses where there is room. This would give a freedom of life to the servant that she does not now have, and which lack of freedom, and hours of her own and a life of her own, is the chief source of objection to domestic service, while the employers’ gain would lie in the fact that our homes could be smaller in proportion to the number of servants for whom we must now have rooms. In other words there seems to be no practical reason, except a blind adherence to custom, why the worker in the home should not be placed on exactly the same basis as the worker in the office, the store or the factory. That this idea is destined to come in the future, and in the near future, admits of no doubt. Of course it will take some time to consider all the phases of the matter that make home service different from office or store service. But we shall never solve the question of domestic service until we first place it on a practical business basis.

* * * * *

In the library of Clark University the volumes of Charles Booth’s Life and Labor of London are bound under the title A Survey of London.

BOOKS

THE EVOLUTION OF A COUNTRY COMMUNITY

By WARREN H. WILSON. The Pilgrim Press. 221 pp. Price $1.25; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.35.

Because Dr. Wilson has made a clear and pointed statement of fundamental conditions, the student of rural sociology is grateful for this book, even though much of what it contains is obvious to him. Throughout, the writer shows his belief that the rural population can be improved by a socially actuated church. Although he believes that a country church should be inspirational he makes clear the fact that the church cannot succeed unless it enters into the whole life of the farm, economic and otherwise. For instance, Dr. Wilson very properly insists that if a farmer is producing but sixty bushels of potatoes on an acre of land which should yield three hundred bushels he is guilty of a wrong that should be denounced just as stridently as the doctrinal sins which have so long occupied the attention of rural pastors. In the co-operation of these activities rather than in actual union the writer sees promise of a solution of many of the problems of the country church. He shows clearly that people cannot be united in religion until they are united in their social economy.

“The business of the church is to organize co-operative enterprises, economic, social and educational, and ... to educate them in the advantages of life together. Co-operation must become a gospel.”

This definition of the business of the church may seem rather heterodox, coming from the head of a Presbyterian department, but the department of which Dr. Wilson is the head has reached its widely recognized effectiveness because it has been actuated by such aggressive common sense as this.

That the volume is dedicated to Anna B. Taft, who has contributed so largely to the success of the movement to reanimate country churches, is indeed pleasant. Dr. Wilson adds to the value of the volume by giving many definite instances of definite achievement in the redirection of country life through the church’s activity.

The book is well named; it does present in an orderly fashion the development of the country community. Dr. Wilson follows Professor Ross of Purdue in his definition of the four types of farmers—the pioneer, the land farmer, the exploiter, and the husbandman. The writer very happily shows that in many communities the evolution has proceeded so irregularly that all the four types of farmers are now living side by side, and that their four sides may be contending for mastery. That the pastor and the church ministering to the farmer of each type are determined by that type is a clearly stated lesson that social workers outside of rural communities might very well take to heart.

Some communities, Dr. Wilson recognizes, are exceptional. He apparently agrees with Prof. T. N. Carver of Harvard that the best farmers in the country are the Mormons, the Scotch Presbyterians, and the Pennsylvania Germans. Each one of these peoples—for they are no less—has come to agricultural prosperity because this agriculture has been built around the church. The organization of the Mormons, for instance, is not only efficient, but it revolves around the church. Dr. Wilson might very well have gone further in this connection and called attention to the fact that the leaders of the Latter Day Saints have made their people happy, here and now, by realizing that all their wants—social, economic, religious, political—were so closely interrelated that they must all be taken care of by collective action.

As a clear and well-proportioned statement, characterized by ample knowledge, careful statement and good temper, the book is valuable.

WARREN DUNHAM FOSTER.

CONSTRUCTIVE RURAL SOCIOLOGY

By JOHN M. GILLETTE. introduction by George E. Vincent, president of the University of Minnesota. New York, Sturgis & Walton. 301 pp. Price $1.60; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.75.

There can be no doubt that this work is constructive if we remember that adequate information is the beginning of all sound construction. The book is packed with information on all phases of rural life. Whether it is sociology or not depends upon one’s point of view and one’s bringing up. It may be economics. Among the eighteen chapters there are included such topics as Rural and Urban Increase (IV), Improvement of Agricultural Production (VII), Improving the Business Side of Farming (VIII), and Rural and Social Institutions and Their Improvement (XV and XVI). There are numerous tables and illustrations, including an interesting map of a rural Methodist parish.

One of the most interesting chapters is entitled Social Aspects of Land and Labor in the United States, though in the first paragraph the reader is confronted with the statement that “The nation’s population is ultimately determined by the amount of its arable land.” This is doubtless a casual statement and ought not to be allowed to mar what is otherwise an excellent chapter. Of course it is only the nation’s rural population which is ultimately determined by its arable land. So long as foreign markets hold out, there is no limit to the urban population short of lack of building room. Or one might say that the population of a nation which aims to be self-contained, or physically self-supporting as distinct from commercially self-supporting, is limited by its arable land. The reviewer does not remember to have seen so good a discussion of the problem of agricultural labor as is found in this chapter.

Probably the most valuable chapter is the one on Rural Health and Sanitation. The author outlines the problem and presents in systematic order the dangers to rural health and the methods of safeguarding against them. Under such heads as Water, Garbage and Sewage, Insects and Animals, Foods, and Transmissible Diseases, he sets forth the chief problems of farm sanitation, and emphasizes the need of co-operation in neighborhood sanitation.

The book is a substantial contribution to the growing problem of rural life and rural adjustment. The author shows a first hand knowledge of the subject which he treats, and a wide familiarity with statistical and other documentary sources of information. All sincere students owe him a debt of gratitude.

T. N. CARVER.

STARVING AMERICA

By ALFRED W. MCCANN. F. M. Barton. 270 pp. Price $1.50; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.61.

This is an adulterating age. The organized exploitation of the primary wants of civilized mankind, the demand for products prepared for immediate consumption, the stimulation of new desires by unprecedented advertising campaigns, the conspicuous consumption of the rich and the unreasoning imitation of the richer by the poorer, the ever lengthening cycle of production from raw material to finished product, the fierce competition among manufacturers and dispensers of goods, the rising cost of living, and more than all, the amazing carelessness of the purchasing public, especially with regard to articles of food and clothing, have caused the adulterators to multiply and flourish and have developed adulteration to a fine art.

The exposure of various forms of food impurities and adulterants, harmless or criminal, is neither new nor unpublished. Few men in our country are better known than Harvey Wiley, and Wiley in the popular mind stands as the champion of pure food and the implacable foe of fraudulent food distributors. No person who reads or listens but knows something of Wiley and something of impure food supplies.

Mr. McCann, whose book under the sensational title of Starving America has recently appeared, is no less valiant than Wiley in his promulgation of pure-food propaganda. Almost unknown, unsupported by the scientific training and the official standing which Wiley possesses, this dark champion girds on his armor and heroically enters the lists, shouting, “I’ll tell the truth if I die for it.” Of course there’s no danger of his dying for it. Speaking logically, the conclusion seems to be that the rest of us will die of starvation if we refuse to heed his speaking.

In general the book supports two theses:

First, that the mineral constituents of foods are much more important in body building than food chemists and dietitians are aware; in fact, that we are either literally starving ourselves and our children by eliminating the ash from our bread, meat, potatoes, rice and other foods, or we are rendering our bodies susceptible to disease—such as tuberculosis—through failure to supply certain mineral defenses to the tissues. The essential ashes, always present in food stuffs—vegetable or animal—in their original raw state, are removed in the manufacture or in the cooking. Wholesome nutritious whole wheat bread and unpolished rice are set over against the insidious, emasculated, mineral-denuded white bread and polished rice—real whited sepulchers, beautiful but deadly.

In the development of this thesis Mr. McCann presents some facts already published and fully accepted, and an array of startling statements. Most of his reasoning is, of course, deductive, because scientists have little authentic data to offer on the effect of the various mineral elements or the lack of them, much less on the most desirable methods of introducing them into the human system. Though neither a university man, nor a graduate chemist, it appears that the author has had exceptional opportunities to study biochemistry as an amateur; and formerly, as advertising agent of a large food industry he spent much time in the food laboratory of the concern. Notwithstanding these qualifications, which he fully sets forth in his preface, some of his conclusions, for example the vital importance of ash in the system and the dire results of our ordinary dietary, though analogically sound, fail to convince the student and perhaps the layman.

On his second proposition, that an astonishing variety and an appalling quantity of our foods are poisonously adulterated both legally and criminally, the author stands on sure ground. Candies, ice-cream, extracts, patent medicines, preservatives, coloring materials are handled without reserve. The argument is supported almost wholly by old material, rather familiar to the magazine reading public; but the cumulative evidence, followed by a dissertation on the appalling and preventable infant death rate gives strength and conviction to the presentation.

The author is not merely destructive. He urges a campaign of education through the public press and pleads for courses and demonstrations of pure food stuffs and their effects in our schools and colleges. He has formulated a practical dietary, a daily menu for a week, of simple, wholesome food, based on the principles he has worked out, for children three years of age and over. His own children have thrived wonderfully on it. He describes in one of the most satisfactory chapters in the book an ideal restaurant that appeals both to one’s common sense and to his appetite.

On the whole the book is timely and deserves a wide reading. In the endeavor to catch the public ear by the presentation of a lurid array of facts under a sensational title I fear the author has overshot the mark. Thoughtful readers are likely to discount much that apparently has a reasonable basis of scientific study merely because of the overstraining after startling statement. The author’s style is not altogether pleasing, nor does it always carry conviction nor inspire confidence in the author. It is not a great book nor an epoch-making one, but it bears the stamp of sincerity, provided one reads to the end, and calls attention to a number of awful truths that should give us pause. The keynote of progress is “light and enlightenment,” rather than repression.

ALEXANDER E. CANCE.

THE THREE GIFTS OF LIFE

By NELLIE M. SMITH. Dodd, Mead & Co. 138 pp. Price $.50; by mail of THE SURVEY $.56

The market is flooded with publications on education with reference to sex, and most of them are the product of superficial or one-sided knowledge and a ready pen. The emphasis is unduly put on disease because most writers are so impressed by the results of ignorance that they find it impossible to take the attitude of the normal, healthy individual whom they are trying to reach.

Among this mass of material, there have been two or three books which could be put into the hands of young girls, but even these should be used with care. The large demand for a good book and our failure to meet it has been a source of anxiety to all who have appreciated the dire need which it voiced. Then came The Three Gifts of Life, which answers the appeal for knowledge concerning the mysteries of reproduction, showing the origin of life in plants, animals and human beings—not detached as physiological fact but interwoven in ordinary experience.

The Three Gifts are the three attributes by which the different forms of life progress: i.e., dependence, as illustrated by plants; instinct, plus dependence, as shown by animals; choice, plus dependence and instinct, which are given to every human being.