TWENTY-SECOND NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CHARITIES

think much of a great railroad which would be content to endanger the lives of all its passengers by using a depot together with Sinasaklu managed road Not whade

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The central thought of my remarks is best expressed in the title of Charles Reade's novel, "Put Yourself in his Place"; and I am heretical enough to think that there is as much loving wisdom in that injunction as in "the law and the prophets."

If we wish to discover the cause that produces intemperate men and neglected children, we must go to the homes of the poor. We must see their lives, not with our eyes alone, but with our educated intelligence, their toilsome lives of pain. What we need to do is to put ourselves in the place of the bread-winners, and attempt to piece out the workingman's experience with our schooling. We must bring an enlightened intelligence and a big heart to bear upon the limited and toilsome lives of workingmen. It takes a complete. and rounded character to know how to meet these great problems of poverty. To be only rich or only learned or only poor is the lot of most men. What we should strive for is to be rich and learned, but something more, and then put ourselves in the place of the poor and ignorant, not to impose on them the things that we like, but to secure for them the things that they need in the way that they can best accept and assimilate.

The faculty that I find wanting, not only in charity workers, but in social reformers, is the faculty of imagination. If you wish to impress upon people that child-labor is a very bad thing, you may talk, you may argue; and in return you will perhaps hear nothing but the sentimental sophism that the parent needs the earnings of the child. But, if you shall show to those you want to convince some poor, wizened creature that has spent its life in the foul air of the factory, you have an argument that appeals at once to the senses. A lack of imagination prevails where one least expects it. I happened, not long ago, to be present at a woman's club when some new building laws for the regulation of tenement-construction were read and submitted to the club for its indorsement before being carried to the legislature. Every clause in those laws was of vital importance, not only to the club women, but to the whole popu lation of the crowded city, and, it is safe to say, to generations ye unborn. Every line, every word, should have been challenged by th women present. Those women were, for the time being, the guar ians, the representatives, of the toiling mothers down in the slums. the mothers whose babies, sacrificed to bad air and insanitation, as dear to them as are the darlings of the rich to their parents,

mothers who must bring up their children under conditions of which it is hard for the better part of society to conceive. These mothers, in the tenements with numberless children and lodgers and friends, must sleep and eat and live in two or three small stuffy rooms in buildings without any conveniences even for decency; yet they are expected to bring up their families to lead self-respecting lives. The club women listened to these laws without comprehending or caring much for them. Instead of challenging every word, they spoke flippantly to each other, and twitted each other about the number of windows in the back buildings of their own luxurious homes. They could not understand the difference between their surroundings and the homes of the poor. They were lacking in imagination.

Better building laws lead directly to that which I consider most important for the permanent improvement of neighborhoods, namely, better housing of the poor. Unfortunately, our preventive measures come too late. We have the bad houses. We encourage the cheap and flimsy manufacturing towns; and we shall have slums developing in every business and industrial centre unless the law-makers understand the danger, and provide safeguards.

As I travel through all parts of the country, I see that almost every small manufacturing town is in great peril from unnecessary and preventable overcrowding. Unfortunately, there is nothing to hinder it. The municipalities seem to exercise no authority in the matter. Lots are divided and subdivided by grasping and ignorant landlords, whom I do not always blame; for rich and educated landlords set the example. They all want to make as much as possible out of the real estate that comes into their possession. Buildings are multiplied on the smallest spaces. Barracks are put up, holding from ten to fifty families, in which as many as possible of the foreign population congregate; for these foreigners are usually social and gregarious. By getting them together in large numbers, the landlords derive the highest possible revenue. This is a very great danger to health and morals; and it behooves, not only the charity organization and child-saving societies, but the tax-payers, to see that the building laws are improved in time to prevent the growth of ill-constructed tenements, else our remedial measures will come so late that whatever changes are made must be made at vast expense and trouble.

think much of a great railroad which would be content to endanger the lives of all its passengers by using a depot together with a miserably managed road.

Not nega

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Perhaps you do not fully realize that the poor who, for many reasons, are condemned to live in wretched quarters of the town, do not go there from mere choice. Labor is not mobile. The workingman stays where his occupation lies; and, strange as it may seem, it is often a positive disadvantage for a laborer to own his own home. If employment changes, as industries do and will, he loses his position; and most workingmen have not a second trade upon which they can fall back. Trades do not now dovetail into one

another.

I am often struck with the inconsistencies of our educational system. We teach our foreigners to read and write; but we neglect to teach these poor and ignorant people the most important of all knowledge—that is, how to live. The mother with many babies needs to know how to live, how to keep up and nourish the body, how to have decent surroundings, how to create such a home as makes for virtue and morality.

I speak of all these matters with a certain authority; for not only have I for many years visited and studied the "slums" in nearly all the large cities of America, but not long ago I made a personal and careful house to house and room to room inspection of the most congested districts in New York and Philadelphia. visited fourteen hundred tenements, sixteen hundred families, and over seven thousand individuals. The outreaching for better things among many of these persons would surprise you. In homes of the humblest character we occasionally find a model little room, just a poem of neatness and refinement, considering the small resources at the disposal of its inhabitants in the way of decorations to meet their love of art. The poor are not only ambitious, but they are resourceful to a degree that puts many of us to shame.

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The chief cause of bad conditions in manufacturing towns visible in them than in larger cities is absenteeism. facturer to-day seldom lives at the central source of industry from which he draws his wealth. He lives away from it. And, when he does that, the model industrial settlements do not grow up. It may be sometimes that the builders of these model settlements are selfish; but, at any rate, it is a selfishness that makes for the good of humanity. I was talking lately with a Connecticut manufacturer who has surrounded himself with conditions that are almost ideal. I could not help praising him for many things that he had done.

There was practically no poverty there. "Why," he said, "do you suppose I should do all this if I did not live here myself?"

Another illustration of the absence of imagination in our dealings with the working classes is afforded by the unthinking way in which a good many people have entered upon the question of tenement. reform. With the very best intentions, some of them have done more harm than good, because every failure discredits the movement, which in itself is of the utmost value. I have had occasion to talk before one or two women's clubs about the housing of the poor, and the methods of Mrs. Lincoln and Miss Octavia Hill; and in these discussions I have heard over and over again the same sad story of the ill success that has attended many efforts. In asking the persons who had made the attempts about their way of proceeding, they have confessed that they always went off in the summer, and left some one else to attend to the work,― going to Europe, for instance, and paying an agent to collect rents. However faithfully agents may work, they cannot achieve the same success. In every case where I have heard of failure, I have asked, "Do you collect your rents yourself?' "No," has been the reply. The women would look astonished at the thought of personal attention to such details. They do everything else; but the significant and important point of personal contact with tenants they had omitted.

One of the large movements of which I spoke, and which will grow out of aroused public opinion, backed by charity organizations and other charitable and reformatory societies, is better drainage. It would surprise you to know how many outwardly respectable homes, as well as the homes of the poor in our large cities and in manufacturing towns especially, are unconnected with any drains. There is no sewerage system whatever. This is true particularly of older houses. In newer quarters, where sewers have been introduced, connections have sometimes been made. But frequently it is the rich landlord who refuses to make the connection, and his tenants must suffer the consequences.

The second and most important means of securing the permanent improvement of neighborhoods is a better water supply,- good water and plenty of it. Not the fishy liquid we are asked to drink in New Haven; not the small supply from the shallow brook; not a supply where all the water for household and drinking purposes is

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think much of a great railroad which would be content to endanger the lives of all its passengers by using a depot together with a miserably managed road. Not neace hu

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derived from one sole hydrant, to which fifty families, perhaps, must go; not one single well, the sources of which are polluted. The hydrant in winter is often frozen, occasioning incalculable annoyance to the housewife.

In Allegheny, Pa., not long ago a meeting of the Women's Health Protective Association was held, to make an appeal for the abatement of the smoke nuisance and for clean streets. The women were exhorted by the mayor to use their influence for a better water supply. One of the most prominent ladies declared, however, that she wanted clean streets; she did not drink the city water, anyway, as she bought all she ever used. I thought this one of the most heartless speeches I ever heard. After the meeting I appealed to the woman, telling her that the polluted water was half the food supply of the poor, that they could not afford such beverages as the rich can buy. Moreover, the rich can go out of town in summer, when hurtful water is most deleterious, whereas the poor have not even the appliances to purify water by boiling it. The lady who had a heart of gold was filled with contrition when I described to her some of the typhoid fever patients I had encountered in Allegheny. A good water supply means a lessening of doctors' bills. and bills for funeral expenses.

It may seem to you that I draw all my unfavorable illustrations from women. I do not feel obliged to join in the general apotheosis of woman. She has done so many noble things that I do not feel bound to pat her on the back and praise her when she does one more, but rather to blame her when she fails to exercise a broad, impersonal spirit.

A third means for permanently improving a neighborhood is in securing better pavements for the courts and alleys. Again, the city of Allegheny furnishes me facts for the truth of this statement. Despite the opposition of the tax-payers, the alleys there have recently been paved with asphalt, contributing enormously to cleanliness. The women now scrub their steps and halls, that these may not be out of keeping with the asphalt pavements. In a little while the mothers will scrub the faces of their children. The friends of reform in Philadelphia secured an appropriation to pave a similar poor quarter of the Quaker City. The result has been most happy: better sanitation and higher standards of neatness prevail. It is the old story of the blue teapot repeated: "They must live up to it."