Community civics; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the United States

Preface

A textbook of civics, by whatever name, has only one reason for existing—to supply its readers with the ideas and informa¬ tion that will help them live the kind of life that will advance the welfare of the nation. Merely to supply facts about the machinery of government was long ago recognized as insuffi¬ cient. For many years, therefore, textbooks of civics have related the facts of government to certain activities of Amer¬ ican life, omitting all nonessentials. The author of this book has gone a step farther. She has led pupils first to analyze life in the United States into its fundamental activities; second, to discover for themselves that government is only an organization made and run by the people to fit these activities; third, to realize that in proportion as life is simple or complex, govern¬ ment must also be simple or complex; and fourth, that since changes in the manner of living are constantly taking place, changes in government must also be made constantly.

The author believes that unless the impulse to analyze Amer¬ ican life is aroused in pupils, however high their ideals and firm their purpose, they cannot properly help adjust the machinery of government to meet their needs. Many an otherwise intel¬ ligent citizen frequently is persuaded into the belief that our government has failed, merely because he has not understood that machinery made to fit conditions that have disappeared or greatly changed has been retained unchanged, or that new machinery badly needed has not been provided. It is the author’s hope that the pupils who use this book will have been helped to approach the responsibilities of citizenship keenly aware that the government under which they live will be what they make it and will do only what they equip it to do.

iii

IV

A nation is never finished. What is handed down to pupils is only partly made; it must be shaped and reshaped, a little change made here, another there.

The author wishes to acknowledge her indebtedness to James Morgan, a close student of modern political life, to Thomas Nixon Carver, professor of political economy in Harvard University, and to James Sullivan, state historian of New York State, for invaluable assistance in the preparation of the manu- • script and in the critical reading of the proof.

THE AUTHOR

Contents

PAGE

SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS.vi

CHAPTER

Appendix

The Constitution of the United States . i

Suggestions and Questions on the Constitution . . . xvii

INDEX. XX1

SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS

At the start each pupil must be equipped with a loose-leaf notebook. All the information gathered in connection with the problems and exercises of text, and all the outlines made, should be inserted in this. At intervals notebooks should be inspected for credit, and at the end of the course they should be inspected, graded, and returned to pupils to keep.

It is desirable that in the work of each chapter pupils should get some practice in (i) using the library; (2) getting infor¬ mation from current newspapers and magazines; (3) getting in¬ formation from persons who are well-informed; (4) cooperative work either in assembling facts required in the exercises or in using these after they have been assembled; (5) impromptu discussion of some important point; prepared discussion (per¬ haps debate) of an important matter; (6) planning or doing some act of service for school or neighborhood or community as a whole. The author has planned the Problems and Exercises so as to facilitate practice along these lines. Teachers should supplement at their discretion.

At the first meeting of the civics class a survey should be made to discover what special abilities and equipment are available. The survey should show what pupils have cameras or kodaks, and apparatus for developing and printing; whether any pupil has skill in mechanical drawing or in preparing blue¬ prints ; what pupils have encyclopedias and other books of ref¬ erence in their homes; to what societies or clubs pupils belong and what experience, if any, they have had in serving on com¬ mittees, presiding at meetings, debating, etc.; what pupils own or have access to a typewriter or have a working knowledge of stenography; what pupils have lived in other communities or have traveled sufficiently to have a knowledge of communities

VI

SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS

Vll other than their own; what kind of home work or vacation work, if any, pupils have done; the different kinds of work life with which pupils come in contact through relatives or the location of the home. Whatever ability or equipment of these kinds is available should be made use of constantly in working out the Problems and Exercises and in making additional studies of community problems.

The indispensable reference equipment for civics work con¬ sists of (i) a good atlas; (2) detailed maps of state, county, community; (3) a map showing the railroads and automobile roads of the state; (4) a good daily newspaper that has a state¬ wide reputation; (5) the principal local paper; (6) the latest Congressional Directory (for this write to the Superintendent of Documents, Washington, D.C.); (7) the last official state register or manual (for this write to your state capitol, address¬ ing the letter to the secretary of state’s office); (8) the latest report or manual of your community (a small charge is fre¬ quently made for these official manuals, but whatever the price or inconvenience in securing them, they must be obtained) ; (9) as many government reports as possible; (10) the World Almanac, the Statesman’s Yearbook, or some other annual book of ready reference; (11) guidebooks to the principal cities of the state. A civics bulletin board should be placed at a con¬ venient point in the school. Every event in the community which is of special interest to the class as students of community civics should be inserted here—notices of lectures, art and in¬ dustrial exhibits, the presence of distinguished persons, addi¬ tions to the library, the closing of a factory, etc.

If possible, plan to have a delegation of the class visit the state capitol, the county seat, and the city hall (or whatever is the headquarters of your local government). Before these visits are made the class should prepare an outline of the things to be looked for and the information to be obtained. The dele¬ gates must be ready not only to make a formal report on their trip but to be questioned by the class.

'&) Nov. 11, 1921, George W. Stephenson

THE HERALDING OF PEACE.” WASHINGTON ILLUMINATED ON ARMISTICE DAY, 1921,

IN HONOR OF THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER

Chapter I The First Picture—a Famous Steel Valley

1 . An Awe-Inspiring Scene. A sight once seen never to be forgotten is Pittsburgh at night. By Pittsburgh we mean that long stretch of Allegheny valley where, between steep, barren hills, stretch acres upon acres of huge smokestacks and dark buildings overspread by a heavy curtain of smoke that never lifts but does not hide the glare of hundreds of furnaces. By day it is a sight that makes one thoughtful. By night the stranger stands awestruck before it. He feels as if some miracle had taken place. What by daylight had been a stretch of dingy hillside is now a wall of purple darkness, spotted with tiny lights—soft orange lights that come from lamplighted homes, hard yellow street lights that mark the course of the zigzag thoroughfares of the hills. But the purple shadows and maze of lights are only a fantastic frame for the real picture— the narrow stretch of valley which one moment seems darker than the darkest black one has ever seen in his dreams, and the next moment is torn into a thousand fragments by bursts of fire.

The lights on the hillside, the deep shadows, the earth, even the sky, seem to quiver in suspense. Again and again the valley is lighted by angry masses of flame, as if giving warning of a great catastrophe, but that is all. As the hours slip away, the scene hardly changes. The soft orange lights from the queer little houses one by one disappear, but the hard yellow lights

i keep winking, and the dark valley keeps on vomiting fire. The stranger turns away with the dissatisfied feeling that he has seen the beginning of something that failed to happen. But he was wrong. Something did happen.

2 . Monstrous Tasks are accomplished in this Valley. In that dark valley huge battleships, great bridges, miles of Rus¬ sian railroad were being started; great locomotives and steel cars that would some day penetrate remote parts of China and Africa were being made. There, too, was being fashioned the framework for hundreds of skyscrapers which, in a few months, would house thousands of city workers.

This is one of America’s enchanted valleys. If measured by miles it would be found to constitute only a thousandth part of the earth’s land surface, yet it produces one sixth of the world’s pig iron. Without this valley there might have been no victory over the German armies in 1918, for the ships that carried am¬ munition to our allies, the transports that laid down in France about two million American soldiers, the guns that poured death into German ranks, the emergency railroads and locomo¬ tives that rushed troops from French ports to the firing lines, —all were made, in large part, of steel that came from this valley. But the American people spend only the smallest frac¬ tion of their time making war. They prefer to battle with the forces of nature, and steel is man’s magic weapon. It would take a whole chapter to name all the ways in which steel has helped us to defy nature: steel made it possible for us to overcome the Rocky Mountains and thus make San Francisco and New York City companion seaports; to tear down mountains and carve a way from ocean to ocean in Panama; to penetrate the most inaccessible parts of the United States with railroads; to fashion stoves and furnaces by which, in the coldest day of winter, the hugest office building, as well as the small cottage, is made as warm as a midsummer day; to manufacture tons of simple needles that have brought comfort and luxury to almost the whole world. The production of steel is today one of our great¬ est industries. Before the World War it employed more people

© Joseph Pennell

Like a great steel magnet the Allegheny valley has drawn workers from the four corners of the world. Some years a hundred thousand men work in this valley. Every language known to Europe is spoken here than live in Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming together. The money invested is greater than the wealth of Switzerland.

3 . The Most Important Part of the Valley. When one has heard all the facts as to the extent of our steel industry, and has tried to imagine in dollars the wealth it represents; when one gets over marveling that iron ore can be transformed into steel strong enough to support the weight of mountains,—then he wants to know about the human brains and hands that have made this wonder an everyday event.

Most visitors to Pittsburgh think only of the output of the mills. Noise and smoke and flames fill their senses. The workers seem so insignificant in comparison with the hungry blast fur¬ naces that tower sometimes eighty, sometimes a hundred, feet above them, that the visitor for a time forgets that the most important part of the valley is the worker. But if, late in the afternoon, he happens to be in one of the many railway stations near the chain of mills, he will think of nothing but workers. Like a great flood men and boys pour out of the buildings. Train after train pulls in empty, and leaves crowded to the steps. Seeing these multitudes will make the stranger ask: "How came these hundreds of thousands of workers in this valley? What keeps them there? How does it happen that there are always enough men to feed all the furnaces and attend to the many other tasks ? ” The answer is simple: The steel mills need the men , and the men need the steel mills.

4 . The Steel Mills stand for Work. The steel mills stand for work, and work stands for food, clothing, and home; therefore the mills will never lack workers. Like a great magnet the Allegheny valley has drawn workers from the four corners of the world, until now it shelters men from every nation of Europe. At one time more than half of the seven thousand men employed in one mill were Slavs, and fully two thirds were foreign-born. It seems peculiarly fitting that this industry which brings comfort to people in every land should also draw its workers from every part of the world.

5 . Work means Homes for the Workers. The glare of the blast furnaces makes the mellow lights of the homes seem dim, but size and brilliance seldom determine the important values in life. From the mill the worker, whether he be head chemist or stoker, turns to some one of the homes which cling to the steep hillsides or which extend on the level stretches all the way along the valley to the heart of the city of Pittsburgh.

Factories are springing up in every part of the nation, and always there are workers to fill them, for the mills need the workers and the workers need

the mills

The homes of many workers are very humble. Some of them have only two rooms, with a tiny yard in which a few hens make a scanty living. Others have four, five, and even nine rooms. On the hillsides and in the valley there is street after street of such houses, the monotony broken only by the lawns and flowers that many families have had the courage to attempt. Just as the cloud of smoke that hangs, day and night, over the valley, is the symbol of the never-ending toil of the mills, so the little garden patches and the lighted windows are the sym¬ bols of the home life of the mill people.

By no means are all the homes of the steel valley humble little houses clinging to the hillsides. There are whole towns of spacious, attractive houses, which are owned and occupied by the men of the steel mills. Since the railroad and the trolley run to the very gates of the mills, thousands of workers live many miles away. And in some respects the farther away they live the more attractive are their homes. But whatever it is—a five-room house, a two-room cottage, a big brick palace, a room in a boarding house—and whether he owns or rents it, every steel worker has a home. It is the home that makes the steel mills possible, and the steel mills that make the home possible.

6 . Home means "the Place where the Job is.” If the time comes that the ore fields of the United States are exhausted, then the cloud of smoke that rests on Pittsburgh will lift, the big furnaces will be lifeless, the valley will be silent. One by one the families will lock their doors and start life anew some¬ where else. The scattering would take many months, perhaps years, but inevitably it would come. And the one question con¬ stantly on men’s lips would be, Where shall I find work ? When¬ ever they eventually found it,—whether on farms in the Middle West, in lumber camps of the great Northwest, or in the great cities,—there they would again set up their homes. Home for the millions of people in the United States means "the place where the job is.” To understand any nation or any community one must know what is the work of the people and what kind of homes they have.

7 . Many Other Industries in America. Only a relatively small number of the families of the United States get their living from the steel mills. There are other vast industries, as well as hundreds of less important ones. Some industries are housed in factories, others stretch out over fields and woods. What¬ ever the kind of work, somewhere near it are the homes of the workers. There are always well-worn paths from the homes to the mills, stores, and fields. Sometimes these paths are trolley lines, sometimes steam railways, often ordinary streets, but sometimes mere footpaths. In a Rhode Island village is a graystone cotton mill to which the workers come from the tiny farms by footpaths, over stone walls, through swampy meadows and strips of woods. The paths to the steel mills of the Allegheny valley are of every kind—footpaths, roads, trolley lines, steam railroads. The worker finds a path to the work, wherever it is.

ANOTHER PICTURE OF THE REAL AMERICA

8 . A Famous Valley. Five hundred miles to the west of the smoky Allegheny valley is another famous valley, known throughout the world and envied us by many a nation of Europe. It is the valley of the Mississippi, in which centers one of America’s big industries. This industry monopolizes large areas in the Middle Western states and overflows into every state in the nation. There is no mountain high enough to com¬ mand a view of even a hundredth part of the acres devoted to this wealth-making industry—the growing of corn. If all Eng¬ land and Scotland were one great cornfield, this area would not equal the land covered by the cornfields of the United States. A stenographer in the Department of Agriculture at Washing¬ ton one summer took a canoe trip on the Tennessee River, which so bends its course that it twice crosses the state of Ten¬ nessee. On his return he said, "Now I understand why the gov¬ ernment has a special corn investigations office—I haven’t been out of sight of corn since I left Washington.” Yet he had not been even within sight of the real Corn Belt!

9 . Our Cornfields are World Battlefields. Once you have seen these great plains of corn, have walked between the stately rows, have listened to the rustle of the leaves, which seems at times like the hoarse whisperings of a great multitude of men and again like the slow wash of water on a sandy shore, you will always thrill at the mention of corn. There is something about the endless rows in late August that suggests armies of soldiers standing at attention, waiting for the word of com¬ mand to go into battle. And in an almost literal sense these cornfields are battlefields. It is on these that the United States fights hunger and famine, not only for its forty-eight states but for the crowded, ill-fed countries of Europe and other parts of the world.

Before America was discovered, there were years when all the world was hungry part of the time, and some of it all the time. In 879 so great a famine spread over Europe that chil¬ dren were readily sold for the price of a single meal. Men became like beasts. In 1016 and for the five years following there was never enough to eat in Europe. Hunger was the com¬ mon lot of the people. In 1918-1923 millions of people in Europe and Asia died of hunger, but there was food to spare in the United States. It was only because the whole world had been turned topsy-turvy by the war, so that there were neither ships nor railroads enough, that America’s cornfields and wheat fields did not prevent starvation.

Except in times of war disastrous and long-continued famines need never again sweep over those countries which trade with the United States. A complete corn-crop failure in the United States would affect every part of the world to a greater or less extent. But there can never be such a disaster in the United States, unless the farmer fails the nation, for corn can be grown with success in every state of the Union. In acreage, uses, production, and value, corn exceeds any other food crop of the United States. We export less corn than wheat, because wheat is far less bulky to transport, and because we need most of our corn to feed to hogs and cattle in order to have a suffi¬ cient meat supply. But a poor corn crop means that less wheat and meat products can be sent to other countries, so in a very real sense our cornfields are the famine battlefields of the world.

10. One of Our Cornfields. An English traveler who left Pittsburgh early one morning slept the next night in an Illinois farmhouse which hardly made a dot in the thirty-five thousand acres of corn surrounding it. From his bedroom window, as far as his eye could see in one direction there was only the light of the stars to relieve the blackness, and in the other direction, several miles away, a few tiny lights. He had left Pittsburgh with the feeling that noise and smoke were for some reason necessary to create great national wealth; but here the silence was almost oppressive, yet in every direction, and for hun¬ dreds of miles beyond the horizon, corn was being "manu¬ factured” ceaselessly. The silent cornfields of the Mississippi Valley and the smaller fertile valleys are a vast workshop that helps make the United States a prosperous nation.

© Am. Agr. Cliem. Co.

Somewhere near the great cornfields are the homes of the workers

11 . Corn and the Workers. So much of the work of the United States is done in factories by large numbers of workers that it is sometimes difficult to realize how great is the work that nature does with the minimum of help from human workers. Yet the most marvelous crop grown must be under the control of ordinary men like those who tend the blast furnaces in the steel valley. Three, four, and five times, at least, every part of the millions of acres of cornfields has to be gone over by men, first with plows and harrows, then with cultivators, and finally it has to be harvested. Corn usually requires at least one worker to every forty acres. The twinkling lights which the English¬ man saw from his bedroom window were from, the homes of workers employed on the great corn farm. But where in the steel valley there were fifty thousand workers here in a corre¬ sponding area were only five hundred workers.

Just as in Pittsburgh the hillside homes are dwarfed by the steel plants, so here the homes seem obscured by the corn¬ fields. But again it is the workers that are of most importance. It is the little groups of houses and barns scattered over the Corn Belt that make the corn crop possible, and it is the fertile soil that gives work to the workers. No matter how long a search through the Corn Belt a traveler might make he would find only two things—work and homes.

A THIRD PICTURE OF THE REAL AMERICA

12 . The Land of a Magic Flower. The traveler who follows the cornfields of the United States toward the south comes after a time to rolling, upland stretches on which grow millions of plants which produce America’s most precious flower. Without these plants not only the United States but the whole world would be a far less desirable place in which to live. The green¬ houses do not grow this plant, and in many states the people have seen it only in pictures or at special fairs and exhibitions or at museums. It is not the blossom that is precious, however, but the "fruit” which develops from it. This consists of a small white boll which we call cotton. Cotton was not discov¬ ered by Americans. It is almost as old as history itself. In Jeru¬ salem today there still stands an ancient temple which for many years was used for a cotton market. Cotton is still raised and sold in India, Egypt, and many other countries, but the great cotton markets are in the United States, which produces three quarters of the world’s cotton. Cotton cannot be grown every¬ where. Temperature, rainfall, and quality of soil must be spe¬ cially adapted to this strange plant, else it will refuse to grow or will produce bolls that have little value. Nature gave to our Southern states the kind of climate and soil in which cotton can flourish.

ii

13 . Cotton is King. When we think of kings we think of power, of many dependent people. And that is what cotton suggests, for the people of many countries are dependent on cotton for clothing and for the means of earning their living. England cannot grow cotton; but because its climate is suited to the manufacture of cotton thread and cloth, it has many hungry factories that every year require millions of dollars’ worth of our cotton. The men and women who knelt in the streets of Manchester, England, one day in 1865, were not bowing before the king of England or some member of the royal family. They were kneeling to express their thankfulness at the arrival of a shipload of cotton from the Southern states—the first for sev¬ eral years. The Civil War had stopped the export of American goods, and in thousands of British homes there had been hunger and cold because the factory spindles were idle.

Although such large quantities of cotton have been sent abroad through the port of Galveston, Texas, that it has become the largest cotton port in the world, many millions of bales are shipped by railroad to distant factories. One of the great cot¬ ton markets of the United States is in New York City; the largest cotton factory is in New England. It is no wonder, then, that newspapers in states which never grew a single cotton plant give many columns every week, and sometimes whole pages, to cotton news—news of the crop, of the mills, of the shipping facilities.

14 . What Cotton means to the People. It is because cotton means so much to the people of the South that they often make a special ceremony of the selling of the season’s first bale. In Houston, Texas, in a recent year the first bale brought $1200 at auction, and the money was given to charity. The cotton was then presented to the Manchester Cotton Association of Eng¬ land, where a second ceremony took place,—another auction sale, the Lord Mayor of the city acting as auctioneer,—the bale selling for over $2000, which also was given to charity. A third journey and a third auction sale in Yorkshire completed the trip of the Texas cotton.

15 . The Cotton Fields make Many Homes. Neither corn¬ fields nor wheat fields require so many workers as the cotton fields. Men have devised machinery for cultivating the soil, sowing the seed, removing the seeds from the ripened cotton bolls, baling the raw cotton, transforming this into thread and cloth, but only human hands can be trusted to pick from the stems the soft white bolls. There are many cities and villages

) Allen N. Hoxsie

Cotton must be gathered by human hands. Many cotton-picking inventions have been made, but none has been successful. Therefore always near the fields are the homes of the workers where work life centers in ginning-plants, cotton-storage houses, cotton factories, but in addition to these there are little groups of homes wherever cotton grows. The people may live far from store or church or school, but their homes are near the fields not only because ripened cotton cannot wait for dis¬ tant workers but because they have come to love the cotton fields as few people love the work by which they live. Often the home is literally surrounded by cotton fields—an island in a sea of cotton.

A FOURTH PICTURE OF THE REAL AMERICA

16. The Unbelievable City. Many miles from cornfields, cot¬ ton plantations, and steel mills is an Unbelievable City, as some have called it. It is one of the strangest parts of America and yet one of its simplest and most important parts. It is a city that is like a great nation comprising many cities. Some of all of America is here, and all of America made the city. This is New York City, whose population of more than five mil¬ lions makes it greater than Greece, Switzerland, Scotland, or Denmark. During the Civil War New York’s mayor sent a message to the common council proposing that the city secede from the Union and become independent. It might at first seem that a city containing as many people as some of the nations of Europe could indeed withdraw from the rest of the nation and become independent. But like all our great cities New York is not something apart from the cotton fields and cornfields, the iron mines, and the steel mills; it exists because of these, it is made of these and from these, it helps them and is helped by them.

17. A City of Unrest. When the English novelist Thackeray first visited New York City he wrote to a friend: "I have an insistent longing to be in motion. There is some electrical force in the air and the sun here which we don’t experience on our side of the globe. People can’t sit still long, they must keep moving. I want to dash into the street now.” It was many years ago that Thackeray wrote these words, and each year the city has grown noisier and more restless. It might have been named after the first vessel made in the city, which was called Unrest. But it is more than a restless city. Dur¬ ing the day and most of the night the roar of the city s traffic, which is unlike any other sound one ever hears, tells not only of restlessness but of activity, of work, and of accomplish¬ ment. New York is not a city of sightseers or pleasure seekers. There are thousands of such people, but these are only a small fraction of the whole. New York, like the cornfields and the wheat fields, the cotton plantations and the steel mills, is one of the nation’s workshops. If the people seem always in a rush, if the noise of traffic never ceases, it is because there is so much work and such important work to be done.