American Women in Civic Work

Front matter

AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK

Helen Christine Bennett

AMERICAN WOMEN IN CIVIC WORK

Preface

PREFACE

Portions of the sketches which appear in this book have been published serially, principally in the Pictorial Review and the American Magazine. With one exception, they are stories of women whom I have met, and whose work I have personally investigated. It has taken something over four years to gather the material for this little volume.

At the end of the time I find myself so impressed by one fact which has developed from the matter collected, and particularly from acquaintance with the women themselves, that I want to record it. In almost every instance they who have done so much for the public welfare have stated that they believe themselves selected by a Divine agency for their particular work and accountable to the Divinity for success or failure.

Sophie Wright, whose recent death bereft New Orleans of its most useful citizen, said to me:

"If God did not help me, and want me to do this thing, how could I, a sickly cripple, accomplish so much?" and Sophie Wright but put into plain language the feeling that many of the other women indicated in more subtle phraseology. The sense of a power beyond themselves, impelling them onward, was general. So was a great faith in the efficacy of prayer. As I am neither a religious nor a sentimental person, the knowledge of this belief, forced upon me after many interviews and visits with the women, had a profound effect. In a day of despair over the lack of idealism in the advance of women, of antagonism to the very phases of work with which this volume deals,—that is, their entrance into public affairs,—of suspicion as to motives and ultimate ambitions, the leaders, the women who have achieved success and fame, are working as direct agents of God to minister to His people! The simplicity and sincerity with which this belief has been shown have made it impossible to doubt. And to the writer, at least, the thought that the most prominent women of to-day are working not for fame nor glory, nor for the joy of personal expression, but for the service of humanity because they believe that God wants them to, is worthy of consideration.

Helen Christine Bennett.

Caroline Bartlett Crane

CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE

CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE

"If you please, madam, will you come and look us over and inform us what is wrong so that we may right it, and what is good so that we may continue it?"

The invitation has gone out from fifty-nine American cities. Their self-chosen instructor is a woman, Mrs. Caroline Bartlett Crane. In response to their appeal she has called upon them, submitted them to a detailed inspection, praised their merits, criticised their faults and departed leaving behind her specific directions for their guidance.

Mrs. Crane calls her visits "sanitary surveys." When a city desires her services, it calls upon her as a professional municipal expert and places the keys of the municipality at her disposal. She arrives at an appointed time and personally investigates the water supply, sewers, street sanitation, garbage collection and disposal, milk supply, meat supply, markets, bakeries, food factories, schoolhouses, tenements and homes for the poor, almshouses, hospital dispensaries and jails, studies the city's resources, its system of public health administration and any other incidentals which occur to her. Then she addresses mass meetings of citizens which are called to hear her, reporting conditions as she finds them and suggesting improvements. Finally these reports and suggestions are incorporated in a printed booklet which serves as a municipal text-book for some years following.

Some of the cities which have sent for Mrs. Crane have been aroused to the need of her services through the necessity for self-preservation. An epidemic of typhoid, a scourge of fire, or an intolerably bad milk or meat supply, brought to them the realisation of their need for reform. But many cities have aroused themselves to a consciousness of their condition. These have not asked to be corrected because of their deficiencies, but because they are already so far on the road toward progress that they welcome the stimulus of criticism and advice. Both they and Mrs. Crane are working at a comparatively new task.

It took twenty years' experience to develop Mrs. Crane into what she calls a "professional sanitarian." In 1889 the Rev. Caroline Bartlett was called to Kalamazoo, Michigan, to minister to the spiritual needs of the handful of people who still clung to the remnant of the Unitarian Church left in the city. The Rev. Caroline Bartlett met her new congregation with something like dismay. She had just left her first parish in South Dakota where hardly a member was over forty years of age. Here the faithful remnant included, for the most part, gray-haired men and women. They needed a minister, they explained, for funerals. Small wonder had the young pastor turned and fled to more cheerful surroundings, but she stayed and sorrowfully enough ministered to the funerals. At the same time she started a search for children. There were just four found available among the congregation and three of these were in the same family. But with the four she started a Sunday School.

It must have been an attractive Sunday School, for soon there were more pupils, and more and more. At the same time the congregation increased and under the stimulating influence of their pastor began to hold mid-weekly meetings for the purpose of studying their town. The young pastor saw nothing unusual in their choice of a study. The church was to minister to the needs of the people here and hereafter, and three years of study convinced her that here the people had many needs. So when the congregation grew too big for the little Gothic church and money was found for a new one, the church that was planned included features unusual at that time, and not so very common now.

The new church had a kindergarten, because there was none in the town; it had a gymnasium for women, a manual training department, a domestic science department. It did not have a library nor a gymnasium for men because these were found in the town, and the church was not starting an institution to rival those in existence, it was filling the people's need. The new church was renamed the People's Church, and with the relinquishing of sectarian boundaries it grew in numbers and in power. And then just when her people were beginning to feel that their young pastor was their own peculiar possession, they had demonstrated to them that she had her own life to live, as well as to help them.

One New Year's eve a musicale was announced. As usual the church was full to overflowing. Suddenly the organ overture began to play a wedding march and before the excited congregation could catch breath, their pastor, clad in white, stepped to the altar, met there one of the city's leading physicians, and before anyone could interfere became Mrs. Crane. Kalamazoo talked late that night and went to bed with an uneasy mind. Like the small girl, it was afraid of the "never-again-the-sameness" supposed to come when a woman enters married life. But Mrs. Crane continued to minister to their needs as thoughtfully and as energetically as Miss Bartlett had before her. One of her first efforts was to start a class in marketing, cooking, housekeeping, nursing and sewing, which she herself promptly joined. Now although Mrs. Crane believes that the church should minister to the temporal needs of its people, she also believes that when the need ceases it should turn its energy into new fields. In course of time Kalamazoo awakened to the fact that kindergartens and cooking courses and manual training are excellent things and started to incorporate them in its public schools. Then the People's Church closed its classes in those branches.

As there was no good, wholesome dining-room for working women, it converted its basement into a restaurant where good dinners are served nightly at a cost of about ten cents. The kindergarten was kept for the Sunday service so that parents might leave their children and attend church—not necessarily the People's Church—upon the Sabbath day.

When Mrs. Crane found that church work was running smoothly she began to look farther. One of the first things she noticed was that the alleys and back yards of the business section were very dirty. They were much like the back yards of the average town, but that fact had no weight with Mrs. Crane. Surreptitiously she photographed a number of the worst places. Then she called together a number of progressive women from her own and other churches and organised a Civic Improvement League. At one of the first meetings there was a lantern exhibition of Kalamazoo alleys and back yards. As picture after picture appeared upon the screen the inhabitants of Kalamazoo squirmed in their seats. Mrs. Crane was merciful and tactful enough to suppress names and localities, and every owner of a yard that was shown made up his mind instantly that no one should ever recognise that yard as his. As a consequence Kalamazoo went through a cleaning period in the next twenty-four hours that put the slides hopelessly out of date. There wasn't a back yard in the town that even faintly resembled them. The Mayor issued a proclamation for an annual cleaning day and proper receptacles for ashes and garbage were provided. Mrs. Crane undertook to see that this effect was permanent. Let "sanitary" restaurants, hotels, plumbing establishments look out that their rear entrances were as "sanitary" as their front. Mrs. Crane's ever active camera made truthful photos and these were quietly mailed to the transgressors. Usually no other warning was necessary. The back yards of Kalamazoo continued clean. Next, Mrs. Crane noticed that by contrast the streets of the city were woefully dirty.

After much hard work she induced the members of the Civic Improvement League to ask the City Council for permission to keep six blocks of the main business section clean for three months, as a demonstration of how the work should be done. The women of the League at once began a study of the street-cleaning system introduced into New York City by Colonel Waring, and when the Council at last gave a reluctant consent to the experiment they knew how the work should be done. When the time drew near it was arranged that the women should act as inspectors, relieving each other, so that none would be overworked, and that their duty would be to follow and supervise the men with their handbrooms and small carts. At the moment of starting the yellow press deposited a number of reporters armed with cameras in Kalamazoo and the women inspectors fled in haste. To be sure they gave excuses. One woman found a suddenly sick baby, another unexpected company, a third was really ill. Mrs. Crane listened and said noth- ing. She didn't wait to get angry or afraid. She walked out from her home and faced the cameras. And for three months daily she inspected every one of the six blocks experimented upon—alone. Every night she bathed her aching feet and every morning she got up and set her lips firmly together and went on.

At the end of three months she had reduced the cost of cleaning those six blocks $3.89 per day. The streets were cleaner than any resident had believed possible and the City Council was only too glad to adopt her methods as its own. The Civic Improvement League made up for its desertion by placing galvanised iron cans upon the street corners and by organising Junior Civic Leagues among school children who promised to help to keep the streets free from rubbish.

This civic service was undertaken two years after Mrs. Crane had resigned her pastorate on account of a prolonged illness. When she recovered Kalamazoo needed her more than the church did—for the church was doing very well and the city had other weaknesses besides dirty streets. One of the Kalamazoo weaknesses was the administration of charity. Kalamazoo is a middle-sized city. It has outgrown the village stage where everyone knows everyone else, and it has not yet become a great city where evil is so obvious that it is a part of the city government to attend to all its manifestations. The good folk of Kalamazoo hardly realised that they had grown beyond the time when it was well to give to him that asked. As a result, certain noted vagabonds and certain shrewd families with a sharp eye toward making an easy living were having an excellent time, bountifully supported by the unthinking citizens. Mrs. Crane organised a Charity Organisation Branch of the Civic Improvement League. She asked churches, societies and individuals to direct their funds and appeals for help to this branch. She begged housewives not to feed wanderers, reminding them that in all probability they were helping some deserting husband or bad son to more evil ways. She promised to take care of every case referred to her. And she did. She did so well that the city of Kalamazoo decided to contribute fifty dollars monthly to the Charity Organisation Branch, "for," said the Mayor, "Mrs. Crane makes it go five times as far as we can."

This Charity Organisation Branch went to work with a will. It decided to find or to provide work for every self-respecting applicant. It had no trouble in finding work for the women, and it promptly installed a woodyard for men out of work. All the husky tramps who had found Kalamazoo a delightful and profitable stopping place promptly left the town. On the road they notified their brother hoboes of the change in Kalamazoo, so that the number of Weary Willies visiting Kalamazoo included only those strays who had missed the warning. The Branch also determined to root out shiftlessness among the poor, a Herculean task.

"They must be taught to save," said Mrs.Crane.

She arranged with a local savings bank for the acceptance of small accounts, from one penny upwards. It was astonishing how those accounts grew. In the eight years since they have been inaugurated sixty-five thousand three hundred and eighty dollars have been deposited.

Every penny of this was saved by people who never had known what it meant to put a dollar away for a rainy day. The Branch also waged a war upon deserting husbands. In these cases frequently the discipline was needed by the wife. When a husband deserted from an untidy, unattractive home, Mrs.Crane promptly sent a visiting housekeeper to instruct the wife to keep the home attractive. "We will make your husband do what is right if you will do your part," was the nature of the bargain. Stimulated by this promise, and enlightened by the knowledge brought by her instructor, the discouraged woman went to work.

The Branch also supplies trained nurses to visit homes where a nurse is needed, savings collectors to keep the people awake to the need of putting money into their accounts, and friendly visitors to dispense cheer generally. According to Mrs.Crane's doctrine there are no worthy and unworthy poor. There are just poor. If they do what is wrong they need more than food and clothes and work; they need guidance and advice and discipline. And because they need these they are not sent away, but made to stay and take the help that is offered. All this effort means a good deal of expense. Mrs.Crane has very definite ideas as to expense in charity work. She does not believe in charity balls nor charity fairs nor charity "hold-ups." Contributions to the Charity Branch are from church collections, from the city and from individuals who are philanthropically inclined.

There are no pet charities in Kalamazoo and no one society is trying to outdo another—for there is but one. Consequently a little money goes a long way. Nor was all this work accomplished in Kalamazoo itself. To rid the city of tramps, Mrs.Crane appealed to the railroads, and freight cars through Michigan are strictly watched. To prevent mortgaging the goods of the poor at extortionate rates of interest, she started a movement which resulted in a State law making it a felony to charge more than a specified rate of interest upon any chattel mortgage loan.

In 1903, as Chairman of the Committee on Household Economics of the Twentieth Century Club of Kalamazoo, Mrs.Crane attempted to secure a speaker on meat inspection. All the officials importuned were busy. They wrote Mrs.Crane kindly letters and regretted their inability to help her out, but they could not come to Kalamazoo.

The usual thing for a chairman to do upon such an occasion is to read the letters from the officials, to neatly express her own regret at the unfortunate occurrence and to skip that part of the programme. But such a course never suggested itself to Mrs.Crane. Meat was on the programme planned, therefore meat must be talked about. If all the State officials were busy, she would simply have to do it herself. She did not know anything about meats before they came into her own hands, but this fact did not deter her at all. Nor did she hunt up a book and read up on meats.

"For what," she argued, "is the use of a book when there are real things to learn from?" So she hunted up all the butchers and abattoirs, and slaughter sheds about Kalamazoo. When she had located seven she invited the wife of the Mayor, and the wife of a former mayor and two men to visit with her. Without sending word of their intentions, the five visited six of the seven slaughter houses in a day and a half. The party started out resolved not to comment or to show any surprise at anything they saw. When they arrived at the first house they were glad of the resolution. Horror and disgust robbed them all of power to speak words adequate to meet the conditions. The buildings were old abandoned barns or sheds, unpainted, warped and rotting. Dense black cobwebs covered the ceilings and upper walls, while within six feet of the floors, walls, posts and shelves were caked with blood, grime, grease, mold and putrid flesh. Without provision for drainage, the floors let through their cracks blood and refuse which there remained, putrefying. The offal of freshly killed animals was fed to those waiting in the pens. Rats abounded. Revolting as these details appeared, they were less dangerous than the fact that animals brought to the houses were accepted unquestioningly in any condition, diseased or well, and promptly made away with.

Mrs. Crane and her committee returned home, literally ill. But the lecture was given to the club. More than that, Mrs. Crane repeated it to the City Council. The members of the Council were aghast; they promised to remedy conditions at once.

Then the district-attorney found that under the city charter nothing could be done with the slaughter houses as they were outside city limits; it was beyond the city's power even to refuse the entrance of the goods to the city's markets. And the Council regretted its inability as the State officials had done, and everybody considered the matter ended. That is, except Mrs. Crane.

She determined to find out whether Kalamazoo was an exceptional offender in the matter of bad slaughter houses and lack of inspection of animals. So she wrote to the Mayor of Grand Rapids and the Mayor replied that no such conditions existed there. Mrs. Crane had her doubts and went to Grand Rapids. She found the same conditions as in Kalamazoo, and convinced the Mayor that he had been mistaken. She went to Owosso and Lansing and found things no better. Then she determined to put the matter before the State legislature. It was a year and a half until the legislature met, so she had plenty of time. She sent to every State in the Union for every meat inspec- tion ordinance in existence, then she went to talk to the State Board of Health. The State Board of Health immediately appointed a committee to look into the matter and the committee never was called. Mrs. Crane was on the committee and decided that if anything was to be done she would have to do it. So she sent for more information, to Germany, New Zealand, France, Argentine Republic and read everything she received in reply.

By the time the legislature convened she knew the meat laws in pretty nearly every country on earth and in every State in the Union. She prepared a bill providing that cities in the State could make their own meat inspection ordinances. She was a bit afraid of the bill, for although by this time she knew a good deal about meat, she still knew nothing about law. So she took the bill first to a lawyer friend and then to the State attorney-general, and when it had been pronounced constitutional, she managed to get the bill introduced. And then she heard that the bill was scheduled to be defeated. Someone telegraphed Mrs. Crane of this fact. It was at night, but she got out of bed and took a train for Lansing. On the way she worked out a set of reasons for the passage of the bill. When she arrived at Lansing she had these printed. She sat up all night, rushed the freshly printed reasons to the capitol and saw them placed on the desk of every legislator. She was given the privilege of the floor, made a speech in favour of the bill and it passed by a count of sixty-one to sixteen. She went home and drafted a city ordinance which would forever do away with filthy slaughter houses and uninspected animal slaughter, had it pronounced constitutional and presented it to the City Council. After several years of strife, during which Mrs. Crane found opposed to her an organised body of local butchers, the City Council accepted and passed it.

Michigan newspapers had made familiar the name of the woman who knew more about meat and meat inspection than legislators or health officers. And the people of Michigan began to inquire, "Who is Caroline Bartlett Crane? Where does she come from?" The people of Kalamazoo found that Kalamazoo was becoming a favourite stopping-place for visitors.

The Mayor of Saginaw was the first to ask Mrs. Crane to visit a city outside her own for the purpose of inspection. Mrs. Crane did not care about going. She had her hands pretty full at Kalamazoo. But the Mayor was urgent, and finally Mrs. Crane went. Arrived at Saginaw, she visited the local slaughter houses, assisted the officials in drafting a meat inspection ordinance for the city, and addressed a public meeting called by the Mayor. This was her first inspection and she had no idea that it would not be the last. But calls upon her became frequent and urgent and in her own State she visited and inspected Big Rapids, Calumet, Hastings and Bay City.

She was asked to inspect and report on slaughter houses and meat inspection, but work done in Kalamazoo proved a foundation for work that was general. Cities which called Mrs. Crane found that she knew a great deal more than they about problems common to most cities, and Mrs. Crane mastered every new problem by a thorough study not only of all the printed matter available thereon, but as in the case of meat inspection by actual investigations of the best and worst concrete expositions to be found.

Demands for inspection grew, until, harassed for time, Mrs. Crane decided to put a price upon her services, and to formulate a definite professional plan which she called a "sanitary survey." To-day the cities that call upon her gladly pay for her services, furnish funds for all expenses, a secretary, automobiles, theatres and halls for meetings, official authority to conduct her investigations and an escort to accompany her.

To the women of the fifty-nine progressive cities must be given much of the credit of the calls for Mrs. Crane. In 1908 the Women's Club of Erie, Pennsylvania, asked her to make a general survey of sanitary conditions. In 1910 she received a request for a more extended investigation from the same club, together with the Chamber of Commerce, the Board of Trade, the Teachers' Association, the Juvenile City League, and the Erie High School Association. At Nashville, Tennessee, the movement originated with the women of the Tennessee Federation of Women's Clubs, but before Mrs. Crane accepted, the State, City and County Boards of Health, the Mayor and City Council, the Board of Trade, the Centennial Club, the Housekeepers' Club, the Anti-Tuberculosis League, and fifteen additional civic and literary societies had joined in the invitation. In Rochester, New York, the Mayor, Chamber of Commerce, Board of Education, Public Health Association, City Federation of Women's Clubs, Council of Jewish Women, Social Settlement, Children's Aid Society, Humane Society, and Daughters of the American Revolution joined with the Women's Educational and Industrial Union, and forgetting class, creed and office, asked Mrs. Crane to come and help them go forward. Kentucky and Minnesota went at the thing thoroughly. The Kentucky Board of Health and the State Federation of Women's Clubs combined their resources and secured Mrs. Crane for a five weeks' tour of the State with inspection of the twelve leading cities, while the State of Minnesota a little later, through its State Board of Health, State Federation of Women's Clubs and the Commercial Clubs of Minneapolis, St. Paul and Duluth, enjoyed an even more thorough survey, covering the seventeen leading cities and towns and occupying nearly two months.

In 1913, under auspices of the State Board of Health, State Department of Agriculture and State Federation of Clubs, Mrs. Crane made a survey of thirteen leading cities in the State of Washington. Here, as in her State-wide campaigns, she was sworn in as a State Health Officer during the period of her survey.

How Mrs. Crane can accomplish so much in so brief a time spent in the field can be understood only when one knows her method and also the amount of data gathered by her in advance of her visit.

In the fall of 1912 Mrs. Crane accepted an invitation to visit and survey the city of Montgomery, Alabama. The women of the city had been convinced of the need for Mrs. Crane some two years before and had patiently waited and worked all that time for her coming. The male population proved indifferent, or amused, or openly antagonistic to such a proposition. Montgomery was well able to take care of herself, why send for an outsider? But the women persisted and after two years the men resigned themselves. The City Commission frankly admitted that they did not care particularly about it. "But," said the President, "the women got hot after us and would not let us alone, so we voted one hundred dollars to the fund, and agreed to give Mrs. Crane any help she needed."

This vital matter settled, a triumphant invitation was dispatched to Mrs. Crane. An answer arrived promptly and was read eagerly. Then the women turned to each other in dismay. For the letter of acceptance contained two startling requests. The first was that an inclosed list of questions should be answered, at once. The second demanded that until her arrival, as far as possible, all news of her coming be kept a secret. The committee groaned as they read over the questions. There were more than a hundred! Mrs. Crane wanted to know the acreage, property valuation, tax rate and charter limit on taxation. She asked for a map showing all sewers and sewer outlets, the location of parks, playgrounds and recreation centres. She inquired the nature of recent bond issues, what they were for, how many had been approved and how many rejected by the people within the last ten years. She asked the bonding limit, the method of municipal accounting and reporting, the public utilities owned and operated by the municipality. She wanted the carter date, its home-rule features, its amendments. The source and quantity of water, its storage and treatment, its cost, the soil conditions, various kinds of street pavements, dairies, abattoirs, markets, bakeries, and the municipal regulations affecting them, housing ordinance, milk and meat inspection ordinances, status of the smoke nuisance, school census and appropriation, hospital and dispensary equipment, all were the subjects of minute detailed questioning, and every answer was to be signed by an official in a position to know the facts.

"Mrs. Crane will know a lot about Montgomery before she sets foot in it," remarked one committee member sagely.

"Yes," retorted another, "and so will we!" The committee members looked at each other in sudden enlightenment. The education of Montgomery had already begun! It was hard work to get answer to that list of questions without the general public getting an inkling of what it was all about. The women stole in and out of public offices as quietly as possible, bind- ing every official to silence as they secured the necessary information. On the street corners and in private places they whispered confidences, always ready to change instantly to some other topic if someone not in the secret happened along. The questions were answered and the reply mailed and Mrs. Crane well on her way before somebody told. Just three days before her arrival the morning paper announced her visit.

The committee held a wrathful session, but no weak spot could they discover.

"And," wailed the youthful president of the City Federation of Women's Clubs, "what will Mrs. Crane think of us? What can I say to her?"