The Survey, volume 30, number 7, May 17, 1913

7, MAY 17, 1913 ***

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THE COMMON WELFARE

THE PITTSBURGH SCHOOL STRIKE

Pittsburgh school affairs are under a cloud but the outside world should understand certain facts, notably that the cloud itself is stirred up, to some extent at least, by interests using it as a cloak for their operations. These interests are two-fold: the first, political, embracing the faction opposed to Senator Oliver; the second, partly political and partly personal, embracing the men from whose hands the school affairs of Pittsburgh were wrested by the Legislature two years ago. Under the old system school buildings and maintenance were in control of petty ward boards; in some districts the schools were excellent but in others waste, mismanagement and graft were rampant. Under the new system many of the old directors secured election as ward school visitors and, shorn of their spoils, have been bitterly opposed to the control of the small, centralized executive board appointed by the judges of the Allegheny county courts.

Charges brought against Supt. S. L. Heeter by a housemaid gave politicians and ousted directors their chance to start an agitation for a return to conditions under which they throve. These charges were given publicity by Coronor Jamison, president of the old central board. Superintendent Heeter demanded a court trial and was acquitted. Afterward a committee of citizens, including the president of the chamber of commerce and two clergymen, was appointed to investigate the superintendent’s fitness to remain in office. This committee has not yet reported.

Whether Superintendent Heeter is retained in office or not is aside from the main issue—the revolution in the conduct of the Pittsburgh schools in the past year and a half. The new board has been obliged to spend $150,000 in transforming indescribably dirty old fire-traps, with poor light, worse ventilation and unspeakable toilets, into schools that could be used with decency.

The great mass of Pittsburgh’s good citizens refuse to get excited. Not all the scare heads of the interested newspapers, the _Leader_ and the _Press_, or mass-meetings and parades of children arranged by still more interested individuals, have befogged the recognition by Pittsburgh people of the improvement in school affairs since 1911. The exaggeration of the children’s strike in the press of the country, however, has been broadcast. _Collier’s Weekly_, for example, that usually accurate publication, prints a picture with the explanation that “a strike of 50,000 school pupils paralyzed the Pittsburgh school system.” There was marching of children; but when an effort was made to discover the identity of the men who the children reported were urging them on, the agitators quickly dropped out of sight. For a few days attendance dropped off in certain sections, but many parents had kept their children at home for fear of their becoming involved.

The situation has been tense, but social workers in Pittsburgh do not anticipate that the Legislature will respond to the manufactured agitation and put the schools back in the hands of the ward boards whose long regime left conditions that can not be remedied in years. A bill introduced this week would make the central board elective. Theoretically there are arguments in support of the election-at-large of members of the centralized board, but the appointive board was regarded as a necessary measure if the schools were to be freed from the domination of the old boards.

Efficiency has been the new board’s watch-word. Janitors and teachers are not appointed on the basis of political “pull.” Already the high school attendance has increased over 60 per cent. Manual training, cooking and sewing classes are now found not only in wealthy districts, but also in sections where boys and girls need such training most.

The one point in which the new board has been weak was the failure to establish sympathetic relations with the public in the reforms it is putting forward and to utilize publicity as a constructive force in the securing of them. This indifference to public opinion, although only apparent, has been mistaken in many quarters as contempt, especially because of the autocratic personalties of two members of the board. It is perhaps unfortunate that the board’s president, David Oliver, is a brother of Senator Oliver, thus giving a decided political turn to newspaper discussion. He was the logical man for the place, a leading member of the state school commission which drafted the new code. As president of the old board in Allegheny, now the north side, he had helped to make the schools of that section far superior to those of the old city; this, in spite of the fact that civic conditions in Allegheny were even worse than in Pittsburgh.

The unfortunate Heeter affair is in fact but an incident in the forward movement toward responsible municipal rule in Pittsburgh.

STANDARDIZING CHILDREN’S CARE

Judge John E. Owens of the Cook County Court, Chicago, has the distinction of having inaugurated the service of social investigators, of having extended the court’s supervision over thirty-three child-helping agencies and of having promoted their close co-operation with the court and with each other.

Although Judge Owens has a contingent fund for the employment of other judges to assist him in passing upon cases of insane and dependent persons, he prefers to do all the work himself and use the money for four social investigators. They report upon the conditions involved in each case, and, aided by this information, the judge enters his decision.

Hitherto the board of visitors, which the judge of the County Court appoints to report upon the care of children committed to child-helping institutions and agencies, has ordinarily attempted little more than a perfunctory service. The present board with Wilfred S. Reynolds as its secretary, however, had the services of experienced social workers.

The first report of the board of visitors to the county judge tells of co-operation and fellowship which has come into being, and of the standardization thus brought about in buildings, equipment, methods and service.

Among the recommendations of the report are the following:

A full record of all facts concerning the child and its previous environment which are in the possession of the court should accompany all commitments to institutions;

Regular and definite reports should be required by the court from all institutions and organizations concerning all children under guardianship;

Money which the court orders parents or guardians to pay for the support of children should be paid to the clerk of the court and turned in to the county treasury;

The submission of plans for new buildings or improvements should be required of all institutions, so as to secure suggestions and approval from a board of competent ability;

A diet should be established upon a scientific analysis of food properties;

Assignment of routine work to be done by the children should be strictly upon the basis of the child’s training, not service to the institution;

Classes in industrial and special training should be organized, and supplemented by routine work about the institution;

Record systems must be complete of the child’s history, its institutional life and the after disposition;

Visits to placed-out children should be made as often as once in six months;

Adoption should not be consented to until six months after placing;

Placements should be kept within the state; and

Personal investigations of all applying for children should be made.

To estimate fully the importance of the achievements recorded in this report requires some knowledge of the acute disturbance[1] within the field of child-care in Chicago during the year or so preceding the work of this board of visitors. To it is attributed the credit of having brought harmony and efficiency out of the chaos produced by the disruption and antagonism which marked the recently repudiated county administration.

THE CONTRACT LABOR PROBLEM IN MISSOURI

The Missouri Legislature of 1911 passed a law which provided for the gradual abolition of the convict leasing system. Under this law contracts employing 1,700 prisoners were due to expire December 31, 1913. Before the convening of the next Legislature, January, 1913, many had decided that the law of 1911 by no means solved for Missouri the problem of convict labor. It was discovered that it was most difficult to employ convicts to the satisfaction of all.

A number of bills were introduced to solve the problem. One representative went into the penitentiary to explain to the convicts his bill to repeal the 1911 law. He was hissed by the convicts who showed in this way their disapproval of the system of leasing out their labor to contractors. When, however, the representative explained that his bill provided that the state would get thirty cents a day for each man and that thirty cents would go to their nearest relative the convicts became calmer. Another bill provided that the contract system be maintained, but set $1 a day as the smallest wage that might be paid. Of this amount thirty cents a day was to be given to the convict.

Finally a resolution was passed appointing three senators to investigate and recommend to the Legislature then in session the best means of handling the situation.

The gist of the report follows:

Prisoners in penitentiary, 2403; employed under contract system, 1600; 1650 prisoners let at $.70 per day each, forty-six cripples at $.50 and forty-four females at $.50. The earning capacity of the prison for the biennial period 1911-1912 was $710,000. This excludes 400 prisoners employed by the state. The committee further reports that about 1000 of the prisoners are confirmed criminals and could not under any circumstances be employed outside of the prison walls. About 300 white men and a like number of Negroes could be worked upon the public highways.

The committee states that at this time the state cannot afford to purchase the machinery and manage the industries now in the prison. This it is estimated would cost about $1,000,000 for two years and such an expenditure would cramp badly all other state institutions.

The report finally advises the Legislature to extend by enactment the time of the prevailing contract system to a period beyond the convening of the next Legislature, because it would be inhuman and dangerous in many ways to allow the men to be idle.

Before the Legislature adjourned a bill was passed following in the main the suggestions of this report. The abolition of the leasing system is suspended till December 31, 1915. The services of the major portion of the prisoners may be contracted at 75 cents a day for each (an increase of 5 cents). A number not to exceed one-quarter of all the prisoners are to be tried out on public road work and in the manufacture of school furniture. The state binding twine factory is to be continued.

LABOR PROBLEM OF THE POST OFFICE

The post-office appropriation bill for the year beginning July, 1913, which was passed in the last days of the Sixty-second Congress, provided for 2,400 additional clerks as well as an increased number of carriers. It raised the minimum pay for clerks and carriers from $600 to $800 a year and set the minimum for substitutes at forty instead of thirty cents an hour. Large appropriations were made for auxiliary clerk and carrier hire, a special sum being set aside to prevent overwork of the regular employes during the summer vacation period. The minimum pay for laborers and watchmen in the department was raised from $650 to $720.

The raising of minimum salaries and the provision of extra service to prevent overwork and insure the effectiveness of the eight-hour day worked within ten consecutive hours, which was passed last year, rounds out the legislation of the Sixty-second Congress affecting the postal employes. This Congress, in the words of the _Union Postal Clerk_, in the two years of its existence, “enacted more legislation providing for the betterment of the condition of the postal employes and the improvement of the service than has ever been enacted since the establishment of the civil service among postal employes.”

The conditions which prevailed at the opening of this Congress were described in THE SURVEY of August 6, 1911. Last year’s improvements, which were summarized in THE SURVEY of July 13 and September 14, include the abolition of the gag rule; the enactment of an eight-hour day for clerks: and a Sunday-closing provision, with compensatory time off for the group of employes who are not affected by this provision; the raising of pay in the mail service; the providing of safer construction for mail cars, and the provision that 75 per cent of clerks and carriers in the second highest grades of pay should be automatically raised each year to the highest grade.

The post-office is not as yet, however, in the opinion of those who have studied its labor problem, a model employer. The substitutes are not on an entirely satisfactory basis, as no provision is made guaranteeing them a minimum number of hours a week, or setting a limit to the number of years they serve before they are received into the regular service. By the terms of the bill, whatever may have been done by administrative readjustments, no provision is made to relieve the overstrain on certain sections of the railway mail service. In spite of many years of vigorous agitation no retirement or pension bill for the service has as yet been passed.

THE AMERICAN COMMISSION ON CO-OPERATIVE RURAL CREDIT

Over a hundred strong and representing over three-fourths of the states and Canada, the American Commission for the Study of the Application of the Co-operative System to Agricultural Production, Distribution and Finance in European Countries sailed from New York on April 26. This commission is to visit certain European countries under the direction of the Southern Commercial Congress. According to the officers of the Congress it will take special note of

1st. The parts played, respectively, in the promotion of agriculture by the governments and by voluntary organizations of the agricultural classes.

2nd. The application of the co-operative system to agricultural production, distribution and finance.

3rd. The effect of co-operative organization upon social conditions in rural communities.

4th. The relation of the cost of living to the business organization of the food-producing classes.

The work of the commission was given standing by the joint resolution of the Senate and the House of Representatives authorizing the secretary of state to bespeak for the commission the diplomatic courtesies of the various European governments. It was further strengthened by the appointment by President Wilson of a commission composed of seven persons to accompany and co-operate with the American commission, and through the appropriation by Congress of $25,000 for the expenses of this federal commission. Senator Duncan Fletcher, of Florida, president of the Southern Commercial Congress is chairman of the federal commission. The other members are: Senator Gore, of Oklahoma; Congressman Moss, of Indiana; Clarence J. Owens, of Maryland, managing director of the Southern Commercial Congress; Kenyon L. Butterfield, of Massachusetts, president of Amherst College; John Lee Coulter, of Minnesota, the government’s expert on agricultural statistics; and Colonel Harvie Jordan, of Georgia, president of the Southern Cotton Growers’ Association. Sevellon Brown accompanies the federal commission as a representative of the State Department.

The American commission will return to New York on July 25. The federal commission will as soon as possible thereafter render its report to Congress. A committee of nine governors appointed at the last conference of governors is awaiting the report of the American commission in order to draft appropriate state legislation in regard to farmers’ credit and co-operative organizations. Few commissions have gone abroad with the backing and the enthusiasm that accompanies this one. Representative of national and state public authorities, business men, and farmers, its report promises to hasten practical measures for the relief of the financial burden of the American farmer.

LOUISVILLE BEGINS TO CLEAN HOUSE

Louisville, Ky., is at last making progress in the task of securing better housing for the people. Three years ago a law which set much higher standards than those previously prevailing was secured. The act simply gave the city permission to employ a housing inspector instead of commanding it to do so. As a result, Louisville’s housing legislation remained until last summer a matter of purely academic interest despite all the efforts of the housing committee.

During the vacation season four medical school inspectors were assigned to housing work. There were hopes that these men would accomplish something but when the schools opened again in the fall and the result of their efforts was summed up the total, according to the housing committee, was disappointingly small.

Meanwhile some amendments had been made to the law which included a mandatory provision for an inspector. This inspector was to be appointed by the health officer, Dr. W. E. Grant, who is in sympathy with those who are working for better housing for Louisville. The city administration pleaded that it was too poor to pay an additional salary but the offer of the Charity Organization Society to provide the money was not accepted. At last, however, a policeman was detailed to the task and though he was without training he proved to have tact and persistence. As a result one hundred violations of the law were corrected within two months.

MILK BILLS DEFEATED IN NEW YORK STATE

At almost the very close of the session of the New York Legislature, the bills introduced at the instigation of the New York Milk Committee by Assemblyman Carroll to give to the state more complete control over milk production and milk handling through the State Departments of Agriculture and Health were defeated, although one came within half a dozen votes of passing. These bills were drawn in accordance with the resolutions adopted by the governors’ delegates from eastern and middle states at a conference last February.

The bills were drawn to supplement each other and provided that the State Department of Agriculture should have charge of dairy inspection and the State Department of Health of medical inspection of the dairy employes and laboratory tests of milk. According to the first of these bills, veterinarians now in the employ of the State Department of Agriculture were to be employed as dairy inspectors. It is the opinion of the committee that only competent veterinarians can perform the examination of dairy cattle and that the training which competent veterinarians receive equips them to make sanitary inspections of the buildings in which dairy cattle are housed and the surroundings of these buildings. The companion bill to amend the public health laws gave to the local medical representatives of the State Department of Health power not only to make medical examinations of dairy employes but to test the water supply on dairy farms and the milk delivered by farmers to creamery and milk stations.

After the Carroll bill was defeated Senator Wagner introduced a bill providing for a commission to investigate the methods of production, distribution and sale of milk and cream. The state commissioner of agriculture, the Senate and Assembly chairmen of the Committees on Agriculture, the master of the grange, the secretary of the New York Sanitary Milk Dealers’ Association and the president of the National Housewives’ League were named in the bill as the members of the commission. This substitute was attacked by the New York Milk Committee as merely a measure for delay and on the ground that it contains but one actual representative of the consuming public, the president of the National Housewives’ League. The secretary of the Milk Committee pointed out that the commission contained no health expert, no sanitarian, no bacteriologist and no veterinarian. In the closing moments of the Legislature an attempt was made to have at least the state health commissioner added as a member of the commission. This effort proved to be unnecessary for the bill was only passed by the Senate.