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

The plan of organization followed was much the same as that of the National Conference of Charities and Correction. There were seven special conferences gathered under the name of the Southern Sociological Congress. Each was separately organized and met with the other divisions only in the general night session. The seven divisions were: organized charities, courts and prisons, public health, child welfare, travelers’ aid, race problems and the church and social service.

The latter was an innovation with the Southern Sociological Congress. It served to emphasize the fact that “the church is the fellowship of those who love in the service of those who suffer.” The discussions in this conference all served to bring out in sharp relief the new spirit beginning to dominate the old church. It was agreed that the social worker who can satisfy only the bare material needs of life is poorly equipped for his task, that religion must lend its strength to every effort towards individual or social reconstruction, and that the call of the church is a call to service.

The individual conference that enjoyed the greatest popularity was the one on race problems. Throughout its four days of almost continuous session there were in attendance about 400 persons, half white and half colored. Some of the Negro delegates, fearing an unjust discrimination against those of their race in the conference sessions, had prepared, while on the way to Atlanta, resolutions of protest. These were never tendered. No reason was intruded for their presentation. One of the Negro delegates expressed the situation most aptly. He said:

“The old order of whites understood the old black man. But it has remained for this Congress to demonstrate the possibility of the young white men of the new order sympathizing in and appreciating the hopes and aspirations of the Negro of today.”

Too great a significance can not be attached to this simple statement of fact. Its optimism is the culture-soil out of which we may expect to see develop that happy adaptation of the two races, which after all is the solution of the race problem.

This incident, and what it goes to show, would alone justify the existence of a southern congress separate and distinct from the National Conference of Charities and Correction. The peculiar problems that faced the conference on courts and prisons make this separate treatment even more desirable. In the South there are not many of those great central, highly organized penal institutions known as penitentiaries. For the most part we have county chain-gang camps engaged in road work. A distinct contribution was made to southern penology by Hooper Alexander, of Georgia, when he showed the absolute identity of the convict lease in Georgia with the system once known as the institution of slavery.

The conference discussion made clear the fact that the county convict road camp, prosecuted without a scintilla of effort at training or character building, is not less immoral than the old lease system; that the wrong of public exploitation is as great as exploitation at the hands of a private lessee.

The congress made a tremendous impression on Atlanta and the whole state of Georgia. Its influence will spread over the entire South. It served to quicken the civic consciousness of our people and to make them better acquainted with their common problems. It took the mask off sociology and unfrocked it of scholastic appearance. In pointing out our needs, the congress unified our aims and at the same time broadened our vision.

UNIVERSITY FORUM

(_In downtown New York_)

JEREMIAH W. JENKS

Director of the Division of Public Affairs, School of Commerce, Accounts and Finance, New York University

New York University has added a chapter to the history of “town and gown” by opening a University Forum in lower New York. This has been held throughout the winter in the Judson Memorial Building in Washington Square, and its purpose has been to put the university at the service of people in New York interested in a thoroughly impartial discussion of questions of the day.

The purposes of the forum as announced last fall are to make the university a greater force in training students to perform the duties of citizenship, in helping citizens to understand the problems of government, and in making thinking men act and active men think. Public officials, business leaders, social workers, eminent authorities were asked to present important questions of government and industry and discuss vital problems of civic and commercial life.

The methods employed were somewhat different from those usually followed in public discussions. In order that the academic atmosphere of thoroughness, sincerity and impartiality might so far as possible be conserved without sacrificing at the same time the interest that comes from having questions presented by experts and from the stimulus of controversy, it was decided that each question discussed should cover three sessions. At the first session an able authority has presented one side of the question. If there were time, as has usually been the case in the hour and a half, the audience has questioned the speaker in order to bring out more fully the points made.

At the second session, a week later, the opposite side has been presented with similar questioning.

At the third meeting the director of the forum has enumerated briefly the most essential points made on both sides, giving his own judgment regarding their validity and the relation of the question under discussion to the public interest. In some instances where it has seemed desirable, he has supplemented the arguments presented in the discussion by points of his own in order to make the discussion as complete as possible. In this summary an effort has been made to present the questions as impartially as possible from the viewpoint of the public interest.

In addition to this, representative citizens from the audience have given in brief talks of not more than ten minutes each their own views. Sometimes these voluntary speakers have been students, sometimes citizens. So far as possible the names were learned in advance in order that the discussion might proceed in the nature of a debate with the two sides presented alternately. In these third meetings especially, the interest has chiefly centered. In two or three instances, notably perhaps in the consideration of woman’s suffrage and the closed shop, the discussion was most animated, not to say excited, but nevertheless the temper of university study and the desire, however heated the feelings, to reach the truth and a fair judgment was not lost.

The list of topics and speakers included:

The Control of Vice and Crime—

William J. Gaynor, mayor of New York; Arthur Woods, former deputy commissioner of police, in special charge of the investigation of Italian criminals and the white slave traffic.

The Relation of Government to Corporations—

Martin W. Littleton, member of the Congressional Committee on Investigation of Industrial Monopolies; Herbert Knox Smith, late United States commissioner of corporations in charge of the Investigations of the Standard Oil Company, the American Tobacco Company, the Meat Packers, the International Harvester Company, and many other of the great corporations.

Socialism—

Victor L. Berger, the first Socialist to be elected to Congress; Bird S. Coler, former comptroller of the City of New York.

Woman Suffrage—

Anna Howard Shaw, president National American Woman Suffrage Association; Mrs. A. J. George, organization secretary of the Massachusetts Association Opposed to Woman’s Suffrage.

The Open Shop versus the Unionized Shop—

John Kirby, president National Association of Manufacturers, and Joseph W. Bryce, president of the Trades and Workers’ Association of America; James O’Connell, president Metal Trades Department and vice-president American Federation of Labor, and C. G. Norman, ex-chairman Board of Governors of the Building Trades Employers’ Association.

The meetings seem to have reached the results sought in more than one way. They have been well attended both by students and public, although comparatively few students have registered and done the reading required and passed the examination in order to secure university credit. For those students, however, who entered upon the work seriously the course has been as severe both in the quantity of reading required, in the reports upon that reading and in the examination as the regular university courses, and students have expressed their appreciation of the interest as well as the value of the course. Similar expressions have come from citizens in numerous instances. There have been regular attendants from Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Yonkers and also from New Jersey. Requests have been made for an extension of the forum to other boroughs and the matter is under consideration for the coming year. Inquiries have come from as far west as Kansas and Calgary in western Canada regarding the methods employed; and numerous requests for printed reports of the addresses and discussions have been received.[3]

The audiences in one respect at any rate seem to have lacked somewhat the university spirit of inquiry, having retained rather the normal human spirit of liking to hear views that agree with one’s own. It was noticeable, for example, that the people who came to hear the Socialist speaker were the Socialists coming to be flattered, and not the anti-Socialists coming to learn. Likewise, the anti-Socialist speaker was not listened to by so many Socialists as by those of his own opinion. Perhaps equally noticeable was this tendency to listen to speakers of their own side in the case of the discussion on woman’s suffrage. Surely it is to be hoped that in another year the academic spirit will have increased sufficiently so that each group will be equally anxious to hear their opponents, because it is, after all, primarily from those who differ from us that we learn, rather than from those with whom we agree.

THE ST. LOUIS PEACE CONGRESS

CHARLES E. BEALS Secretary Chicago Peace Society

The biennial gathering of the pacifist clans in the Fourth American Peace Congress at St. Louis, May 1-3, enabled those who attended the previous congresses (at New York in 1907, at Chicago in 1909 and at Baltimore in 1911) to gauge the direction and speed of the movement.

Like its predecessors, the St. Louis congress was initiated by the American Peace Society, which has been the national peace organization in the United States since 1828. Unlike any of its predecessors, the Fourth American Peace Congress was financed entirely by the local commercial association. The New York Congress had Mr. Carnegie for its god-father. The Chicago congress received material assistance from the Chicago Association of Commerce. The St. Louis congress was the first one the expenses of which were entirely underwritten by business men through a business men’s organization. This precedent will render easier the organization of future congresses.

In one respect the St. Louis congress was unique—in the official participation of Latin-American governments. This is not saying that this was the first congress in which ambassadors have taken part. Earl Grey, then governor general of Canada, Ambassador Bryce and the Mexican ambassador were notable figures at New York. Count von Bernstorff, the German ambassador, and diplomatic representatives of other nations were present at Chicago, and Minister Wu Ting Fang was the most picturesque and popular visitor at the latter congress. Indeed the international session of the Chicago Congress may perhaps be reckoned as the most thoroughly international of the four congresses. At Baltimore a French senator and a Belgian senator were conspicuous figures. But the St. Louis congress was the first in which the ambassadors and ministers of the Latin-American nations sat as official delegates representing their respective governments. And the frank, honest, kindly message delivered by the Peruvian minister was welcomed by all lovers of truth and international justice. In fact the congress insisted that he should repeat his address at another session.

The two addresses most warmly applauded were those of Dr. Thomas E. Green and Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones, both of Chicago. Dr. Green, a wide traveler and popular Chautauqua lecturer, spoke in place of Secretary of State Bryan, and his address was a piece of oratory of the sort seldom heard in this scientific age.

Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones discussed the psychology of heroism. The writer recalls riding with Mr. Jones in Washington in 1909, when we were corralling speakers for the Chicago congress. Mr. Jones burst out: “I want some one to discuss the psychology of war. There will be plenty of discussion of international law and of the economic, moral and educational aspects of the peace problem.” Then and there the subject of Armaments as Irritants was assigned to the veteran social worker and militant pulpiteer. And his presentation of this subject before the Chicago congress (using the homely barnyard figure of de-horning cattle) was one of the most delightful and valuable contributions to that congress. At St. Louis he followed up this psychological investigation with his survey of heroisms. So human, so true to life, so morally prophetic, so shot through and through with first hand information gained in four years of service in the Civil War, so illumined with poetry and ripe literary culture was this address, that again and again the speaker was forced to bow in response to the prolonged applause.

There were not lacking men who “spoke by the book,” men who had participated in the Hague Conferences, senators and representatives, authors of books on international problems—men like former Vice-President Fairbanks, Dr. James Brown Scott, Senator Burton (president of the American Peace Society), Congressman Bartholdt (president of the congress), Congressman Ainey, Dr. Benjamin F. Trueblood (for over a score of years secretary of the American Peace Society), Prof. Paul S. Reinsch, Prof. W. I. Hull, Dean W. P. Rogers; the United States commissioner of education, Dr. Claxton; college presidents like David Starr Jordan, C. F. Thwing, S. C. Mitchell, A. Ross Hill, Laura Drake Gill, Frank L. McVey, Booker T. Washington, and others; business men like Andrew Carnegie, Leroy A. Goddard, J. G. Schmidlapp and Eugene Levering; the secretaries and directors of various peace offices from Bunker Hill to the Golden Gate; the official head of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, Mrs. Pennypacker, and her predecessor, Mrs. Phillip N. Moore, under whose administration was created the peace department of the women’s clubs. British America was represented by such distinguished men as Hon. Benjamin Russell, justice of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, and John Lewis, editor of the _Toronto Star_.

In connection with the congress inter-collegiate oratorical contests were conducted, the coming Hundred Years of Peace Celebration described, special church services held, and social courtesies bestowed through receptions and dinners.

Should one ask what is the most characteristic feature of the peace movement in 1913, perhaps it might truly be said that pacifism more and more is being formulated into a science. The organized peace movement began ninety-eight years ago purely as a moral reform. It is no less a moral reform today. But it has accumulated a vast amount of historic, economic, juridical, biological and general sociological data.

When one considers the movement of the human animal from the day of the man whose bones recently were dug up from the Sussex gravels; when one measures the progress of human beings from cave-dwelling to Universal Postal Unions and Hague Conferences and Courts; when one notes the marked decrease in the number of wars, the total abolition of private war, the almost revolutionary mitigation of war practices (so that today one finds it comparatively comfortable to “get his living by being killed”); when one remembers that the world is beginning to think in economic terms; when one examines the beginning already made towards the substitution of judicial procedure for fist law; when one counts up the half hundred things actually being done officially by governments acting internationally; when one perceives that the man animal is specializing in two things—rational thinking and morality—then one can easily believe that, having so progressed from jungleism towards internationalism, the race probably will not stop now and here.

Direction and distance are prophetic. Only by some unforeseen and catastrophic and utter extinction of the human species can man escape his blessed and inevitable and rapidly approaching terrestrial destiny of organized pacifism and world-wide scientific and industrial co-operation. The tiny mountain rill of pacifism has become an ocean-seeking river, on whose mighty current the war-afflicted human race is being borne on towards the ocean of a real civilization.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See THE SURVEY for March 30, 1912.

[2] See THE SURVEY for May 10, page 212.

[3] It would be desirable if a sufficient number of persons interested would contribute so that it would be practicable to print in full the discussions, properly edited with bibliographies and notes, so as to make a really authoritative booklet on the questions under discussion.

BOOKS

THE DISCOVERY OF THE FUTURE

By H. G. WELLS. B. W. Huebsch. 61 pp. Price $.60; by mail of THE SURVEY $.65.

This is a small book, sixty-one pages of large type, containing an address delivered at the Royal Institution in England. But the value of the publication is out of proportion to its size. Here is the abundant Wells literature of the last two decades in a compact and highly concentrated extract form. And this means, as every lover of this English author will know at once, a wealth of suggestive speculation and stimulating idealism.

The thesis of the book is that we now have the materials in hand for a systematic and accurate “exploration of the future.” There is no reason why we should not be able to forecast the future development of society, by a critical study of operative causes, as definitely as we now reconstruct the past conditions of the race by a critical study of the geological and archeological record. What the scientist now does in the fields of physics or astronomy, we ought to be able to do just as easily in the field of social life. “Suppose,” says Wells, “that the laws of social and political development were given as many brains, were given as much attention, criticism and discussion, as we have given to the laws of chemical combination, and what might we not expect?” Here, evidently, is the philosophical justification of The War of the Worlds, Anticipations, The Future in America, New Worlds for Old, and many another fascinating volumes from Wells’ pen which might be mentioned.

This thesis, however, constitutes only a part of the book’s abundant material. A keen psychological discussion of the two divergent types of mind, the forward-looking and the backward-looking, into which all men may be divided; a passing glance at the pragmatic standard of “it works”; a survey of the great-man theory versus the economic theory of social determinism; an incisive critique of positivism; a bold and eloquent prophecy of the future destiny of man upon this planet—here are only a few of the “extras” which are contained in this distillation of the Wells philosophy. About as good an example of _multum in parvo_ as I have ever seen!

JOHN HAYNES HOLMES.

SOCIAL WELFARE IN NEW ZEALAND

By HUGH H. LUSK. Sturges & Walton Co. 287 pp. Price $1.50; by mail of THE SURVEY $1.62.