The Father and the Mother State : Part 2

The Family and it's Members
by Anna Garlin Spencer

(Page 17 of 23)

The Interest and Work of Women in This Process of Political Change. - In every one of these new forms of approach to individual life by the general public through law, tax-supported opportunity, or special grant of official aid, women have played a distinct and a large part. When, therefore, women entered formally into the body politic of these United States, they entered into a place of power already familiar to them in many of its activities. Indeed, they had helped to outline and to make effective many of those activities and came into a new relation to them only by virtue of a recognized access of control over their administration. When government was merely a restraining or a military power over individual life, there might be to many minds an incongruity in women assuming voter's privileges and duties. When government became a means for conserving and nurturing and developing individual life, mothers, at least, could be easily seen to have proper part in its functions.

Health a Social Enterprise. - To briefly rehearse this list of political activities is to show marked changes in social ideals. We have entered upon a crusade against preventable disease and for the better physical development of all citizens and potential citizens. This crusade now makes the official Boards of Health, the hospital and medical service, the nurse's vocation, and the lay volunteer support of all these, the outstanding features of our community life. Epidemics used to be considered visitations of an avenging Providence for the people's sins. So they are in essence and in modern translation of old ideas, a punishment by Nature for broken laws; experiences to be ashamed of now that we know how to prevent them. Deaths of babies, once mysterious dispensations of Infinite power, have come to mean indictments of community and family for failure to furnish right conditions for infant life.

Deaths of mothers in childbirth, leaving older children without suitable protection and care, once thought events to which to be resigned, however sad and pitiable, are now seen to be preventable calamities for which society is to blame. Avoidable cripplement and invalidism of workmen, once considered either their own fault or unexplained misfortune, are now listed as cause for receipt of sickness and accident benefits under Workmen's Compensation Laws. Premature old age, due to overwork and undernourishment, is on its way to be proceeded against as a record of social neglect. All waste of life's vigor and happiness which is indicated by lower levels of health and strength in any class or age than can be secured by the more favored is from now on recorded as social failure and social fault. Hence, the state and all manner of private agencies are at work to make physical standards higher and physical conditions better for all. When we remember that the pioneer worker in organization of Boards of Public Health and the founder of the American Public Health Association, Dr. Stephen Smith, has just passed away after reaching the hundred year mark of life's usefulness, we can readily see how rapid has been the growth in scientific attention to health and social agencies for its advance.

General and Vocational Training for All. - In education we have not accomplished all that the leaders in that field outlined for us two generations ago, but there is a movement all along the line to make it possible for every person to have at least a fair start toward education in the compulsory free school; and for adults, younger or older, to make up for early deficiencies by constantly increasing later opportunities of special and of general training in the things every citizen should know. Allusion to new specialties of varied educational facilities has before been made.

No one can doubt that as teachers and helpers to teachers, as members of educational societies, and as acting on official boards by appointment, women have been long serving in the ranks and needed the ballot only to make their function more inclusive and more commanding in directive power. When we remember that it is only since 1837, when Horace Mann published the first Report of a State Board of Education and began his great work for the Common School of his country, that we have had even a distinct social goal in this great field of endeavor we cannot be pessimistic about future accomplishment. When that educational leader declared in response to those who remonstrated with him for turning aside from the usual and, for him, brilliant opportunities of the law, "The next generation is to be my client," he started a new profession, and the present effort in education is but the widening of that social furrow. When we recall that Mary Lyon, in opening Mt. Holyoke Seminary for Girls in that same year of 1837, offered the first opportunity to girls of limited means of what could be called higher education, we can better realize how rapid has been the movement to fit women for educational service. We, at least, now have a clearer aim in education and are at liberty to use fit men and fit women alike for its realization. The one great contribution of later times is the determination to share with all the opportunities once held sacred to a select few.

Women's Work in Philanthropy. - In philanthropy there has been so great a transformation both in ideal and in method that it amounts to a change in the centre of gravity. Charity once had for its aim the easing of unbearable misery, the giving of alms to relieve the starving, and personal aid of all sorts to those who were not expected to be lifted out of the category of the poor, those who must be always helped, but should be helped in a spirit of kindness. Now we have the command for permanent care for the helpless where they will not handicap the normal. We have the varied agencies for preventing delinquency in youth and many a new type of moral rehabilitation for all who have stepped but a short distance out of the ordered path of life. We have the ideal of every defective child in permanent custodial homes, every insane person cared for with humanity and trained intelligence, every dependent child readjusted to family life by adoption or trained happily and usefully in residential school, every aged person protected from want and misery in public or private homes, every widowed mother helped to take care of her own children, and every sick person aided by hospital and clinic and visiting nurse and convalescent home in readjustment to normal activity. Finally, we have boldly replaced the motto, "Relieve Poverty," by the new slogan, "Abolish Poverty," and we are impatient with ourselves and with social arrangements if any considerable number of our fellow-beings are obliged without fault of theirs to receive material relief. In all this, what a part has been played by women! Dorothea Dix revolutionized the care of the insane in the United States.

Copyright, 1923 by J.B. Lippincott Company

About the Author

Anna Garlin Spencer (1851-1931) was an American educator, feminist, and Unitarian minister. Born in Attleboro, MA, she married the Rev. William H. Spencer in 1878. She was a leader in the women's suffrage and peace movements. In 1891 she became the first woman ordained as a minister in the state of Rhode Island.