The Father and the Mother State : Part 4

The Family and it's Members
by Anna Garlin Spencer

(Page 19 of 23)

The foreign-language publications in the United States numbered, in 1914, 1404, of which 160 were dailies, with total circulation per issue of 2,598,827, and 868 weeklies with a total circulation per issue of 4,239,426, and other publications to the number of 376 with a total circulation per issue of 3,609,735. These foreign-language journals are not all or many of them devoted to "stirring up strife" and do not prevent absorption of the foreign-born in the body politic. They are, on the contrary, necessary means of making those who speak foreign tongues acquainted with facts and conditions which newcomers need to know and understand. During the Great War our government used these foreign-language publications to spread broadcast appeals for financial and personal support. The excellent "Foreign Language Information Service," still existing and having Federal backing, has in hand the introduction into the principal foreign-language publications of information and appeal calculated to make good American citizens.

The demand that has been made in moments of excitement for the abolition of the foreign-language press is therefore as stupid as it is unfriendly. Only by the use of his native tongue can a man who does not yet understand English be made to feel and act as a genuine part of the citizenship of his adopted country. It is for those who cherish real Americanism to try to get into these publications, which are the strategic point of contact between older and newer Americans, all that is deemed vital to the welfare of our common country. Through a wise use of this material in every free public library and in the multiplied Loan Libraries in remote districts, the newcomers in our country who read intelligently their own language and are eager to learn, may gain all that a good citizen needs to know. And if in parallel columns the English with the foreign language should be used to convey the same thought, the progress will be doubly fast in true Americanization.

Personal Conservation. - In the conservation of natural resources for the benefit of all the people we have been slow to understand either our social danger, or our social opportunity, but our Federal Government is setting us notable lessons and local communities are trying to learn and follow them, and Women's Clubs all over the country are staying up the hands of officials and trying to help save the people's inheritance for the people's wealth; surely a fatherly and a motherly office if any state function can be. When we enter the area of protection of the young and weak and ignorant against the exploitation of vice and greed and selfishness, we are in the very centre of that parental care which the modern state now seeks to give to its citizens.

When the Great War turned into training camps the flower of our youth, these agencies for moral protection and social watch-care which had been so largely developed as volunteer and private social work, became the resource of a government bent on keeping men "fit to fight," and on preserving young women in the vicinity of the camps both from giving and receiving harmful influences. Since then, more than ever, such agencies for moral protection have become official in civic life and have the endorsement and the aid of government. It is one new feature of all modern protective work that women are employed as members of the police, as matrons in public places supported by tax, and indeed in places of commercial recreation, as judges of special courts where parole and methods of suspended sentence are used, and in all places where boys and girls are exposed to danger and to temptation. Thus the home influence is spreading out toward the work-place and the play-centre - truly a retranslation of family service in terms of the public life.

The Children's Bureau. - Our government at Washington used to be limited in its function to those political services which no state organization could accomplish by itself, but now the Federal departments are busily at work setting standards, if only through authentic information and suggestion, which aim to raise the average life in all directions, economic and social. The Children's Bureau is preëminently a standardizing body, although with no power to issue or enforce decrees. The Bureaus which have to do with foods and animal life and farm management are setting higher and higher levels of attainment for the common people in their home life and in their vocational work. There is a strong movement to enlarge the educational influence at the very heart of our national government with a Cabinet Head to set a high standard of attainment in both the art, the science, and the administration of education as well as to aid in equalizing educational opportunity. Moreover, there is a strong tendency, seen most recently and vividly in the provisions of the Maternity Aid Bill, for all social efforts to ask and to be granted Federal financial aid on the fifty-fifty plan.

There is not a consensus of opinion among the thoughtful as to the wisdom of thus placing upon the general government the burden of social schemes upon which a minority of the people, be that minority large or small, are alone agreed. The force of persuasion may secure national legislation in advance of that which many local communities already have or are seeking to secure. The increase of national power through the work of national officials is not deemed politically sound by some persons who favor specific action by the states alone in such matters as maternity aid. The tendency is, however, a proof of two things, one that we are as a people becoming a nation; that is more a centralized and united governmental force - and the other that more and more people are trying in every way to secure a more uniform as well as a higher standard of living for all our citizens.

A Women's Lobby at the National Capitol. - It is said that the most powerful lobby in Washington is "the Public Welfare Lobby backed by seven million organized American women."

There are signs already that among the leaders of women in the new organization of Women Voters there is a feeling that the pendulum may swing too far toward philanthropic measures, for some of which the general public is as yet unprepared. The call is already made for more concentration upon the better enforcement of existing laws, rather than upon constant demand for new legislation in the interest of social welfare.

Women's Interest in Public Life a Social Asset. - The fact, however, that so many women are actively engaged not only in watching legislation and in learning the character and ability of political leaders in the national Congress, but also in trying to raise the average life of the people of the country by and through better laws and more efficient enforcement, is cause for great encouragement. It shows that women came into their kingdom of political power just as the state was ready to take on the functions no longer fully expressed within the family circle. If we must be shocked by learning that a baby a day is being given away in New York City through advertisements in the daily papers, and with a haste and carelessness that proves lack of responsibility in parents and guardians, we may be relieved of fear that love of children is dying out when we see what are the things that millions of women are now banded together to secure for the betterment of all child-life.

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.