The Father and the Mother State : Part 7

The Family and it's Members
by Anna Garlin Spencer

(Page 22 of 23)

This all indicates that women voters who have, happily, no past bondage to partisanship to overcome, who entered upon their political power with no pledges to any one party to hamper their free action, and who, being indebted to progressive party leaders in every one of the political divisions, have friends in every one, may and should do much to help progressive and independent men voters to solve the deeper problems of our political situation with clarity of judgment and true patriotic devotion.

Difficulty in Being a Good American Citizen. - We have the most mixed of populations. We have the greatest variety of inherited national and racial backgrounds in the electorate. We have the widest stretches of country, and therefore the most difficult adjustments to any centralized system of government. We have the most mobile common life, our people moving from State to State, and from one sectional interest to another with bewildering frequency. We have as yet no universal schooling even in the rudiments of reading and writing of the English language to serve as common basis for common knowledge. We have a lack of ethical unity in many basic problems of the family, the industrial order, the type of tax-supported schooling, and the ideals of patriotism. These conditions seem to make it more difficult to become a first-class American citizen than to achieve political competency in any other government on earth. Even with the confusion in countries abroad, even in the European tangles of feuds and suspicions and the horrible weight of starvation and physical weakness of the Old World, we may yet, if serious in our judgment of American life, soberly acknowledge the greatest difficulties of all political adjustment which lie within our own political life. Such acknowledgment is not to any true American of the older stock and the more noble patriotism a confession of discouragement or an apology for social failures in our common life.

It is rather, for all nobler and wiser citizens, a stimulant to constant vigilance in defence of inherited liberties and a call to deeper consecration and more devoted service in our political relationship. Finally, the father and the mother state does not try or want to live to itself alone. We have learned that selfishness in the private family leads to social ills and weakness which society in general, which surrounds all private families, must correct and amend. Are we not learning in the awful light of the recent world conflagration that selfishness in nations leads to social ills and weakness which can be corrected only by world organization for world well-being?

Our Country a Member of the Family of Nations. - That America we love and would serve with a higher patriotism and a wiser political method is a part of the great family of nations, and if it has learned any lessons of fatherly and motherly function of state care and development of the individual life, it has learned those lessons not for isolated national culture, but as a part of the universal schooling in the gospel of human brotherhood.

Rightly to understand and rightly to apply that teaching of race-experience in all the complicated life of international relationship is more truly to serve the best interests of every smallest community within our own nation. As Immanuel Kant declared so long ago, "The constantly progressive operation of the good principle works toward erecting in the human race, as a community under moral laws, a kingdom which shall maintain the victory over evil and secure under its domination an eternal peace."

It has been urged that patriotism is the piety of the school, and brotherhood is the gospel of the church, and justice is the righteous law of industry, and mutual reverence and mutual affection are the heart of the family life. If this be true, then patriotism itself is the working-out in ever-widening circles of that ideal of coöperation for the common good, which shall at last make every Father and Mother State a worthy member of the Family of Nations.

Vows of Civic Consecration. - The Athenian youth took a solemn pledge when he arrived at the age when his relation to the City became consciously one of loyal service. This vow may be translated as follows: "We will never bring disgrace to this our City by any act of dishonesty or cowardice nor ever desert our comrades. We will fight for the ideals and sacred things of the City both alone and with many. We will revere and obey the City laws and do our best to incite a like respect and reverence in others. We will strive unceasingly to quicken in all the sense of civic duty, that thus in all ways we may transmit this City, greater, better and more beautiful to all who shall come after us." Should not some such solemn act of consecration mark the advent of each youth into the actual citizenship of his town and his country? A modern writer, Thomas L. Hinckley, has summed up a "Municipal Creed" as the utterance of the "Spirit of the Modern City," as follows:

"I believe in myself - in my mission as defender of the liberties of the people and guardian of the light of civic idealism.

I believe in my people - in the sincerity of their hearts and the sanity of their minds - in their ability to rule themselves and to meet civic emergencies - in their ultimate triumph over the forces of injustice, oppression, exploitation and iniquity.

I believe that good food, pure water, clean milk, abundant light and fresh air, cheap transportation, equitable rents, decent living conditions and protection from fire, from thieves and cut-throats and from unscrupulous exploiters of human life and happiness, are the birth-right of every citizen within my gates; and that insofar as I fail to provide these things, even to the least of my people, in just this degree is my fair name tarnished and my mission unfulfilled.

I believe in planning for the future, for the centuries which are to come and for the many thousands of men, women and children who will reside within my gates and who will suffer in body, in mind and in worldly goods unless proper provision is made for their coming.

I believe in good government and in the ability of every city to get good government; and I believe that among the greatest hindrances to good government are obsolete laws - which create injustice; out-grown customs - which are unsocial; and antiquated methods - which increase the cost of government and destroy its efficiency.

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.