THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS AS SOCIAL CENTERS
Richard, Livy S.
The Public Schools as Social Centers Edward J. Ward's Work in Rochester, N. Y. By LIVY S. RICHARD Editor, The Boston Common; formerly editor tlie Rochester Times. ABIG IDEA—one of the biggest in...
...Usually some person supposed to be well informed would make a prepared speech or read a paper and then the discussion would become general...
...At the Denver Convention, by throwing out one anti-benzoate delegate on a technicality, and by admitting a benzoate delegate frcm a territory without any dairy and food department, and by all the influence of the Department of Agriculture at Washington, a resolution endorsing benzoate of soda was adopted by a close vote, "several states refusing to vote on the ground that the resolution was improperly presented...
...If they lacked ideas or initiative, it wasn't Ward's fault...
...Benzoate of Soda Opens the Door to Fraud THE real question is not whether benzoate of soda in itself is harmful to the human organism...
...Embodied in the law, it commands: 'The label must tell.' " Gradually, the law was enforced upon the adulterators, misbranders and poisoners...
...The criticism that civic clubs are "hotbeds of Socialism" came mostly from outsiders who don't understand Socialism and didn't attend civic clubs, where they could have learned as well as taught...
...The use of benzoate of soda has opened wide the door to fraud all over the United States...
...He opened them to Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian, bond and free...
...It suggests criticisms of politics by those who neglect the primaries...
...ABIG IDEA—one of the biggest in our time—is what Edward J. Ward is bringing from its nursery bed in Rochester, N. Y., to the fertile soil of democratic Wisconsin...
...A year before, "it had voted, by a large majority, its support of Dr...
...it arose among our grandfathers in the little red school-house of generations ago...
...Only the school offers a hopeful service...
...And that displeased some ultra conservatives...
...But James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture of the United States, now led the contest in advocacy of benzoate of soda...
...Then in the basement were the shower baths, imparting a cleanliness which went some way toward Godliness...
...The idea to use the public school buildings as social centers— as common ground on which men and women can meet for study of common interests and for acquaintance and human fellowship, absolutely on a parity one with another...
...This is for men, women, boys and girls, meeting for the most part separately but coming together with sufficient frequency to become acquainted...
...Wiley like Gifford Pinchot is the new type of the public man who has ever in view the vast public interests committed to his charge...
...Shall the Special Interests Rule...
...But an invariable rule in all these activities was that they were to be open on terms of complete equality to all who wished to participate...
...But their detailed reports show that "fourteen out of the sixteen benzoate-fed men were aifected variously, in the periods of dosage, with marked disorders of stomach, bowels, kidneys, temperature, pulse and general condition...
...Professor Herter of Columbia University reported upon a four months' series of experiments from which he was continuously absent because of ill health...
...It is evident that this latter question is of far greater importance than the question decided by the Board...
...A new official ruling was issued permitting the use of benzoate of soda in unlimited quantities...
...Professor Long of the Northwestern University was the fourth member of the Board...
...If a club wished to issue notices to its members, it took up a collection...
...and I have never seen or heard of the slightest denial of fellowship on account of race, creed, color, or status of pocketbook...
...he had free reading rooms and circulating libraries...
...but he has a high regard for certain organized business interests which yield, by exploitation, a Irlgh rate of profit...
...There were no dues...
...Imagine a University-trained athlete as full of vitality as a heavy-weight prize fighter ready for the ring, yet bubbling over with the cream of human kindness...
...In one room were one hundred and ten natives of Italy, chiefly day laborers...
...and even those born to city ways generally know only persons in their own set—fellow citizens, fellow humans in other sets, on other levels, may be physically near, yet socially they are as if miles and miles away...
...Secretary Wilson is now the guardian of the Pure Food Law of the United States...
...Those of you who live in cities, and especially in big cities, don't need to be told how many are the things that divide folks...
...Professor Chittenden of Yale is known as a defender of artificial preservatives and has favored the boracic acid interests in their attempt to legalize the use cf this acid in dairy products...
...It should be remembered and emphasized that the only possible use of this substance is to place and keep on the market inferior or unfit foods...
...He secured for Mr...
...If possible, an expert on one side would be counterpoised against an expert on the opposite side...
...What Has Become of Our Pure Food Law...
...The Civic Club in Action ACENTRAL part of the social center, and the sheet anchor of the whole idea, is the civic club...
...Not in church, for there you assemble those of only one creed or faith...
...Sometimes the radicals would do more than their share of the talking—generally they did...
...I have been in the thick of Rochester's social center experiments during most of their career...
...This would give a popular market value to decayed and inferior vegetable foods preserved by benzoate of soda...
...In another part of the school building was a well-filled reading room, from which books could be borrowed and taken home...
...he had free dental clinics and wanted to have free legal aid and medical aid and nursing and a host of other things...
...They were "carefully selected young men in the best training, fed upon the best obtainable quality of food in exceptionally large quantities to withstand intermittent terms of dosage with benzoate of soda through a four months' period...
...absolutely without heed to the prejudices and class distinctions which, in all other activities of life, tend to keep them apart—was not original with Ward...
...It is not whether one-tenth of one per cent, or seven-tenths of one per cent, shall be used...
...In next week's La Follette's, Mr...
...Where, in the cities, is such commingling to be...
...One line of business gets into one part of town, another in another, and cften separate families sleeping beneath a common roof don't know each other or pretend that they don't...
...That night the women were invited and the buzz of their discussion lasted long after the meeting adjourned...
...Flanders of New York the election as President of the Convention...
...As they gracefully marched from the floor of the assembly room, used as a gymnasium, into the lecture room, sixty matrons, mostly mothers of families, took their place and underwent drilling in physical culture...
...and who is so perennially enthusiastic and likeable, and so beautifully oblivious to pelf or self, that he sheds troubles as a duck sheds water and persists smilingly when the average man would want to go off and swear—and you'll have some faint notion of Ward...
...Rochester, when I left it, had twenty civic clubs, meeting once a week, once fortnightly or once a month...
...By S H. Adams in the February, 1910, Hampton's "To PASS the Pure Food Act took seventeen years...
...Kittle will tell about the lawlessness and violence of government by public utility companies, as described by Judge Ben...
...It was a popular not a political meaure...
...The school authorities lighted and heated the buildings and paid the janitor to arrange chairs...
...have addressed meetings in them in every part of the city and have heard all the rumors and gossip about them...
...The Convention of State and National Food and Dairy Departments met at Denver in August, 1909...
...They were of the age and kind often associated by ignorant Americans with Sunday debauchery and stabbing affrays...
...but for the social center open on Sunday afternoons they, too, might have to seek fellowship in some villainous back room, at the price of liquor and disorder...
...Flanders, the Secretary of Agriculture said: "I would like to see this association go back to the original intention of it and consider the dairy cow...
...Secretary Wilson like Secretary Ballinger seems to have no conception of the rights and interests of millions of people...
...but it isn't open long enough to serve as a communizing influence...
...Secretary Ballinger is now the guardian of the Conservation cf the resources of the United States and Alaska...
...The rich live usually by themselves and the poor by themselves, with as much room as possible between...
...The decision of the Board opened wide the door to fraud by the food adulterators, misbrandeis and poisoners...
...In seconding the nomination of Mr...
...In certain respects, the tests seem to have been under conditions particularly favorable to the nonaction of benzoate...
...The food adulterators, misbranders and poisoners have emerged in safety upon most of the markets...
...But Ward recalled it and re-established it in a modern city...
...In another room was an assembly of young shop girls, mostly Jewesses...
...he had free art clubs, free exhibitions of paintings and sculptures, free moving picture shows...
...The Board reported that benzoate of soda was not harmful...
...They submitted for a time or paid fines...
...simply surcharged and effervescing with optimism...
...Now, just a sentence or two about Ward himself...
...I am aware of no other institution of which the same can be said...
...They were in nowise to determine whether its use as a preservative would or would not be widely injurious to public health by opening the door to all kinds of inferior, fermenting, and decaying vegetable products...
...Ward: 100 Per Cent...
...B. Lindsey in his story "The Beart and the Jungle," in Everybody's.—EDITOR'S NOTE...
...The question before the Board was: Is sodium benzoate used as a preservative, harmful to the human organism...
...Democracy in the Schools HENCE Ward, and those whom he convinced, took his mis-sionary work for democracy into the schools...
...Wiley's fight against benzoate of soda and other harmful preservatives...
...That State "has always been a laggard in pure food work...
...It was opposed by the food adulterators who, by drugs and coloring matter, were placing on the market inferior food products and even "medicated garbage...
...But Wisconsin, I think, will like his style...
...The first time I attended a social center in Rochester was on a Sunday afternoon...
...They had just been through a drill in the gymnasium, and, in their neat "gym" clothing, were listening to a lecture by the gifted wife of a university professor...
...Then a brilliant thought came to the mind of some food trickster: A scientific test might open wide the door to fraud and nullify the Pure Food Law, An appeal was made to President Roosevelt who appointed a Referee Board "to consider and report upon the physiological effects of sodium benzoate...
...The Indiana Board reports that the frauds have increased 60 per cent, since the emasculation of the law...
...Having seen Ward and his idea in the cradle stage, I want to tell you about them...
...But here, in "Ward's place," they were studying American history and learning to speak the English language...
...He has no counterpart...
...He had free lectures, free discussions, free gymnasium training, free baths...
...He is 100% fine...
...a chap who couldn't think an unkind thought to save his life...
...Flanders was a worker in the ranks of this association at the time when there tvas no quarrel about foods, benzoate, and things of that kind...
...The Denver Convention THE next step was to whitewash the reputation of benzoate foods...
...Sixteen men were experimented upon...
...There were flies in all this ointment...
...The striking thing about these interminglings was their cordial democratic spirit...
...Not in a lodge, for its membership is picked...
...by misbrand-ers who sold liquors, extracts and other substances under false labels...
...By WILLIAM KITTLE VI...
...Democracy isn't possible without common knowledge, common sympathies, common ground...
...Let the label tell' was the slogan of the campaign for pure food...
...and even the radicals sometimes received as well as imparted ideas...
...The most interesting discussion I ever listened to was between a professional woman advocate of woman suffrage and the wife of a University professor who opposed women going into politics...
...Membership was open to all...
...The function of the club was to discuss, frankly and freely, any subject of civic interest, from the tariff and the trusts and other reasons for the high cost of living, down to the matter of a playground in a community, or to whether Smith, Jones or Brown was the better fitted man to be elected alderman of the ward...
...The baseball ground is democratic, when the admission fee isn't too high...
...For young people who come into town strangers, it is not easy to form social ties except at saloons or cheap dance halls...
...Wiley has been overruled and Forester Pinchot discharged from the public service...
...Ira Remsen of Johns Hopkins University, chairman of the Board "neither made nor reported upon any experiments of his own, but merely signed the reports of the others...
...The real question is whether the 99 per cent, of inferior, decayed or rotten vegetable foods shall be preserved or deodorized by this antiseptic...
...Furthermore, a radical who can unburden his mind in an open meeting is less likely to explode than one whose inner feelings are without a sane vent...
...But the latter had equal privileges...
...Fine THIS, very briefly, gives a hint of Ward's idea...
...He opened them at night, he opened them on Sunday afternoons...
...They were too busy earning wages to study during the week...
...When will public opinion sustain such men as Wiley and Pinchot in positions of public trust, partly by fair compensation in money, partly in long tenure of service and partly in honor...
...by patent medicine poisoners who spent millions of dollars annually in newspaper advertising to sell "their enslaving 'cures'—worse than the disease itself—loaded with hasheesh, opium and cocaine...
...The very highest grade of food firms have gone on record in declaring that these drug preservatives are not necessary if the foods are properly and promptly handled...
Vol. 2 • July 1910 • No. 27
