Week by Week
392 THE COMMONWEAL August 2I, 1929 sity more obvious than in the sphere of "prosperity," which displays not a sign of willingness to permit a wider immigration. A new school of writers on...
...Undoubtedly it is difficult, when one has given all to labor in the cause of charity and service, to accept criticism from persons who range all the way from "nuts" to over-zealous reformers in whose eyes a speck of harmless and eminently natural dust is a proof of squalor unrelieved...
...Although we are aware of the rather difficult criminal problems in Michigan, rising largely out of its proximity to Canada, and its unenviable position as headquarters for the bootleggers of the Middle-West, we cannot follow the reasoning which urged the legislators to take this backward step...
...His comment on this situation was one of regret for the passing of a system which attempted to develop, and sometimes succeeded in developing, teachers capable of imparting not only the mechanics of literacy, but a regard for ethics, religion and culture...
...The majority of the families sleep five in a room...
...WALTER ATHEARN was merely reporting a fact well known in this country when he told the World Federation of Education AssoTraining ciations at Geneva that the aim of the Teacher normal schools and teachers' colleges in the United States is to turn out "well-running machines," and no more...
...To their number this energetic man added others which represent his character--a college, houses of refuge, a home for foundlings...
...The Building Inspector (as a result of an untoward accident which gave one entry a broken leg) passes formally upon the sine and safety of the poles employed...
...Of the I,o6o,858 juvenile workers from ten to fifteen years of age listed throughout the country, a little more than 7 ~ percent are on the farms, with the result that the average school year of the farm child has dwindled to I37 days, compared to the I84-day year of urban districts...
...A new school of writers on economics declares that the fight against poverty will be won by the instruments of efficiency...
...About four million pupils get their whole elementary education in I6o,ooo one-teacher, oneroom schools--an average of twenty-five pupils to a school...
...THIS is perhaps the most serious factor, but there are others...
...As Governor Green pointed out recently in vetoing the bill, Michigan was the first state in the union to abolish capital punishment...
...Who knows but what our increasing knowledge and control of nature also forces us to run greater risks, to enter more hazardous unknowns...
...The resumption of Mexicans Catholic life in its normal forms has Here and likewise restored much of the old Yonder "tone" to a landscape individualized during centuries by spires and the robes of priests...
...The city has produced to date, according to news despatches, twenty-one young pioneers in this field of competitive imbecility, their ages ranging from nine to sixteen years...
...Of the eighty-five colleges which Dr...
...Gooze is invited to examine our place from garret to cellar and bring his neighbors if he likes," Sister Raymond will probably make a repentant friend, earn heaps of goodwill for the House, and make the ladies who worry about such matters feel ever so much better on account of the knowledge that everything possible is being done for the unfortunate...
...For one thing, it demands for its soil a social order in which even a factory hand can look forward to a future that at least promises some measure of ease and liberty...
...Among the many reports issued lately about peon labor in the United States, the one prepared by Miss Linna E. Brisette (Department of Social Action, National Catholic Welfare Conference) should be noted as having particular value...
...But by declaring, "Mr...
...One who has, however, is M. Dubreuil, and in a recent book called Standards he expresses a deep admiration for the cordial relationship existing between chiefs and subordinates, the scientific organization of labor, and the sanitation of the American factory...
...To most of us flying is still a dashing stunt rather than an enterprise in which we care to risk our lives and money...
...Mapp had been defeated for the nomination before, a fact which always takes away interest from a candidate, and Mr...
...We continue to need, possibly we need more than ever, those solid landmarks of moral and religious truth which are the only safe guides in history...
...Of course Mexico cannot expect that religion will be shielded from intellectual or revolutionary opposition...
...The persistent tapping of the MediterThe ranean fruit fly has reduced the citrusFlorida growing regions of fertile Florida to Pest near ruin, and threatens to wreak almost immeasurable havoc...
...ONLY where old-line Democrats are concerned did the recent party primaries in Virginia result in a vindication of progressive government...
...Nor is the domestic environment in which these children live anything but horrible...
...And if one thing distinguishes the youth of today from the youth of fifteen years ago it is his skepticism of the schools, his recognition of the futility of much that passes under the name of education...
...No man would risk his private fortune betting that the conditions upon which they are based can be even relatively permanent...
...Secretary Adams has amiMuseum ably promised to consider its preservation as a historical relic, and so for the moment the end expected of all ships has been averted...
...This was in I847, and since that time the tendency in all nations has been toward less severity in the handling of criminals...
...Again, the figures of child labor are proportionately high...
...On the one hand, the Bishop suggested that the anti-Raskob Democrats refrain from going to the polls, and the fact that only I4o,ooo votes were cast, arrayed against the memory of Mr...
...Even bearing in mind that educational statistics supplied by localities in need of a subsidy are notoriously pessimistic, one is forced to conclude from these figures that the situation is gravely depressing...
...THE department of rural education of Teachers' College, Columbia University, has just published a collection of data of which the general Rural effect is somewhat disquieting...
...news report likewise informs us that Padilla, the Mexican Secretary of Education, is carrying on a cultural campaign "to tranquillize consciences and to free the peasant masses from fanaticism...
...Far easier to transplant machines, which have only to cross an ocean and be set up on concrete bases...
...WEEK BY WEEK NE is glad to hear that the pacification of Mexico has now been carried to a point where the number of troops actually under arms is smaller than it has been for years...
...A minister, even, has brought the comforts of religion to one of the higher-minded of the young sitters, by holding religious services at the foot of his perch...
...and as a nation we can hardly face with equanimity the prospect of their staying under circumstances which would produce even very bad sheep or horses...
...But perhaps in these matters action is decided by temperament rather than logic...
...No one objects to this, indeed most of us look forward to the pleasant little interims when the salvation of the old ship is the first concern of the land...
...And so if any poet proposes verses in the cause of the Olympia, let him embody in them a plea for permanent endowment, the interest on which will be sufficient for its maintenance as the need arises...
...392 THE COMMONWEAL August 2I, 1929 sity more obvious than in the sphere of "prosperity," which displays not a sign of willingness to permit a wider immigration...
...Many people admired and loved him as a Shepherd of Souls and a leader of men ; many will mourn him in genuine sorrow for a long time to come...
...THE advice to laugh at folly is admittedly sound, but there are times when laughter sticks in one's throat...
...More light is thrown on the matter by the detailed survey of conditions in Colorado prepared by Mr...
...Signs and For others, state government of one kind or another is unimportant cornProphecies pared to whether its administrators hold allegiance to Mr...
...They guarantee the economic stability of the individual rather than of the mass...
...Conceivably enough, however, neither aviation nor statecraft may prove lastingly trustworthy...
...Athearn examined, only twenty try to prepare their students to cultivate the "moral character" of the pupils who will be under them, and only eight offer courses in the philosophy of education...
...If the chances for success in this direction are less today, it is because slight emphasis is put upon it in the training schools...
...The I4o,ooo votes cast under such circumstances look much bigger than the same number voted in November for exGovernor Smith...
...and that the recipe for keeping an "improved producing machinery" in motion is simply the inevitability with which an earner becomes a purchaser...
...The story is that of an exploited race, brought to work in beet fields and on railroads, housed in the worst manner conceivable, and paid at a rate which makes eventual appeals to charity inevitable...
...The eighth-grade graduates number I5,OOO...
...and he promptly dispatched a message to the press...
...As yet, however, it is sadly evident that these are mere surmises...
...And the solution is still far off...
...Pollard's success seemed inevitable...
...One last item of comparison may serve to point the truth of this statement, and to define the chief difficulty under which the farm community labors: the fact, to wit, that the per capita expenditure, and value of school property, for country pupils as against city pupils, stand at $4o.4 ~ and $99.oo respectively, against $6o.67 and $299...
...WE BELIEVE that Sister Raymond, superior of a House of the Good Shepherd at Peekskill, New York, acted most wisely in welcoming an inWise quiry into charges brought against the Defense institution by Mr...
...Thomas F. Mahoney and read at a recent Catholic Conference on Industrial Problems...
...The city's official representatives have taken proud cognizance of the affair, felicitating the youngsters and exhorting them to keep remembering "that stamina and grit are essential in the great struggle of life...
...Athearn's ideal is an old-fashioned one, but it is the one originally responsible for the present entrenchment of our educational system, and we believe that it still has much value for the world...
...In consonance with these general facts, illiteracy statistics show rural communities to stand at 7-7 percent against the 4.4 percent of city communities...
...Thus there has been nothing in subsequent history to render obsolete the opinion held on capital punishment by Michigan law-makers of eighty years ago...
...To anyone who knows the kind of literature and oratory which Padilla and his associates have favored during recent years, the intention to broadcast propaganda against the Catholic faith is obvious...
...Few prelates have ever lived on terms of greater intimacy with the people at large...
...It is likewise true that the majority of Americans are still very far from placing a great deal of trust in the social trends which characterize the society to which they belong...
...Charles Gooze, a metropolitan labor organizer...
...It is true that one of the most striking facts which emerge from the whole summary is that the 8,Ioo,ooo rural pupils who form about onethird of our total public-school enrollment engage the services of close to one-half of our public-school teachers...
...And in the past few years we have freImportation quently found ourselves entertaining groups of foreign journalists, bankers of Joy and industrialists, all bent on discovering the causes of our prosperity as the first step toward reproducing a similarly happy growth in their home lands...
...Although the state law requires attendance in school on the part of children between the ages of eight and fourteen, yet at the present moment, "thousands of young children are in the beet fields of northern Colorado," despite the fact that Congress has been assured by various spokesmen that "no child labor exists...
...Our judgment is that if the Olympia is to be saved at all, the job should be thoroughly and permanently done...
...Perhaps the most lucid exposition of the pest is that contributed by Mr...
...One reacts best against them by displaying that calm which is, of all virtues, the one they least understand...
...But its inevitability does not counteract its lowering effect upon the general level of rural education...
...The question is whether they are as numerous as Bishop Cannon has represented, and on this the primaries throw no light...
...But the clear inference in this case is that the government has dropped none of its antagonism to Christian tradition but remains what, essentially, it has been...
...And that is something not very easily transplanted...
...The sugar companies deal with the grower, who in turn employs the family as a unit without allowing to this any rights other than those specified...
...The champion, Avon Foreman, has a record of ten days, ten hours, ten minutes and ten seconds, but this figure is threatened by several other aspirants--notably two girls, between whom the contest has assumed the character of a private feud, the while suitable recriminations are supplied by their respective supporters...
...Nothing could be more plain than the world's abiding lack of confidence in aircraft...
...Gooze is an impudent busybody who wishes to cause a scandal," that gentleman would be aggrieved and many of his fellow-citizens would suspect that he was right after all...
...IN ITS last session, the Michigan state legislature passed a bill which would not only have restored capital punishment, but would have made Capital the extreme penalty mandatory in all cases of first-degree conviction, regardPunishment less of the age, sex or circumstances of the person to be sentenced...
...Into a reading of the results you may take your own interests, hopes and prejudices, and emerge with a triumphant prophecy...
...It is too late to suggest a similarly definite arrangement for the Constitution, about which has grown a tradition that it should be saved once or twice in each decade...
...The consolidated schools, now I7,ooo in number, are admitted to be thoroughly superior, but at present they take care of only about a million pupils...
...Certainly one of the most serious of our new problems is the failure of the schools to fulfill the promises which were made for them thirty years ago...
...True, the results have encouraged the New York Times to declare that the Bishop's hopes have no show at all, and the Herald Tribune to hail the revival of a two-party August zI, I9z 9 THE COMMONWEAL 393 system in the South...
...The good work done by Oliver Wendell Holmes was not for long effective ; even within our limited memories, "Old Ironsides" has been saved twice, and is in the way of being saved again at present...
...In Mr...
...The concentration of this inexpert material in the country districts follows logically enough from the difficult working conditions and the poor salaries (the average is $855, against the $I,878 of urban communities...
...It may well seem, however, that this device is far less effective than a cordial reception of this brave men at Mexico City would have been...
...But we do suspect that, when next one of our atrabilious social critics lets loose upon our fellow-citizens at large, our own heretofore ringing defense may just conceivably falter a little, as we remember...
...THE Mexican is, however, very much with us in this country...
...We will not accuse M. Dubreuil of a cursory acquaintance with these shores, but we do suspect that if his experience as a mechanic had carried him very far into New England, New Jersey or the South he would not be so enthusiastic about the "cordiality of relations" between employer and employee...
...If for some years the agencies of justice have been conspicuously ineffective in the Middle-West, the remedy is in a reorganization of the courts and the police, not in a more severe statute of penalty...
...It would take a miracle of Babes in detachment to regard the spectacle of Baltimore Baltimore's child flagpole sitters with that mere untroubled amusement which might help to speed it soon and genially into oblivion...
...Some have even ventured to say that this theory, now partly in effect throughout the United States, must be "exported" for the welfare of other nations--that, indeed, giving currency to it will prove to be our most distinctive international service...
...DR...
...The 64,ooo two-teacher schools have sixty pupils apiece...
...THE Olympia, flagship of Admiral Dewey at Manila Bay, has been threatened with the junk pile, and many voices have been raised to spare it this The Navy's ignominy...
...TO MOST Europeans the one characteristic of American civilization worth imitating is its prosperity...
...The "temporary" deportation of Archbishop Orozco is explained on the ground that his "visit" to the United States might help in quelling the rebellion in Jalisco...
...An N.C.W.C...
...For us, the reports of the election and comments thereon, read all dutifully and in great labor, indicate neither the breaking up of Bishop Cannon's power, nor its maintenance, nor the growth of it...
...John Steven McGroarty to the Los Angeles Times...
...Twenty-three percent have not advanced more than two years beyond the elementary grades...
...Gooze's opinion, evidence existed to show that girls were badly fed and treated...
...The ideal expedient culturally is the consolidated school, but it involves a maintenance and transportation budget which the overwhelming number of farm districts cannot yet meet...
...Raskob, a citizen of Delaware...
...We think there will be more general endorsement of another suggestion he 394 THE COMMONWEAL August 2I, I929 has made--that an adequate corps of entomologists be employed and equipped to deal with this and other insect scourges too frequently ignored by citizens whose only knowledge of the situation is gained through their own occasional discovery of a worm in a barrel of apples...
...If Sister Raymond had said (in a fashion unfortunately too popular) "Mr...
...It wiped the Hawaiian Islands off the map as a fruit-growing region...
...But let us not forget that there was in this primary none of the uncertainty which makes for an interesting election and a large ballot...
...These Mexican people are here to stay...
...There must also exist that "joy in work" which to him, as a workman, is the most precious and enviable aspect of the complex existence that goes on in the new world...
...McGroarty does not hesitate to declare that the farmers ought to be reimbursed for their losses because the present ban on Florida fruit is for the good of the country as a whole...
...Hoover's I65,ooo last fall, would indicate that he was heard and obeyed...
...Something may perhaps be done to enlarge the experiment being carried on by most of the normal schools, of imparting special training to candidates for rural teaching...
...We have no idea that the majority of Baltimoreans are anything but ashamed of this whole exhibition, in which witlessness itself would seem to be parodied...
...As professor, pastor and Wyoming bishop, his early years were spent in what was then a district struggling to turn the frontier into a habitable and moderately industrialized locality...
...It is literKeane ally true to say that he "grew up with the country and enjoyed doing so...
...Everyone will agree that there should be no conflict of interests between the Olympia, remembered of two seas, and the Constitution, famed for generations in song and story...
...that only through study, and never through vengeance, can we decrease their danger to society...
...Of course, as compared with the European, it may be true that the American workmen possess a "joy in work...
...Having sneaked into the neighborhood of Orlando, Florida, it introduced itself one bright morning to several growers about to sample their breakfast grapefruit...
...A good 5,ooo stopped their training at the sixth grade, or earlier...
...THE death of the Most Reverend James John Keane, archbishop of Dubuque, removes one of the most typically middle-western members Archbishop of the Catholic hierarchy...
...ANOTHER blow has been dealt to agriculture, this time by a hammer no bigger than a pin's head...
...It has been recognized that detachment and not passion is the mood in which to deal with them...
...But we can realize that it might be a bore to keep up two relic-ships on the installment plan, and that it might prevent adequate attention being given to either one...
...This is not as favorable as it seems at first sight, however, for it is offset by the generally inadequate training of the country pedagogue...
...But for M. Dubreuil it is not enough that Europe should copy our industrial methods...
...But that the "settlement" is far from having ended the difficulties of the Church in Mexico becomes evident if one scrutinizes a little the hundred scraps of news which have eddied across the border...
...We do not tie the phenomenon to the locality...
...Workmen have come, too, but most of them have been too enchanted with working conditions here to return...
...Archbishop Keane's coming to Dubuque made him head of one of the oldest and most flourishing of Catholic dioceses...
...It is hoped that a spray may be found, or a satisfactory disinfecting method hit upon...
...and "habitable housing" has been reduced, in most cases, to a mere shack...
...The companionableness, the simplicity, the practical sense which characterized him throughout life were genuine characteristics of men who knew their world and what could August 2I, I929 THE COMMONWEAL 395 be done in it...
...Meanwhile a quarantine has descended upon already harassed Florida, and the possibility of a complete loss of their crop stares the growers in the face...
...Normally, however, these people are not malicious but simply too excitable...
...and the closely related data on health and nutrition also tell against the farm...
...The fly has won out in every country which it has attacked, with the possible exception of New Zealand, we are told...
...and it is a striking fact that although the archbishop was an advocate of total abstinence in a community which had conserved a Germanic fondness for beer, even that led to no misunderstandings...
...It is possible that some of that futility will be removed when it is learned anew that a teacher must be more than an automaton capable of following a code of instructions prepared by a state board of education to cover every gesture in the classroom...
...The upshot of the matter was that federal and state governments combined to enlist the aid of science against the invader...
...More than one-third of the entire 230,o0o have not been graduated from high school...
...that these last are, primarily, unifications and mergers of capital, natural resources, and means of production...
...In our sugar-beet districts, the average earnings of thousands of contract-worker families, that is for the labor of the father, the mother and the children from seven years and up, will average only $6oo a year...
...It constitutes a comparative study of the Education literacy, health records, equipment and expenditures of the country and city schools of the United States, and shows a balance so definitely against the former as to indicate a serious deficiency in the methods and resources of our country educational system...
...This city which rises with the bluffs that crown the Mississippi in upper Iowa has long since been rich in convents and churches...
Vol. 10 • August 1929 • No. 16
