HOME AND EDUCATION

Hunt, Caroline L. & Follette, Belle Case La

HOME AND EDUCATION The home is the rear seat ot government, and the Wise Men ol all nations, bring their gifts to the cradle. Conducted by BELLE CASE LA FOLLETTE and CAROLINE L. HUNT Women of the...

...She found them in a state of unspeakable filth, and later took the mayor's wife and other citizens out to see the conditions for themselves...
...She established also classes in cooking, sewing and carpentry...
...It would seem from this list as if all Rochester were bidding her welcome...
...Crane, a prominent physician of Kalamazoo, she continued in charge of the People's Church for two years...
...Her labors as pastor had shown her what to look for...
...Crane had been a preacher as well as a pastor...
...Her first move was to visit the slaughter houses which supplied meats for Kalamazoo...
...But city officials change, and the time came for a new election...
...Later, the results of all her findings will be printed...
...Crane's next move was to find out how other states and other countries had met similar conditions...
...Later there came a time when the subject for consideration in one of the clubs of which she was a leading member, was to be "The Meat Supply of Cities...
...On reaching the city she will look into its physical conditions...
...Crane is to make a sanitary survey of the city of Rochester, New York...
...The mayor and the city council were aroused and said that something must be done, but in their first attempt to improve conditions, they found that they were powerless because the slaughter houses were located beyond the city limits...
...It happens that Mrs...
...I like to trace also her work for the improvement of alms-houses to these same experiences...
...These reports together are among the most thoroughly practical treatises on sanitary science within the reach of the American people today...
...This with other experiences of the kind aroused her sympathies for those whom she has somewhere called a "Forgotten People," and showed her very clearly what to look for on her later visits of inspection...
...to look into her ancestry to learn the source of her energy and the great intellectual power which she has shown in all her undertakings, and also to look into the earlier years of her labors to see how the foundation was laid for her recent achievements...
...During this time it succeeded in cleaning the streets better than they had ever been cleaned before, and in saving nearly $3.00 a day...
...A large gift of money from one of the parishioners made it possible later to erect a beautiful new church building...
...She will look into the water supply, and will probably get a good report in Rochester, for Rochester, you know, has one of the best health officers in the country, Dr...
...THERE is rather an interesting sequel to this story...
...Crane, or Miss Bartlett, as she was then, was one of the first institutional churches of the country...
...She had been witness not only to the sorrow, but to the hardship which followed...
...As soon as she could reach the telephone she sent for a trained nurse...
...Being called from Dakota to Kalamazoo, Michigan, she found a tiny, struggling congregation seeking a pastor chiefly that there might be some one to preach the funeral sermons of the members as they passed away...
...But to be a successful minister, as Mrs...
...The bill passed...
...She found no kindergarten in the city and for that reason, started one in her church...
...Once during her pastorate in Kalamazoo she was called to the poor house to find there an old woman dying, with only such care as could be given her by a degenerate and untrained inmate of the institution...
...Not an inch of space was wasted...
...Crane had been for many years, is to be first, a pastor, a term which has come to us associated with all the tender care which a shepherd gives to his flock, and to be, second, a preacher, a term which is associated with uncompromising denunciation of evil wherever it is found...
...There were a few young people in the church, to be sure, and a Sunday School of four members, three of whom belonged to one family...
...As a pastor, Mrs...
...She will examine the outside doors to find if they open easily and outward...
...She wrote hither and yon to get a speaker, but was not successful...
...This was maintained until the city itself finally took up the work...
...Toward the end of her stay she will hold great mass meetings and tell the people what she has seen, what she has seen that is good and what she has seen that might be made better, and they will listen (it is marvelous how the people do listen to Mrs...
...In the case of Caroline Bartlett Crane, it is a temptation to do both...
...She will inquire about the fire drill...
...After the plan was announced, a mighty opposition arose, or rather an opposition which seemed mighty...
...It is here I believe that her previous experience as a pastor will be found most helpful...
...Educated for the Unitarian ministry, her first pastorate was in Dakota...
...Upon full recovery of her health, having resigned her pastorate, she started in Kalamazoo a Woman's Civic Improvement League...
...It maintains a visiting nurse and a visiting housekeeper...
...She will remind those who are interested in the welfare of the city that if they expect the people who handle their food to keep clean, they must provide them with the means of keeping clean...
...To go back to Rochester: she will look not only into slaughter houses, but into bakeries and markets...
...In studying her work I think I have learned more from what she commended than from what she criticized, and I am sure that in every place she has gone, she has given fresh courage to painstaking public officials and to all others who hold the public welfare in their hands...
...But the demonstration had been made and Mrs...
...She had been called more than once, we cannot doubt, to homes from which the father had been taken in disgrace to jail or to prison...
...She will look to see if the stairways are broad and straight...
...Crane's early public life and find that it contributed to the success which she has achieved in her present work...
...In much the same way we can go back to almost every experience of Mrs...
...They did not act upon her advice and in January of this year the worst typhoid fever epidemic of years broke out in Erie...
...No course in sanitary science alone could ever have given her the human sympathy with which she looks into the conditions of the unfortunate...
...This "People's Church" which was established in 1889 by Mrs...
...It was then that she saw clearly the great disadvantages under which housewives labor because of the failure of cities to do their share of the housekeeping, to care properly for streets, to remove, household waste satisfactorily, and to inspect bakeries and markets...
...She will inspect the pavements, for she is an expert on paving materials and the care of streets...
...And here it should be noted that Mrs...
...Conducted by BELLE CASE LA FOLLETTE and CAROLINE L. HUNT Women of the Hour Caroline Bartlett Crane AFTER PEOPLE have become famous we like to look back into their ancestry and to find here and there strains of talent which may have united to produce their strength and their power...
...Besides the work for safer meat and cleaner streets the Kalamazoo League has engaged in many other forms of public service...
...She had the experience of seeing great numbers of people voluntarily coming together at stated intervals to sit before her and be told of their sins and of their duty...
...Crane), rejoicing when she tells them their city has done well, and resolving to correct the evils which she points out...
...Before leaving home, she will have looked over reports of all the city departments, plans of public buildings, and all other material which she has been able to gather together concerning Rochester...
...Crane as a successful minister began to hear of her as a municipal expert, called from city to city, from state to state, to examine and report upon water supplies, drainage and sewerage systems, methods of collecting garbage and other household waste, upon almshouses, schools, prisons, it seemed to us that she must have turned right about in middle life, and taken a new course...
...Crane's help in other cities and other states...
...He adopted what was called "Mrs...
...When, however, it was traced to its source, it was found to come from a few owners of slaughter houses and butchers who thought of that time long ago when she had interfered with their business...
...But there were soon demands for Mrs...
...It was then that her attention was called to the need of trained nurses in such institutions...
...One of the first labors of this League was to demonstrate to the town authorities how the streets should be cleaned...
...Crane teaches quite as much by holding up the good as a model as by denouncing the evil...
...In her public addresses and in the printed reports which she handed in, she urged the people to improve their water supply...
...She rose from her bed, took the train for Lansing, wrote out on the train her reasons for thinking the bill ought to pass, and by the time the legislature convened the next day, had these reasons, printed in red, on the desk of every member...
...The great public services which she is rendering now in response to these demands may perhaps be best shown by taking a specific example...
...It enabled every town and city in Michigan to control the conditions under which its meat supply was prepared...
...Fortunately there was in Kalamazoo, at that time, a Street Commissioner, who was ready and willing to be taught...
...Crane had been called to many homes where poverty, sickness, death, misfortune of every kind, had preceded her...
...Crane's method of cleaning," but which she modestly called Colonel Waring's system...
...Looking back over the typhoid fever records, she found a shocking condition, only slightly improved during the year or two preceding her visit...
...It has established a provident fund by which it encourages small savings, going so far at times as to send a collector for the pennies...
...BUT Mrs...
...It has enlisted the children of Kalamazoo in the clean city movement, and it is encouraging school gardens...
...into their location, and their cleanliness...
...AFTER Miss Bartlett's marriage to Mr...
...Crane had had her experience, an experience by which the whole country is now profiting...
...When the public schools in the course of time, took over the classes in cooking as they had the kindergarten, she made use of the kitchen which she had built, for the purpose of preparing ten-cent suppers for working women...
...She got together these four members, and began to teach them about their own town and how they might become good and faithful citizens...
...During her convalescence she assumed the lighter tasks of housework...
...The organization was given full charge of the cleaning of four blocks in the down-town district for a few weeks...
...At the end of that time she had a serious nervous breakdown, followed by a long period of comparative inactivity...
...When for example, we read that she had stood up before a great audience in a certain prosperous and wealthy state, and had shamed the people of that state because they were receiving, and boasting of receiving, a profit of $192 a year from each one of the men and women in their state prison, we saw, at first, little connection between this and her earlier work...
...She has been given an invitation which comes from the Mayor, the Public Health committee of the Chamber of Commerce, the Board of Education, the Health Officer, the Public Health Association, the City Federation of Women's Clubs, the Council of Jewish Women, the Social Settlement, the Children's Aid Society, the Humane Society, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Woman's Educational and Industrial Union...
...But if the report is not satisfactory, the people of Rochester would better pay heed to it...
...During the week beginning May 8th, the day on which this is being written, Mrs...
...Finding Kalamazoo with gymnasiums for men and boys but none for girls and women, she established in her church a women's gymnasium and formed classes in physical culture...
...Crane superintended during the process of its construction, down to its minutest detail...
...In much the same way, when people enter upon entirely new lines of work after the years which are usually given to education and to the prep-aration for life are past, we like to look back into their earlier years and to find, if possible, experiences and activities which may have led up to and prepared for their later work...
...This building Mrs...
...In such plaees she will inquire particularly into the number of lavatories and toilet rooms...
...Crane is engaged to go the latter part of this month to Saginaw to make a survey of its sanitary conditions and to report upon them...
...It was this which had given her the confidence which made it possible for her to stand up before that great audience and to denounce a system of which the state was very proud, courage to tell the people that they were taking money which belonged to the families of prisoners, and also that they were sending the prisoners themselves out to begin life anew, trained in one industry only, and that an industry which had been driven from the state...
...She collected state laws on meat inspection and city ordinances from all over the world, and finally drafted a bill which was introduced into the Michigan legislature...
...Crane made a sanitary survey of Erie, Pennsylvania...
...Finally she decided to take up the subject herself...
...Finally, she will visit almshouses, poorhouses and hospitals and will learn how the city is caring for its old, its sick and its helpless...
...Mrs...
...She will go to the schools and look carefully into the precautions against fire...
...When those of us who had known Mrs...
...was told boastfully that a state had by its system of prison labor "busted a trust" and was actually reaping a profit for itself from its prisoners, her thoughts were not diverted for a moment by the apparent triumph but went directly to the main consideration, that of the welfare of the families of the prisoners left without support...
...When the time came for the meeting, she made a report which startled and shocked Kalamazoo, as Upton Sinclair's "Jungle" startled the people of the whole United States...
...It was for this reason, that when she...
...It will find a place beside the report on Minnesota, and on Kentucky, on Erie, Scranton, Saginaw and many other places...
...Goler...
...It was a demonstration of the ability which led a reporter recently to say of her that her conversation with the superintendent of a building which she was inspecting, sounded like a conversation between an architect and a contractor...
...In the spring of 1910 Mrs...
...She believes that we pave too many of our streets, or at least pave them when we are not prepared to appropriate enough money to keep them clean, or to keep the dust from flying from them...
...Then the efficient street commissioner went down to defeat because his views on the Philippines or the tariff or some other national question did not meet with the approval of the people...
...One night after she had retired she received a telegram saying that the bill probably would be lost...
...The printed report will become one of a remarkable series of documents which are the result of her work in various cities and states...
...The last figures which I have at hand show that there were 946 cases, and 103 deaths last winter in this city of 70,000 people...
...her labors as preacher had given her courage to condemn evil wherever she found it...
...Perhaps you will ask, "By what right does she do this...
...But we must content ourselves with linking together, so far as we can, the different periods of her own life...
...It maintains a municipal wood pile for the purpose of giving work to the unemployed and of discouraging the visits of tramps...
...It gives pensions to women who are left with the sole support of children on their hands...

Vol. 3 • May 1911 • No. 20


 
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