HOME AND EDUCATION
Follette, Belle Case La
Home and Education Conducted by BELLE CASE LA FOLLETTE and CAROLINE L. HUNT Janet E. Richards IT IS generally believed that the nation-wide publicity was the greatest benefit of the suffrage...
...Year after year many hundred of Washington's most intelligent and influential women attend her current history classes...
...Each lecture is in a way, a triumph, and holds the interest like a drama...
...Monday mornings from November to May, six months, Rauscher's large ball room is filled, often crowded, sometimes standing room taken, to listen to her discussion of the world's events...
...It is of vital interest to the state, therefore, to prevent these forms of degeneration, the lowering of physical qualities which are especially observed among the young people in great cities and in industrial districts...
...How can hungry children be able, though ever so willing, to follow the instruction...
...In almost every community, city and country, there are women who, though they have not Miss Richards' wonderful gifts, nevertheless have the information and natural aptitude which would enable them to give talks on current events that would help to educate the women of their communities for civic and political responsibility...
...improvement of cow's milk for children...
...But the conditions become very much more serious with lapse of time and the consequences more marked...
...Sometimes she gives special lectures, like one on the Passion Play at Oberammergau...
...There should be more...
...Miss Richards tries to state both sides of every question fairly, but does not attempt to conceal her own viewpoint...
...Not only has she this grasp of present day events, but with statesmanlike power she often fascinates her hearers with an historical resume that may take us back to the Roman Empire, but which nevertheless bears directly on the questions of the hour...
...He brings less knowledge with him into life, is mentally weaker, he feels his unfavorable social position and carries the seed of discontent and bitterness in him...
...and on these she has the personal hold of a great teacher...
...and cartoons are often the text of her discussion...
...But the former cause is the more important...
...bodily exercises are for him, not a means to develop and strengthen the body, they merely consume the scanty nutrient material of his blood...
...Like many careers that women today evolve, Miss Richards created hers...
...She drew the crowds...
...The nutrition of the great mass of the people is a question of the highest importance, deserving far more attention than it has hitherto received...
...There is no doubt that the desired purpose, the improvement of nutrition, is accomplished by this means, that thousands of children are thus saved from a joyless youth and grow up healthy members of society...
...It is not possible to go to Miss Richards' lectures without bringing her views home for discussion...
...EXTRACTS from an address delivered before the International Health Congress in Wash-ington, D. C., September, 1912, by Max Rubner, Professor of Physiology and Director of the Physiological Institute, Berlin, Germany...
...But until housing conditions in the great cities are greatly improved, our efforts will be rewarded by only very partial success...
...In some places a breakfast is furnished, in others a second breakfast...
...the promotion of breast feeding...
...Miss Richards is not only a strong believer in equal suffrage but in woman's work in professional and commercial fields...
...The mother was also gifted...
...In the field of infantile nutrition the fault lies with mothers who are ignorant Concerning the care of children, and, in the second place, in poverty...
...Many questions are to be solved...
...While Miss Richards is tactful she is never politic in her discussion of men and measures, even though what she says touches very closely members of her class...
...She was discussing the Ballinger case...
...A reporter has facetiously said of Miss Richards' lectures that one might wager she was talking on beauty culture or some such subject popularly supposed to hold the breathless attention of women...
...She knows the value of some obscure item tucked away on the ninth page of a great daily which to you or me would have no significance whatever...
...She has humor and she well understands the art of making her message, whatever it may be, attractive and entertaining...
...If we consider what sums are spent for other hygienic purposes, water supply, sewerage, etc., the sums spent for feeding school children are exceedingly small...
...Often the occasion arises for saying, "Miss Richards said so and so...
...How can the pleasure of study be experienced by underfed children...
...She does not believe that this will destroy the domestic life...
...It is not in itself a new field, for so long as insufficient nutrition is found among the people, the children are affected by it...
...She made converts...
...And no one can say how much influence she has on public affairs...
...his muscles are too weak...
...A great movement is now on foot among poor and rich to spread a knowledge of the care of children and we may expect its ultimate success...
...Her method is rather simple...
...All the great countries ought to have a central authority, a food commission, which should concern itself exclusively with the far-reaching questions of the well-being of the people...
...How easily the teacher misjudges inertia of the brain caused by a bodily condition, though the child does perhaps as much as he can...
...Home and Education Conducted by BELLE CASE LA FOLLETTE and CAROLINE L. HUNT Janet E. Richards IT IS generally believed that the nation-wide publicity was the greatest benefit of the suffrage parade in Washington on the third of March...
...An inexhaustible fund of information and historical knowledge furnish the back ground for her graphic interpretation...
...Besides feeding children in the schools it is absolutely necessary to supervise and care for the children in 'day' nurseries (kinderorte...
...She is an ardent Catholic and this great religious drama has strong appeal to her...
...And so the impoverished child, having a hard struggle for existence before him, leaves the school with inferior preparation as compared with other children...
...Miss Richards is a brilliant, logical, fluent, and experienced speaker...
...Miss Richards travels extensively the half of the year she is not lecturing, in our own country, in Europe, and in the Orient...
...The Nutrition of the People III...
...How can a poorly nourished child accomplish a task intended for a normal child...
...The nutrition of the masses has so far been mostly studied with regard to political economy and according to methods and viewpoints which do not always withstand the tests of the physiology of nutrition...
...And so her first class began seventeen years ago, with seventeen Washington women who opened their houses for the lectures, and paid twenty-five cents each...
...From this source and an unhygienic youth, a great army of weaklings is thrown upon the state, who as workers do not count, and who have to be discarded at the military recruiting office...
...Here, too, we find the same end-causes whose evil influence is manifest in the nutrition of the masses...
...The wife of an official prominently connected with the administration rose to defend the policy of the Secretary of the Interior...
...No loving tie attaches him to the family, no pleasant thought lives in his memory...
...The question of furnishing free meals to school children has been a subject of much study...
...The brain, like any other organ, refuses to work when food is withheld...
...He was a scholarly man, a student of humanity and economies, a lawyer and journalist...
...Her work is nevertheless original and creative...
...We are in a state of transition," she says, and the transition necessarily means unrest...
...He finds no pleasure in play or gymnastics...
...Here much can be done for the hygienic and ethical good of children, who do not see their parents until late in the evening...
...Great as are Miss Richards' gifts, the first lesson of her success is that women may be as profoundly interested in subjects of great moment as they are supposed to be in beauty talks...
...This was done in various ways in different parts of Germany and in other countries...
...It is no more than self-preservation for the state to lend its aid in combating these conditions...
...She has always been a great admirer of Colonel Roosevelt...
...Among the most effective speakers in the pre-pageant campaign was Miss Janet E. Richards...
...Only by means of the physiology of nutrition is it possible to carry on exact research...
...Another great and new field of the food question awaits our attention, the question of removing the bad effects of insufficient nutrition of school children by free feeding at the schools...
...So it happened one day when she was talking to a group of friends on public questions, one of them was inspired to say, "Janet, why not give a talk to us once a week on these questions, just as you are talking to us now...
...In this environment the daughter acquired unusual knowledge and developed rare conversational power...
...She does not profess to verify all the news, but she has great sagacity in reaching the right conclusion...
...The impoverished anaemic child suffers much more from the changes of the weather than a healthy child...
...Not until we began to search for the causes did we reach solid ground...
...Fatigue increases...
...In other cases there is a demand for a warm meal at noon, and sometimes also for a lunch in the middle of the afternoon...
...Although great progress had been made in the prevention of adult mortality, the mortality of the children seemed to continue almost unabated...
...In these day nurseries, the children prepare their lessons, learn various forms of hand work, and receive bodily and mental care...
...She bases her talk on newspaper clippings...
...Now she lectures each week day, and sometimes twice a day...
...then New York and Philadelphia and other large eastern cities...
...It would doubtless be desirable to study the food conditions in the various countries, of young people who have left school, for it is certain that we would find many deficiencies at this period of life, which are the more important at the time of puberty, and the years immediately following are of vital significance in the development of a healthy body...
...Complaints about insufficient nutrition long ago attracted the interest of charitable people, and they furnished relief to the best of their ability...
...But there was something besides this that caused her to be the most effective of suffrage speakers...
...The care of children has, of late years, attracted great attention in Germany and other countries...
...Her clientele of four thousand or more women by no means represents the extent of her influence...
...As a practical means to prevent the evil effects of poor nutrition, we began years ago to feed the children at school...
...Without scientific study of this question, a solution was impossible...
...Many chronic diseases are acquired in this period of life...
...I was present once when quite a dramatic scene took place...
...But it is an unrest from which only ultimate good can spring, for it means woman's greater, more understanding grasp of domestic as well as commercial, political, and ethical problems...
...Insufficient nutrition of school children is only one symptom of the general condition of the people, a symptom which facilitates the diagnosis of bad general conditions, revealing them very clearly since compulsory education has brought all the children under general supervision...
...Whoever does not believe in the defects and shortcomings of our food conditions, whoever considers them exaggerated, may find in the conditions of the nutrition of school children evidences of the actual state of affairs in the population at large...
...Here in Washington many women from congressional circles are in her class...
...Morbidity and mortality are doubtless much larger among these children, and every wasting disease more dangerous to them...
...Memory and thought are dulled...
...By feeding the children at school, however, our task is not completed...
...The material, as it lies before us today, is very incomplete, but suffices to indicate the main lines of useful work...
...the search for a substitute for milk where breast feeding is impossible...
...The problem has become chronic and concerns the state in its most vital interests, in the strength and vitality of the coming generation...
...In recent years the nutrition of infancy has been a subject of deep concern both to physicians and laymen, from the merely quantitative viewpoint of saving the race, especially in those countries where increase of population is slight, and the mortality of the children inflicts serious loss in the numerical strength of the nation...
...Of course she finds everywhere material with which to enrich her lectures, keeping her thought up to date, picturesque, and refreshing...
...The same year Baltimore friends formed a club...
...She will sieze upon this bit of information about Persia or India or China and make it the illuminating point of her lecture, showing the relation of the great world happenings to each other...
...the cheapening and even free dispensing of milk for children's use...
...But I am inclined to think a deeper and more far-reaching result was the awakening of the men and women of the capital of the United States to a new sense of patriotism and of citizenship...
...These institutions are a great blessing...
...Her father was the uncle of Salmon P. Chase and cousin to Morse, the inventor of the telegraph...
...Naturally others have entered this profession and there are now many successful lecturers in our cities on current events...
...And some way, her audiences always gave liberally of their money for the cause...
...Whenever and wherever she speaks in this city, they contribute a large nucleus of fond, appreciative, admiring followers...
Vol. 5 • April 1913 • No. 14
