Loose Threads in a Skein Rentals on the East Side (nearly eight per cent); Material Relief, Personal Aspects; Charity in Ancient Judaism. It is, indeed, safe to say that not a few of the important future contributions to Sociological data will appear in this maga zine. 171 While approached from the standpoint of the Jews on the East Side, it must be remembered that the problems discussed are almost without exception the identical problems with which all other agencies are contending. Loose Threads in a Skein It was Mrs. Wiggs, wasn't it, who plucked up hope during the darkest days of the Cabbage Patch in the thought that she did not have a hair lip? Christ's Poor, a monthly report of St. Rose's Free Home, New York, tells of a Father Wiggs-of the cheery visit of an elderly priest to the wards where some of the worst cancer cases are cared for. In every room he had a joke to leave at the bedside, and became "far merrier in the shadows." His was a breeziness which challenged the lagging spirits of chronic patients in a way which was half audacious, but it "worked." There was an old man with his face depleted of an eye and part of his nose. "Well, you're not in hell yet!" Speechless amazement followed this summary greeting, but the purpose of the priest was accomplished when he added, "Then you're all right. You still have a chance to keep out of it." There was consolation in that. Next the good Father chanced upon a pale wreck of a woman who suffered constant pain. "Now you never did much that was wrong before you were six, did you?" A murmur of horror escaped from the patient; even that was feeble. But there was ready response again. "Oh, of course, if you stole a horse and team at that age you are bound to confess it. But you didn't do that, did you?" The woman laughed for the first time in a great while. workers. prayer-meeting like a turkey's gizzard, but if he is not honest and clean in his living he has simply become a young white-washed sepulchre. Methods, too, must have real ends in view and appeal to real instincts. The supreme excellence of volunteer social work with boys is that, as nowhere else, not even in the home and the school, one may make a constant and unadulterated appeal to enthusiasm. As this is something that every normal boy is willing to furnish in quantities, you have only to engage it wholesomely to get hold of the whole boy and to win him to enjoy his virtues more than he does his vices; which, I take it, is a real goodness. To win such results requires real men. A man who, in working with boys, ever makes failures without asking how he himself was to blame is almost certainly pulling at the wrong door-bell. Self-control and a good temper are not only traits worth having, but they are indispensable to the minister to boys. The clerk of a crape counter, or the blase information bureau secretary of a Young Men's Christian Association, would be quite incapacitated for the task, while the man with the incurable optimism of Sunny Jim and the benevolence of the patron saint of Quaker Oats to make two familiar cereal illusions -would be apt to succeed." Had the priest known it, he was verging on a problem which is besetting juvenile court judges and child-saving There are those who strenuously object to calling any act done by a child below a certain age by any other name than delinquency. The boy burglar of five or six-or perhaps older-is an anomaly in terminology, they maintain. His bump of property rights is lacking. The other side of this problem-the putting before the normal boy a morality which he will understand in a way that will build up right living, is capitally put by a Boston clergyman. reality is the only thing worth working with or for in trying to help boys," says Dr. Forbush. "A boy may be able, as a recent writer has expressed it, to 'disgorge Bible verses like buckshot out of a bag,' or willing to turn his soul inside out at a "I have learned that Who but Phil Hardy, ambitious settlement worker, would have thought of taking Andy White to the minstrel show? Not that Hardy enjoyed that form of entertainment above all others himself, nor did he believe it would materially elucidate for his friend the problem of providing for a family of five. This enigma poor Andy advertised as insoluble by a certain blankness of face and hazy indefiniteness of procedure which was very affecting. Phil Hardy had accomplished more than the other workers had dared to dream along the line of Andy White's industrial evolution, but the sad facial expression remained, lasting testimonial to days devoid of interest and effort. So they went to the minstrels. Phil was surprised to find himself thoroughly amused; he laughed with boxes, stalls and galleries; there was not an anecdote he didn't remember affectionately or hail with new warmth. All the while Andy kept his eyes glued to the stage nor spoke a word. At the end of the evening Phil gave a final despondent look at his friend and voted his scheme a failure-no smile had come to disturb the placidity of the dour Scotchman's face. "Well, Andy, it was a pretty good show, wasn't it?" he asked in sheer bravado. "Old Dockstader was at his best to-night." "Thot mon, thot mon," Andy replied lugubriously; "there was whiles I could hardly keep fra laughlin'." FROM A VISITOR'S NOTE-BOOK. "Some have greatness thrust upon them." To-day, doing a little investigating for a probation officer, I encountered the present employer-Sole Fear and Greatest Dread of the investigator. 'Now, if ever, be tactful, wary and wise, we say to ourselves, lest this man discover our hidden source, and trust be betrayed. Yes, he employed Pat Regan, a nice boy, sober, hardworking, industrious, honest, truthful, etc., etc. Never before was such eulogy bestowed, this side the grave. Finally, "Are you a relative of Pat's?" smilingly asks the present employer. "Oh, no, only interested in him," I ambiguously and rather too hurriedly reply. "But hope to be?" retorts that over-intelligent present employer. There's quite a bit I could tell you about Henry-about the legacy-oh, several thousand dollars and more-which his own father was said to have left him and the heritage of slaps and drunken squalor which his step-father entailed; about his running away to an aunt's in another street and the parole officer they inveigled into frightening him back because of the legacy: about the discovery that the money was most of it gone; and about the child-labor law which kept Henry out of that job even after the time the settlement-worker spent with him in the hand-me-down shop, picking out "pants" that would fit legs of unequal length and a very small body. But the child-labor law worked for good, as it turned out, though they did not see it at first. Some friends were interested and Henry was whisked off to a Jersey suburb, where he is going to school this very day. And what I was going to tell you was merely this: Not long ago he was taken on a visit to the rector's and seemed properly impressed. "It's a nice place," he said afterward, "but the rectory's an awful quiet settlement." The reason I introduce Henry and his perplexity is to show that it was a very natural mistake which the New York school board fell into when it measured things by old standards, called the recreation centers and the roof playgrounds and the evening schools "outside" activities and decided to lop them off first in the event of meagre appropriations. They are outside, but only in the sense that they are after school hours or for grown ups. In truth, they are very much inside, and at the bottom of the problem. Superintendent Maxwell tells a story of the visit made to one of the recreation centers by members of the Moseley Commission -among them the mayor of Nottingham. They saw evening schools and study rooms where day pupils get away from the unrest of the tenements to work at next day's lessons, gymnasiums and play rooms and club They happened into one of the last just in time to hear a debate between the members of a street gang for whom the recreation center had meant an opportunity to work out their own civilization. They were at it now. rooms. The question was: Should United States senators be elected by the people. One of the larger boys gave a very clear exposition of the affirmative side of the argument, marshalled his facts well and seemed in a fair way to carry his point. But the leader of the negative forces had to be counted on -a little, wiry street boy, "ragged and sassy," as they say out West, who went at the matter fiercely and stirred up all manner of enthusiasm. He won. The winner was asked to show the way to the next recreation center, the mayor of Nottingham and the small debater in the lead. His Honor is the authority for what followed. On the way, he asked his ragged companion what he intended to do when he grew up. "Well, do you know," was the reply, "after winning that debate I've made up my mind to become a lawyer." When they came to separate, the mayor of Nottingham was about to slip a quarter into the boy's hand. But the boy drew his hand back. "I don't wish your money, sir," he said; "all I desire is your esteem and your good will." Now is it to be suspected that the mayor of Nottingham did not catch the vernacular of that small American boy. But he caught the spirit of his remark. And what is more, he caught the spirit of an educational system which is teaching boys to spell "life" right no matter how many r's they may put in Mediterranean. At the annual meeting of the Associated Charities of Washington Jacob Riis told a Bibliography of Social Literature story which he has probably told before but which is certainly worth telling again. "I have a friend out on Long Island," he said, "who lives in a house that stands in a garden with a sand heap on the back of the lot. When the children come home from school they go down there and have a good time digging in the sand. It is a good thing. The dog goes along: the cat goes along, and the kittens go along; and they are all there having a bully good time together. The mischief about it is that every once in a while the dog breaks out, when he has got a nice little kitten, and covers 173 the kitten up in the sand and thinks he has killed the kitten. He is perfectly gleeful about it, because it is his nature to so,' you know. The children were always scratching out the half-smothered kittens and saving them, until one day they were a little too late. One of the girls burst into her mother's room with eyes blazing, and cried out: "Mother, there is a perfectly good cat spoiled." It does not take a person with Mr. Riis's fund of experience to see where the moral points. THE LOOKER-ON. Bibliography of Current Social Thought and Effort PRACTICAL CHARITY. Some Real Needs of the East Side. A. H. Fromenson. In Regard to Day Nurseries. Irene R. Guggenheim. (Jewish Charity-February) Charity in the Home. Mrs. Katherine M. Briggs (Co-operation - January 23). Material Relief Personal A pects. Nathan Bijur. (Jewish CharityFebruary). Christian Service in City Slums-II. London. George C. Lorimer. (The World To-Day -February). PUBLIC HEALTH. The Medical School Inspectors of the New York Health Department. Editorial Article (New York Medical Journal and Philadelphia Medi cal Journal - January 23.) SETTLEMENTS. Settlement Ideals. II. E. J. Urwick. (Charity Organisation Review-December.) The Greek Play at Hull House. Mrs. Elizabeth C. Barrows. (Commons-January.) SOCIOLOGY. The Sociology of Conflict. Georg Simmel. Moot Points in Sociology. V. Edward Alsworth Ross. Introduction to Sociology. VII. G. De Greef. Note on Ward's " Pure Sociology." II. Albion W. Small. (American Journal of Sociology-January.) TENEMENTS. Rise in Rentals on East Side. Louis A. Freedman. Jewish Charity-February). TUBERCULOSIS. Prevention and Control of Tuberculosis. Paul Kennaday. (Commons-January.) International Congress on Tuberculosis. (SanitarianJanuary.) Care of Sputum of Tuberculous Patients. J. W. Kime. (American Medicine-January 9.) Some Investigations of a Bacterial Treatment of Tuberculosis. Continued. Stephen J. Maher. The Relatin of Early Diagnosis and Treatment to the Prevention of Tuberculosis. F. M. Pottenger. (New York Medical Journal and Philadelphia Medical Journal-January 16.) Some Investigations of a Bacterial Treatment of Tuberculosis. Continued. Stephen J. Maher. (New York Medical Journal and Philadelphia Medical Journal-January 23.) Bovine Tuberculosis. J. W. Kime. (Medical News -January 23.) The Present Position of the Tuberculosis Problem in Ireland. Alfred E. Boyd. Occupational Phthisis and Social Habits. J. M. Coure, M.D. (Tuberculosis-January, 1904.) Prevention of Tuberculosis in Children Charles C. Browning, M.D. (Southern California Practitioner-January, 1904.) A Real Most "medicated" soaps are nothing Glenn's Sulphur Soap is not only a Glenn's Sulphur Soap sweetens and Refuse any substitute for Glenn's Sulphur Soap 25c. a cake at all drug stores, or mailed Hill's Hair and Whisker Dye, black or brown, 50c. |