The Family and its Members Part 22

Rightly to understand and rightly to apply that teaching of race-experience in all the complicated life of international relationship is more truly to serve the best interests of every smallest community within our own nation. As Immanuel Kant declared so long ago, "The constantly progressive operation of the good principle works toward erecting in the human race, as a community under moral laws, a kingdom which shall maintain the victory over evil and secure under its domination an eternal peace."

It has been urged that patriotism is the piety of the school, and brotherhood is the gospel of the church, and justice is the righteous law of industry, and mutual reverence and mutual affection are the heart of the family life. If this be true, then patriotism itself is the working-out in ever-widening circles of that ideal of cooperation for the common good, which shall at last make every Father and Mother State a worthy member of the Family of Nations.

=Vows of Civic Consecration.=--The Athenian youth took a solemn pledge when he arrived at the age when his relation to the City became consciously one of loyal service. This vow may be translated as follows: "We will never bring disgrace to this our City by any act of dishonesty or cowardice nor ever desert our comrades. We will fight for the ideals and sacred things of the City both alone and with many.

We will revere and obey the City laws and do our best to incite a like respect and reverence in others. We will strive unceasingly to quicken in all the sense of civic duty, that thus in all ways we may transmit this City, greater, better and more beautiful to all who shall come after us." Should not some such solemn act of consecration mark the advent of each youth into the actual citizenship of his town and his country? A modern writer, Thomas L. Hinckley, has summed up a "Munic.i.p.al Creed" as the utterance of the "Spirit of the Modern City,"

as follows:

"I believe in myself--in my mission as defender of the liberties of the people and guardian of the light of civic idealism.

I believe in my people--in the sincerity of their hearts and the sanity of their minds--in their ability to rule themselves and to meet civic emergencies--in their ultimate triumph over the forces of injustice, oppression, exploitation and iniquity.

I believe that good food, pure water, clean milk, abundant light and fresh air, cheap transportation, equitable rents, decent living conditions and protection from fire, from thieves and cut-throats and from unscrupulous exploiters of human life and happiness, are the birth-right of every citizen within my gates; and that insofar as I fail to provide these things, even to the least of my people, in just this degree is my fair name tarnished and my mission unfulfilled.

I believe in planning for the future, for the centuries which are to come and for the many thousands of men, women and children who will reside within my gates and who will suffer in body, in mind and in worldly goods unless proper provision is made for their coming.

I believe in good government and in the ability of every city to get good government; and I believe that among the greatest hindrances to good government are obsolete laws--which create injustice; out-grown customs--which are unsocial; and antiquated methods--which increase the cost of government and destroy its efficiency.

I believe that graft, favoritism, waste or inefficiency in the conduct of my affairs is a crime against my fair name; and I demand of my people that they wage unceasing war against these munic.i.p.al diseases, wherever they are found and whomsoever they happen to touch.

I believe that those of my people who, by virtue of their strength, cleverness or thrift, or by virtue of other circ.u.mstances, are enabled to lead cleaner lives, perform more agreeable work or think more beautiful thoughts than those less fortunate, should make recompense to me, in public service, for the advantages which I make it possible for them to enjoy.

I believe that my people should educate their children in the belief that the service of their city is an honorable calling and a civic duty, and that it offers just as many opportunities for the display of skill, the exercise of judgment or the development of initiative as do the counting houses and markets of the commercial world.

Finally, I believe in the Modern City as a place to live in, to work in, and to dream dreams in--as a giant workshop where is being fabricated the stuff of which the nation is made--as a glorious enterprise upon whose achievements rests, in large measure, the future of the race."[22]

We may think that these utterances stress too much the city life and fail to visualize the wide stretches of rural communities and the small towns where a few people only make the atmosphere and administer the laws. The spirit, however, must be the same, whether one dwells with the crowd or on some lonely farm. The spirit of that genuine patriotism which is not satisfied to have one's country less n.o.ble and less unselfish than its own ideal of what a country should be.

=The Children's Code of Morals.=--It is in the spirit of such a patriotism that _The Children's Code of Morals_ has been prepared by William J. Hutchins, and is sent broadcast by the "National Inst.i.tute for Moral Instruction," In this code, boys and girls are enjoined and pledge themselves to be good Americans by obeying the following laws: "The Law of Health; The Law of Self-control; The Law of Self-reliance; The Law of Reliability; The Law of Clean Play; The Law of Duty; The Law of Good Workmanship; The Law of Friendly Cooperation in Good Team-work; The Law of Kindness; The Law of Loyalty."

Though children and youth may learn these laws by heart and understand and agree to the fine statements by which they are expounded and make through them a detailed promise to obey the laws of "right living" by which alone the citizenship of our country may serve its best interests--that in itself could not make all citizens what they should be. It is, however, a lesson of the past that youth needs some outward and visible sign of its "coming of age." Now, as in the past, youth needs some form of consecration to high ideals. It needs some ceremony that shall fix the lessons of patriotism, of social responsibility and of community service, and stir to n.o.ble purpose. The education that begins in the home is not finished by any college graduation or even by vocational training for a useful career. Its great "Commencement"

is that which ushers the young man, and now also the young woman, into conscious and responsible relationship to the body politic. This Commencement should have its solemn and beautiful ritual and should be made the great event of all young life.

QUESTIONS ON THE FATHER AND THE MOTHER STATE

1. What changes in legislation and in law enforcement is the entrance of women into the electorate likely to effect?

2. Should the State be more and more charged with responsibility for care of the weak, the defective, the delinquent, dependent, and sick, the out-of-work, the aged, and those heavily burdened by parentage of young children, and if so, how can society escape a tendency to remove from individuals and from the family that sense of personal responsibility upon which the best things in our inherited social order have been built?

3. Should women voters particularly address themselves to increasing public welfare provisions or should they try to solve difficult problems of adjustment between public and private effort for the common good? If both, how can they adjust effort to party politics on the one side, and to independent use of the power of the vote on the other side?

4. When volunteer organizations of charity, correction, and education transfer their work to official boards and legal provisions, that work, experience shows, sometimes is lowered in standards and loses in efficiency. How can voting women prevent this? How can a new cla.s.s of voters, hitherto specially interested in getting things desired done by others, best help others to do things through their own political action?

5. The army intelligence tests showed that our white drafted army contained 12 per cent. superior men, 66 per cent. average men, and 22 per cent. inferior men. This statement, made by Cornelia J. Cannon in _The Atlantic Monthly_ of February, 1922, leads the author of the article to the conclusion that "our political experiments, such as representation, recall, direct election of senators, etc., are endangered by the presence of so many irresponsible and unintelligent voters." Is there a remedy for this, other than waiting for the slow process of education? If so, what is it?

6. _The Neighborhood: A Study of Social Life in the City of Columbus, Ohio_, by R.D. McKenzie, of the University of Washington, gives a good example of what such a study of one's own locality should be. Is it not the duty of those having the leisure and the ability to inaugurate such a study in the locality in which their political relation is most immediate?

If so, how can a Women's Club, or a League of Women Voters, start such a study?

FOOTNOTES:

[20] _Woman's Share in Social Culture._

[21] See _A Course in Citizenship_, by Ella Lyman Cabot, and others.

[22] Printed in _The Survey_ of October 31, 1914.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS AND ARTICLES MENTIONED IN THE TEXT

INTRODUCTORY NOTE AND CHAPTER I Page 5, 19

Man and Woman, by Havelock Ellis.

The Evolution of Marriage, by Le Tourneau.

Woman's Share in Primitive Culture, by Otis T. Mason.

The Evolution of s.e.x, by Geddes and Thompson.

The History of Matrimonial Inst.i.tutions, by George Elliott Howard, University of Chicago Press.

s.e.x and Society, by W.I. Thomas.

Descriptive and Historical Sociology, by Franklin H.

Giddings.

The Family as a Social and Educational Inst.i.tution, by w.i.l.l.ystine Goodsell.

Social History of the American Family, by Arthur W.

Calhoun.

Sociology and Modern Social Problems, by Charles A.

Ellwood.

The Primitive Family as an Educational Agency, by Arthur J. Todd.

Woman and Labor, by Olive Schreiner.

The Family, by Elsie Clews Parsons.

The Family, by Helen Bosanquet.

Women and Economics, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Love and Marriage, by Ellen Key.

The Family in Its Sociological Aspects, by J.Q. Dealey.

The New Basis of Civilization, by Simon Patten.

Social Control and Social Psychology, by Edward A. Ross.

Children Born Out of Wedlock, by George B. Mangold, University of Missouri.

The Federal Children's Bureau, Publications 42 and 77.

Report of the Committee on Status and Protection of Illegitimate Children of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, 1921.

Normal Life, Chapter V, The Home, by Edward T. Devine.

Taboo and Genetics, by Knight, Peters, and Blanchard.

A Social Theory of Religious Education, Part IV, Chapter, The Family, by George Albert Coe.

CHAPTER II Page 46

Conveniences for the Farm-home, Farmers' Bulletin No.