Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1907-09-13
Copyright. by Joseph B. Bowles.)

(Miss Julia C. Lathrop, long associated
with the work of Hull House in Chicago
and with larger activities elsewhere, has
had an important part in building up
many worthy institutions in Illinois. Dur
ing her terms of service on the Illinois
state board of public charities. of which
labored to improve conditions in the great
hospitals and asylums of the state. The
Cook county institutions at Dunning also
owe much to her public-spirited work.
Much of the credit for establishing the
Juvenile court in Chicago and broadening
its influence for good is due to her. In
ameliorating the condition of child work.
ers and in other ways she has shown her
devotion to the helpless classes of the
population.)
One of the significant signs of the
times is the growth of a sense of re-
sponsibility among women as to mat
ters of public hygiene, the protection
ot children, the care of dependents
and delinquents-in short, that rather
indefinite and constantly enlarging
field which may be called public char
tiles. This sense of responsibility is
the natural development of those indi-
vidual charitable ministrations which
have always been assigned to women
as their legitimate province. The COM
Portable. if not comforting. charity of
a Lady Bountiful is out-dated A wo-
man cannot make the most innocent
visit to family in distress without
finding herself beset by the whole army
of problems of causation. Willy-nilly
she is dragged into public efforts for
laws and institutions, in each case the
inevitable result of simple activities
which apparently would lead her no
farther than a neighbor's hearth.
For example, in the last few years,
to take Illinois as fair type, large
amount of legislation has been secured
of philanthropic sort-the parental
school law, the juvenile court law, the
improvement in the compulsory educa-
ton law, the law as to factory inspec-
ton and the labor of children, the es-
tablishment of the asylum for chronic
insane, the state training school for
girls, the new st. Charles school for
boys. These measures and others
have been initiated and urged in large
degree by women, and are logical
evidence of the desire to find con-
structive remedies of general applica-
ton which follows the simple
beginnings involved in being a neigh
bor in the direct fashion of the para
BILE. The time has passed, we take 1t,
for questioning the usefulness or pro-
priety of such larger activities on the
part of women. Further, as we dis
cover that few conditions are local or
spasmodic, that cause battles us and
prevention alone shows itself as an
adequate end. the effort to make COM
mon provision for specially helpless
persons or classes of persons, in the
interest of society as we'll as of these
classes Is certain to increase.
AS an illustration of this tendency
10 Increase the scope Of charitable ef-
fort consider the growth of public
charitable institutions from the county
poorhouse to the constantly elaborat-
ing system by which the blind, deaf
and feeble-minded, insane and others
are cared for by the state unit in sep.
arate groups and by which the care of
groups once classified as criminal are
now set under a milder heading. The
states, too, are constantly taking UP
new tasks, so that the philanthropic
and reformative functions of state
are its largest item of expenditure,
sometimes absorbing half Its revenue.
In the state of New York alone there
are said to be 100000 dependent and
delinquent persons, whose care costs