The Greenville journal. [volume] (Greenville, Ohio) 1850-1918, 1907-09-12

worst type Of tenement, which is pre-
cisely identical in Chicago and Paris,
New York and London. If George Her
bert was right as to the value of
sweeping a room, then to keep sweet
tae food vessels of institutions would
be a service worthy of canonization,
and to so keep house for the 35O,0O0
wrecked and miserable beings who
are sheltered in our public institu-
tions would add intellectually to the
cheer of that scattered nation within
a nation which, with the solidarity Of
misery, they perforce compose.
On the other hand, here is a great
penitentiary system which lumbers on,
headed and manned by persons who
are placed in charge not because they
have offered to the state the service
of trained ability and ardent love of
their ill-fated fellow men, but because
they have stood some esoteric test of
merit known only in the circles of a
dominant political party. BY what
logic do we justify the universal waste
and failure of the public prison and
the ignoring of such interest and ability
to deal with the prisoner as persons
like Mrs. Booth have shown? Why
should the public purse, the public
conscience, divorce itself from the ef-
fort to give a man his chance in the
world again? So long as the prison
exists why do do we not call to its serv-
ice the fittest persons who can be
found, whether they be men or wo-
men? To undertake seriously the study
of pathological conditions of social
life in these great institutions, is it
not as reasonable and withal as invit-
ing as to study diseased tissue in the
laboratory Is it not time to remove
this heavy and exacting task from the
list of unskilled occupations and lift
it into a dignified profession?
The colleges and universities have
added schools of economics and soci.
ology, all unknown a quarter of a cen.
tury ago, and through them the young
persons they educate certainly gain
new view of the dignity and inter
estingness Of masses Of people. AT
Vassar rs years ago there was no his
tory in the course, much less any hint
of the study of men in their social and
industrial relations. Now such studies
are conspicuous. No young woman
who is literally educated can escape
contact with that modern interest
which at worst expresses itself in
Summing" whose best has not ar
rived, but whose progress is marked
by such attempts as those to better
and equaliZe primary instruction, to
improve housing and living conditions
| in crowded town quarters, to protect
children, whether at work or neglected
and mischievous; to cope adequately
with diseases of poverty, like typhoid
and tuberculosis; to create an agree
able and refined social life in the cos
mopolitan loneliness of typical tene'
ment locality, to give to the immigrant
and his older neighbor a civic con.
science.
1t is not too much to hope that from
all the rich output of cultivated minds
trained in the modern fashion of in
terest in human life and its homely
struggles, we may gain as mere by.
product If you please, enough inter
est in public charities to create a new
vocation for women. Further, we may
believe that as the states must sustain
the institutions they will in time con
meet them with the universities and
will provide training for the highly
specialized service Of carrying them
| on.