The Cook County herald. [volume] (Grand Marais, Minn.) 1893-1909, 1907-10-19

the fire of acute mania, others are in
ert and demented. The temptation to
a monotonous routine is almost ire
sistible, and foodstuffs of good quality
become hateful from the thoughtless'
preparation and serving. No one who
has been obliged to know them can
forget the great tins in which institu-
ton food is all but universally served,
with their acrid odor of all grease as
characteristic as that smell of the
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
the food vessels OF institutions would
be service worthy of canonization,
and to so keep house for the $4,000
wrecked and miserable beings who
are sheltered in our public institu-
tons 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 Inflated 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 eff.
fort to give man his chance in the
world again? So long as the prison
exists why do do we not call to it's serv
ice the f1ttest 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 il
not as reasonable and withal as invit
laboratory? Is it not time to remove
this heavy and exacting task from the
list OF unskilled occupations and lift
it into dignltled profession?
The colleges and universities have
added schools Of economics and soci
ology, all unknown a quarter of cen
fury ago, and through them the young
persons they educate certainly gain
a new view of the dignity and inter
est1ngness Of masses of people. Al
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 miscellaneous; to cope adequately
with diseases of poverty, like typhoid
and tuberculosis; to create an agree.
able and refined social life in the cos.
mopol1tan loneliness of a typical tene.
ment locality, to give to the immigrant
and his older neighbor civic con.
science.
It 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 it's homely
struggles, we may gain as a 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.
l once spent a few days at the re.
markable undertaking of Pastor Bo.
delschwinger, Bethel colony, at Biele-
field, Germany. Every visitor is i'm.
pressed by the devotion and efficiency
of the deaconesses and brothers who
care for the epi1eptic, the sick and
the wrecks of drink who make up the
population of that wide-spreading
community. A fellow visitor said:
"Ah, we'll, you can't expect such devo.
ton in a public institution. These
people work from the religious mo.
tive" l have thought often of that
remark, unquestioned at the time.
Why should the public command less
than private undertaking? Why
should that sweet old definition of re.
ligion, which lays such emphasis on
comforting the sick anG visiting the
prisoner, be less potent in great
public institution than in one conduct.
ed by private persons? Why should
the commonwealth command less than
the service of her wisest and best
children on behalf of her most foolish
and helpless ones?
After all, it is something larger and
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