Omaha daily bee., 1921-07-18
State As Super-Parent
What May Happen If Ben
Lindsey's Ideas Shall Prevail
(From the New York Times.)

In proclaiming the state as super-parent,
| Judge Lindsey of the Denver children's court
is very convincing, but convincing of something
quite different from what he apparently in
| tends The state has accepted the responsible
ity of educating the child and mo one today
seriously questions this responsibility" ut is
far more its duty to feed the child and in gen.
eral to take responsibility as to its health and
| morals" "The child must no longer be the vic
| tim of conditions over which it has no control,
but for which society and the state itself are to
| blame" The words are doubtless inspired by
a high spirit of humanity and patriotism; but
constructive craftsmanship requires something
more than that.
Let us first reconnotre the pass to which
sentimental philanthropy has already brought
us. The cost of state aid-public schools, pub
lie baths and Fairgrounds, maternity hospitals,
Americanization schoos-falls upon those who
pay taxes, which is to say very largely upon
the middle class SO heavy is the burden under
which the class struggles that it can no longer
afford to have children and educate them ac-
cording to the traditional American standard
In this important field statistics are mainly
lacking, but there are certain straws in the
wind. We know that on the average, Harvard
graduate and his wife have one child and Vas
sar graduate and her husband seven-tenths of
child. If any of our advanced institutions
were limited to children of its own graduates,
it would shrink by approximately one-haf with
each generation. What else can this mean than
that the brain power of the nation is shriveng?
For several decades the increase of our popula-
ton has come almost exclusively from imlni-
grants and the children of immigrants. Yet
Judge Lindsey proposes that the national
wealth be still further diverted to the care of
the children of the incompetent and improvi-
dent.
A curious sign of the times is that women
of the middle class seem blind to this danger,
and not always because of philanthropic sent-
ment. When committees of the house and SEN
ate were lately struggling with the question of
salaries in the civil service they gave several
reasons. some of them rather clumsily ex-
pressed, why men should receive higher pay
than women. They were sharply taken to task
by the president of the National League of
Woman Voters. If womans sphere is the home,
argued Mrs. Maud Wood Park it is "up to the
men to make that career SO desirable that
women will choose it' What else had the dear
congressman intended? If men are to be hus-
bands and parents, they must have incomes
scaled to the service they are rendering to the
future AS an abstract principle, equal pay for
the sexes is as convincing as the super-parental
responsibility of the state: but in the actual world
of today both would work inerrantly and power
fully against all the high interests of women and
of children
The tendency of modern impulse, and of such
thought it inspires, is somewhat too individual
istic, considering only the particular hardship,
the particular fright" The prime concern of the
state is with the family; its future lies in its
women as related to their children. The prob
lem is by means simple; but it cannot be
solved by insisting whether from motives of
philanthrophy or of selhshness upon individual
rights which can be granted only at the expense
of the family