The Alaska daily empire., 1923-06-09
Fifty Years of Social Work.
(New York Post.1

trcmardnos panorama is planned by the Ma ticnal Conference Social Work in it's review of half century of social activity at its hftieth annl- yersary meeting in Washington this week third week in Mayl. Some important branches of phllanthIoplc endoayor had been developed before the Civil War Prison reform initiated in Europe by HoWaro anu peccaria and supported in America by such men as Roberts Vaux, vigorously undertaken early Ill the century Dorohea Dix had awakened the nation
 o the need for better treatment of the insane. rms country, thanks to S c. Howe and others, led the world the training of the deaf and dumb CharleS Lorng Brace early as 1855 had organized the Chdrens Aid Society. The A. l. C F. was rounded in 1S43 Tenement house reform had its rudmen- tary beginnings in the thirtes. But four-hfths Of the history of social work in America is it's history since the first National Conference of Charities and Correction the organization was then called was held in 1873.
 To the social worker Grants Administration seems almost in the Dark Ages Concerning justice, all our elaborate machinery of juvenile courts, women s courts, domestic relations courts, aliensts, parole systems, and indeterminate sentences remained to be called out of the world. Education still a crude affair. named Elizabeth Peabody had introduced the kindergarten as private nsti- tuition, but city to risk adopting it for an other fifteen years. Not for three years were the public libraries association. School gardens vacation schools nair schools, and yoca
 ona schools innovations of the future. Half dozen years to eapse before Cleveland segre- gated the exceptional children. Brookline had just established the first municipal playground. The first training school for nurses being born in New York Public inspection of milk unknown,
 
 nurses still thirty years in the future. Emira had just taken plan for medical inspection of school children but New York City safe from i for twenty-five years The mosquito. fly, and rat fourished unassailed. After tremendous cam pagn New York had managed pass her first im- portant tenement act in 1867 but large part of the town still given to fever-nest sums. Rear tenemcnts. without air shafts, sewage connec- tons, bathtubs swarmng with people and ver- min. their basements devoted to hog raising. shell tered a large part of the people. Vice ashamed
 The idea that charity should be discriminating or scientific had scarcely begun make stand in 1873. There some talk of the work of charity organization society founded in London five years before, but the first in this country unknown till 1877. It to be another decade before the settlement house born in England and thirteen years before New Works first settle ment. Nutrition work neighborhood work legal aid, employment agencies, milk stations, shelters, tuber- eulosis clinics fresh air camps and maternity aid belonged to the future. Henry Bergh was just or ganizng movement to protect dumb animals. Mo- body worried about child labor If workman was injured on his job it tough for the work man. that was all. William Booth an enhus- iastic young evangelist but there Salvation Army The State Charities Aid Association for New York had just been incorporated
 To look back upon such progress in a half cen tury is the best encouragement in facing forward The National Conference has many problems ahead of it still