Evening star., 1938-03-06
By THOMAS r. HENRY.

Better "mate-flndlng machinery" "
low-cost housing and family wage
scales" for rearing children were
among the reforms advocated by DR..
Joseph K. Folsom, professor of So
ciology at Vassar College, speaking
before the Conference on the Con-
servation and Development of Human
Resources here yesterday.
The family, DR.. Folsom stressed. is
increasing in importance as the one
island in the chaos of modern life in
which the individual can find affec-
tion and Importance. Hence, he said,
it is essential that it rests on founda-
tions of compatibility.
We need much better mate finding
machinery" he said, 80 that persons
can practically find the type OF per-
sonality that each uniquely Graves for
a mate. More time and appropriate
settings should be planned for court
ship by schools. churches, group work
agencies and young peoples assotia-
tions of all kinds. There should be
agencies through which people could
find friends of either sex having de-
sired attitudes and interests in our
highly urbanized. heterogeneous and
essentially lonely society,""
Community Planning Urged.
Communities with great excesses of
men or women. Dr.. Folsom said,
should be modified by conscious COM
munlty planning and introduction of
new industries until there is a fair
balance between manageable men
and women.
Industry should subdivide labor
and create jobs in accordance with
family and personal needs of the
workers and not merely according to
the direct efficiency of the industry.
There should be part-time Jobs for
married women and adolescents.
There should be in general shorter
hours OF labor so that some workers
could have larger blocks Of free time
to allow for development of family
life"
Love, resulting in happy marriage,
is getting to be a more complicated
affair than in the old days, Prof. Fol-
som pointed out. Both men and
women want more and feel more
miserable because they do not get
their wishes.
Causes of New Wishfulness.
THE movie and the short story are
responsible for much of this new wish
fulness," he said. In the older days
class limitations checked wishing.
The milk maid didn't so seriously
aspire to wed the prince as the beauty
parlor worker now aspires or hopes to
marry Clark Gable The very fluidity
OF society today makes almost any
experience theoretically possible for
anyone.
Modern liberty, with the breaking
down of cast and the enlarged mobility
OF the individual, has contributed to
these over-expectations and conse-
quent disappointments. The popular
appeal of Fascism and of several back
to-authority movements suggests that
liberty is the cause of modern over
wishfulness or -hopefulness, and
consequent Illustration.
THE emotional strain involved in
making too many personal choices and
that resulting from too many disap-
pointments nourish the quest for GER
tainty and authority. Perhaps the
secret of the spread of the oxford
group movement lies in the sense of
being guided through the all-too-
numerous and difficult decisions of
everyday living.
Only the Nation as social or
ganism" can cope with the malad-
justments which have arisen largely
from the enormous chronological ad-
vances during the present century. the
conference was told by David Cush-
man Coyle, washington economist.
Sees Interest In Owning Lost.
The machine age with its concentra-
ton Of industry, he stressed, has made
money essentially the only kind Of
property and income. One result has
been that people have lost their in
terest In owning and producing for
themselves the things that money will
buy. Thus the fisherman sells the
fish he catches and buys from the
store fish for his own table, usually
canned"
AS a result, Mr.. Coyle said, there
is a general helplessness and inse-
curity spreading above the submerged
classes into the middle and upper
classes and sapping the vitality of So
ciety"
1.-THE majority" he said, "call on Mr..
Roosevelt, who is undoubtedly regard
ed as having magical qualities. A nil
nority lift their hands to the economic
laws which they have been taught to
reverence. A few still weep for the
gold standard, that holy symbol. All
these quasi-relisi9ls manifestations