NAWSA

Subject File

National League of Women Voters
Convention-1930-Press Releases

Press Department.
National League of Women Voters.

Release 2p.m
Monday. April 28.

Speech of Miss Rhea Kay Boardman. of New York City.
member of the Visiting Teacher Committee. Public Education
Association. to be given Monday afternoon, April 28, in
the Joint Committee Conference Child Welfare and 
Education. during the Louisville convention of the
National League of Women Voters.

Miss Boardman's topic will be "The Visiting Teacher in
the Community"

------------------------

The visiting teacher work had its beginning in 1906,
in Boston and New York City, but it was not until 1921 when
the Commonwealth Fund made its grant to the program for the
Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency that it received its
real impetus.  It had been evident that work with the child
could not be really successful unless the home, the school,
and the community cooperated.  The social worker had worked
with the home and community but had great difficulty in
contact with the school.  Therefore, visiting teachers
were put in the school so that they might better interpret
its program to parents or to outside clinics and social
agencies, and bring them all together to work for children
who needed help.

It was somewhat unfortunate that the visiting teacher
movement became known as a part of the program for the
prevention of juvenile delinquency, for it emphasized the
delinquency phase of the work and was apt to give people the
impression that it was only children who stole, ran away
from home, and were otherwise delinquent that were reported
to the visiting teacher.  As a matter of fact, the visiting
teacher is more interested in preventing academic failure
and maladjusted personalities which may later lead to crime


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and delinquency.  She believes that difficulties in the
home are reflected in the child's school work, that feelings
of inferiority and emotional stress in the school room also
play their part in maladjustments that may result in serious
transgressions. 

The visiting teacher can be of great help to the
school, the home, the community and the child.  She can
interpret the school to the home by
making the parent realize that school procedure is very
different now from that it was when they attended school.
New school/methods often cause difficulty when anxious parents are
trying to help with home work and are moved to criticize the
method used by the present day teacher.  She is often able
to bring about an understanding between the teacher and the
parents, thereby relieving emotional stress and the child's
feeling that he is a shock absorber between two conflicting
authorities.  And, again, she is able to interpret the home
to the school.  Mothers are often over-wrought and tense when
they visit the teachers so that when the conference is over
the real difficulty has not been solved.  With the aid of a
third person who can be objective about the whole procedure
the mother can be made to see why her boy is an annoyance and
the teacher why the mother in her eagerness and over anxiety
is somewhat defensive.  The visiting teacher in frequent
reports to the school and to the home can be constructive for
all concerned.

The child himself is never overlooked.  It is interesting 
to observe home much insight many children have into their
own problems and how they are able to plan for themselves if
they feel that it will be for their own good.  A child often

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feels that he has no friend in the school and that he is
misunderstood; when given an opportunity to tell his story
fully without fear of punishment he may often reveal some
of the underlying and little understood factors of his
problem.

The schools need a representative in the community.
They are often misjudged by social agencies. The whole
program of school procedure is formal. Each month is planned
so that a certain amount of academic work has to be covered
and social workers are apt to forget that teachers are
accountable for the work covered and that the teachers'
criticism of the long hours spent in clinics is often
justified. The teachers do want help but if this help means
keeping the child out of school it is resented by the [?]
teachers. On the other hand the teachers can not understand
why a child who is constantly showing off and attracting
attention to himself should be allowed to have special
privileges, such as being monitor and passing supplies, etc.
The social worker recognizes the child a one who wishes to
have a part in the school activities and will have it at any
cost; she believes that by giving him a legitimate outlet his
conduct will be better. The teacher sees him as a nuisance
and believes that depriving him of things he wants is the
proper treatment. These and many other such varying points
of view and to be clarified, a visiting teacher placed in
the school interpret the one to the other.

Visiting teachers should be trained so that they can
cooperate with the mental hygiene clinics, the juvenile court
and other community agencies, bringing in to these agencies


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reports from the school and the home and in turn interpreting
the findings of these agencies back to the home and the
school.

The visiting teacher must guard against getting so
interested in "cases" that she loses sights of the fact that
her chief and fundamental purpose is to work for the good
of the individual child and that she and those working with
her must try to realize and respect the dignity of the child's
personality.

Press Department.
National League of Women Voters.
Reldaso Tuesday a.m. papers
April 29

Speech of Dr. Kelen Vincent McLean, director,
Woman's Division, Chicago Public Health Institute, to be given
Monday night, April 29, before the Legal Status and Social Hygiene
Committee conferences during the Louisville convention of the
National League of Women Voters.

---------------

       Problems in the field of sex must have existed since the
appearance of the first ego-conscious man and woman.  However, in
the decade which has passed since the organization of this League
of Women Voters we have seen tremendous expansion of and many
changing concepts in social hygiene.  Let us first consider the
aspects of social hygiene which are included in the proposed
program of the League.
       1) In 1920 the majority of individuals - probably even
some of those responsible for the social hygiene program of the
League- felt that segregation was the method to be used in control
of prostitution.  Police regulation and control, with the establishment 
of red-light districts still seemed desirable to many
intelligent people.  Further confusing existed on the minds of these
same people as to the rights of the prostitute herself, - forcible
examinations for venereal disease before the woman has been convicted
of any crime was thought, in spite of its manifest injustice, to
be necessary in the interest of public health.
       In some cities, even at present, we have forcible examination 
of prostitutes before conviction, and if venereal infection 
is found, internment in a hospital where the girls are virtually
prisoners.  Only this winter, when a visiting Englishman was protesting 
in no uncertain terms against the uselessness and injustice
of this course of action, an individual who is in charge of an


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unofficial organization for repressing houses of prostitution
said that he really thought that the reduction in venereal disease
by forcible examination of prostitutes more than made up for any
injustice.  Unfortunately for his argument the results are not
as he states - compulsory examination of prostitutes for venereal
disease has never, either in Europe or in America, reduced the
amount of venereal disease.
       We must be forever on our guard, for each new health
officer and many uninformed citizens wish, as has been done in some
cities already, to return to police regulation and compulsory
examination.  The injunction and abatement law, which gives to
the individual citizen the right to close by injunction a house
of prostitution as a public nuisance - the ouster law, which
provides for the removal of any official who refuses to enforce
the law, and vice-repressive measures which strike at those men
and women who profit from the business of prostitution - these are
the three weapons which every community should have.
       2) Venereal discuss is the public health problem of the
present, and the realization of its importance dates from the war
period.  Any contagious disease concerns the voter, and diseases
which are also incapacitating and therefore place in economic
burden on the community are of vital interest to us all.  The
United States Public Health Service estimates the annual cost of
venereal disease to the country as around $1,300,000,000, or
approximately $13 per person.  What can be done by intelligent
medical men working with government agencies is well illustrated
by the splendid work of Colonel Harrison in England.  Since 1918
the number of new syphilitic infections in England has been reduced

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five-sixths.
       Venereal disease exists in all economic classes - in the
prostitute, and in men and women, married and unmarried, of all
occupations and professions at the present time. We hear so frequently 
that the middle class suffers from inadequate and unskilled
medical attention - and in no field of medicine is this more true
than in venereal disease. The diagnosis and treatment of a
syphilitic infection requires a high degree of specialization in
the doctor, and great patience and cooperation in the patient.
The minimum length of treatment is about two years. The medical
services open at present to the infected individual are (1) free
clinics, under either private or state control, (2) specialists
in private practice. The girl, however, who earns twenty dollars
a week, or the man with a weekly wage of $35 to $40, should not
accept charity, nor can he or she on the other hand afford treatment 
for two years in the office of a specialist. With proper
facilities we could in a very few years greatly reduce venereal
disease in amount, and prevent the more serious disabilities resulting 
from it - such as locomotor ataxia, general paralysis of
the insane, syphilitic disease of the heart and blood vessels, and,
with proper pre-natal care, congenital syphilis could be reduced to
zero.
       3) Thus far we have discussed the problems which were 
considered prior to 1900 to belong rightfully to social hygiene -
prostitution and venereal disease. Prevention is now the key-note
of all medical and social programs, and yet I see nothing of these
newer aspects of social hygiene on the program of the League.
To see to it that children and adults alike have a broad and wise


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understanding of the role of the sex instinct in human behavior is
the first and most important stop in abolishing prostitution and
in preventing venereal disease. The League's Committee on
Education wishes to promote both better child and adult education,
through higher standards of training for the teachers. With the
public opinion of the voters behind the training of teachers in
sex education it would be possible to deal intelligently with the
problems of sex behavior and to institute courses in sex education.
The teacher is frequently afraid to impart sex information to her
students or give advice in sex problems because of lack of public
opinion. A generation of children taught under teachers capable
of meeting such problems would almost certainly mean a lessening
of unhappy adolesence and of actual sex delinquency. Even in
higher education - such as state universities - the teacher is
handicapped, as we saw illustrated last winter at the University
of Missouri.
       4) An increasing number of voters particularly women
voters, believe that our present Federal and many state laws dealing 
with contraception are extremely harmful, not only in the legal
bars which are put in the way of an honest acquirement of this
knowledge, but also because of the basis on which these laws are
written, that is classifying such knowledge with obscenity. The
League realizes that organized groups of voters are against any
change in these laws, but organized effort opposes change in any
laws and in any fundamental concept.
       Abolishment of, or changes in legislation in a field so
peculiarly related to women's lives would seem to belong to any
social hygiene program of the League.

Press Department.
National League of Women Voters.

Release 2 p. m.
Monday, April 28.

Speech of Dr. James S. Plant, of Newark, N. J., director of Essex
County (N. J.) Juvenile Clinic to be given Monday afternoon, April
29 in the joint Child Welfare and Education Committees Conference
during the Louisville convention of the National League of Women
Voter's convention.

His topic will be "The Place of the Psychiatrist in the Problems
of Delinquency."

- - - - - - - - - -

         The legal code has had the preservation of the
State largely as its basis and man has correspondingly been always
tremendously perturbed over the transgressions that we term crime
and delinquency. There have been roughly four methods of dealing
with this problem. Examples of all four are still to be found -
easily. For countless centuries unquestioned, brute punishment
held sway. For the last century there has been a widespread (and
equally blind) effort to change in some magical way the delinquent
or criminal. "Magical" because the change was supposed to occur
in some institution about as different from the constitution of
ordinary society as one can imagine. The third method is ven
newer - a sort of "seeing eye to eye" with the offender. We owe
to Judge Lindsay a concept of sympathy that has tremendous humanitarian 
implications. It remained for Dr. William Healy in Chicago
in 1911 to bring us a fourth method - that of the psychiatrist.
Because the psychiatrist is a physician this is essentially a
method of diagnosis. It asks not what happened but why it happened.
The psychiatrist has rather brazenly said that you can't really
control crime and delinquency until you know why people commit
crimes.
         There is to-day no standardized procedure but
certain fundamentals run through all clinical studies that are
made to assist the courts. These may be summed under three headings.


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      (1) A thorough analysis of the situation is made.
There is a physical examination. There is a psychological examination 
to determine the youngster's general intelligence level - his
special abilities and disabilities. There is a psychiatric examination 
or what we often term the "own story" which means a slow working 
over, with the child, of some of the trends of his life up to
the present. This never starts with "Well, what's the trouble now" -
in fact the present trouble is precisely the last thing the psychiatrist 
is interested in because it is the last thing that has happened 
in the child's life. An effort is made to approach the delinquency 
as it was actually approached in the child's life. There
is a social examination in the sense that parents, teachers, pastors,
doctors, scout leaders, what not, are interviewed. Here just as
serious an attempt is made to assay the strength and weakness, the
drives and hungers of all those about the child as was made towards
assaying the child himself. The effort is to see the delinquency
in its proper perspective, as the expected result of a long series
of events and clashing personalities. All through this study there
is the effort to discover not what the delinquency is but who the
delinquent is - of what strength and weakness, of what power and
plasticity.
      (2) A summarized report of these finding is made
to the Judge. He is the one to make the decision as to what should
be done with and for the child. The Clinic provides him with more
complete information than he would otherwise have. This is the
function of the clinic - its sole function in problems of delinquency. 
A tendency on the part of the Juvenile Court judges to invite 
recommendations and "rubber-stamp" those, is unhealthy.

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(3) The Clinic must keep an accurate and fairly
complete record of the child's progress after this contact. This
is one of the inevitable responsibilities involved in the pschiatrist's 
entrance into the field of delinquency - this frank facing
of success or failure - of what actually happens when a certain
adjustment is made.
This, then, is the work of the psychiatric clinic -
this represents the part it plays in the problems of delinquency.
Certain conclusions may be presented on the basis
of the work so far done. These must be clearly separated into two
groups - those in which most clinics would agree and those which
bestir less unanimity of opinion.
Of these things we speak with certainty. (1)
Psychiatry has a well worth while approach to the problem of delinquency 
for it brings the method of diagnosis - of a certainty that
you can't solve a problem until you know what it is. (2) There is
no single cause of delinquency. The ways to maladjustment and unhappiness 
are as protean and, to-day, as little understood as are
those to success. (3) The way to understanding lies in a knowledge
of the criminal or delinquent rather than the crime. Crime commissions 
will lead us only further on the blind path we have followed 
for they interest themselves in the thing done - when we need
knowledge as to the doer. It is through knowing the criminal rather
than the crime that we will find real help.
Of these things we personally speak with certainty
though many disagree. (1) The psychiatrist must not replace the
judge. A group of self-styled prophets sees psychiatry as usurping
the field of the treatment of delinquency. However, in this problem
are implied factors of social responsibility which the psychiatrist


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psychiatrist can in no sense encompass.  He may, and should, be of transcending
help to the judge but beyond that should not go.  (2)  The
psychiatric clinic should be supported by public funds.  The Freeholders
of Essex County, New Jersey had the vision seven years ago
to see that the study of the child, the assay of the youth of the
county, every effort to stem the tide of ever-growing human debris--
that all of this must be beyond the passing whim of private funds.
Their friendship towards the establishment and growth of this work
is a ringing challenge to every social engineer.  (3)  More and more
do we see the causes of delinquency as arising in the environment
of the child.  We have been in a period of overweaning interest in
the child and the direct moulding of his life.  It has been said
that "behaviour is caught, not taught"--and we are more and more
realizing that as we help the parent, the teacher, the nurse in
the task they have the problems of the child will largely care for
themselves.  (4)  True mental hygiene is as widespread and as old
as the human race.  The psychiatrist has no new magic to offer.
He is but the organizer of all those rich resources of mental hygiene
that already exist in the community.  (5)  The psychiatrist
in the problems of delinquency faces a slow, tedious task.  Two
patients a day, four patients a day, these are his limits.  His
method holds brilliant promise of supplementing and coordinating
the resources of the community.  He has promise of bringing something
of the method of science to your most baffling and colossal
of problems.  He brings you this challenge--that you can't control
delinquency and crime until you know why people are delinquents
and criminals.  And you can't know why people are delinquents
and criminals until you take the time to carefully assay

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and follow through a large number of delinquent careers. Any other
method is but patch - work.

Press Department.
National League of Women Voters.

Release 2 p.m.
Monday. April 28.

Speech of Representative William Williamson. member of the House
of Representatives from South DAKOTA. and Chairman of the
House Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments.
to be given Monday afternoon. April 28. at the Efficiency in Govern-
ment Conference during the Louisville convention of the National
League of Women Voters.

His topic will be "Reorganizing the Federal Government."

--------------

The Government of the United States is the oldest business
organization in the country and by this time should have become a
model of efficiency and economy of operation. With the increasing
years, however, it has become loaded down with multiplied layers of
barnacles that show a surprising capacity for hanging on. The
slightest effort to dislodge them, singly or in groups, at once
raises an alarm that sends their cohorts to Congress and the country
with plaintive and vehement protests.

With the passage of time the various bureaus and activities
have built up their ramparts and fortifications from arguments both
plausible and persuasive. None are so poor as to have no defenders
in Congress and many have their champions throughout the country and
are able to build up a considerable backfire in some of the districts
of congressmen who show any disposition to revamp them. Even
Presidents who have started bravely to reform the administration of
the Government, after some months of effort have given up ins despair
and devoted their energies to other matters that seemed more promising
of results.

Two years ago Congress set up a new committee in the House
known as the Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments
and made me its Chairman. Like most chairmen or presidents of a

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spanking new organization dedicated to a great purpose, even though
not a particularly inviting one, I entered upon my new-found and
ready-made responsibilities with a secret determination to make it
one of the most important, worthwhile and useful committees in the
whole Congress.
       My colleagues patted me encouragingly on the back, told me a no
better qualified man could be found, and that I had been especially
selected because of my known courage, studious and industrious habits,
and ability to get things done. I had already been too long in
public life in one capacity or other to be greatly flattered by the
very kind and encouraging words of my colleagues. Someone must be
found who might be expected to take the assignment with a sufficient
seriousness to at least make a respectable attempt to carry out the
party pledges for reform in the administrative branches of the
Government. I looked grave, was reputed to take my work seriously,
and yet was not thought so radical as to attempt to upset the whole
Government structure overnight. That explains my choice for Chairman,
rather than my having shown extraordinary abilities for achieving
great reform. I suspect that had I borne such a reputation some-one else 
less disposed to radical change might have been selected.

CONGRESS NOT A REFORM BODY

       After all, Congress is not a great reform body. It clings
tenaciously to the past. Tradition and form, not to say habit,
inhabit great forward movements except under conditions of exceptional
stress. It is doubtless well for the country that this is so. Were
it not for this inertia of traditions and the unwillingness to enter
upon uncharted sees far from accustomed mooring grounds, disaster
might overtake our people by some rash act of reform that would


-3-

return to plague us.
       Whether my colleagues know it or not, inertia is foreign to my
nature. Rutted and unprogressive bureaucracy is distasteful to my
theory of government, and the conglomerate assembling of administrative 
activities on abomination to my conceptions of order. I was not
rash enough, however, to suppose that any new committee, however
distinguished and able its personnel, could at once undertake radical
reform without going on the rocks. The building up of prestige and
power in the House of Representatives is usually a slow process for
both the individual member and committee. Confidence in a committee's
collective good judgment must be established, not by brilliant undertakings 
that are too visionary to receive the approval of the House,
but by doing well the tasks that come to its hands in the daily
routine and grind. That means painstaking investigations and
carefully considered and well drafted legislation.
       Only two scalps of major important as yet dangle at our belt--
the transfer of the enforcement division of the Bureau of Prohibition
from the Treasury Department to the Department of Justice, and the
consolidation of all veteran's activities, including the Bureau of
Pensions, the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers and the
Veteran's Bureau, into a new establishment under a single administrator,
Neither reform was won without exhaustive labor and sharp controversy
both in the Committee and in the House. The Chairman has others in
mind but has concluded not to press them for consideration at this 
session.

BUREAUS ANTAGONISTIC TO REFORM
       There is only one large-scale employer in the whole country
so far as I know that is not engaged in business for profit, and that
is the Federal Government. Upon its payroll at the present time are

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approximately 590,000 employees. This is a staggering total for the
peace time operation of the Government. Very few of these people
give any attention to working out more efficient methods of make the
slightest effort at economy. On the contrary, the tendency is to
expand the personnel and diminish the output of the individual.
      Bureau chiefs seek to expand their program and extend their
organization. Enlargement adds to their personal feeling of importance
and occasionally aids in boosting their salaries. This tendency to
expansion very often results in duplicating services already existing
in other departments. Overlapping of functions by various departments
and bureaus is the rule rather than the exception. There is at the
present time no correlating agency in connection with the Government
services of sufficient potency to even make a dent in the armor of our
bureaucratic setup. It is not that we do not have able men at the
head of many of our bureaus, but for the most part they have grown up
with the system and do not seem able to reorganize so as to secure
a high state of efficiency, and by high state of efficiency I mean a
high output per employee. The bureau may show fairly satisfactory
results in carrying out its functions, but it does it at excessive
costs, such as would not for a moment be tolerated in a private business
enterprise.
      Even where bureau heads are not recruited from the civil service,
they generally are dependent upon the personnel under them for results
and they speedily become infected by the system and in the end do
little or nothing to improve the situation. On the contrary, they
soon become the champions of their particular bureau or office and
when committees of Congress in the slightest way seek to improve the


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services by suggestions of reorganization, consolidations or
eliminations, they stoutly, and not infrequently vehemently, defend
the particular activity over which they preside as the most efficient
and important in the whole Government service. I know of no case
where it might result in diminishing in the least degree the prestige
of the bureau or its head where we have secured the slightest cooperation, 
but I can point to plenty of authentic cases where bureau
heads have fought like tigers to leave "well enough alone". They are
typical standpatters. Let me say, however, that I am using the term,
not so much as a term of reproach as to describe a condition. It is
human nature to gather unto ourselves whatever may add to our stature
and to resist anything that may in any way diminish our importance.
The amazing defects, however, that one bureau can discover in another
with which it may be sought to consolidate it, is sometimes startlingly
illuminating. What they say about each other would in many cases, if
true, justify Congress in booting out both.
      Every private business concern, especially if it is highly
competitive, studies the methods of its competitors, and adopts without 
hesitation anything that may add to efficiency or economy.
Frequently experts are called in for consideration. Duplication, waste
and overlapping receive short shrift. Employees are carefully studied
and placed where they can render the most and best service. The
inefficient are dropped or pensioned.
      If the Government could adopt methods that obtain in every
successful big business I am confident that at least one-fourth of
our personnel could be dropped with no detriment whatever to the
services rendered. Such drastic reform, however, is quite beyond the
possibility of hope. I am by no means certain that it would receive
public support. It would involve dropping from the rolls many faithful

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employees not too old to find employment elsewhere. From the very
nature of things the Government must be a benevolent employer, but
much could be done without disturbing any worthy employee, even though
by age or infirmity his efficiency has become greatly impaired.
There is always a sufficient turnover by resignations, retirements or
death to permit of rapid reduction of personnel if the business of the
Government was reorganized as to permit it. If an esprit de corps
could be developed among the workers which should have as its essential
ideal the high efficiency of each individual a very great step forward
would have been taken. Too often there is a conscious effort to do
as little as possible to make place for additional employees. Some
Effort has been made to stimulate pride of service and accomplishment
but with meager results so far as the sum total of the Government
service is concerned.
      Lost what I have just stated should give a false impression, let
me say now that tons of thousands of Government employees are
ambitious, personally efficient and are earning more than they get,
but the point I am trying to make is that the organization of
Government departments, in many cases, is so defective and employees
are so hedged about with rules, regulating and fixed routine as to
make efficient work impossible. Add this to duplication and overlapping 
of functions by different bureaus and you have a state of
chronic dyspepsia.

GOVERNMENT BUSINESS GROWN WITHOUT SYSTEM

      Throughout the entire history of our Government its business has
grown with little system or plan. As now needs developed, departments
and bureaus have been added. Frequently such additions have come
from pressure of department heads who not infrequently have succeeded
in setting up activities which in large measure duplicate and overlap


-7-

a similar activity in some other department. These have been become
rivals in an expansion program, thereby aggravating the original evil.
A classic illustration of this sort of development is to be found in
the Hydrographic Office and the Coast and Geodetic Survey. It will be
recalled that during the early part of the Harding administration a
joint Committee of the Senate and House, with Walter F. Brown as the
representative of the President, was created. This committee was
charged with the duty of making an exhaustive study of the entire
administrative and business machinery of the Government. During the
course of extensive hearings it was proposed, among other reforms,
to consolidate the Hydrographic Office and the Coast Geodetic
Survey, a very minor part of the general program. Each of these
bureaus at that time was headed by an able and determined man. these
chiefs engaged in a most dramatic fight before the committee. So
enthusiastic were they for their respective bureaus, and so critical
of the others that they filled up one-fourth of the total record which
made up the voluminous hearing on the general subject of reorganization
Their criminations and recriminations frequently threatened the peace
and dignity of the committee. Both admitted that these activities
should be consolidated, provided always that the other fellow's was
to be brought into his bureau. More recently we have had much the
same kind of a fight in trying to consolidate all veterans' activities
under one head.
      Other bureaus have been created as a result of propaganda by
small but militant groups. In the very nature of things those orphan
waifs were attached to some department without much reference to the
question of whether they bore any relation to the major purpose of the
department. Once created, such bureau continues to permit however

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uncongenial or unpropitious its environment. Other bureaus were
deliberately placed in departments where they did not logically belong
because at the time the head of the department where they should have
gone was unpopular with Congress. Still others are left independent
with little or no executive direction.
      Like Topsy, the Government has grown till nothing short of the 
surgeon's knife can bring it into a semblance of a coordinated whole.
To apply the knife is the business of our committee.

UNSCIENTIFIC GROUPING---MAJOR PURPOSE

      At least eight Government departments are engaged in construction
and engineering activities; seven are concerned with activities related
to shipping, to the great annoyance and confusion of commerce; a half
dozen/ with welfare problems; three or four deal with conservation of natural
resources; three with veterans' relief: two with the enforcement of
prohibition and two with national defense. Very many were outstanding
duplications can be cited.
      To deal intelligently and effectively with the problem of reorganization 
some principal of more or less universal real applications must be
followed. This principle can perhaps be best expressed as that of
"major purpose".
      The major purpose of the Department of Agriculture, for
illustration, is that of making agriculture a profitable industry.
Judging from the condition of agriculture during the last eight or
ten years it has not been especially successful: nevertheless its
major purpose remains. Manifestly all these activities in the
Government service that deal primarily with some phase of this problem
should be grouped in that Department, yet a find irrigation and
reclamation, which are concerned with the production of agricultural


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commodities, in the Department of the Interior, though this bureau
clearly belongs in the Department of Agriculture. On the other hand,
we find a purely engineering and construction bureau, that of
Public Roads, in the Department of Agriculture. Over in the Treasury
Department that was originally created as a purely fiscal agency we
find such curious incongruities as the Public Health Service prohibition 
enforcement, and an assistant secretary in charge of the
greatest building and construction program in the world.
      I need not multiply example. Those mentioned are sufficient to
distinctly indicate some of the reform which are obviously necessary
to a sane and economical administration of government activities.
      I am not overlooking the fact that reorganization cannot proceed
purely upon theory or even relentlessly on principle. There are
many practical problems that must be met which make it expedient and
indeed necessary in some cases to depart from the principle of
assesmblig all activities according to major purpose in order to secure
the greatest economy, but in the main, the interest of the people will
be best served if we adhere fairly closely to the underlying principle
of assembling activities having similarity of function and purpose
in the department to whose major purpose they contribute.

PROCEDURE TO EFFECT REORGANIZATION

      Having pointed out some of the more glaring inconsistencies in
our present setup and the principles that should guide us in any
scheme of reorganization, let us consider the very practical problem
of how to proceed.
      President Warren G. Harding undertook to do it in one great fell
swoop after a most painstaking and exhaustive study by the Joint
Committee already referred to. Elaborate charts showing the existing

-10-

setup and the proposed setup were prepared to illustrate the recommended 
reorganization in graphic form. It looked beautiful on paper.
Its advocates had proven conclusively that if the suggested reorganization 
was put into effect it would result in the most scientific
and business like administration that this Government has ever
experienced. it promised large economics and greatly improved services.
      A bill was introduced to carry out the plan of reorganization.
Immediately the snipers from department heads on down commenced the
bombardment. Bombs, shells and shrapnel commenced to riddle the plan.
The lesser lights used machine guns, bludgeons and night sticks. the
attacks converged from so many points that the President become
noticeably loss ardent. Congressional leaders shied away from the
subject and soon there were few left to pay it homage and none to
rescue it from utter collapse.
      The canny Calvin Collidge readily detected the sticks of political
dynamite concealed among the assembled timbers for the erection of the
beautifully charted structure and steered clear of entanglements. Not
so, however, Candidates Hoover and Smith, who, in line with their
party platform, pledged themselves to reorganize government/ departments in the
event of their election. Large savings were predicted, and greater
efficiency. Reorganization, however, languishes. The bureaucrats
still dominate the situation. Political dynamite -- yet hidden in
every crevice and cranny. The result --- everybody is rather cautious
of approach and inclined to leave it to future Congress which again
will probably have the same inclination to pass it on to their
successors. Then it must not be forgotten that to become at all
familiar with the existing setup of the widely scattered Government
services and the functions of the departments and numerous bureaus


-11-

and activities is quite beyond possibility for anyone except a
specialist who devotes his entire time to the subject. Members of
Congress with their multiplied duties find it impossible to
familiarise themselves with the entire problem, nor would it be
possible for reorganization along the lines recommended by the
Joint Committee, to become sufficiently familiar with the problem to
risk voting for such a bill.
      Only two courses, therefore, appear to be open to Congress.
First, either the Congress must delegate to the President full
authority to transfer, consolidate, climinate, and to redistribute
the functions of existing Government bureau, agencies, offices
and activities, and to create new ones and and fix the functions
thereof and the duties and powers of their reprective executive
heads, or, second, Congress must deal with the problem piecemeal.
      The first method would be much the simpler but is open to
serious Constitutional objections. To create government activities
and define their powers and duties is peculiarly a legislative
function. Under the Constitution as construed by Chief Justice
Marshall and all his successors such duties cannot be delegated
to the Executive by Congress. Doubtless a law could be drafted
which would go a long way toward circumventing our fundamental law
which would give the President wide powers in connection with
reorganization, but Congress would hesitate to do this without a
pretty definite ideas to what the President might be expected
to do under the authority granted. It is hardly conceivable, therefore, 
that Congress will pass a bill giving to the President the
wide powers necessary in order to enable him to carry forward

-12-

sweeping changes in our present setup.
      We are, therefore, left with the last alternative as the only
feasible method of procedure. Of course, piecemeal legislation must
have in mind a pretty clear idea of what the whole structure will be
like when reorganization is completed or we should have a worse hodge
podge in the [?] than when we began. It is possible for Members of
Congress to become reasonable familiar with the purpose and value
of a specific proposal such as the consolidation of all veterans'
activities under one head. Support can be secured for such a
proposal provided Members can be convinced that the new setup will
be an improvement over what it seeks to displace. But even this
consolidation met the most determined resistance from many
influential Members of the House who refused to be guided by the
principal invoked. Their opposition was directed to the very
practical proposition that the proposed reorganization will add
nothing to efficiency and will effect no economics. With a
competent head I am confident it will do both. And what is even more
important, it will serve as a basis for humanized legislation that will
bring order out of the chaos which is now prevalent in the administration 
of veterans' affairs. This chaos is due in very large measure
in my judgment, to unworkable statutory provisions, and inequalities
in the kind and character of relief that is provided for disabled,
sick and needy ex-soldiers and sailors. With one directing head
most of the difficulties will yield themselves to a more ready
solution.
      The studies which the National League of Women Voters are now
making with a view to contributing something toward "Efficiency in
Government" in time will have a profound effect in stimulating interest
and public backing for reform. Like so many things of a public


-13-

character, which in reality is everybody's business, Government
Reorganization is nobody's business. If it is ever to be realized
someone in authority must act, but he cannot be expected to
accomplish a great deal without the active backing of public
spirited citizens. If a sufficient public demand can be created
reform in the administration of public affairs can be made a reality,
but without such backing a thorough going job is improbable.
      I therefore congratulate you upon the movement you are sponsoring 
and which you are so efficiently carrying forward. Your body is
composed  of highly intelligent and public spirited individuals who
are among the leaders of thought in their respective communities.
It is the sentiment "back home" that counts most with the average
Member of Congress and if that sentiment is actively supporting any
worthwhile movement at the National Capital it will be a most potent
force in bringing it to a successful issue.
      May I not at this time express to you my deep appreciation of this
opportunity to address you upon a subject which for a long time has
been close to my heart, and to bespeak for the future the continuance 
of that hearty cooperation which you have always been so happy
too render.

Press Department
National League of Women Voters.

Release TUESDAY A. M.
APRIL 29.

      Abstract from speech of Miss Josephine Schain, of of New York City,
administrative chairman, Women' Conference on the Cause and Cure of
War, to be given Monday night, April 28, before the International
Cooperation conference during the Louisville convention of the National 
League of Women Voters.

      The subject will be "Women as Part of Public Opinion for World
Peace."

- - - - - - - - - - -

      Miss Schain was a member of the special women's deputation which
went to the London Naval Conference bearing a memorial from women of
the world. The deputation included women from Japan, France, England
and the United States, and was officially received by the Conference.

- - - - - - - - - - -

      The deputation was memorable because it introduced women as a
new factor in international politics. It represented the idealism
of women translated into practical political action. These women believed 
that reduction of naval armaments was possible and they placed
on the delegates to the Naval Conference the responsibility for accomplishing 
steps toward peace.
      Steps toward peace were accomplished in the establishment of the
policy of limitation of naval armaments by international agreement.
A beginning has been made. Other international conference will follow. 
The women must decide what they intend to do about future conferences. 
The question of channels through which they may function
is one that must be thought out.
      The deputation to the London Naval Conference represented the
eleven women's organizations co-operating through the Conference on
the cause and Cure of War. The British group represented seventeen
organizations organized in the British Women's Crusade for Arbitration,
the Japanese women represented seven organizations and the French,
eleven organization. Other countries also have co-operating groups


-2-

of organizations within national boundaries.
      There is need of some sort of international overhead organization 
of the women's groups. Internationally we have the Inter-national 
Alliance, the Council of Women, the International Y.W.C.A., the
W.C.T.U. and the international organization of University women. We
must look to our national organizations, represented in turn in international 
organizations to form some sort of international joint committee 
through which we may function in an organized way.
      In the United States more responsibility rests upon the individual 
citizen than in other countries. In most countries the delegates
to international conferences have the right to speak officially for
their governments. It is only by senatorial action that the United 
States can be committeed. This places the responsibility on the
people in their respective states to see that their representatives
think and act internationally.
      As a nation that took a leading role in the movement to outlaw
war as an instrument of national policy, it behooves the United
States to see that this principle is made effective. We are bound up
with the rest of the world by cultural, social and economic ties.
Wars anywhere in the world effect us. It is nonsense to pretend that
we can pursue a policy of isolation. We contradict ourselves every
day in this respect. Our very demand for parity shows that we cannot
proceed without paying attention to what others are doing.
      Speaking of parity, - I wonder if we mean parity of responsibility 
for peace as well as parity of strength for war.
      We are living in an age which challenges us to help organize the
world for peace. We must not fail that task.

Press Department.
National League of Women Voters.

Reldase Tuesday a.m. papers
April 29, [?]

Speech of Dr. Kelen Vincent Mohcan, of Chicago, director,
Woman's Division, Chicago Public Health Institute, to be given
Monday night, April 28, before the Legal Status and Social Hygiene
Committee conferences during the Louisville convention of the
National League of Women Voters.

----------------

Problem in the field of sex must have existed since the
appearance of the first ego-conscious man and woman. However, in
the decade which has passed since the organization of this League
of Women Voters we have seen tremendous expansion of and many
changing concepts in social hygiene. Let us first consider the
aspects of social hygiene which are included in the proposed
program of the League.
      1) In 1920 the majority of individuals - probably even
some of those responsible for the social hygiene program of the
League- felt that segregation was the method to be used in control
of prostitution. Police regulation and control with the establishment 
of red-light districts still seemed desirable to many
intelligent people. Further confusing existed in the minds of these
same people as to the rights of the prostitute herself, - forcible
examination for venereal disease before the woman has been convicted
of any crime was thought, in spite of its manifest injustice, to
be necessary in the interest of public health.
      In some cities, even at present, we have forcible examination 
of prostitutes before conviction, and if venereal infection 
is found, internment in a hospital where the girls are virtually
prisoners. Only this winter, when a visiting Englishman was protesting 
in no uncertain terms against the uselessness and injustice
of this course of action, on individual who is in charge of an


-2-

unofficial organization for repressing houses of prostitution
said that he really thought that the reduction in venereal disease
by forcible examination of prostitutes more than made up for any
injustice. Unfortunately for his argument the results are not
as he states - compulsory examination of prostitutes for venereal
disease has never, either in Europe or in America, reduced the
amount of venereal disease.
      We must be forever on our guard, for each new health
officer and many uninformed citizens wish, as has been done in some
cities already, to return to police regulation and compulsory
examination. The injunction and abatement law, which gives to
the individual citizen the right to close by injunction a house
of prostitution as a public nuisance - the ouster law, which
provides for the removal of any official who refuses to enforce
the law, and vice-repressive measures which strike at those men
and women who profit from the business of prostitution - these are
the three weapons which every community should have.
      2) Venereal disease is the public health problem of the
present, and the realization of its importance dates from the war
period. Any contagious disease concerns the voter, and diseases
which are also incapacitating and therefore place an economic
burden on the community are of vital interest to us all. The
United States Public Health Service estimates the annual cost of
venereal disease to the country as around $1,300,000,000, or
approximately $13 per person. What can be done by intelligent
medical men working with government agencies is well illustrated
by the splendid work of Colonel Harrison in England. Since 1918
the number of new syphilitic infections in England has been reduced

-3-

five-sixths.
      Venereal disease exists in all economic classes - in the
prostitute, and in men and women, married and unmarried, of all
occupation and professions at the present time. We hear so frequently 
that the middle class suffers from inadequate and unskilled
medical attention - and in no field of medicine is this more true
than in venereal disease. The diagnosis and treatment of a
syphilitic infection requires a high degree of specialization in
the doctor, and great patience and cooperation in the patient.
The minimum length of treatment is about two years. The medical
services open at present to the infected individual are (1) free
clinics, under either private or state control, (2) specialists
in private practice. The girl, however, who earns twenty dollars
a week, or the man with a weekly wage of $35 to $40, should not
accept charity, nor can he or she on the other hand afford treatment 
for two years in the office of a specialist. With proper
facilities we could in a very few years, greatly reduce venereal
disease in amount, and prevent the more serious disabilities resulting 
from it - such as locomotor ataxia, general paralysis of
the insane, syphilitic disease of the heart and blood vessels, and,
with proper pre-natal care, congenital syphilis could be reduced to
zero.
      3) Thus far we have discussed the problem which were
considered prior to 1900 to belong rightfully to social hygiene -
restitution and venereal disease. Prevention is now the key-note
of all medical and social program, and yet I see nothing of these
newer aspects of social hygiene on the program of the League.
To see to it that children and adults alike have a broad and wise


-4-

understanding of the rolls of the sex instinct in human behavior is
the first and most important step in abolishing prostitution and
in preventing venereal disease. The League's Committee on
Education wishes to promote both better child and adult education,
through higher standards of training for the teachers. With the
public opinion of the voters behind the training of teachers in
sex education it would be possible to deal intelligently with the
problems of sex behavior and to institute courses in sex education.
The teacher is frequently afraid to impart sex information to her
students or give advice in sex problems because of lack of public
opinion. A generation of children taught under teachers capable
of meeting such problems would almost certainly mean a lessening
of unhappy adolescence and of actual sex delinquency. Even in
higher education - such as state universities - the teacher is
handicapped, as we saw illustrated last winter at the University
of Missouri.
      4) An increasing number of voters, particularly women
voters, believe that our present Federal and many state laws dealing 
with contraception are extremely harmful, not only in the legal
bars which are put in the way of as honest acquirement of this
knowledge, but also because of the basis on which these laws are
written, that is classifying such knowledge with obscenity. The
League realizes that organized groups of voters are against any
change in these laws, but organized effort opposes change in any
laws and in any fundamental concept.
      Abolishment of, or changes in legislation in a field so
peculiarly related to women's lives would seem to belong to any
social hygiene program of the League.

Press Department.
National League of Women Voters.

Release 2 p.m.
Monday, April 28.

Speech of Judge Charles W. Hoffman, of Cincinnati, of the Hamilton 
County (Ohio) Domestic Relations Court, to be given Monday 
afternoon, April 28, before the Child Welfare and Education
Committee conferences of the Louisville convention of the National 
League of Women Voters.

His subject will be "Human Attitudes and Juvenile Delinquency".

------------------

HUMAN ATTITUDES AND JUVENILE DELINQUENCY

The most significant social and political trend today is
that of providing for a study of human relations and the law.
No definite procedure or program has as yet been formulated to
attain this end, yet there is extent a fairly clear conception of
the identity of the relations of man to man and the nature and
content of our social and civic life. It may, therefore, safely
be predicted that it will not be long until social and legal
norms are in some measure harmonized.
      If the term "human relations" can be considered tentatively
as synonymous with "human attitudes" the line of inquiry and research 
becomes at once obvious and imperative. It is possible
that the attitude that is taken by members of society toward
crime and delinquency and anti social conduct in general is responsible 
in great measure for the social maladjustments which
impose so great a burden on mankind. A survey or study or human
relationships insofar as it is related to delinquency must
primarily be based on a clearly defined objective, otherwise its
success will be uncertain if not be negligible. A sound social and,


-2-

may I add, moral philosophy must first be formulated and accepted
by those who are to conduct the investigations and by the public
generally. This is the doctrine of the late Leonard Hobhouse of
London University. We live and act and attempt reforms on the
basis of our moral and social conceptions. If they are not in
harmony with facts and reality we meet with disaster and failure.
Our attitudes as conditioned by our beliefs determine the issues
of life and society. If social chaos prevails, especially in
the realm of delinquency, it is but the reflection of the ideas,
conceptions and attitudes that prevail in the state or community
in which it occurs. This applies to adult criminality as well as
to the misbehavior of children.
      Previous to 1899 the attitude toward offending children, as
manifested by the law, was that of hostility. Children who committed 
offenses were deemed criminals and tried in the ordinary
criminal courts. They were considered as outcasts by society
and treatment administered accordingly. Mankind, says Dr. George
Mead, has always had a feeling of hostility toward the enemy of
the family, the tribe, or the race, regardless of whether the
offender is an adult or a child.
      It was this feeling or attitude that for centuries had
imperiled childhood. There seemed to be no relief. Finally
the public conscience was awakened. The loss of so great a
multitude of children who for some reason were unable to keep
step with the herd jeopardized the welfare of society and the
State. It was found that the attitude of hostility, vengence
and retribution must give way to a real and genuine interest in
children and childhood.

-3-
This conception found expression in the Juvenile Court
Codes and the organization of Juvenile Courts. The criminal
procedure was abolished in children's cases. The state entered
the field of social work for the purpose of saving delinquent
children, not only from entering criminal careers but for lives
of usefulness and happiness.
The Juvenile Court codes represent in their content a most
beneficent and noble purpose. As an instrumentality for the saving 
of children they have succeeded in just the proportion that
the communities in which they operate have eliminated the element
of hostility and substituted therefore a sincere desire to save
the child by all the means at their command.
Notwithstanding the fairly successful attempt to substitute
one emotion or interest for another by law, the attitude of hostility 
toward delinquent children is still a vital and living
force in many localities in some states and in less number in
other states. In these localities, or as they might be termed
jurisdictions, the Juvenile Court laws are practically ignored
in spirit if not the letter. In fact in all states and in all
jurisdictions the factor of hostility forces itself into a
greater or less degree in the handling of children who commit
offenses at all serious. If this were not true we would not
find the Industrial Schools filled with children ranging in age
from 10 to 16 years. We would not find it possible in any state
to try children six, eleven, or even seventeen years of age for
murder in the first degree.
There is indeed a great and present need for a study of
human relations, in order that it may be determined first of all


-4-
if any possible means can be devised to change the opinion of
the average man or woman that a delinquent youth, as defined by
statute, is a responsible individual who ought to suffer the
pains and penalties of the law and be cast out of society.
In most of the Juvenile Court jurisdictions of this
country children are disposed of without any particular social
investigation and no mental or physical examination at all.
The plea is that of lack of facilities for making these investigations
and examinations.  It is evident that this plea is not always
well taken.  If delinquency is reckoned or defined in any
community as a disease demanding the same treatment as any other
of the ailments of children, the people of such community will
avail themselves of the means for the diagnosis and treatment of
delinquents whatever may be the cost and sacrifice.  It is attitudes
and definitions that determine the manner in which unfortunate
children are cared for in any given place.  It is the
judgement of many experts in child welfare that there must be
a change of heart and mind generally previous to the accomplishment
of real or permanent results in the effort to prevent
delinquency and even crime.
It is the complaint of those connected with juvenile courts
in a hundred jurisdictions that the community has not been educated
up to the point at which it would approve or permit the
application of modern scientific methods in the treatment of
delinquent children.  In courts more numerous than is generally
known, even those who hold in their hands the destinies and the
lives of children have no faith in the redemptive power of

-5-

science and medicine, but rest their case on the efficacy of
pain and punishment to redeem and to reform.

----------------------------

      While it is true that the treatment of individual cases
by child guidance clinics and by a limited number of Juvenile
Court clinics has resulted in saving numberless children afflicted 
with conduct disorder, yet there does not appear at
this time any wide spread change of attitude on the part of the
public at large toward children and youths who commit acts subversive 
of peace and order.
      Our political system is grounded on the principle of the
consent of the governed. Our social, remedial, or reformatory
policies and systems must be founded on the consent and the
approval of the people of the community or state in which they
exist, otherwise they will inevitably fail in their purpose.

----------------------------

Social workers and social scientists have not been heedless
of their obligation to emphasis both in public and private conferences 
that a manifestation of resentment or revenge even in
its milder and least obtrusive forms toward a so-called erring
or delinquent boy or girl is fatal to all the value that childhood 
implies and detrimental to the best interests of society.

----------------------------


-6-

Neither a juvenile nor an adult delinquent can be reformed
or reinstated as a good member of society so long as he is deprived 
of association with those the represent the best types of
living and life. Refusing to employ a delinquent who has been
in an industrial school or depriving him of the privilege of
associating with boys and girls the represent in their conduct
and manners the best standards of youthful behavior, is in direct
contradiction to accepted principles of sociology and psychology.
This, however, is what occurs in practically all cases of so-called 
bad boys or bad girls. Such children are found outside
society pounding on the gates and crying for admittance.
They are left unaided in the darkness; in their wretchedness
many perish; the great majority live on and become recidivists,
criminals and a menace to the lives and property of those who
inside the gates enjoy the bright lights and the love and respect
of their friends and relatives.
      The delinquent in a thousand cases is nobody in his own and
the public mind. The average socially normal child or youth is
somebody. He believes in himself as his parents, friends and other
boys and girls believe in him and respect him. Most delinquents 
regardless of pathological defects could be brought up to the
level of the socially normal if they were given the same consideration 
and respect by the community that is given children who
have not had the misfortune of having been in court or in a
correctional institution or a reformatory.

----------------------------

-7-

      If the men and women of our country were to manifest the
same fine spirit in saving the delinquent children of today for
useful citizenship, that they displayed in the great war in the
saving of human material and life, there would be no difficulty
in providing all the courts and social agencies with the necessary
modern scientific equipment for this purpose. No one objected
to the organization of great medical and psychological divisions
of the army in the great war. These things were considered indispensable 
in the making and the saving of soldiers. They are
indispensable now in times of peace and when we again reach such
heights of human endeavor as we attained during the war, the
public will demand that no human being shall be sacrificed on the
altar of hostility and hate, and that every delinquent adult or
child be given the benefit of all the aid that modern science can
supply.


Press Department.
National League of Women Voters.

Release Tuesday 2.m. papers
April 29.

Address of Dr. John Henry Gray, of Washington, D. C., head of
Department of Economics, Graduate School, American University, to be
given Monday night, April 28, in the Living Costs Commities Conference
during the Louisville Convention of the National League of Women
Voters.

His topic is "Our Tariff: Its Effect on International Relations"

------------------------

      I have come to this meeting with a crippled body and out of a
very busy life, because I believe that we have reached a crisis in
world affairs, and that the prosperity and the peace of the world now
depend on the action of the United States more than on any other
nation at any time in the history of the race. I have,also, come
because I think that the day is to be saved by genuine economic, and
political education. In the rush for wealth and what, in the vulgar
sense, we call success we have so far lost sight of ideals and of the
future that we must depend primarily, at least, in the near future
for that education upon voluntary effort. For our formal educational
system has been largely submerged and has surrendered to the prevailing
atmosphere. The chief result of that educational system, today, is
to glorify existing institutions and practices instead of adapting
those institutions and practices to the needs of the changed world in
which we must live. The schools train for nationalism in the narrow
sense of that word and isolation, when we must think and live in
internationalism, cooperation and association, if we are to live at
all.
      While we must have many of those voluntary educational movements 
of many kinds, I look upon this league as one of the most
promising in the field.
      In the last two generations the industrial struggle for men

-2-

has been so intense, that men have lost all sense of the future, and
are concerned only in trying to get rich in their own day, without
any knowledge or thought of the ultimate effect of their actions on
human welfare. On the other hand, the woman, notwithstanding the
number in the last decade going into business life, still remain the
leisure class of America. Even the women financially above the
clerical and manual laboring classes, who have gone into business and
professional life, since their social and political enfranchisement,
have not yet lost their ideals and social outlook, nor become wholly
absorbed in the struggle for wealth and power, and can be of the
greatest service in educating the nation for a better social, ethical,
economic and political life.
      But, at present, the large number of women who do not have to
earn their living must be counted on to organize and lead the
educational movement. These are the women who heretofore have been
mere parasites and idlers surrounded by the large mass of women now
in vocational life. They are no longer willing to be parasites and
butterflies. The time is now ripe for them to pursue idealistic ends
and load this educational movement.
      What more worthy aim could any person or any group have than to
organize these women for educating themselves, and then through them
educating the whole population for the genuine advance of
civilization?
      Our Constitution, our laws and our thought rest on the philosophy
of individualism, hand labor, local markets, competition and free
contact with unlimited natural resources. Under such conditions,
every man seized all he could and believed that he injured no one
thereby. He rejected co-operative effort and resented government
interference with his will. He was amply able to defend himself


-3-

against Indians, wild animals, and all the world. Wealth and educational 
opportunities were so nearly equal for all that, with
unlimited unappropriated land and natural resources. The fight was
a fair one, and the system worked reasonably well.
      A hundred and fifty years of machinery has changed all this.
The natural resources have been appropriated, large cities have grown
up; international trade has covered the world; international finance
has made the world one economic unit. Nobody now consumes what he
produces or produces what he consumes. Goods are produced by huge
corporations, trusts and cartels, and distributed from a single plant
over the whole world. The raw material for production comes from the
four corners of the earth. Vast cities have sprung up with no
adequate philosophy, laws or institutions to govern them.
      Ownership is separated from management and the workers. The
vast majority of mankind have become hired servants with no claim on
the product of their labor. We are trying to govern this complexity
by the theories and philosophy of the earlier ages.
      So long as this complex mechanism works smoothly, it produces a
thousand times more material goods then the age of hand labor, but,
the moment the machine is clogged up or cause to operate, great
masses of the population are in danger of actual starvation. If
even the milk supply of one of our large cities were cut off for a
few days, it would mean wholesale death for children.
      America lived at one time virtually without foreign trade.
After a long time for adjustment it could so live again, but it could
not live on any scale today regarded as civilized. When this fact
is mentioned, we at once think of the things for which our soil and
climate, with all of our great extent are wholly unsuited such as
tea, coffee, and jute. The human race lived for millions of years

-4-

without sugar, but we do not wish to live on such a scale. But in
this age of chemistry, where we have abundance of fundamental raw
material, such as iron ore, an endless variety of minor materials
must be imported for the steel industry to give us many of the finer
goods or anything like the cheapness of price we have. Our whole
civilization would be wrecked, if the materials imported for the
steel industry were cut off. We depend primarily on imports for our
soap industry. Of course we could make soap without imports but it
would cost many times what it does not. So we could harvest our
grain crops but it would have to be done by hand without imports.
We boast of our resources and our skill and of the progress of science
but if we are to get the full benefits of these, it must be by cooperation 
with the whole world, and not by saluting the flag in every
school every morning or crying America first. It is true that the
unfortunate and unparalleled material progress of western civilization 
was built-up, or at least, greatly accelerated by the material
exploitation of loss industrialized people, but that day is past.
Many of the wars of the past have been directly caused by the rivalry
of advanced nations to dominate weak peoples, with the solo purpose of
exploiting them by getting raw materials cheap, and unloading manufactured 
goods on them at a profit. That day is past. With the
growth of trade, the sending of missionaries, the general spread of
education, cheap printing and the inculeating[?] of the spirit of 
independence, such people are no longer willing to be exploited however 
poor or weak they are from a military standpoint. Not the least
check to this exploitation is the jealousy


-5-

of the great nations among themselves. Everyone knows that for more
than one hundred years Turkey has stood out by her own strength but
simply because the great powers could not agree on the division of
the spoils. The same is true of China. Such jealousy prevents the
dismemberment of nations, but it equally endangers the peace of the
world. China may remain intact and India may remain under the British
flag for a long time but profitable exploitation by foreigners in
either case is a thing of the past.
      Enough has been said to show that, if we are to maintain our
present level of material civilization or to advance it, we must
preserve the peace of the world and keep the channels of international
trade open. From the beginning of our present government, our
legislation and administration have always been unduly favorable to
the industrial and manufacturing classes. The condition was greatly
aggravated when the great war left us virtually untouched in manpower
and wealth, while it left Europe impoverished and depleted. Since
we were rich enough to loan them the money to pay for the goods so
sadly needed, always with high rates of interest and great bankers
profits, this caused a great accentuation of our manufacturing and
commercial classes. The result is that we find ourselves today with
a capacity in these fields probably 25 to 30 per cent in excess of any
need for supplying the domestic market. Truly, no other nation, therefore, 
was ever in so great a need of holding and extending its foreign
market as we are at present. If we cannot hold and expand that
market, we face non-payment of German reparations, of inter-allied
debts, of ten to fifteen billions of private debts owed us by
foreigners, and wholesale unemployment, Wide-flung broad lines
suffering and such a readjustment of our whole economic system as no
nation has ever been subjected to and survived. Practically speaking
we are much more likely to cause war by our attempts to prevent such

-6-

a drastic readjustment than we are to endure peacefully the hardships
necessary to effect such a change.
      Let us turn now to a brief consideration of our tariff system as
related to this subject. This demands some explanation of the theory
and effect of tariffs and inter-national trade. First, we speak of
trade between Great Britain and the United States as if that trade
were carried on by the government. Such is not the case. The trade
is carried on by individuals for profit. In the absence of government
restrictions, every man sells goods where he can get the best price,
all things considered. That is, where he can make the most profit,
and buys where he can buy the cheapest. In the long run the experts of
goods from any country must pay for the imports from all other
countries. Ultimate balance must by paid in gold, but the wear and
tear, the insurance and express charges, and, above all, the loss of
interest during shipment are so great that endless expedients are
resorted to to postpone the sending of gold and to minimize the ultimate
amount to be sent. The only exception that goods must by paid for by
goods or gold is that if one renders service such as, carrying goods by
rail or ships, he establishes a credit on which he can draw just as if
he had sold goods abroad and deposited the money there. Likewise if
vast numbers of Americans travel abroad, they do not carry the money
with them, they must establish a credit abroad against which they
can draw just as if they had sold goods there. A like exception, much
less important since we have limited immigration, is the money that
immigrants in America send to the old countries. They must send goods
to establish this credit or buy the claim or someone who has sent
goods. Bearing in mind these apparent exceptions, which are not real
exceptions, we may ignore them. They amount to a large lump sum so far


-7-

as America is concerned but make a small part of international transactions. 
They are designated as invisible exports.
      All international balances are settled by bills of exchange.
These are bought and sold by bankers as a means of temporary employment
of funds. The rates at any point at any time depending on the course
of trade and interest rates in the different countries. In normal time
they are all on a gold basis, a bill calling for so many grains of gold.
The fluctuation is limited by the expense of shipping gold. But a
few great centers like London and New York carry on business with the
whole world. Their banks hold deposits of other banks in every part
of the world. The banks borrow and land among themselves and always
are willing to buy or to sell bills irrespective of the course of trade.
Most of the bills are drawn on these centers, irrespective of the
origin of the goods against which they are drawn. These banks in the
great centers perform exactly the function in international settlements 
that clearing houses do in domestic banking.
      When Alexander Hamilton established the first tariff he had
various objects in view. First there was need of government revenue.
The federal government was weak and of doubtful vitality. The people
were hostile to all direct taxes, especially federal taxes. In the
next place manufacturers were but little known and hazardous transportation 
costs were high. Diversity of industries was desirable.
Dependence on foreigners for any necessary goods was much more
dangerous than at present. The people being ignorant of manufacturing, 
if they were to incur all the risks and uncertainties of such a
venture, they had to have at least a chance of large profits. Furthermore, 
he stated that he wished to give the richer classes special
privileges and extra gains to attach them to a new central government.

-8-

Hamilton's idea would have been justified if he could later have
abolished or curtailed the special privileges. But power grows with
power, and greed increases with power. From that day to this, the
protected interests have been privileged class, and with each
decade have increased their power and their privilege. Hamilton's 
scheme was for infant industries. Now our mature industries that
dominate foreign markets, seek and obtain more and more tariffs and
control and government. We hear nothing new of diversity of industries
or of infant industries. When the protectionists are driven from
one argument, they invent another equally fallacious. Our tariffs are
no longer made by these imediately concerned, on any theory of
protection or free trade, but by the most powerful group deciding what
they want and then approaching other groups and offering to give them
what they want if they will support the rates that the stronger group
desires. This goes on until enough votes are obtained to put the bill
over.
      The avowed object of a protective tariff is to raise the price
by the full amount of the duty and thus give an extra profit to the
protected industry. So long as imports continue to come in under the
tariff it will usually raise the price, but not necessarily by the full
amount of the duty. That depends on some theoretical considerations
that must be mentioned, but cannot be fully explained. It is a well-known 
fact that a change in price effects the demand for goods, but it
effects it quite differently for different goods. Broadly speaking,
an increase in price lessons the demand, a decrease in price increases
it. How much in either case depends on what the economist calls
the elasticity of demand and supply. The price of any good in any
market, at any time, is fixed by the cost of the producer for that


-9-

market that produces at the greatest cost, known as the marginal
producer, the men that just comes out even when the price is raised by
the full amount of the duty, if the demand is approximately as great
at this price as at the old lower price. The first result is to rival
out of the market some of the most inefficient foreign producers and
to call into action new producers at home, those who could not make a
profit at the old price. If these new producers are numerous and can
make more than normal profits at the new price, they will be competition 
flood the market and reduce the price. It will settle at a price
higher than before the increase, but loss than the former price plus
the increase in tariff. If the demand is such as to be seriously
checked by the price raised by the full amount of the tariff a like
result may follow, that is an increased price prevails but the price
is not raised by the full extent of tariff. Likewise how much of the
market the foreigners will held under the increased tariff will depend
on what part of their supply is produced at less than the marginal
cost. It may well be that so small a part supplied formerly to our
market under the old tariff was produced at high cost, that nearly as
much comes in as before. In that case the price here cannot be raised
to the full extent of the increased tariff, but the foreigners make
loss profits than they did before. For production costs for these
have not been changed and they must pay the increased tariff to get
their goods in. If the tariff is prohibitive the price will be raised
to the full extent of the tariff, if the demand will stand it.
      It seems scarcely necessary to say that a tariff in the statute
book on a commodity that is regularly exported has no effect on price.
But our statute books are loaded with such rates. This is especially
true of rates on farm products. The farmers being ignorant of the
effects of the tariff, think they are protected by these rates and to

-10-

got the rates on agricultural products give their votes to rates on
other commodities whose prices are effected by the tariff.
      We hear much today of maintaining the American standard of wages
and of the danger of the competition of pauper labor in countries with
lower wages, as if the ability to export a given commodity depended on
the ability to produce it by low wages. This assumption is capable of
complete refutation by facts and also by reason. Our wages are
admittedly higher than in any other country in the world, yet we are
the largest exporting nation. In 1829 we exported in round numbers 5 and
1/4 billion dollars worth of goods, every item of which went to
countries paying lower wages than we do, and our exports have increased
in value two and one half fold in the last fifteen years, with a wage
scale constantly rising faster than in foreign countries. This is a 
complete and final answer to the pauper labor argument and to the
assumption that exports depend on wages.
      Why certain commodities are exported cannot be determined by wage
scales or by any facts or statistics but must be approached from the
standpoint of theoretical reasoning. In such reasoning we deal with
assumptions and tendencies. The assumptions are bases on experience
and the tendencies are often interrupted before they work out their
full effects. We always begin with the assumption, "other things
going equal". For our purposes let us assume universal free trade --
the absence of all government restrictions on the movement of goods
and gold. The trade between two nations is said to be in equlibrium
when the value of exports is equal to the value of imports. Each of
the two nations will have a certain level of prices - not likely, or
necessarily, the same level. The general theory of domestic prices is
that all the money (or money equivalent) is exchanged for all the


-11-

goods within a given unit of time with a given quantity of money and
a given quantity of goods the price level will depend on the rapidity
of circulation. That, in turn, will depend on the banking facilities,
the means of transportation, the habits of the people and many other
elements.
      But within any country labor or capital are much more productive in
some industries than in others. The good produced by such industries
will be relatively cheap - notwithstanding the general level of prices-
In fact, goods entering widely into export trade are the same price
in all exporting countries, if allowance be made for the cost of 
transportation. For example, the world price of what being fixed by
demand and supply in Liverpool, the Dakota farmer, and the Argentina
farmer, and all the rest supplying that market, get the Liverpool
prices less the cost of transportation from their respective farms to
that market. One sells his commodity at home or abroad wherever he can
get the largest net price for it, after paying all the costs, including 
the costs of transportation. Certain goods are exported because labor
is more efficient in that industry than in other industries in the
same country. It matters not what the cause, if that efficiency is so
general that high wages are not due to tariff but to general productivity
of industry.
      Exactly the same doctrine of comparative costs applies to domestic
division of labor as to international trade. The President of the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad could probably not run a locomotive better
than any man on his road but as President he gets about twenty times
as much pay as an engineer. He, therefore, hires engineers to run all
the trains. Just so we buy foreign goods, if the government will
allow us to do so and pay for them by exporting goods which we can

-12-
produce with less effort than we could produce the goods we import in
exchange for them.
   Let us assume the trade of two nations is in equilibrium and that
these nations are isolated from all others. A sudden demand for some
new good discovered in one arises in the other. Since exports and
imports exactly balanced before the purchasing nation of this new
foreign good will now have a balance to pay in gold to the other nation
but the outflow of gold will lower prices in the paying country and
the inflow of gold will raise prices in the other country. The level
of prices in each country is changed. The country into which gold
flowed became a better place to sell goods in, the other a better place
to buy goods in. the adjustment is automatic.
   The collossal disturbances of the last fifteen years confuse us.
International trade in theory or principle is exactly the same as
domestic trade save as it is interfered with by governmental restrictions. 
All trade is essentially barter-goods pay for goods. Our
total so called unfavorable balance of trade-excess of exports over
imports in the last sixteen years is about twenty-five billion of
dollars. That is represented, in some measure, by our own securities
held abroad before the war and bought back by us. A small part
represents the balance of the invisible items referred to above --
immigrants, money, services and travellers. But the great bulk
represents what we loaned to the allied governments and the foreign
bonds, stocks and title to foreign property acquired since the war.
Like the German reparations none of this has been finally paid.
Without paying us anything on the principle, foreign nations must now
send us in addition to paying for all their imports, a net balance of
approximately $100,000,000 a month until the principal is paid. This


-13-
includes the so called interallied debts. It is highly probable that
if political revolutions can be avoided the undeveloped states can,
and will pay their portion of it if our tariffs are not made
prohibitive.
   But something like two-thirds of the total is due from the impoverished
and devastated European nations. There is nothing in
experience or human history to justify the belief that they can, or
will pay any such a sum. For as already explained each nation must
export goods enough to pay for all of its imports and, in addition,
enough to meet these financial obligations. The same is true of the
German reparations. Particularly Germany and England must import
vast quantities of food and raw materials to keep their illbalanced
industrial civilization from collapsing. Particularly are these two
nations manufacturing nations with greatly overexpanded manufacturing
capacity and labor. If they are to pay they must find profitable
foreign markets for such goods. But we are the largest and richest
market in the world. Furthermore, it prevents them from pay quite as
much if we take from them natural markets as if we close our own to
them. The evil is greatly intensified by the fact that our own over-expansion
 of manufacturing requires over expanding foreign markets.
As previously explained, it is in the case of each nation in the long
run a question of obtaining a net balance of exports of goods to all
the world equal to the financial payments to be made. The round
about character of the trade does not effect in the least this fundamental 
principle, that goods pay for goods.
   The world has realized since the great war that the peace of the
world must be maintained or civilization will be destroyed. In the
great war it was clearly demonstrated that no nation can preserve

-14-

itself by its own armaments. England has actually ruled the seas for
100 years. Yet, if we had joined the central powers, or even remained
neutral, there is every reason to believe that the central powers
would have been victorious. The safety of any nation today depends on
good will, friendship and cooperation, not on military and naval
armaments. The stronger the nation is the truer this is. The talk
of military preparedness and being ready to defend one's self is pure
nonsense. It smacks of the eighteenth and not the twentieth century.
Furthermore, the richer the nation and the more foreign investments it
has the greater need of peace and the more injury from war.

Our unparalleled wealth, our boasting, our insisting on the payment of
the so called interallied debts, our refusal to cooperate with other
nations since the war, but, above all, our unprecedented military and
naval expenditure in recent years, has made the whole world suspicious
of our motives and afraid of us.

In the midst of such tension and fear we are apparently about to
pass the most outrageous tariff bill ever proposed in any nation. A
bill, which, if enacted, and enforced, brings domestic hardships and
suffering to every nation in the world. It will tend to increase
enormously the domestic inequality between agricultural and manufactur-
ing commodities by raising prices of manufactured protected goods, and
lowering the prices of agricultural goods for the farmers are the
largest exporters. If foreigners cannot sell us they cannot buy our
agricultural exports, even where the new rates raise agricultural
prices in the United States they are a vital injury to the farmers
as a class. They in many cases strike every farmer as a consumer and
effect a very [?] producers of the protected article. For example
the rates now pending on sugar amount to about 100 per cent, at present


-15-

prices. It must be remembered that when a tariff raises the price it
effects the price of the domestic product to the same degree as on the
imported portions. Assuming that the price would be raised to the
full extent of the tariff, we are to double the price of sugar to all
consumers - on the 5,000,000 tons imported as well as on the 1,000,000
tons produced at home we thus burden all consumers including all
farmers in order that about 1.5 percent of all farmers may get an
increased price for the sugar they grew. The rates would be an
irreparable injury to Cuba to which we are under the strictest moral
obligations. This particular industry is especially objectionable
socially. It is for the most part carried on by contract, peon,
foreign labor of the lowest type and a migratory character. While
a large part of the boat sugar industry would be profitable without
any tariff, a large part is purely parasitic - a direct child of the
tariff. That part of the industry is not profitable even under the
tariff. The tariff will therefore simply divert industry to less
profitable channels. I use the sugar tariff as an example because it
is perhaps the most objectionable in the whole bill. First, it in-
creases the cost of living for every man, woman and child in America.
It brings in comparatively little revenue to the Treasury. It does
a wrong and a great injury to our ward, Cuba. It diverts our labor
and capital to less favorable industries. It is fraught with serious
social evils. I dwell also on the sugar duties because they are the
best illustrations in the whole list of the doctrine of comparative
costs. The expansion of the industry, if it comes must be in the
sugar best portion. This requires strictly hard labor - labor of a
kind that Americans will not do at any price. They can employ their
time more profitably to themselves in capitalistic machine industries
for themselves and the public. Certain domestic phase of the matter

-16-

can be mentioned here not discussed. Excessive tariffs not only place
burdens on the many for the benefit of the few and divert labor and
capital from mere to less profitable industries but they haston the
depletion and waste of mutual resources to the detriment of future
generations. They tend to industrialize our nation and concentrate our
population in the great cities. They increase the inequality between
farm prices and the prices of manufactured goods; they corupt [corrupt] all
government and tend to destroy all ideals. The greatly increase the
inequality of wealth.

But great as these domestic evils are they sink into insignificance
compared to the evil effects on international relations and the peace
of the world. A generation ago, President Cleveland summarily
dismissed the British Ambassador for making some very wild remarks
about free trade during a political campaign. That was accounted in
those days an unwarranted interference by a foreign ambassador in a
purely domestic American question. Times have changed. During the
pending tariff controversy our State Department has received formal
diplomatic protests against the proposed increase in tariff rates from
almost every national government on earth. Diplomatic relations have
not been severed and so far as I know no one has even suggested such
severance. Most nations have already retaliated against high tariff by
raising their rates. It is reported that M. Briend is sending this
month a questionnaire to 28 nations asking them if they are willing to
join an European Alliance or Federation to counteract our tariff policy.
There is no doubt whatever that fear that the United States means to
dominate the whole world is an important element in the military and 
naval rivalry now going on.

It is an accepted belief in the leading industrial nations that
they cannot prosper, pay debts, private or public, or pay reparations,


-17-

nor even keep the domestic peace and live, if the American Tariff
policy is to destroy or even further limit to a great degree their
market for exports. On the other hand the less developed nations
fear one financial domination, an inability to pay for necessary
imports or find a market for their exports, if our tariff policy
leads to much greater isolation on our part.

The great nation lies down and dies knowingly in peace or with-
out a struggle. On the other hand it is inconceivable and contrary to
all human experience to suppose that if for any reason foreigners
should be unable to pay us what they owe us that we should refrain
from interfering in their government to safeguard our claims. A
wholesale repudiation or failure to meet our claims would probably
result in world war and destruction of civilization. With 25 to 30
billion of claims against foreigners already it is inconceivable that
we can go on much longer spending millions of public money trying to
extend our foreign trade and at the same time making it more and
more impossible for foreign nations to sell goods here or to pay the
money we claim from them. It is time for you to set a halt on this
madness.

----------------

Press Department.
National League of Women Voters

Release 12 o'clock noon.
Tuesday, April 29

Abstract of talk to be given by Dr. William Leiserson.
professor of economics at Antioch College (Yellow Springs,
Ohio) to be given Tuesday morning, April 29. in the
Women-in-Industry Committee Conference during the Louisville
convention of the National League of Women Voters.

His topic will be "The Necessity of Stabilizing Employment"

"If business men would put the same scientific
research into unemployment as they put into their producton
problems, we would soon eliminate most of the difficulty,"
Dr. W. M. Leiserson declared.

Dr. Leiserson cited the case of the Frigidaire
Corporation who discovered that their product made more
noise than that of rival companies.  Thousands, perhaps
hundreds of thousand, of dollars were spent in every kind
of scientific investigation to correct this defect.  The
makers of Lux Soap spent large sums of money to remedy a
defect in their product, and so on down the list.  When it
comes to unemployment, however, these companies consider
it none of their business.  "If they would consider it just
as important not to have their employees' families dependent
on charity, if they applied the same scientific research
to this problem as they do to production problems, remedies
for the present situation would soon develop," he asserted.

"The Proctor and Gamble Soap Company," Dr. Leiserson
said, "guarantees its employees 48 weeks of work or 49
weeks of pay.  How are they able to do this?"  They used to
work like other people, he explained, day and night and
Sundays three or four months of the year, and then not at

all.  The firm, however, inaugurated a scientific research
to arrive at the cause of this.  They discovered that the
fluctuation was caused by the wholesaler who bought long in
advance of his retailers.  When the wholesaler figured
that prices were going to rise, he put in a heavy order,
got rid of the wholesaler and sold directly to retailers.
They are able to estimate in advance every year how much
of their product will be sold on the basis of statements
from their salesmen.  This estimate is divided by twelve
and the same amount is produced each month of the year.  "In
only one year out of seven," stated Dr. Leiserson, "did
the company make a mistake, and that year they needed more
than their calculations called for."

The Packard Automobile Company makes a similar
estimate, and produces its product whether it is in demand
at the time or not.  Several other industries are now being
run on this plan.

In Dr. Leiserson's opinion, the main reason for the
serious unemployment problem is that business men are
ignorant of the real conditions and consequently afraid of
them.  "Unemployment in England and Germany is considered
so bad that people say these countries are going to the dogs,
whereas the United States declares itself very prosperous.
The truth of the matter is that four million workers
ordinarily attached to industry are out of work in the
United States today, this number being double the number of
unemployed in Germany and more than double that in England.
In England and Germany, however, the number of unemployed


-3- 

is counted and published every week in the year, whereas 
we leave the problem to take care of itself while our
newspapers and chambers of commerce declare business 
conditions fundamentally sound." 

As to the fact that business conditions began to 
improve about the middle of March, Dr. Leiserson stated 
that it is not definitely known whether this is a seasonal 
improvement or really an upward movement of business. 
Although the building movement is showing an increase, most 
of the other industries are more than 30% below last year 
at the present time. The charities in many cities are 
receiving more calls than in 1914 and even more than they 
received in the big depression of 1921. Practically every 
city, he declared, has bread lines, soup kitchens, and all 
other indications of a bad industrial situation. 
  
The main trouble, Dr. Leiserson asserts, is that 
employers and managers consider their responsibility only to 
their stockholders. They want to pay dividends every 
year whether they earn them or not. During a bad year, 
they use their surplus to pay dividends. If they payed
wages, they could not pay dividends. 

"What we need," stated Dr. Leiserson emphatically, 
"is to enforce the company's responsibility to wage earners 
as well as to stockholders. One way to do this is to get 
the government to tax all industries and set up an 
unemployment insurance fund, thereby putting the cost of 
unemployment on industry. To avoid paying this cost, Dr. 
Leiserson explained with a smile, industry will study 

-4- 

methods of avoiding unemployment. If we put the burden of 
unemployment where it belongs. the slogan 'employment first' 
will replace 'dividends first.'


 

Press Department
National League of Women Voters

Release 12 o'clock  noon
Tuesday, April 29.

Speech of Dr. Broadus Mitchell, of Baltimore, associate professor
of political economy, Johns Hopkins University, to be given
Tuesday morning, April 29, before the Women-in-Industry Committee
conference during the Louisville convention of the National League
of Women Voters.

His topic will be "The New South and its Industrial Problems".

The League of Women Voters can be most effective in
studying and influencing local economic and social situations.
The organization, to the extent that it has dealt with national
and international problems, has largely dissipated its energies.
By and large it is properly said that woman suffrage in America
had no other impact upon the vote than to double it.  We were
told through the years of agitation for woman suffrage that votes
of women would be informed with a new social conscience and
that the old venality or indifference of the men would be flavored,
probably profoundly altered, by the social alertness of women's
ballots.  It is not surprising that a decade has given us little
to fit in with this picture.  The new women voters were caught up
in the old political habit.  Women voters were victims of two
well-nigh universal errors; first, they subscribed to the belief
that political or legislative fist is of more importance than
fundamental economic fact, and second, they failed to understand
that the local and not the national arena is to be chosen for
first endeavor.  Magnificent projects remain merely projects.
They result in nothing besides talk.

The new industrialism in the South invites the attention
and the hard work of women voters, not only on the South,
but outside it.  It presents many problems which are important

-2-

in political, social and economic aspects.  Here is a great
region of our country in transition from an agricultural to an
industrial state.  If women want to have anything to say about
the world in which they live, here is a chance to inform and
express themselves.

I want to make three points about Southern industry,
particularly the great cotton manufacture:

(1)  The workers themselves are virtually without
voice, either political or economical.  Many of those in cotton
mill villages never express themselves on local affairs, because
the towns belong to the companies and are not incorporated places.
In other elections their ignorance has been capitalized by the
demagogue who inflames their prejudices to get himself into
office.  They have no industrial suffrage because, until now,
they have been denied the right to organize in labor unions.

(2)  There has been no considerable body of people in
the South anxious by legislative means to protect the Poor Whites
who have recently absorbed by industry.  Restrictive legislation,
as in the matter of child labor, has been enacted tardily and
reluctantly, mainly in response to national agitation.

Southerners are said to have a talent for politics.  They have
certainly never shown social insight or anxiety through the means
of the law-maker or other public officials to minimize the
penalties of rapid industrialization.

(3)  If the women of the South and of the country
generally become aroused over the long hours and low pay of
southern cotton mill workers and seek to better conditions through
legislation, they must not be frightened off by the allegation


-3-

that they will fatally injury industry.  For this is an old cry,
almost as old as capitalist industry itself.  Nothing can really
injury an industry which prescribes for it decent minimum
standards of living.  It is often necessary to bolster an
industry with a protective tariff which will enable it to charge
the American people artificially high prices for its product.
But it is never proper to subsidize an industry by permitting it
to exploit its workers.  We are told that conditions in the
Southern cotton manufacture are bad because the industry is
depressed.  It is just as true that the industry is depressed
partly because its labor standards are low.  If we were able to
require shorter working hours and a reasonable minimum wage,
probably we should have some inefficient manufacturers driven
out of business, which would tend to reduce the present glutting
of the market and thus benefit those manufacturers able to
operate under fair conditions of labor.  Wherever conscience has
been aroused against a vicious industrial practice, a thousand
and one business reasons have been adduced for calling off the
protest.  But generally, when social morality has had its way,
the defenses of the entrepreneur have been forgotten, industry
has adjusted itself to the new higher requirements, and everybody,
including the business man himself, has been benefited by
the change.  It will be so in the Industrial South when women
voters set themselves to studying and improving the lot of the
Southern operative population.

Press Department
National League of Women Voters

Release afternoon papers
THURSDAY, MAY 1.

Abstracts from talk of Mrs. Richard Edwards, of Peru, Ind.
who as chairman of the Anniversary and Memorial Plan,
presented the plan Thursday morning, May 1, to the Louisville
convention of the National League of Women Voters.

Could greater joy come to those women than to know
that the influence of their names, evoked at this date,
gave greater stability and assurance of continuity of effort
to the kind of activity they visioned the voting women
carrying on.  For what do we study in the League today but
subjects which occupied their minds.

If we can make permanent by the tablet and biennially
recurring through expenditure of the funds a reminder to a
swiftly moving age of what women have done for women--then
we have established a real memorial.  If we can quicken the
sense of obligation in this and coming generations to what
has been done for them, we increase the value they set on
the tangible thing acquired--the right to vote.

It has been salutary for us to realize the vote was 
not a free gift of a beneficent government, nor has all
advancement for activities of women come since 1920.  We are
voters by the grace of human progress and the efforts of
these many women so eager to use the vote.

One fact must be borne in mind, always with regard to
the list of distinguished names and this is an important
phase of the memorial.  It is totally unlike most lists.
It is no list of the world's twelve greatest suffragists, not





-2- 

a list selected by a jury, sitting at some central point reviewing 
the whole field of women's effort, using a yard stick 
to determine eligibility - setting up standards by which to 
measure eligibility - saying this one is worthy to go on the 
list  that one has not done quite so much for suffrage and 
for women and so cannot go on.  

It is a much more significant list than one centrally 
compiled. It is a list brought together from all sections of the 
country. There are names presented - one at a time - by the 
states in which these women lived presented because of personal 
contact, local group interest and appreciation. Not the kind of 
appreciation which results from knowledge of some striking deed 
quickly telegraphed around the world, but that real appreciation 
which comes from close association and affection - which comes 
also from knowledge of the influence and inspiration these women 
have brought to their communities. 

Sometimes the greatest incentive to achievement has 
come from women whom a central jury would not select, but the 
state knows, the community values and the name is presented, 
saying this is the women we feel must be recognized because of 
what she has done for all of us and urged us on to do. There 
are omissions in the list. This is especially true in regard 
to State Rolls of Honor. But such omissions can be 
rectified either soon or in the preparation of additional 
memorials at a later date. To provide against there being any 
too glaring omissions and remind us as states, if we had 
been forgetful on the National Roll - to review those names      

-3- 

already presented, the National Advisory Committee on selecting 
names was appointed - women who while interested members of the 
League and suffragists, had also won recognition before the 
public in other fields of women's interest and so were fitted 
to see the whole problem.   

  

Press Department
National League of Women Voters.

Release Wednesday a.m. papers
April 30

Speech of Mrs. George Gellhorn of St. Louis, former vice-
president National League of Women Voters and director,
National American Woman Suffrage Association to be given Tuesday
night, April 29, at the "tenth anniversary of woman suffrage"
mass meeting during the Louisville convention of the National
League of Women Voters.

The topic of Mrs Gellhorn's speech will be "The Debt."

---------------------------

This evening we shall try to recapture some of the drama and
beauty of the struggle for woman's emancipation, that we and our
children may more deeply value our hard-won heritage and pay a
tribute of grateful appreciation to those whose memories are
worthy of perpetuation.  The world so quickly accepts a condition
as if it had always been that Woman's Suffrage seems like last
year's theme song or a topic to be looked up in a public library.

This audience may be reminded (it need not be told) that
woman's political equality was the legitimate outgrowth of the
fundamental principles of government as expressed in the
Declaration of Independence, but we know how Abigail Adams'
reminder to John was received.  Although suffrage was only an
episode in the woman movement it was recognized that most of
women's disabilities were rooted in disfranchisement.  And for
decades the feeble few who advocated woman suffrage suffered
derision, opposition and persecution.  It is incredible that
the moderate and reasonable statements and demands (for so
they seem to use) should have so infuriated the public.

But fortunately, those who made the struggle their life-work

-2-

had the rare advantage of not being able to comprehend defeat.
Their superb determination is a single quality common to them
all.  The Beards tell us, "Intellectual and political enfranchisement
of woman can be traced in its representative
characters from the eighteenth century, but it took more than
a century to warm it into life."

When Mrs. Catt came upon the scene her wise generalship
increased the ranks of its supporters tremendously but she was
seldom satisfied.  "We are converting women to want the vote
by the hundreds," she said "but we are not having any
appreciable effect upon men.  This is because men have been
accustomed to take new ideas only when accompanied by party
leadership with brass bands and huzzahs.  We have a total lack of both.
Ours is a cold lonesome little movement.  There is an absolute
indifference concerning it.  We need some kind of political
mustard plaster to make things lively ."

The financial side of the campaign reveals no need of a
Corrupt Practices Act to control expenses.  The record of
contributions would wring the hearts of all of us.  In
California, a large photograph of Miss Anthony and Dr. Shaw was
given for every #2.00 pledge and many poor seamstresses and 
washerwomen fulfilled their pledges in twenty-five cent
installments, coming eight times with their mite.  Often when
there was not enough money on hand at headquarters to buy
a postage stamp, there would be a timid knock at the door and
a poorly dressed woman with a quarter would say, "I have done
without tea this

-3-

week to bring you money," or a poor little clerk, "I have made
a piece of fancy work evenings and sold it for this dollar."
Many a woman who worked hard ten hours a day to earn her bread
would come to headquarters and carry home a great armload of
circulars to fold and address at night.

The first large windfall was a contribution of $50.00 from a
man, and then later bequest in wills made the writing of the
History of Woman Suffrage possible.

No simple recital of what the pioneers have done or been can
give an adequate picture of the movement which came slowly as the
result of the cumulative force of years of effort and represents
a gradual growth of conviction.

Although born of temperance and slavery agitation, the
campaign for woman suffrage was kept entirely outside all
political, religious, or reform questions.  The courage which
it took to enforce this policy is a tribute to the sagacity of
leaders in the American Woman Suffrage Association.  Uncritical
support was no more to be desired by them than prejudiced
opposition.  "This drain of helpless women, able and willing to
work but utterly ignorant of how to do it, wears me out body
and soul.  So few seem to use their brain-power on ways and
means," writes Miss Anthony.  But from a little band apparently
leading a forlorn hope, almost universally ridiculed and
condemned, they increased their forces to a mighty horde
marching forward to an assured victory.

Tonight we are meeting to recognize the benefits we have
received from these heroic pioneers.  We could here restate the

-4-

famous Rochester Declaration of Rights and see in what degree
the movement has succeeded in eliminating the wrongs so
clearly announced.  Suffice it to say that with woman's
political enfranchisement has come a larger outlook on life,
higher educational opportunities, and the theory (if not
always the practice) of equal pay for equal work.  It is
significant that these specific objectives of the movement
which have not been yet achieved are still part of the program of
those of us who are carrying on.

It is in the spirit of ancestor-worship that we are honoring
these women from whose labors we have profited.  Anna
Howard Shaw enjoined us against perfunctory praise.  "Neither
the world nor my cause is indebted to me--but from the
depths of a full and very grateful heart I acknowledge my
lasting indebtedness to them both."  It is not because we
have received the mantle of the suffrage organization
and wish to express a becoming gratitude that we are
here met.  We have responsibilities to be fulfilled,
inequalities to be overcome, inertia and indifference to be
fought and energy and interest in doing the world's work to
be rekindled.  We need the vivifying influence of these women
to make us do our jobs today.

We need it in order to get a true perspective of the women's
place in the political scene.  We need it to restore some of
the conviction which kept the older generation at work during
the long years of the struggle for suffrage.  We need it to 
restore our equanimity in the heat of battles for a federal


-5-

program of maternity and infancy welfare, for instance.  "Vent
all your ill-feelings on me but keep sweet as Juno roses to
every body else," said Miss Anthony to the one of the many
apostles of women's rights, "It does not pay to lose your
temper."

Our debt to them we pay to ourselves.  Their propaganda by
the magic of an anagram we have changed to program.  Their
lives and work may not have been appreciated by their
contemporaries and history is in danger of making its usual
omissions on the distaff side.  The constructive efforts of
women are rarely recorded in the story of the building of a
nation.  Let us make this memorial of ours a foundation for
a trust history.

With the poet Yeats, let us vow,

"They shall be remembered forever,
They shall be alive forever,
They shall be speaking forever,
The people shall hear them forever."

Press Department
National League of Women Voters

Release Afternoon Papers
Thursday, MAY 1

NATIONAL ROLL OF HONOR
(As announced to the Louisville
Convention of the National League
of Women Voters, May 1, 1930.)

Susan B. Anthony (Deceased)
Nominated by New York.

Dr. Anna Howard Shaw (Deceased)
Nominated by Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt.
Nominated by Iowa and New York.

CALIFORNIA--

Mrs. Frank A. Gibson -- Los Angeles
Mrs. Caroline N. Severance (Deceased)
Mrs. Clara Shortridge Foltz, of Los Angeles.
Mrs. Elmira T. Stephens
Mrs. Charlotte LeMoyne Wills (Deceased)

COLORADO--

Mrs. Sarah Platt Decker (Deceased)

CONNECTICUT--

Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker (Deceased)
Miss Katherine Ludington, of Lyme.
Miss Caroline Ruutz-Rees, of Greenwich.
Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, of Norwich.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA--

Mrs. Helen Hamilton Gardener (Deceased)
Mrs. Ellen Spencer Mussey, Washington, D. C.

ILLINOIS--

Miss Jane Addams, of Chicago.
Mrs. Henry W. Cheney (Deceased)
Mrs. J. Paul Goode (Deceased)
Miss Julia Clifford Lathrop, of Rockford.



-2-

INDIANA--

Mrs. Zerelda Wallace (Deceased)

IOWA--

Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt

KANSAS--

Mrs. Charles H. Brooks, of Wichita.

KENTUCKY--

Mrs. Madeline McDowell Breckenridge (Deceased)

MASSACHUSETTS--

Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, of Boston
Mrs. Mary A. Livermore (Deceased)
Miss Fanny Osgood (Deceased)
Mrs. Maud Wood Park, formerly of Boston.
Mrs. Lucy Stone (Deceased)

MICHIGAN--

Mrs. Belle Brotherton, of Detroit.
Mrs. James G. MacPherson, of Saginaw (now resident
of Pasadena, Calif.)

MINNESOTA--

Mrs. H. G. Harrison, of Minneapolis.
Dr. Ethel Edgerton Hurd (Deceased)
Miss Isabel Lawrence, of St. Cloud.
Mrs. C. P. Noyes, of St. Paul.
Miss Maria Sanford (Deceased)
Mrs. Andrea Ueland (Deceased)

MISSOURI--

Mrs. Emily Newell Blair, of Joplin.
Mrs. George Gellhorn, of St. Louis.
Mrs. Luella St. Clair Moss, of Columbia.

NEBRASKA--

Miss Grace Abbott, of Grand Island.

-3-

NEW HAMPSHIRE--

Mrs. Armonia Smith White (Deceased)

NEW JERSEY--

Mrs. Nina C. Van Winkle, formerly of Newark, now of
Washington, D. C.

NEW MEXICO--

Mrs. Ann Webster, of Santa Fe, formerly of
Washington, D.C.

NEW YORK--

Miss Susan B. Anthony (Deceased)
Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, of New York City
Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell (Deceased)
Mrs. Raymond Brown, of New York City.
Miss Mary Garrett Hay (Deceased)
Mrs. Florence Kelley, of New York City.
Mrs. Frank Leslie (Deceased)
Miss Harriet May Mills, of Syracuse.
Dr. Anna Garlin Spencer, of New York City.
Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Deceased)
Mrs. Charles L. Tiffany (Deceased)
Mrs. Norman DeR. Whitehouse, of New York City.
James Lees Laidlaw.

OHIO --

Judge Florence E. Allen, of Columbus.
Miss Elizabeth J. Hauser, of Girard.
Miss Belle Sherwin of Cleveland.
Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, of Warren.

OREGON--

Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway (Deceased)

PENNSYLVANIA--

Mrs. John O. Miller, of Pittsburgh.
Mrs. Lucretia Mott (Deceased)
Dr. Anna Howard Shaw (Deceased)

RHODE ISLAND--

Mrs. Elizabeth Buffum Chace (Deceased)
Mrs. Pauline Wright Davis (Deceased)




-4-

TENNESSEE--

Mrs. Guilford Dudley, of Nashville.
Mrs. George M. Milton, of Chattanooga.
Mrs. Leslie Warner (Deceased)

TEXAS--

Miss M. Eleanor Breckenridge (Deceased)
Mrs. Minnie Fisher Cunningham, of New Waverley.

WEST VIRGINIA--

Dr. Harriet B. Jones, of Glendale.

WISCONSIN--

Mathilda Franziska Anneke (Deceased)
Rev. Olympia Brown (Deceased)
Mrs. Ben V. Hooper, of Oshkosh.
Mrs. Robert M. LaFollette, of Madison.

TOTAL - 71

National League of Women Voters

Friday, May 2.

Abstract from speech of Eduard C. Lindeman, of New York City,
professor of philosophy, New York School of Social Work, to be
given Thursday night, May 1, before the Louisville convention
of the National League of Women Voters' Convention.

The subject will be "Steps Toward New Culture:  Significant
Recent Social Changes."

--------------------------------------------

It is to be noted that few thinkers now use the term 
"progress"; we are no longer certain whether the direction
in which we move implies progress, and consequently we
call our modern variations from the given pattern "social
change."

Our present task is to measure what changes, how
rapidly, and what remains relatively unchanged.  For
example, our almost phenomenal development in industry
and the technologies has not brought about a corresponding
advance in, say for example, religion, or morality.  The
gap between one act of changes and another constitutes
the area of our present unadjustment.  As members of an
organization devoted primarily to political education, we
need to analyze these gaps in order to know where to apply
the lubricant of learning.

In order to appreciate the nature and quality of
change in American life, we need to have in mind the sort
of civilization which existed here, let us say, roughly a
century ago.  The so-called "modern world" began in the
Seventeenth Century but its main impact upon our
civilization came during the past one hundred years.  At
that time we were a small, struggling people, living the ways


-2-

of farmers, and devoted to the simplest forms of democracy.
In 1815 we were less than ten millions of people in
size; there were no railways, no telegraph, no telephones.
New York City had a population of less than one hundred
thousand.  In order to appreciate one aspect of the change
which has occurred in this last century, it might be noted
that 250,000 people now enter the Broadway area of New
York City each night seeking amusement.

We may, then, point to some of the more significant of
the social changes which have characterized the recent
evolution of our nation, remembering, of course, that this
constitutes one person's interpretation.  In addition, it
should be remembered that these various so-called "social"
changes are not purely social in nature.  Life is not so
simple as to be easily divided into "social," "economic,"
et cetera.

1.  The first, and perhaps most important of changes in
American life is the drift from rural to urban civilization.
In spite of the fact that some twenty-eight percent of our
total population still live on farms, we have become
essentially an urbanized people.

2.  We have achieved a relatively high standard of living
for, perhaps, a larger proportion of the total population
than has been true of any previous civilization.

3.  Our civilization is characterized by the fact that
we move about rapidly in time and space.  The place of
residence moves farther and farther away from the place
of work, and consequently, we spend a great deal of time
riding back and forth between work and home.  Also, ideas


-3-

change more rapidly.

4.  Our contacts with others tend to become more impersonal.
Mechanical devices for communicating make personal relations
less necessary.

5.  The invention of labor-saving appliances, both in the home
and in the factory, provide us with increasing amounts of
leisure time.  So-called "technological unemployment" is
now leisure brought about my machines.

6.  We all tend to become specialists.  This, in addition
to the trend toward more and more organizations, tends to
fractionalize our living.

7.  Our habits of life tend to become less democratic, and
both politics and organizational living come under the sway
of bureaucratic controls.

8.  Women tend to play a more important role in all spheres
of American activity.

9.  Conduct in the United States, on some levels, tends to
become standardized.  This is already true in the sphere
of consumption, for example, and is partially true in the
area of ideas.

10.  Because of economic inter-relationships, our civilization
is increasingly influenced by foreign movements, especially
in Europe and South America.

;  ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;

The above, and many others which should be added, may be
regarded as the items which constitute the main pattern of
contemporary culture in America.  To be aware of such changes
is, probably, the first step in evaluating the positive and
negative elements involved.  The League of Women Voters

-4-

must, however, go further; it must learn how to orient
its total program in terms of these trends or changes so
that it may become a dynamic, not passive, part of general
social change.

Press Department
National League of Women Voters

Release Tuesday p.m. papers
April 29.

Summary of address of Chester H. Rowell, of Berkeley, Cal., an
outstanding writer and speaker on international questions, to be
given Monday night, April 28th, before the International Cooperation
Department conference during the National League of Women Voters'
convention in Louisville.

His topic will be "World Peace and the Immediate Situation".

---------------

The naval conference has adjourned, bringing home a three-
power agreement with a string to it, and a five-power agreement that
does not cover much.  Is that success or failure?  The best evidence
that it is success is that the jingoes are opposed to it.  The best
evidence that it is failure is that you are disappointed in it.
The practical thing, it seems to me, is to support it, as a step
forward, and to criticize it, to educate the American people to
the need of the next step.

It was success not to have failed.  The Washington conference
failed, as to certain classes of vessels and the Geneva conference
failed as to everything.  This conference may not have agreed to
much, but its agreements covered all classes of vessels.  The
principle and the habit of conference are confirmed, and this meeting
adjourns in an atmosphere favorable to the next one.  Whether
it accomplished "reduction" depends on whether you look at the
middle floor of a building from the ground or the roof.  It did
accomplish a limitation of programs, a postponement of replacement
of battleships, and some actual scrapping, and it did definitely
accomplish limitation.  It put the three major naval powers in
agreement, and it left the next two working for agreement.  Any
lawyer can prove that the three-power act is useless and the five-


-2-

power pact meaningless, but that does not make them so.  Lawyers
can likewise prove that the Kellogg Pact does not prohibit any
wars except those which could never occur, and that the League
Covenant commands wars which might not have occurred, but neither of
these legal conclusions is a human fact.  Likewise, these two
contracts, which might be set aside in court as not obligating anybody
to anything, are very valuable accomplishments.  Secretary
Stimson and his colleagues are entitled to commendation, for what
they have done, and President Hoover is entitled to support, in his
efforts to get the treaty ratified by a Senate whose only objection
to it is that it is not bad enough.

Altogether, the result is probably as good as could have
been had, on the only basis on which our Senate will permit us to
negotiate--which is that this is the world of 1913 and before.
Even the failure of the French and the Italians to agree was
inevitable, so long as Mussolini agrees with our Senate, in that
anachronistic delusion.  If this world is composed of completely
separate nations, each of unified and unconditional sovereignty,
and if there is to be no larger unit of action or responsibility,
then the wonder is that we were able to do as much.  Doubtless we
should have failed een in that, except for the momentary boldness of
Secretary Stimson in reopening the question of a consultative pact.
The conference did not go far enough to make that pact necessary,
which is perhaps fortunate, since the Senate would almost certainly
have rejected it--but Secretary Stimson did point the way, which
some day we shall have to take, unless we are ready, instead, to spend
billions of dollars to plunge the world into another competitive
naval race.

The direct failure of this conference to accomplish more

-3-

may safely be laid on the broad shoulders of Mussolini.  He will be
delighted if the world blames him for it. Like our jingoes, he
regards the condemnation of foreigners to the highest praise.  But,
if the partial success of this conference does not lead to the greater
success of the next, the fruit will be ours.  There can be no 
substantial disarmament without political commitments.  Less
will be required of us in that respect than any other nation.  It
will be enough if we agree to do nothing--absolutely nothing--in
the event of a blockade of the high seas by other nations, against
a treaty-breaking aggressor.  Unless we are willing to do that, the
only other national course is to build a navy that can "lick the
world".

Between these two--chose ye:


Press Department 
National League of Women Voters.

Release A.M. PAPERS 
Friday, May 2. 

Extracts from address of Walter Hamilton, professor of law, 
Yale University, to be given Thursday night, May 1, before 
the Louisville convention of the National League of Women 
Voters' convention.

His topic will be "The Rival Roles of Business and Government 
in the Solution of Social Problems".

The problem of the control of industrial activity
is always with us. In a society whose institutions are changing, 
it is always being solved, and yet can never find a solution. 
As the industrial system changes, and as our ways of thought 
are made over, our problems are newly made. Old problems go and 
new ones take their places, but we do not secure answers which 
abide.  

As age succeeds age we make use of different agencies 
of control. In the middle ages the dominant control was the 
church. By the 17th century the state had become the instrument 
employed for keeping industry in order. In the last 150 years 
petty trade has given way to big business. Individual activity 
has been replaced by group activity and the various industries 
have been roughly and crudely reorganized into a business system 
which is itself a scheme for the control of industry. 

At present the government is and must remain a 
necessary agency of control. But its control is now being 
exercised very largely through boards, commissions, and executive 
offices which are quite unlike the mechanisms of established 
government. Necessary as it is there are difficulties in the way 
of its effective use. Its procedures are slow and none too easily 

-2- 

accommodated to a flexible and changing society. Our federal 
system with a division of power between the national government 
and the states makes it very difficult to make an effective 
attack upon some of the larger industrial problems. 

We see the old and seem to understand it; it is hard 
to appreciate the new. There are at present tendencies which 
will make for a revision of our industrial system and its 
scheme of control. which it is very hard for us to catch in 
perspective. But there is arising a formal control of business. 
Business itself is giving attention to industrial and social 
problems. An example or two must suffice. The more rational 
labor policies with attention to maintaining the level of wages 
is a significant development. A movement of consequence, too, 
is the attention being given within business to the health of 
employees. The business order that is coming into being will b e
as different from the political order as the political order 
was from the church that preceded it. Because it is not like the
old scheme of control we find it hard to realize that it is a 
scheme of control. But a formal control through business is in 
the next few decades likely to play a larger part in the solution 
of political and social problems than in the state.   
  

 

Press Department
National League of Women Voters.

Release Afternoon Papers
SATURDAY, MAY 3

Abstract of remarks to be given by Judge Florence E. Allen, of
the Ohio Supreme Court, Saturday morning, May 3, before the
Louisville convention of the National League of Women Voters.

---------------------------

Courts will take notice of matters of history sufficiently
notorious to be a subject of general knowledge.

Courts take notice of facts which are universally known
and so generally understood that they may be regarded as forming
part of the general knowledge of every person.

Hence the court will take judicial notice of the fact
that no organization in the United States fills exactly the place
which is filled by the League of Women Voters, state and national.
No organization of men performs the same function.  We many
of us are members of certain groups of men and women, such as the
American Political Science Association, which have for their
object the intelligent study of the problem of politics.  Many
of us also belong to fine local groups, such as the Civic League
of Cleveland, which do intelligent and valuable work in spreading
information as to candidates and governmental issues.  The court
will take judicial notice that there is no organization such as
the League of Women Voters which ramifies throughout the whole
United States with organizations in almost every state, which in
such states as Pennsylvania and Ohio has local organizations in
many counties, stressing the importance of political issues, of
political candidates, and of the intelligent exercise of the
ballot.

In the state of Ohio the Leagues have done an enormous
and certainly impressive work in getting out the vote.  It is

-2-

no doubt due in several instances to the work of the Cleveland
League of Women Voters that Cleveland still has the opportunity
of endeavoring to work out her city problems under the city
manager plan.  On three different occasions there have been
powerful efforts to abolish the city manager plan, and at least
upon two occasions it was generally conceded that the women,
led by the League of Women Voters, blocked that attempt.  This
was not because the League was committed to any particular plan
as such.  But because it was opposed to the attempts of spoils
politicians to change the system in order to seize the offices,
and desired a more extended trial of the city manager plan so
that whether the plan was abolished or retained, the action
upon it should be based upon judgment rather than upon
meretricious motives.

When every women has become "an intelligent voter," surely 
there will be more chance that every man will be "an
intelligent voter."


Press Department
National League of Women Voters

Release WEDNESDAY A.M.
APRIL 30.

Speech of Chester H. Powell, of Berkeley, Cal., distinguished
writer and speaker, to be given Tuesday night, April 29, before the
Louisville convention of the National League of Women Voters'
convention.

--------------------------

This is the tenth anniversary of woman suffrage and of the
League of Women Voters.  The original momentum of the suffrage
campaign was long since exhausted and most of us have nearly
forgotten that there ever was such an issue.  The voting of women is
now as much a matter of course as that of men, and is now questioned
only by those who likewise question it for me.  Meantime, not as women
fighting for a right, but as citizens exercising it, you have undertaken
a task for which no one else was so well equipped.  As the
practical sex, you have faced the facts which the emotions of the
sentimental one has obscured.  As the intellectual sex, you have
studied the issues, while the men went out and herded the votes.
You have organized where men have fumbled.  Where men have sought a
"good" reason for their conduct, you have dug for the true one.  You
have substituted facts for slogans and realism for gullibility.  To
you and your organization this nation owes more than it knows, and
more than even you always appreciate.

Now you face the second decade and those that are to follow, with
some tasks done, but with greater ones scarcely begun.  Some of
these, indeed, will last forever, and will perhaps never be visibly
nearer to completion than they were when they were started.  For these
especially, women have an inherited capacity.  For how many ages
have women preserved an invincible optimism in the face of things
that must always be done but could never be accomplished!  The man
who built a house finally finished it and went off to build another.

-2-

But no home was ever made so clean that it would stay clean.  No
stomachs were ever so well filled that they would stay satisfied.
No family was ever so well clothed that it did not constantly need
new clothing.  No child was ever so well cared for and trained that
it did not to be done all over again the next day.  Against
this endless round of Sysiphus tasks, women have sent an implacable
optimism, which kept them going forever.

One part of the task of politics is like unto that.  I have
read some of the slogans of the demagogues of Ancient Greece and the
letters and speeches of the Roman politicians, Cicero and Caesar.
I have seen the campaigns of slogans in Russia, in China and in
Mexico.  Everywhere and in all ages that combat of knowledge against
buncombe, of truth against slogans must go on.  If we remit it, we
fall backward.  If we conduct it, we may not move forward.  Over and
over, like sweeping and cleaning, it must be done, apparently forever.
To that task of patient optimism, you dedicate yourselves.

But there are other things, more immediate and perhaps more
critical, which each decade presents for itself.  And the fundamental
difficulty with all of them is that facts move faster than
thought.  I remember once spending the morning walking about London
dodging left-handed automobiles.  Then I stepped into an airplane
and spent the rest of the afternoon walking about Paris dodging
right-handed automobiles.  Modern invention could whisk my body in
that brief interval from Westminster Abbey to Notre Dame, but it
could not readjust my mind with equal speed.  I was nearly run over
several times by the always maniacal Paris cabmen before I relearned
which way to look first. 

In great affairs we are faced with the same difficulty.  Begin
with business and our economic life.  The facts have moved on with
dizzy speed.  A new industrial revolution, which has substituted
capitalistic collectivism for the old competitive individualism, is

-3-

no longer a speculation or a menace. It is an already accomplished
fact, and we are living in it.  But all the slogans and theories to
which our miscalled "practical" men so devoutly subscribe are
based on the assumption that nothing has happened.  The United States
Chamber of Commerce proclaims the slogan "More business in  
government and less government in business."  The railroad spokesmen
talk about "private initiative."  The telephone company believes in
"individualism" and the power trust proclaims the glories of the
competitive age.  We enact laws and argue cases in court on the theories
of that age.  And all the while we dwell in a daze in a world from
which all these things have conclusively and permanently vanished.
Political thought lags so far behind economic fact that unless you,
the intellectual sex, do your full part in thinking new thoughts
and educating us to them, the gap will become unbridgable and we
shall fall, governmentally, into the chasm between.

On the strictly business side of government, witness the spectacle
which my noble party aided and abetted.  Democrats of the South, by
yours, has presented to the world in the present riff performance
in Congress.  There were the representatives of a whole great people
thinking with their memories.  In a time when we have become a
creditor nation, they sought to preserve and increase the sort of a trade
balance which had been desirable when we were a debtor nation.  At a
time when the one way in which we can continue the rate of expansion
to which we are geared is by extending our foreign commerce, they
followed a policy which had been good when it was sufficient to
preserve our monopoly of the domestic market.  The thinking which was
good in 1880 they applied, with their eyes shut, to the facts of 1930.  And
the men did it!  The women, who are the consumers as well as the
thinkers and students, may have to make themselves heard.

-4-

You in this group need scarcely to be reminded how far behind
the facts our political policy has lagged in international relations.
In an interrelated world, we have persisted in isolation; in an
organized world, we have sought to perpetuate disorganization;
in an international world, we have proclaimed an anachronistic
super-nationalism--and, so far, a reactionary minority in Congress,
because it has courage and resourcefulness, has "got by" with it,
against a timid majority.  If we can not instill courage with that
majority, the next-best course is to take advantage of their cowardice,
and make them more afraid of us than they are of William Randolph
Hearst and his slogans of reaction.

Another and a harder task lies nearer at home.  We have reorganized
everything but government.  Manufacturing has new machinery and
business new organization.  Your very homes have been transformed--
that is the reason you have the leisure to be here.  But government
still cultivates its fields with the hoe and shovel, and harvests its
crops with the sickle and the scythe.  We need to turn our attention,
not so much to the principles, the character and the personal character
of government--those are old problems, and the men remember
how to meet them--but to its mechanics.  If we have developed a
ballot so long that nobody can vote it intelligently, we need the
short ballot.  If we have a system of Congressional action so 
cumbersome that nothing is ever finished we need to do to Congress
what every corporation long ago did to its board of directors.  If our
lawmaking bodies are irresponsible and misrepresentative, we need to
study the methods of competitors, who have tried out ways of
minimizing these evils.  If we look to the President or the Governor
for legislative leadership and deny him the tools to exercise that
leadership and to be held responsible for it, we need to remake that

- 5 - 

machinery. In the last generation, we have largely made over the 
character and the spirit of municipal government by remaking its 
machinery. The next great task for the still unatrophied minds of 
the new citizens is to face that problem of the mechanics of government. 

Need I add the tasks of social reform? America still trails 
the world in the matter of social insurance. We lead the world in 
the transformation of the home, and then we let ancient taboos command 
the limits of speech and thought in facing the problems raised 
by that change. We lead the world in crime and we trail it in 
criminology. First, in the world to arrive at the gasoline age, we 
were also first to recognize that alcohol must go out when gasoline 
comes in. And then we proceeded to disgrace that really "noble experiment" 
by the manner of its execution. The richest country in the 
world, we are the poorest organizer to face the problem of poverty -- 
and we have a vast lot more than our share of that poverty. 

This is a critical age which we fact in the next decade and as 
far as we can see in the decades that follow. What we shall need 
above all other things is leadership not afraid to think? It is not 
merely in morals and decency that we require the services of women. 
There are upright and decent men who will meet that responsibility,  
somehow, whether you do or not. It is above all in intelligence, in 
which your leadership is needed -- to help find the way, and above 
all, to educate the people to follow it. Your task did not end with 
the attainment of suffrage. It is not exhausted by these ten years 
of organization, to face facts rather than merely to win elections. 
Rather, it has only just begun. And may a temperamental optimist be 
for a moment constructively pessimistic enough to suggest that unless 
you do it, it will not be done. 

Press Department 
National League of Women Voters

Release Saturday a. m. 
Papers, May 3. 

Telegram from Miss Jane Addams, of Chicago, to Dr. S. P. 
Breckinridge, to be read at Tenth Birthday Party Friday 
night, May 2. 

"I wish to express my regret at not being present 
at the Tenth Birthday Party of the League of Women 
Voters. That organization has proved a marvelous channel 
for carrying out the purposes cherished by the suffragists 
of old. They have, in a unique way, attempted 
to base their activities on informed experiences. Other 
groups have tried to secure the suffrage to benefit 
their own group; the League, perhaps more than any other 
example that could be cited, have tried to use their 
power for the benefit of the entire community. If I 
am right in being told that Kentucky first gave manhood 
suffrage, the League is fortunate in celebrating its anniversary 
there. I send my good wishes that the work 
may go on and many anniversaries be celebrated under 
conditions of increasingly satisfying evidence of the 
League's influence. With congratulations." 

Jane Addams. 
  
  
   



Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.