A time. AN "OPEN WINDOW ROOM" THAT "LIFTS THE BAN FROM FRESH AIR." (NOTE THE WINDOW SCREENS TO PREVENT DIRECT DRAFTS) A MODERN CHILDREN'S CRUSADE BY ROSE WESTON BULL N organization which an induce a boy, of his own volition, to take two baths a week instead of the compulsory Saturday "tub," is worthy of consideration even in war The Modern. Health Crusaders, a society made up of 500,000 children, has performed this miracle. It has brought about other achievements in that realm of cleanliness which we are told borders on that of godliness. It has converted entire families to the use of the tooth-brush. It has lifted the ban from fresh air, and introduced pure water into the menu of millions. It is making health so attractive that children are flocking to join its newly established order of chivalry-the chivalry of cleanliness. The indications now are that by the end of the school year one million boys and girls will be enrolled as Modern Health Crusaders. Those who imagine they understand child nature will be mystified by the growth of this organization, which is largely founded on the faithful observance of a few health rules which children usually find it more convenient to ignore than to observe. It is contrary to precedent to find boys and girls between the ages of five and sixteen falling naturally into health habits instead of being driven into them. The boy who elects to take two baths a week might run the risk of being classed as a "sissy" were it not that by taking the two baths he may qualify as a Modern Health Crusader for the order of knighthood. A boy will do a great deal to attain such an honor. Perhaps the requirements do not measure up to his dreams of valor, but as long as he can be knighted for performing such necessary acts as hand-washing, tooth-brushing, and bathing, he asks himself why he should not qualify. It is by appealing to the spirit of chivalry and encouraging the idea that health is imperative to the performance of great deeds that the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis, which stands sponsor for the Modern Health Crusaders, has brought about a change in the child's attitude towards health and cleanliness. It has first striven to break down the old juvenile prejudice against clean hands and correspondingly clean bodies, and in its place to build up a spirit which glorifies health, not so much for health's sake, as for the good that strong and healthy men and women can do in the world. The Modern Health Crusaders originated as a junior organization to promote the sale of Red Cross Christmas Seals. School-children were first banded together under the leadership of their teachers to sell the little holiday stamps which have played so important a part in the crusade against the Great White Plague. Naturally, the children absorbed the lessons of the anti-tuberculosis movement from this contact with its work. The incentive of competition was added to the zest of the sales campaign, and schools vied with each other for the disposal of the greatest number. As a result the movement spread, and to-day the Crusaders are a big factor in the success of the Christmas Seal campaign. The National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis soon found that it had acquired an alert and eager junior auxiliary, well organized and equipped for service. This auxiliary stood in need of permanent work. The seal campaign lasts, at the most, for six weeks, and it was recognized that it would be a mistake to limit the Crusaders' activities to the Christmas season. The Association realized that the children constituted a valuable asset in the public health plan, and felt that they must not be allowed to disband for lack of a cohesive force. In 1916 the permanent organization was undertaken by the National sales manager of the Red Cross Christmas Seals and field secretary of the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis, Charles M. De Forest. Mr. De Forest is a Yale graduate who entered social work after devoting a few years to business. He fully appreciated the value of the junior health movement, and visualized the effect it would have on the future health of the country if properly organized and directed. Mr. De Forest has a young son who at the age of seven was just as loth as any other child to make seemingly unnecessary ablutions and perform superfluous acts of a prophylactic nature. He presented to his father an opportunity to work out plans for the future of the Health Crusaders. Mr. De Forest knew the futility of the old "don't and do" method of training. He knew that constant admonitions and reminders irritate a child into a state of rebellion. So he devised a new plan of persuasion. One day Walter De Forest found a chart on his nursery wall. It was marked off into days and weeks. In a column at the side was a list of eight essential health tasks which he recognized as daily bugbears. The first had to do with the washing of hands before meals, the second with the drinking of water, the third with the brushing of teeth, and so on down the line. He found the average boy's pet aversion-the taking of a bath -at the end of the list. He was told that each of the eight requirements would henceforth be known as a health "chore," that every time he performed a chore he must place an "x opposite it on the chart on the day of the week on which it was performed. There were eight chores, and if they were each performed daily the weekly score would be fifty-six. But the bath was not ranked as a daily necessity, and his father explained that if he got through the week with a score of fifty chores faithfully performed he would pass with honors. A bare forty would allow him to squeeze through. Of course the question arose, "What do I get if I do all this?" The answer was that he would be given a certificate of enrollment as a modern Health Crusader, and enter the ranks comes after a member has kept up his record for two weeks. He is then given the button and the title of squire. The third degree brings the reward of knighthood and a silver pin bearing one of the insignia of the Crusaders. To become a knight the squire must be faithful to his chores for four weeks. Once he is knighted, he may still hope for higher honors, for the knight is promoted to knight-banneret and given a gold pin, which is the highest mark of rank, if he performs eighty per cent of the health chores for a total of ten weeks. In order to intensify the Crusaders' interest in the anti-tuberculosis campaign for the benefit of others carried on by the sale of Red Cross seals, a plan was devised whereby they can qualify for advancement at Christmas time by the sale of seals. Thus the beginner, to be admitted, may, at this time of year, sell or buy ten seals, to become a squire, he may sell or buy twentyfive seals, in order to be knighted, he must dispose of 100 Red Cross Christmas seals, and to become a knight-banneret he must sell or buy 500. As the group instinct is strong in children, the National As sociation is conducting the Health Crusade through the schools, allowing the spirit of competition to enter into it. So the indi viduals, the mere crusaders, the squires, knights, and knight of the army dedicated to the new chivalry of health and cleanliness. Young De Forest took rather kindly to the plan. It interested him to mark the chart when he washed his hands or brushed his teeth or did the other health chores. It appealed to him partly for the fun of the thing and partly on account of the reward. When he won his membership card, his father told him that he must not fall into the ranks of slackers, but must work harder than ever to keep up his record. There were many degrees of honor yet to be attained. The plan worked like a charm. One week when the lad had skipped one of his chores he was so eager to make his score of fifty that he took two baths. Mr. De Forest was satisfied that if he could achieve this result and gain his own boy's interest by a system of encourage ment and reward he could gain that of other boys and girls. Thus the foundation for the children's health movement was laid. A system was worked out based on the use of the chore score card. The first reward for getting a perfect card or for doing forty chores-the minimum requirement is the certifi cate of enrollment as a Modern Health Crusader. The first advancement from the rank of the Crusader to that of squire bannerets, are gathered together into leagues. These leagues develop interest in health ideals by bi-monthly meetings in which topics of timely interest are discussed. For instance, in February the league master may explain equipment for outof-door sleeping in winter; in April directions are given for the fly and mosquito campaign; in June food protection and the dangers of typhoid are taught; in August outdoor sports and athletics are featured; in October the children may taught the care of teeth, eyes, and skin; and in December the Red Cross Christmas seal campaign is explained and the nature of tuberculosis infection revealed. be The National Association keeps the leading-strings always in its hands. Programmes are sent out in advance outlining to teachers topics to be discussed at meetings. Health playettes have been written and printed. The Crusaders appear in these modern "miracle" plays in the guise of the hygienic vices and virtues. A book of "Keep Well Stories for Little Folks" is being used at these meetings. The leagues are banded into State legions, and the spirit of competition is kept rife by awarding pennants and banners for movements which will promote civic health and better community conditions. The child is constantly reminded that he has 1918 THE OUTLOOK not performed his duty when he has done his own health chores and built up a strong, disease-resisting body. He is told that community health and civic welfare are part of the new chivalry, and that he must grow up to be his brother's keeper, and see that disease and physical deterioration give way before enlightenment and public responsibility. The growth of the movement is remarkable. At the office of the National Association, 105 East Twenty-second Street, New York City, telegrams come in by the score calling, for instance, for "ten thousand health chore cards for Denver." "Rush five hundred silver knight badges." The National Association has printed and sold at cost four hundred thousand of the health chore "score cards." Letters proclaim the enthusiasm of teachers and parents for the movement. One which is particularly interesting is herewith quoted. It came from Miss Margaret Gillis, tuberculosis visiting nurse at Newburgh, New York, who wrote: Each girl was given a health chore card, instructed regarding the chores, and put on her honor that no mark be put on the card except as faithfully earned. Each girl was presented with a tooth-brush and a small tube of tooth-paste. We had tooth-brush drill, and at each successive meeting clean teeth had to be admired. Nor did the teeth-cleaning end with the children. One emall Slav girl asked if I would give her a tooth-brush and paste for her father. He had never brushed his teeth, but liked the taste of her tooth-paste and would like to try. Of course I sent him a tooth-brush and paste, and later had the satisfaction of seeing him use them. All that family fell into tooth-brush line and are proud to be in fashion "with the Americans," as the father puts it. Two Italian girls accepted their chore cards very seriously, and so as not to have a single zero on the card they took a bath every day. This is no easy matter when it must be taken in the wash-tub in the kitchen. Those two girls kept every rule on the chore card. The father and mother and other children in the family also kept the health rules and were enthusiastic. The health of the entire family improved, and the work continues. The effect of these health chores was felt in the home of every one of these girls, and brought home to me more fully the oppor tunity and necessity for such educational methods and work. Naturally, Mr. De Forest is enthusiastic about the reception of the movement and about the rapidity of its growth. He predicts that by the end of the school year one million school children will be enrolled. "We have now," he said, "a coherent organization of young people interested in personal and community health. It is grow ing with the speed of geometric progression. Its future possi bilities are enormous. In these children we are laying the groundwork of disease prevention for future generations. If there had been a Modern Health Crusade movement twenty years ago, coupled with all the other health and hygienic reforms of to-day, two per cent of our men would not be rejected from the army on account of tuberculosis. "We are building a future citizenship able to stand the strain of nation remaking that must come after the war. The ultimate hope of the warring world lies in the children of today. What can we do, therefore, that is more important than to form in them health habits that will eradicate disease from their own bodies, protect the community, and go to the up building of a sturdy race of men and women?" NEW YORK'S EAST SIDE AS A POLITICAL BAROMETER BY HENRY MOSKOWITZ N twenty-five years of personal observation of the political barometer on the East Side three distinct stages of development are apparent. The firm grip of district-leader politics marks the first stage. The district leader of the old political parties, and especially of Tammany Hall, is the neighborhood friend of the immigrant ignorant of our language, institutions, and laws. When an immigrant is in trouble because he has violated a petty ordinance, the district leader is found in the police courts helping him with a friendly magistrate. His influence with the authorities gives the immigrant an impression of power. In Russia and southeastern Europe the Jew scarcely ever experienced equality before the law. In self-defense he often had to resort to the only protection which money bought him, so now he naturally turns to the powerful man of his neighborhood, the political boss. The Tammany district lealer is a natural neighborhood product who does a man a turn and relies upon human nature to repay him on election day. A ton of coal to the widow Jones, a five-dollar bill to a constituent out of work, reaches home far more effectively than administrative efficiene. His conception of government is elemental. "Do a man a turn and never mind how the government is done," was the slogan of the old-time Tammany leader. Therefore in the first stage of immigrant political education the organization reaps the benefits of favors performed. Up to six years ago the East Side was a Tammany stronghold. Tammany took a leaf out of the book of the religious orders. It cultivated old and young with an assiduity born of shrewd knowledge of human nature and skill that bore fruit in the membership of the district clubs. It had a genius for excursions given by the district leaders for all the family, "with the kids," and fatherly pride was counted on to register faithfully in the ballot box on election day. Balls for which the business men of the neighborhood were taxed took care of the growing boys, and favors did the rest. Ambitious young men soon realized that the door of the district club is the entrance to political preferment and public life. The political club-house is a social center which radiates generous hospitality. The members of the organization congre gate nightly for neighborly gossip, a social game of cards, and entertainment in which a noisy piano accompanies the lusty chorus of ragtime songsters rendering the creations of the prolific Irving Berlin and other popular song writers. The highbrow is taboo. Serious lectures and discussions, the rule of the Socialist and radical societies, are exceptional occasions in a typical Tammany club. In the gatherings the district leader, the Assemblyman, the State Senator, and other important public officials will be seen nightly "mixing" with the boys and finding out the needs of their constituents. One evening I listened to the reminiscences of a well-known Tammany politician, who, deploring the lax hold of Tammany upon the Jewish voter, said: "When he wants to get that $600 job, for which he is eligible by passing an examination, he comes to me for help. I land him. When he wants a raise, he comes to me again. I get it. When he passes an examination for a job paying $1,000, and he asks me to help him, sure I give it to him. When he wants a raise to $1,200, I can't help him, may. be; then he gets insulted, moves to the Bronx, becomes respectable, and votes the Republican ticket." The Tammany Senator described the evolution of only one type of Jewish voter. The control by the Tammany organiza tion of the Jewish vote lessens as the Jew becomes more and more self-sustaining as an economic and political unit. He has no blind loyalty to an organization as such. His intelligence must be appealed to. That is why the East Side and the Jewish quarters of New York have been fertile grounds for the appeal of progressive and independent political parties. The Tammany Senator referred to one type of political evolution, from an organization Tammanyite to a "respectable Republican voter." He is becoming conscious that a new force is gradually edging its way into the Tammany stronghold. 66 Settlement workers, designated by an East Side mother as paid neighbors," have helped to modify the point of view of Tammany's elementary neighborliness. Big Tim Sullivan, a National Tammany character, reformed a little before he died. Who would have thought that the charming " Robin Hood" of the palmy days of strike legislation against the corporations would sponsor the Fifty-four Hour Law for women workers in 66 the State of New York and the bill advocated by Benjamin C. Marsh doubling the tax on land values? Tim told a settlement worker that he appreciated the evils of congestion, for in his newsboy days he saw the toll of the slums in death, disease, and degradation. Whether Tim was "kidding" the settlement worker or not, he acted as a reformer in spots. Educational propaganda of the radical organization, the effective influence of the social settlements, with their appeals for a new neighborhood leadership, the extension of the social question into politics, and the appeal of the progressive political influence upon the imaginations of the serious East Side youth are bearing fruit, and mark the beginning of the second stage of the political development of the East Side. Despised "uplifters" saw the Progressive party advertise its programme of social legislation and make child labor, workmen's compensation, and other measures of human conservation National political issues. The Progressive party offered the more Americanized and self-respecting East Side young men an opportunity to enter public life without subjecting themselves to the humiliation of Tammany contact with gunmen and guerrillas, and of waiting, hat in hand, for the orders of the district boss. Twice the young and virile Progressive organization of the Eighth Assembly District defeated a Tammany candidate for the Assembly. This district was familiarly known as "de Ate," once the region where "red lights" exposed their danger-signals of moral degradation. New and vigorous progressive movements found a fertile field in the Jewish quarters of New York. The response of the Jewish voters to the idealism of the Progressive movement is registered in the large vote which Theodore Roosevelt obtained from them in 1912. Unfortunately the Progressive party was short-lived; but it left its traces, like other progressive movements, in liberalizing the regular organizations and in improving the type of candidates nominated by them. of the election machinery. For years anarchy reigned on election day on the ast Side. Tammany and its "guerrillas" were given carte blanche by the old police system, and they deprived the citizens of their sovereign right of political self-expression. An honest Police Department under Arthur Woods gave all the political parties on the East Side a square deal on election day. In the recent municipal campaign the Socialist party became a formidable political factor-again not because of Socialist dogmas or on purely Socialist issues, but because its candidate, Morris Hillquit, received a large vote of protest from pacifists and pro-Germans, who favored an immediate negotiable peace, and also because he voiced the discontent of the masses bur dened by the high cost of living. Hillquit's vote, therefore, did not register Socialist gain as much as it was an expression from one hundred and fifty thousand voters on a temporary but important issue. Younger Tammany leaders like Alfred E. Smith, a brilliant East Side product, and State Senator Robert Wagner have helped to place upon the statute-books of New York some of the most advanced social and labor legislation of the country. The Asch fire, with its 143 working-girl victims, shocked the social conscience of New York City into a realizing sense of the need of protecting the lives of workers from the hazards of fire, unsanitary working conditions, and the strain of industrial fatigue. The work of Alfred E. Smith and Robert Wagner in embodying the recommendations of the State Factory Investigat ing Commission in laws represents their conscious reaction to the progressive leaven. to As a result of this bination of forces, the Hillquit vote helped to sweep into office ten Socialist Assemblymen and seven Aldermen, chiefly from Jewish districts. Tammany is now facing a new menace. It realizes the potential power of Socialism. With its ear finely attuned to the ground, it knows that the Socialist Aldermen are no mere "highbrow spokesmen," like the reformers whom it regards with contempt. The seven Socialist Aldermen represent a new force. In type they are wholly different from the fat, good-natured, hand-shak ing ward politician, who thinks of politics in terms solely of "doing a turn." These Socialist Aldermen strike a strange note in the Board of Aldermen. They are serious students. Their leader, Algernon Lee, looks every inch of him the scholar and thinker. One of them played an important rôle in the Russian Revolution. Another is a graduate of the College of the City of New York, thoroughly Americanized, and is fully informed about American political history. The Jew of Russia and southeastern Europe comes America largely an economic and political outcast who thinks in terms of hatred of the tyranny and oppression which bring him here. The radical and Socialist movements talk his language and appeal to his complex. But after the Jews have accumulated a little property and have been influenced by their American environment they become in considerable numbers inde pendent and progressive voters. Independent because the Jew is an individualist often veneered with a Socialist vocabulary, progressive because he responds to an appeal for a juster social and political order. The religious and prophetic spirit of the ancient Hebrew takes in the modern Jew the form of enthusiasm for a fairer and nobler social and industrial polity. The seeds of the Socialist challenge of his immigrant days bear fruit in American opportunism. They also lead him to Socialism, the third and present stage of East Side political development. During the past twenty-five years the Socialist movement has been gaining momentum, so that to-day the East Side has become a fairly fixed Socialist stronghold. Meyer London, an idealist of purest dye, is serving his second term as an East Side Socialist Congressman. He owes his election not exclusively to the Socialist vote, but to a large number of non-Socialist independent voters who have been humiliated by the type of representation which Tammany afforded. Wise political observers on the East Side have asserted that London would have been in Congress long before his first election had he not been counted out by Tammany henchmen in control Since election these seven men made a special study of the city charter and the problems of municipal administration in a class at the Rand School, the Socialist University, of which Algernon Lee is Director. They carefully prepared their municipal programme with the aid of authorities on municipal government. Socialist office-holders lack the bonhomie of the Tammany officials. They appeal less to surface emotions and more to what they regard as fundamental economic causes and to that general social passion for a new order of things. Indoctrinated with Socialist dogmas, they plunge into the details of their jobs with grim earnestness and with the concentration of the student mind. This minority group is performing the function of stimu lating criticism, and incidentally it is educating the old-timers with a lingo the sound of which is unfamiliar to the old walls of the Board of Aldermen's room. Immediately upon taking office this group submitted resolu tions pertaining to municipal purchase and sale of food and fuel. It submitted other Socialist proposals, including the taking over by the city of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit, the establishment of a bureau of school feeding to provide the poor children of the public schools with hot and nourishing lunches, and an inquiry into the condition of labor in the Street-Cleaning Department. The Tammany group is constantly jockeying for advan tageous positions. While it refers the Socialists' resolutions and ordinances to the Committee on Social Welfare, their import is politically assimilated by the majority party. Tammany aldermen are engaged in a race with the Socialists to prove that they are the real " people's friend." Socialists justify their measures in the light of their social philosophy as well as to meet human needs. Tammany advo cates measures to meet the popular demand. Whatever its mo tive, Tammany is reading the signs of the times. Alfred E. Smith, as President of the Board of Aldermen with characteristic shrewd political sense, regards the small group of Socialist Aldermen as a minority worthy of respect and consideration. He has named them on important committees of the Board. The Tammany group is skillfully maneuvering "to beat them to it," as Frank Dowling, President of the Borough of Manhat tan, put it the other day when Tammany introduced a resolu tion a little ahead of the Socialists' for the municipal purchase But Algernon Lee, with practical intelligence, introduced a resolution embodying a policy of social preparedness by providing for the city's purchase and sale of ice to the poor next summer. He learned from the experts that a purchase-and-sale programme to be effective must be worked on months in advance. Tammany is close to the common people, and, while it does not lead, its ear is finely attuned to the music of the uplift band wagon. Tammany does not fear the reform parties in New York City. It regards with contempt some of their highbrow spokesmen, and it never fails to make capital out of their financial and aristocratic background. In the recent political campaign Tammany capitalized its neighborliness and its almost uncanny knowledge of cosmopolitan New York. In the recent city election it advocated radical municipal reforms with a cogency which the reformers lacked. Tammany so manipulated its campaign that it gained the appearance of a progressive party and left the reformers in the position of appearing as reactionaries. From now on municipal reform will be measured not by form but by social content. The emergence of the Socialist as a factor in municipal government will result in interesting political history. The citizen will demand more radical measures. Tammany will give the city considerably less administrative efficiency, but it will be goaded on by its instinct for self-preservation "to beat the radicals and Socialists to it," and become in some measure an instrument of progress. We are on the eve of a fundamental change in our municipal policies. Tammany will try to get away with it by a programme of just enough radicalism in response to the tingling of its East Side nerves. Until very recently Maine has been a fairly accurate index of National politics. "As Maine goes, so goes the country" has been a practical working maxim of experienced politicians. The East Side has been a fairly accurate register of New York City's political tendencies. As the East Side has thought and felt politically, so New York City has frequently followed. It will repay a student of present-day New York to study the East Side as a political barometer. KNOLL PAPERS RECOLLECTIONS OF JOHN MORLEY "N a characteristic passage in his recollections,' John Morley A transition from books, study, and the publicist's pen to the We might extend this list to America. Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge are both authors and politicians, but they will be known in American history by their politics rather than by their pens; while Horace Greeley and Henry J. Raymond were great editors, but failed in politics. John Morley was twenty-five years in Parliament, and twice occupied the office of Irish Secretary, and was for five years head of the India Office. But he will always be better known by his contributions to English literature than by his contributions to English politics. His literary, not his political, recollections give interest to these two rather fragmentary volumes. Recollections. By John, Viscount Morley, O.M. 2 volumes. The Macmillan Company, New York. $7.50. There are two sentences which taken together furnish the key to Mr. Morley's character; the one philosophical, the other political. His father, a Wesleyan, became a Churchman, but carried into the new community the Puritan spirit imbibed in the old. The son reacted from his father's religious faith, and was in his youth carried into radical rationalism by Cotter Morison, whose radicalism is well interpreted by what was his most influential contribution to the thought of his time, "The Service of Man." The change in his pupil is expressed by the single sentence in which Mr. Morley expresses the intellectual change in his time: "The force of miracle and myth and intervening Will in the interpretation of the world began to give way before the reign of law." The other sentence furnishes an admirable definition of the psychology of Liberalism in politics as well as his own psychology: "Respect for the dignity and worth of the individual is its root." The conflict between Rationalism and Faith, the philosophy of James Martineau and that of John Morley, is not a 66 metaphysical quarrel between intuition and experience." It is a conflict between two types of experience, themselves the product of two types of temperament. The rationalist approaches life by observing it from without. He studies the mind by studying the brain and the nerves; he studies men by studying the great historical movements which he thinks has produced them. He looks through nature for nature's God; regards mental operations as brain phenomena; Luther as a product of the Reformation; and the Creator as a hypothesis to account for the creation. The spiritualist approaches life by observing his own experiences and interpreting the life of other men by analogy with his own. To him the brain and the nerves are the instruments of his thought; the great movements of history are the product of spiritual forces; and God is not a deduction but an experience. In John Morley these two contrasting tempera ments were curiously conmingled. The spiritual temper gave him the faith in his fellow-men which made him in politics a liberalist and in literature a great biographer. The rationalist temperament made him so radical and consistent a believer in the reign of law as to leave no room in his mind for the supernatural or even the superhuman. These Recollections furnish two curious illustrations of the intellectual consistency of his rationalism. He had great though not undiscriminating admiration for John Stuart Mill, to whose school he belonged. This school held that all our knowledge is derived from our senses. Even mathematical truths were regarded as the results of observation. There might be, for aught we know, worlds in which two and two do not make four, and in which two straight lines can |