xt70rx937t9n_491 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt70rx937t9n/data/mets.xml https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt70rx937t9n/data/46m4.dao.xml unknown 13.63 Cubic Feet 34 boxes, 2 folders, 3 items In safe - drawer 3 archival material 46m4 English University of Kentucky The physical rights to the materials in this collection are held by the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.  Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Laura Clay papers Temperance. Women -- Political activity -- Kentucky. Women's rights -- Kentucky. Women's rights -- United States -- History. Women -- Suffrage -- Kentucky. Women -- Suffrage -- United States. The Woman Patriot text The Woman Patriot 2020 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt70rx937t9n/data/46m4/Box_17/Folder_35/Multipage21388.pdf 1926 May 1 1926 1926 May 1 section false xt70rx937t9n_491 xt70rx937t9n  

 

 

(the Wanda atria

Dedicated to the Defense of the Family and the State

 

S 1.00 Six Months

AGAINST Feminism and Socialism

$2.00 a Year

 

 

 

Published Twice a fllonth by The [Voman Patriot Publishing Co., 8 Jackson P/are N. ”7., ll’ashington, I). (I.
Entered as second-class matter April 26, 1918, at the post office at Washington, D. C., under the Act of March 3, 1879

 

 

 

 

Vol. 10 No. 9

 

WASHINGTON, D. C., MAY 1, 1926

10 Cents a Copy

 

 

Louisville Women Demand New Declaration of Independence

Insist Upon Democracy, State Rights, and Individual Club Freedom Against Usurped Dictatorship by
General Federation -

needed is a new Declaration of Independence for
women voters from women dictators.”

The Woman’s Club of Louisville, Kentucky, April 13, 1926,
by a vote of 254 to 80, after a debate between Mrs. Atwood
R. Martin of Louisville, who defended the 10cal club and de-
mocracy, and Mrs. Edward Franklin White, first vice-presi-
dent and legal adviser of the General Federation of Women’s
Clubs, who came down from Indianapolis to defend dictator—
ship of the central office over all local clubs, adopted the fol-
lowing amendment to its by-laws:

“The Woman’s Club of Louisville shall not be bound
by any action of the Kentucky Federation of Women’s
Clubs or General Federation of Women’s Clubs, until
such action shall have been ratified by the members of
this club at a meeting called for the purpose.”

THIS publication has said several times, “What is

In other words, the 700 members of the Louisville Woman’s
Club will no longer submit to dictatorship, gag rule, disfran-
chisement, and deception of Congress and the public in order
to allow Mrs. John D. Sherman, president of the General
Federation of Women’s Clubs (and figurehead of the
“Women’s Joint Congressional Committee” at Washington)
to count them, without their consent, among the mythical
“millions of women” Congressional Committees are falsely
assured are behind the SOCIALIST LEGISLATIVE PRO-
GRAM of Mrs. Florence Kelley at Washington!

Without any authority whatever, delegated or implied, Mrs.
John D. Sherman, president of the General Federation of
Women’s Clubs, made a ruling, in June, 1925, at the West
Baden Biennial Council of the General Federation, that prac—
tically anything that can be put through a General Federa—
tion convention is automatically binding upon every State
Federation and local club, and that every local club and
State Federation should be MUZZLEI) on any political issue
upon which it is in disagreement with the central dictator-
snp.

Of course, she didn’t use such plain language, but that is
what it amounts to. Judge for yourself:

“When a resolution has been adopted at such meet-
ings, either unanimously or by a majority, it should be
regarded as the action of the organization. State Fed-
erations, or individual clubs, opposed to the action
taken, should not conduct a campaign in the name of
the State or the Club, in opposition to that of the Gen—
eral Federation. Individual members of_the State Fed—
erations or individual members of clubs, are free to
enter campaigns in opposition as individuals but not
as clubs. In no other way can the General Federation
speak as an organization.”

In other words, without anybody presuming to claim that
the State Federations and individual clubs have delegated to
the General Federation the right and power to determine,
without their consent, how every club shall stand on every
political question, Mrs. Sherman simply usurps the power!

Demand Silence or Support

Once Congress has been told that “3,000,000” elubwomen
want Mrs. Kelley’s Socialist “Child” Labor Amendment, be-
cause Mrs. Kelley has bamboozled Mrs. Sherman anvl a few
dozen General Federation delegates, NO STATE FE [)ERA—
TION OR LOCAL CLUB SHALL TELL CONGRESS THE
TRUTH! The lobby lie that all the clubs “as clubs” are for
SOCIALIST measures, must be allowed to stand so long as
Mrs. Kelley and Mrs. Catt can keep Mrs. Sherman bam—
boozled! Local clubs or State Federations must either sup-
port the lobby program, or keep silence, “as clubs.” As
individuals, they are graciously permitted by Mrs. Sherman
to differ with Mrs. Kelley and Miss Abbott in regard to sur:
rendering their homes and children to Socialism, but “as
clubs” they must let the lobby lies stand—lest perhaps Con—
gressmen “get Wise” to the fact that the '(l‘Onu’N voters out
in the States are not in favor of the Socialism that the
women dictators and professional lobbyists at Washington
say they favor!

The issue is clear-cut. The Louisville Club is demanding
democracy, local self-government and individual liberty. It
is also demanding HONESTY—that there shall be something
more than a snap—vote of a hundred or more busy delegates
on a “legislative committee’s” report before the “legislative
committee” (polite term for lobbyists) shall be permitted to
go before congressional committees and pretend that “3,000,—
000” clubwomen demand or indorse some revolutionary
amendment or bill of which perhaps less than 500 copies
have ever been printed!

The General Federation, on the contrary, is hanging on
to the dictatorship 0f the Washington lobby over all the
State and local clubs. Mrs. Sherman DOESN’T DARE sub-
mit these lobby measures to the individual clubs, and the
individual members, and let the policy for or against them
come up from the bottom. No, that would put the “Women's
Joint Congressional Committee” and the Kelley Socialist Pro-
gram at Washington out of business. It is the first principle
of every autocracy that dictatorship must be handed down
from the top; that the central authority shall decide as it
pleases and compel all the State and local subjects to obey.

Fighting for the life of the Washington lobby, Mrs. Sher—
man and Mrs. White present many excuses for this form of
dictatorship and wholesale iizisrepresmztation of women
voters. Mrs. White says, for example:

 

  

 

THE WOMAN PATRIOT

 

“It is a cardinal principle, not only of parliamentary
law, but of our United States Government, that the
majority must rule. . . . I may liken our position to
the United States Government.”

Aside from the fact that it is not a cardinal principle of
the United States Government that the majority must rule
(the cardinal principle being “a government of limited pow-
ers” that denies any form of despotism and gives even one—
lhirrl of Congress and one more than one-fourth of the
States the right to retain any constitutional rights, and one
State power to retain its equality against the other 48);
and aside from the fact that the machine Mrs. White is
talking about IS NOT A MAJORITY BUT A MINORITY;
and aside from' the fact that the position of these dictators
is mac-fly opposite from the position of the United States
Government .(which claims no powers until they are dele-
gated from the States and people) Mrs. White’s excuse is
fairly good, if submitted to moron minds only.

As Mrs. Martin pointed out at Louisville, in answer to this
ridiculous plea that they are imitating our Government:

“The will of the majority as expressed in Congress
is binding on the several States and the citizens there—
of, but only to the extent and within the limits of au—
lhorilg/ specifically conferred on the Congress by the
States. Any attempt in Congress by a majority and
even a unanimous vote, to control the actions of the
States or of the citizens, in matters where authority
has not been specifically conferred on the Congress, is
null and void.”

But the fact is that the majority of the 3,000,000 club—
women have no more chance of expressing themselves through
the “duplex and illogical system” of the General Federation
than they have of casting individual votes on the “Child”
Labor Amendment through Mrs. Kelley’s “Women’s Joint
Congressional Committee” lobby.

Each local club, whether it has 700 members or 17 mem-
bers, counts 1 vote at the General Federation Council; but
the State presidents, officers, directors and past presidents
of the Federation also each have one vote; so that, for exam—
ple, two “past presidents” can outvote any club of 1,000
members, and any two clubs with 25 members each cast
double the vote of a club of 1,000 members!

Of course this isn’t “democracy,” as Mrs. Sherman pre-
tends, but Prussian plural voting, the craziest form of die-
tatorship in existence, and one of the most dishonest in the
use to which it is here put, for when Congress is told that
“3,000,000” clubwomen indorse or oppose a certain measure,
everybody knows that Congress is considering the “3,000,000”
as 'z'mlividual votes, that the plain meaning intended and un—
derstood is that all or a real majority of 3,000,000 women
are in favor of or opposed to the legislation. Congressmen
care nothing whatever about how a “past president” has the
same vote as a club of 1,000 members at a Federation Coun-
cil; they want to know, and have a right to know how the
hullm'ilual women voters, or the majority of them, stand at
flee polls, where all women, including “past presidents” are
equal. And to rig the machinery to deceive Congressmen
and then make-believe that it is “majority rule” is sheer
trickery.

Of course, as stated, the lobbyists are fighting for their
lives and for the “full grant of power” involved in the
Kelley Program of Socialist Legislation for the bureaucrats
and lobbyists at Washington.

C mscquently, it is not to be expected that the resolution’
of the Louisville Club will have any more immediate effect-
upon the General Federation schemes of despotism than the
Declaration of Independence of 1776 had upon the schemes
of George III. Ultimately it will prevail, if fought for.

But the dictators and lobbyists will hold their power as
long as they can, and their “apparatus of power” for a die-
tatorship, through the “Women’s Joint Congressional Com-
mittee” and the General Federation of Women’s Clubs is
mechanically almost perfect.

Therefore, no one should expect too much, too soon, from
the Louisville resolution. “Rome was not built in a day,”
nor can any form of independence, republicanism, honest rep-
resentation, democracy or individual liberty be won from a
despotism that is established in power, without a long, hard
struggle.

\

of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence can be
forced tamely to submit indefinitely to the Socialist—led dicta—
torship of a distant lobby in which they have less real rep—
resentation than the American colonies had in the British
Parliament!

Eventually, the Washington interlocking lobby dictatorship,
led by a Socialist (Mrs. Kelley) over clubwomen and women
voters, will be overthrown by women themselves. “If even-
tually, why not now?”

Lobby Dictatorship Vs. Capitalist Democracy

To see how absolutely undemocratic the Socialist—Feminist
Women’s Lobby Dictatorship at Washington is, in compari—
son with “hard-boiled” Big Business and Capital, in demand—
ing that every State federation or local club shall appear “as
a club” behind any SOCIALIST SCHEME Washington
lobbyists want, let us quote the following excerpt from the
By—Laws of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States
of America:

“Article XIII, Section 10. On a question submitted
to referendum no organization member found to have
voted with the minority shall be deemed to impair its
standing in the Chamber by adhering to its position or
by continuing its efforts in support thereof.”

The Chamber of Commerce of the United States holds a
referendum. It takes a two-thirds vote of the member or-
ganizations to commit the national Chamber—and even then,
every local chamber among the one-third voting the other
way, is left perfectly free to adhere publicly to its position.

That is democracy, local self—government, individual free—
dom. But the thing is not to be found anywhere in the
so-callec “great national organizations of women” in the
“Women’s Joint Congressional Committee.”

Also, in the “Women’s Joint Congressional Committee” if
any five of 20 or more organizations form a “Subcommittee”
in favor of some measure, all the other organizations are
bound to support it or keep silence! “As a club” 15 or more
“great national organizations” can be MUZZLED on any
Federal legislation that 5 others in the “pool” support. No
wonder, with this machine at her disposal; Mrs. Kelley says:

“We are now organized with a thousand ramifica—
tions. We have more interlocking directorates than
business has.” (Meat Packer hearing, House Agricul-
ture Committee, May 2, 1921.)

With equal truth Mrs. Kelley might have mentioned that
they also have more DICTATORSHIP AND DOCILITY
than “big business” ever dreamed of having.

 

 

THE WOMAN PATRIOT furnishes DOCUMENTED IN-
FORMATION, with names, dates and references, on:

1. RADICAL LEGISLATION AND MOVEMENTS that
threaten Individual Liberty, the natural rights of Par-
?tés', the reserved rights of States or the security of the

a run.

2. PUBLIC OFFICERS, ORGANIZATIONS and INDIVID-
UALS, regardless of party, race, creed or sex, who pro-
mote Communism, Feminism, Pacifism or Paternalism in
the United States.

3. CONCRETE AND DEFINITE MEASURES to uphold
American Constltutional Government against its foreign
or domestic enemies.

THE WOMAN PATRIOT is specific, fair and fearless.
It stands for a STRONG GOVERNMENT of constitution—
ally limited powers, with courage to govern, and right to
do nothing else. It advocates, with Thomas Jefferson, “a
wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from
INJURING one another and LEAVE THEM OTHERWISE
FREE.”

Subscription Price, $2.00 a Year; Six Months, $1.00

 

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T H E W O M A N 1’ A T R I\() ’1‘ ($7

 

 

merly Mrs. Wischnewetzky, friend and translator of

Friedrich Engels, has been, according to her own

testimony, trying “to find the point of least resistance"
to “make an end” of the capitalist system.

Friedrich Engels himself, September 15, 1887, wrote to
Mrs. Kelley (then Mrs. Wischnewetzky) that Socialism “will
take unexpected forms”; and Engels wrote to the Socialist
Sorge, the next day, September 16, 1887, that the masses can
be set in motion only in “a way suitable to the respective
countries” and that “this is usually a roundabout. wag. But
everything else is of minor importance if only they are really
aroused.” (See Marx and Engels on Revolution in America,
No. 6 of “The Little Red Library” issued by the Daily
Worker Publishing Company, ‘Chicago, official American pub—
lishers for the Communist International at Moscow.)

On January 27, 1887, Friedrich Engels wrote to Mrs.
Kelley:

“The less it [Socialism] will be knocked into the Ameri-
cans from without and the more they test it by their
experience the deeper it will go into their flesh
and blood.” (Quoted in New York Call, Socialist organ,
Jan. 29, 1923.)

I ‘OR forty years, Mrs. Florence Kelley, Socialist, for—

“Find the point of least resistance,” use “roundabout ways,"
“unexpected forms” and work Socialism “into their flesh and
blood” as something else—that is the Engels—Kelley Socialist
Program.

Also, of course, Socialism must follow what Col. Raymond
Robins called, “the general rule, to use a woman” that the
Germans and Bolsheviks found successful in Russia (Bolshe-
vist propaganda hearing, U. S. Senate, Feb.—Mar., 1919, p.
792) and which Satan also employed long before to deceive
Mother Eve.-

In all candor, it must be admitted that Mrs. Kelley has
been quite successful in promoting Socialism as something
else, and that hardly anybody else has been so successful,
politically, in “using women.”

On November 22, 1920, Mrs. Kelley and a lot of “non-
communist hands” organized the “Women’s Joint Congres-
sional Committee”—a lobby pool in which “the great national
organizations of women” were to combine their legislative
agencies at Washington for “pressure” on Congress for Fed-
eral legislation.

The “non—communist hands” included Mrs. Maud Wood

Socialism Presented as “Philanthropy”

l’ark, Mrs. Edward Franklin White, and Miss Lida llall‘ord
of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, Miss Ethel
Smith of the Women’s Trade Union League, and others not
worth mentioning.

The real power in the thing has always been Mrs. Kelley——
though Mrs. Park, and later Mrs. Sherman, of the League of
\Vomen Voters and the General Federation of Women’s Clubs,
respectively, have served as figure/reads, “fronts" aml “chair—
men” of the outfit.

Mrs. Kelley‘s leadership over the “Women's Joint ("on-
gressional Committee." is shown by the fact. that she has
actually led all its big “drives.”

Its chief objects in life since its creation have been:

1. The Maternity Act with Mrs. Kelley head of its Ma—
ternity Act Subcommittee.

2. The Child—Labor Amendment——with Mrs. Kelley chief
draftsman of the amendment (See, (.‘ongres-sional Record, May
31, 1924).

3. Opposition to the “Equal Rights" Amendment also led,
of course, by Mrs. Kelley, assisted by Miss Ethel Smith.

4. Opposition to the Wadsworth—(hn‘rett “Back-to—the—l’eo—
ple Amendment” which suddenly began onlg after the Massa—
chusetts referendum against Mrs. Kelley's “Child" Labor
Amendment—the lobbyists convincing themselves that they
have no chance whatever of putting over alleged “women’s
measures” by Federal amendment to socialize. women and
children, if THE PEOPLE, including women voters, are to
be consulted at. the polls.

To show how adroitly Mrs. Kelley can sell Socialism—«and
all the Socialist “fundamental” books to young college women
entering “philanthropic” or “social” work; to show that this
great woman Socialist leader is forty years ahead of her
“non-communist” followers aml dupes in. knowing where she
is going; to proVe that this publication is fair and necnrale
in describing many of these alleged “welfare” schemes as
STRAIGHT SOCIALISM (particularly when Mrs. Kelley,
who scorns “palliatives,” is found drafting them aml driving
them through Congress or women’s clubs), and to give club-
women and other women an idea of the SOCIALIST
METHOD in connecting class—[mired and revolutionary doe-
trines even with “love of mankind,” we print below the full
text of Mrs. Kelley’s famous lecture on “Philanthropic Work”
delivered in New York within three. months after ll‘riedrich
Engels instructed her how to work Socialism “into Iln'ir flesh
and blood.”

 

 

 

“THE NEED OF THEORETICAL PREPARATION FOR PHILANTHROPIC WORK”

A Paper Presented to the New York Association of Collegiate Alumnae on May M, 1887

By FLORENCE KELLEY WISCHNEWE'I‘ZKY

love of mankind, and, at first sight, it seems super-

fluous to undergo theoretical preparation for express—

ing one’s love of mankind. That seems to be wholly
a matter of the heart, the sympathies, the sense of right.
But experience has long shown that these qualities alone do
not suffice. For man lives in society and society has its own
laws of development, an understanding of which is abso—
lutely necessary if our philanthropic effort is not to be
wasted or worse.

If, for instance, in our goodness of heart and our igno—
rance of the laws of development of the society in which we
live, we should assume that all men are brothers, it would
be only to make the painful discovery that these “broth-
ers” are, today, divided into two classes, engaged in a life
and death struggle: the smaller class owning all the neces—
saries of life. all the means of production, houses, lands,
mills, forges and furnaces; the harvests and the ships and
trains in which they are transported; in short, everything
with which work can be carried on: and the larger class,
the vast majority of these “brothers” owning nothing but

I :TYMOLOGICALLY, philanthropy is, of course, the

 

their labor powor, and forced to sell that, piece by piece
and day by day, for what it will bring in the labor market.
In practice, every interest of these “brothers” is and must
be diametrically opposed and if, in our want of tln-oretical
preparation, we prefer to believe differently, a thousand
proofs meet as day by day. Every strike or lockout is at
bottom a class struggle. The workers will work less and
have more, and the employers will pay less and have more,
and each side must, in the struggle for SC]f-IH'OSOl‘Vatitnl, as—
sume the attitude it does assume. tut not in the labor
market only is the class struggle forced upon our attention.
In the church, the priest who speaks his honest conviction
in the interests of the workers is “isolated” by the hierarchy;
in politics, the man who stands forth as their standard—bearer
is covered with ridicule, branded the enemy of order and
civilization, a crank, and whatever epithet seems most op-
probious; while, before the law, the striker——-the worker»—
is liable to imprisonment for conspiracy; the employer—the
capitalist—who locks out his men has yet to be molested in
this State.

One consequence of the division of society into two warring

 

   

  

 

68 THE WOMAN PATRIOT

classes is this: that there are two sorts of philanthropy.
There is our bourgeois philanthropy, to which we college
graduates are born and bred; and there is the philanthropy
of the working class which differs radically from our own.

I shall try, first, to make clear the nature and limitations
of our bourgeois philanthropy; and then I shall try to make
clear the nature of the philanthropy of the workers. And if
I succeed in doing this, the need of theoretical preparation
for philanthropic work will demonstrate itself in the process.

Our bourgeois philanthropy, whatever form it may take,
is really only the effort to give back to the workers a little
part of that which our whole social system, systematically,
robs them of, and so to prop up that system yet a little
longer.

It is the workers who produce all values, but the lion’s
share of what they produce falls to the lion—the capitalist
class—and enables the capitalist arbitrarily to decide what
he will do with it and whether or not he will use a part of
the spoils for the good of the despoiled, a part of the plunder
for the good of the plundered; and, however disinterestedly
individual men and women may devote themselves to this
task of restitution, the fact remains that, for the capitalist
class as a whole, all philanthropic effort is a work of resti-
tution for self-preservation.

This is outspoken for the class, as a class, when our social
science congresses and associated charities meetings occupy
their sessions with questions of the treatment of the depend-
ent and defective classes, with plans to minimize the danger
with which these elements threaten society, by palliating
such of the evils consequent upon our present system of
production and distribution as philanthropy can cope with.

The dangerous classes—thieves, murderers, paupers, all of
whom are as much an intregal part of our social system as
we college-bred women—must be restrained; epidemic dis-
ease, as murderous to the ruling class as to the workers,
must be prevented in self-defense; pauperism, inevitable
consequence of free competition and man—superseding ma-
chinery, must be met by industrial training, the abolition of
outdoor relief. the organization of charities—all in order
that the system of production and distribution which en—
genders all these evils may endure a little longer; and the
same unconscious, unformulated self-interest finds, perhaps
its most adroit expression in the arrangement known as
profit sharing. This institution embodies bourgeois philan-
thropy pure and simple. According to the accepted usage
of the business world, he only may share the profits of good
years who can bear his share of the losses of bad ones. But
the workingman, having nothing, can not bear any losses
whatsoever. So the share kindly given back to the workers
out of the profits, the whole of which they created, is arbi—
trarily determined by the employer, who thereby kills divers
birds wih one stone: he eases his conscience by making some
slight restitution; he binds the hands to the concern by means
of the trifling increase in their wages, so that they watch
one another to prevent wasteful work from diminishing the
share, and they are loath to strike or in any way injure the
arofits of which they gratefully accept the share allotted to
'iem.

In the struggle for existence, with the labor organizations
on the one hand, and powerful competitors on the other, such
advantages in the allegiance of the firms own hands are
cheaply bought with the restitution of a share of the profits.
And this form of individual philanthropy I find typical of
the whole. We give back a percentage and find our account
in prolonging the system that gives us all the rest.

I do not for a moment lose sight of the noble self-sacrifice
of men and women who, in all disinterestedness, give years
of their lives to philanthropic effort. Nor do I believe that
all or most of such Work is done with the conscious intention
of propping up a system of society which is based upon the
exploitation of the working class. On the contrary, it is
because I am convinced of the honorable and noble intention
which animates a vast part of such work, that it seems to me
necessary for every thinking woman to pause before entering
upon it and ask herself the question: What is the real nature
of philanthropic work, and is the kind, usually entered upon
by men and women of my class, such as will satisfy mv
longing to be of use to my fellow men and women? t

For our grandmothers at our age, before the system of
production had developed to its present stage, when the con—

trasts of class were less sharply defined, philanthropic work
was simple enough; neighborly help of those less comfortably
placed, or, possibly, contributions to the maintenance of some
one of a few charitable institutions. For our mothers, and
those of us who virtually belong to their generation, haVIng
lost step with the rapid march of industrial and social de-
velopment that marks the last few years, the philanthropic
problem, though complicated enough, is by no means a vital
one. There is simply the choice among the thousand and
one forms of philanthropic activity approved by the class to
which we blong.

Accepting the social system of today as eternal, final, and
the poor always with us as but an incident to it, the only
problem would be how to minimize their number and alleviate
their sufferings as far as may be. Then the only theoretlcal
preparation possible would be a study of methods. But for
the thinking woman of our generation the final question is no
longer between giving doles to street beggars, on the one
hand, or supporting the associated charities, on the other; or
between the temperance, the White Cross and the suffrage
movements, as to many persons it still seems to be. The
question that forces itself upon us, and imperatively demands
an immediate answer is this: In the great strife of classes,
in the life and death struggle that is rending society to its
foundations, where do I belong? .

Shall I cast my lot with the oppressors, content to patch
and darn, to piece and cobble at the worn and rotten fabric
of a perishing society? Shall I spend my life in applying
palliatives, in trying to make the intolerable endurabl-e yet
a little longer? Shall I spend my youth upon a children’s
hospital, when the dispensary rolls of the city show that the
deterioration of the child physique in the working class is out
of proportion to all that palliatives can do to check it? That
increasing poverty brings increasing rachitic disease out of
all proportion to the growth of population, so that hospital
work is a Sisyphus task? Shall I send a score or a hundred
children for recreation to the country, while year by year
our factories and tenement-house workrooms demand fresh
thousands of children to toil within their noisome prison
walls? Shall I preach temperance to men whose homes are
vile tenements, whose wives toil side by side with them be-
cause the father’s wages no longer suffice to maintain the
family? Men whose exhausted ill-nourished frames demand
stimulants, because the wife has no time, strength, money,
with which to procure and prepare good and sufficient food?

Shall I preach chastity to homeless men, the hopeless dis- .

comfort of whose surroundings must concentrate their whole
desire upon the gratification of animal passion, while want
forces scores of thousands of women to sell themselves to
the first comer? Shall I fritter away the days of my youth
investigating the deservingness of this or that applicant for
relief when the steady march of industrial development
throws a million able-bodied workers out of employment, to
tramp the country, seeking in vain a chance to earn their
bread, until hundreds—aye, thousands—of them, broken, dis—
couraged, demoralized—settle down into the life of the
chronic pauper?

Shall I not rather make common cause with these, my
brothers and my sisters, to make an end of such a system? .

Here lies the choice. If we stand by the class to which by
education we belong, our philanthropic work, whether we will
or .110, must bear its stamp, being merely palliative—helping
one child while the system sacrifices tens of thousands, sav-
ing one girl while thousands fall, building one hospital while
every condition of our social life grows more brutally de-
structive of human life and health.

As loyal members of the ruling class, our work must, I re-
peat, be merely palliative. For a radical cure of the social
disease means the end of the system of exploiting the work-
ers. But to stop exploiting would be suicide for the class
that we are born and bred into, and of which we college-bred
women form an integral part. Lest this should sound like
mere abuse, we have but to recall to mind the origin of
poverty in our society.

I need not waste words in pointing out to you that the
recipients of philanthropic benefits spring from the working
class, whether they are babies, who need créches because
their mothers are forced to go to the factory; or free kinder-
gartens, because the working man has no money for school
bills; or hospitals, because home nursing is out of the ques-
tion; or free transportation to the West, because home life

‘ K

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T H E

has been crushed out in the struggle for life itself, and the
Children’s Aid Society must find a substitute for the real
article; or whether the recipient is a candidate for some home
for the aged, because wages can be earned only through the
prime of life;—whatever the special case, the mass of cases
come from the workers. Women to be rescued, men to be
reformed,—whatev-er the form of the social wreckage, it all
comes from the class of the plundered. Of course there are
exceptions, as when boodle aldermen in jail are given flowers
by well-meaning women. But the exceptions do but prove
the rule that the recipients spring from the working class.
Nor is the reason far to seek, for it is a law of political
economy that the working class receives only enough of the
fruits of its labor to maintain itself and bring up the rising
generation according to the prevailing declining standard of
life of the working class in the given country at the given
time,1 the remainder of the fruits of labor falling to the
capitalist class, by virtue of the monopoly of the means of
production heldby that class. The remainder which falls to
the capitalist class is surplus value, and I must ask you to
have patience a moment while 1 try to explain what that is.

Under our -industrial system the means of production are
a monopoly of an irresponsible class, and the workers are
forced to compete