public schools, and instruction by settlements, philanthropic societies, churches, and other agencies through classes, visiting housekeepers, home schools, or model flats, and other means. In the country the prime need is for movable schools of homemaking, and visiting advisory teachers of housekeeping, whose work as consultants may be developed in connection with the farm demonstration work in agriculture. Meanwhile women's institutes, homemaking clubs, correspondence courses, housewives' bulletins, and similar agencies are utilized increasingly by agricultural colleges and local schools to reach the rural home.

1

Importance
of the
ideals which
are held by
prospective
husband
and wife.

138. The attitude of young people toward marriage! Even more important, perhaps, than training in the fundamental household arts, is the attitude of the young man and young woman toward marriage. The most careful preparation of a young man as a breadwinner, and the most skilful management of household economies by the young woman, will not guarantee a successful and happy home if the ideals of husband and wife are fundamentally wrong. The exaggeration of individualism, the undue insistence upon ambition, social prestige, and personal pleasure, the unwillingness to make the mutual concessions necessary to a successful marriage, all these factors render highly important the attitude of young people toward marriage. In the following passage the ideals which ought to motivate the prospective husband and wife are outlined by Raymond Calkins:

Doubtless the problem of the family is the most serious of all our social problems, for the simple reason that it underlies them all. It is precisely because the integrity and coherence of the family group are the test of American civilization that modern social observers are justly filled with alarm when they discover its steady and even rapid disintegration. ...

[And what is the remedy for this disintegration? The tightening of marriage and divorce laws and other legislative remedies are advocated by many reformers.] Yet all of these suggestions, however important, fail to go to the root of the matter. For the problem of

Fundamental significance of the family.

a

the family, ultimately, is not “the result of a defective social arrangement, but of a defective moral creed.” Its solution therefore must be sought not in the sphere of legislation or of economic adjustment, but in the regulation of the impulses and affections of the human heart. It is precisely the operation of the christian idea in the life of the individual that alone will solve the problem of family life.

The arch-enemy of the family, and of any kind of associated life, Selfishness is the selfish will. The real foe of family life is the untamed Adam the arch

enemy of of the human heart, a deep-seated, obstinate and inveterate egotism, the family. arrant and unmitigated selfishness. Family disintegration is simply a modern recrudescence of the selfishness of Cain. Elementary as such a proposition is, ... the discovery that it is true brings to many people the shock of surprise. They have thought of marriage and the life of the home as simply another way of realizing selfish desires and ambitions, and suddenly they find themselves involved in a moral situation that demands of them the continued exercise of the generous instinct of self-forgetfulness, the foregoing of their own desires and wills.

This they are unprepared to perform. Their idea is both to have the fundatheir own selfish and a home also, and it is a great revelation to

mental law way

of family them to discover that the thing cannot be done. It is selfishness that life. breaks up a home. It makes no difference what form that selfishness may take. It may take the form of actual brutality, of purely material conceptions of living, or of ungenerous self-consideration or a petty disregard of others' feelings and refined cruelties of speech. The fundamental law of the family life is mutual consideration and good will. Upon that spiritual foundation the family rests. Let one violate that law, and he precipitates an inevitable and tragic collision of forces that must result in the wreckage of human life and happiness.

In other words, it is only as the christian idea is recognized and Conclusion. put into practical operation that the gravest of our social problems can be solved. Nothing will counteract this social disease and prevent its spread but the education of the individual in the moral ideas of Jesus. Not only are those ideas practicable in this most intimate and fundamental of human relationships, but they must positively be practised if those relationships are themselves to be preserved and perpetuated.

II

Questions on the foregoing Readings 1. Name an important influence which has helped to disintegrate

the family. 2. Explain what is meant by the statement that formerly the

family was the economic unit of society." 3 What is the relation of urban development to the family? 4. What is the significance of the fact that within recent times house

hold cares have lightened? 5. What is the relation of the house to the home? 6. Outline the Des Moines housing program with respect to stand

ardized housing. 7. What is the advantage of a state housing law, instead of numerous

city ordinances on housing? 8. What is meant by center renovation? 9. What is the importance of community coöperation in housing

reform? 10. State the family problem with reference to subnormal living

conditions. When and where did the mothers' pension movement begin in the

United States? 12. Summarize the mothers' pension laws of the United States with

reference to the type of persons who may receive aid. 13. Under what conditions may aid be received? 14. Compare mothers' pension laws in the various states with reference

to the age of a child on whose account aid is allowed. 15. Compare the various states legislating on mothers' pensions with

regard to the amount of the allowance. 16. By what body was a uniform divorce law proposed in 1906? 17. Summarize the proposed law with reference to the causes for

which a marriage might be annulled. 18. What two types of divorce did the law cover? 19. Give some of the important causes which might be grounds for

either type of divorce. 20. What did the proposed law have to say concerning evidence? 21. What different types of decrees did the law provide for? 22. What is the fundamental aim of education for home-making? 23. Summarize a state program of education for the home. 24. What factors render important the attitude of young people

toward marriage? 25. What, according to Dr. Calkins, is the arch-enemy of the family? CHAPTER XXIV

DEPENDENCY: ITS RELIEF AND PREVENTION

139. Instability of the urban neighborhood 1 An ever-present problem in American social life is the care and Dependency treatment of those individuals who are dependent for the necessities in its rela

tion to urof life upon persons or agencies outside their immediate families. ban life. The problem of the destitute, the sick, the mentally defective, and the otherwise dependent, is met with in every type of community, but on a particularly large scale in our great cities. The rapid development of industrial cities, and the evils of unregulated neighborhood growth in urban districts, have combined to accentuate the problem of dependency in the city. Dependency is also related to the mobility of the urban neighborhood, as Mr. McKenzie points out in the following selection:

That the mobility of modern life is intimately connected with The mobility many of our social problems there is general consensus of opinion.

of modern

life, Assuming that a reasonable amount of mobility is both inevitable and desirable, nevertheless it is unquestionably true that the excessive population movements of modern times are fraught with many serious consequences.

Perhaps the most obvious effect of the mobility of the population and its within a city is the striking instability of local life. Neighborhoods most obvi

ous effect. are in a constant process of change; some improving, others deteriorating. Changes in incomes and rents are almost immediately registered in change of family domicile. Strengthened economic status usually implies the movement of a family from a poorer to a better neighborhood, while weakened economic status means that the family must retire to a cheaper district. So in every city we have two general types of neighborhood; the one whose inhabitants have

i From the American Journal of Sociology, Vol. XXVII, No. 2, September, 1921. (R. D. McKenzie, “The Neighborhood,” etc.); pp. 157-159, 161-162, 167.

located there on the basis of personal choice, and the other whose inhabitants have located there as the result of economic compulsion. The former . . . contains the possibilities for the development of neighborhood sentiment and organization, while the latter lacks the

necessary elements for reconstruction...: Mobility of [Mobility of population gives rise to problems which are the conpopulation

cern of social workers.] Organizations dealing with delinquency handicaps the social and dependency are hampered in their efforts by the frequent moveworker.

ments of their “cases.” Similarly the church, trade union, and other voluntary forms of association lose in their efficiency through the

rapid turnover of the local membership lists. ... Social

[It is important to notice the social causes of intercommunity causes of

migration.] The sudden change from a predominantly agricultural intercommunity mi- to a predominantly industrial society has occasioned a mobility of gration.

life unknown before. As long as the soil furnished the chief basis of economic income man was obliged to live a comparatively stable life in a fixed and definite locality. With the development of the modern capitalistic régime, the presence of the individual is no longer necessary to insure the productivity and security of his property. .. He is thus left free to live, if he so desires, a nomad life. Of course all classes in society are not equally free to move about. The middleclass tradesman and many of the professional groups are more or less tied to definite localities by the very nature of their work. On the other hand, the well-to-do and the day-laborer are free to move

almost at will. Chief cause

Our modern factory system is the chief cause of the present migraof migration tory tendencies of the wage-earning class. . . . "Seasonal or inter

mittent occupations, temporary jobs, commercial depressions, occasional unemployment, and a general sense of the lack of permanency in the tenure of their industrial positions, pull settled families up by the roots and seldom leave them long enough in one place to take root again. Our manual workers are more and more transient. Many

among them are forced to become tramping families.” Mobility Moreover, change of residence from one section to another within within the

the community is quite as disturbing to neighborhood assocation as community.

is movement from one community to another. ...

Again, there is a type of mobility that is not indicated by change

among wageearners.