bill is now on the federal statute books, thus affording a valuable precedent for additional legislation, it is not generally believed that the Senate will take up this measure at least till later on in the session. The new Senate Committee on the Judiciary is as follows:

Culberson of Illinois (chairman); Overman of North Carolina, Chilton of West Virginia, O'Gorman of New York, Fletcher of Florida, Reed of Missouri, Ashurst of Arizona, Shields of Tennessee, Walsh of Montana, Bacon of Virginia, Clark of Wyoming, Nelson of Minnesota, Dillingham of Vermont, Sutherland of Utah, Brandegee of Connecticut, Borah of Idaho, Cummins of Iowa and Root of New York.

Senator Kenyon of Iowa has introduced a bill making it obligatory that all railway employes shall have twenty-four hours consecutively off duty in every period of 168 hours. It is stated that the belief that the existing law, intended to protect railway employes and limit their hours of labor, is being violated because of the impracticability of its strict enforcement prompted Senator Kenyon to draw up this bill.

NEW YORK-BOSTON EXCHANGE
OF SETTLEMENT EXPERIENCES

The inter-city settlement conference held the past month in Boston, though not the first of such conferences, was unique in that it brought together settlement residents so widely separated. as the New York Association of Neighborhood Workers and the Boston Social Union.

The first meeting dealt with the problem of securing and training workers. Eva W. White, headworker of the Elizabeth Peabody House and lecturer in the Boston School for Social Workers, spoke of the need of such training as schools of philanthropy and settlements themselves can give. Richard H. Edwards of the Inter-Collegiate Young Men's Christian Association explained the movement for community service by college men. Settlement Scholarships and School and College Chapters for Settlement Work was the subject of a paper by Geraldine Gordon of Denison House.

John L. Elliott of New York contributed the suggestion that young college men and women contemplating social work as a profession might do a half year's field work in the settlement at the end of the sophomore and senior years in lieu of academic courses.

Mrs. Max Morgenthau of the Henry Street Settlement told how that settlement trained its volunteer workers in clerical work, in regularity in attendance and in actual personal acquaintance with their tenement community. This training has created in that settlement a group of volunteers, who are becoming experts in their work and one of whom has developed a series of pageant plays. The mistress of the wardrobe in

these pageants is an authority on costume, and has studied the technical processes of dyeing fabrics in order to obtain the best possible results.

The subject of an evening meeting was Standards and Stipends for Work and Workers, and was under the leadership of Lilian D. Wald, president of the National Federation of Settlements. Miss Wald held that there should be flexibility in methods of work and a true equality between the administrative officers of the settlement and the specialists who give so much distinction to its work. She spoke of a university teacher who came back to the settlement to "recapture the freedom of her method." M. deG. Trenholm, to whom very much of the success of the conference was due, urged strongly the necessity of proper compensation for settlement service, if standards are to be maintained.

The Sunday afternoon meeting was devoted to the subject of federation in relation to standards of work. Henry Moskowitz of Madison House asked that the settlements keep in mind their primary duty of furnishing opportunity for the manifestation of local social spirit. He showed that in an increasing number of neighborhoods the neighbors are forming federations of their own, made up of representatives of the various local societies. While this sort of community organization is sometimes sporadic or indefinite the settlements should be willing to support it both with money and workers. He warned the neighborhood worker never to forget that the primary duty of the settlement is to build up neighborhood life. He must, therefore, not permit what sometimes seems the larger aspects or implications of neighborhood life to sap his work at the roots.

Philip Davis of the Civic Service House suggested directions in which federated action among settlements might be directed. He showed that, outside of such oversight as the licensing of minors engaged in the street trades involved, the great mass of the minors of the community and the street merchants themselves are free to run into danger without possibility of interference or guarding from the outside. Immigrants are another class who will in the future be more and more in need of constructive human service, especially at the point of entrance on citizenship. The city, either through its officers or by delegating the work to others, should surround the gift of citizenship with appropriate safeguards and should make the process itself educational. The minimum wage is now becoming a significant problem all over the country and Mr. Davis believed that settlement workers should take their place among the pioneers in endeavoring to push its benefits.

Elizabeth Williams, of the College Settlement, New York, spoke of the enthusiasm of the pio

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neers and outlined some of the means of making the settlement ideal today as great a challenge to young men and women of capacity as it was to these early leaders.

Albert J. Kennedy of South End House discussed the question of federations of settlements in relation to the problem of club and class work. The chief task of the settlement is in his opinion to bring about the democratic organization of local communities in order that the people themselves may in time assume the task of local organization. The chief function of club work as such must be that of building up standards toward this end. The fear of rigidity which has oppressed certain critics of federation is, he believed, unfounded and there are, he held, great possibilities for settlement federations in enlarging and bringing to a high standard certain forms of craft work, dramatics, pageants and large recreational events.

At the evening meeting Jane E. Robbins spoke in behalf of definite work in training young Italian Americans as social workers who would contribute their enthusiasm for and knowledge of their own people definitely to the task of social

re-construction and Americanization.

Vida D. Scudder believed settlement work should be made more fundamentally democratic and should give itself more definitely to the task of fostering and championing working class movements as such. The great danger of the settlement, she held, is that it will become one of the regular philanthropies rather than an advance station, as it were, in the progressive democratization of the national life. Settlement residents should be free at times of crisis to drop detail work for the larger task of assisting in the great forward movement of the people themselves.

George Hodges, dean of the Episcopal Theological School, believed that the church also should work along the lines suggested by Miss Scudder. He believed, however, the best achievement could be secured only on the high levels of personality.

John L. Elliott of the Hudson Guild held that it should more and more be the final effort of the settlement to bring the mothers and fathers into the streets, into the schools and into the dance halls that they may come to understand the conditions under which their children live, and contribute of their own experience and power in reorganizing communal life.

The meeting on Monday morning was opened by Abraham Rosenberg, the president of the Cloak and Suit Makers' Union, who spoke of the work of the various settlement leaders in securing the New York protocol. He admitted a growing recognition on the part of labor leaders of the factor of public good will and service.

Mary P. Follett of the Roxbury League urged

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the continued necessity for social workers in the civic centre, and Gaylord S. White suggested the need of such influence in enlarging the scope and horizon of church work. Robert A. Woods summed up the more telling lines of interest opened up in the meeting. He urged that the significance of the settlement for the future, as for the past, lay not in any specific type of service or reform-valuable as nearly all such effort is-but in the development of social self sufficiency among the people from neighborhood to neighborhood throughout the country.

The use which the younger element made of a question box as the meeting ended led to the motion that at future conferences the junior speakers should have the floor for at least one

session.

"BOXING" THE COST OF LIVING

The cost of living was the very live subject taken up by the seventeenth annual meeting of the American Academy of Political and Social Science held in Philadelphia in April. With the exception of the tariff, which was omitted for lack of time, the session may be said to have covered the whole field.

on

Family

The first paper in the session Standards was by Prof. Simon N. Patten of the University of Pennsylvania. His analysis of changes in woman's dress is worth quoting:

"In the early history of America, the dress, the habits, the morality, the relations between men and women could be predicted with certainty. This uniformity has been broken up by recent industrial changes through which the working population has been transferred from the farm to shops and factories. City life makes new demands and excites new wants.

"A new woman is appearing who differs in many ways from her predecessor. She is stronger, more healthy, more ambitious and with moral qualities that match the new vigor. With greater physical vigor and more ambition, women love activity and cut out the contrasts in color and design in which the primitive woman indulged. man-made woman dresses to emphasize her sex; the self-conscious woman subordinates her clothing to the needs of her own personality and her activity.

The

"The active, healthy woman creates a spiritual impress by simplifying her dress and thus enhancing her facial beauty. Her less advanced sister clings to the older dress forms, through which a lower appeal is made. Out of the struggle is coming a new womanhood with higher morality and more beauty. Dressing is thus more than an economy; it is the essence of moral progress."

Martha Bensley Bruère of New York city, author of Increasing Home Efficiency, main

"Food, $447.15, on the basis of 35 cents per day for an adult male and a sliding scale for others in the family; shelter, $144: clothes, $100, based on New York prices "where clothing is cheaper than any other place in the country," she said; operation of household, including light, heat, etc., $150; advancement, meaning education, recreation, charities, church, savings, etc., $312; incidentals, $46, a total of $1,199.15."

ELEMENTS ENTERING INTO COST OF FOOD

Edith E. Smith, president of the Pennsylvania Rural Progress Association, asserted that the fallacy that lessened production is the chief cause of high prices has been exploded and there is ample food produced if waste were eliminated. Said she:

"While city people are complaining of the prices paid the farmer, it is an absolute fact that the farmer has a hard time to make a living profit on his business. The farmer has to face the combined problems of production and distribution and he runs the gamut of both. If any manufacturer were compelled to face the difficulties of the farmer attempted it on so small a margin of profit, he would quickly go to the wall."

Mrs. Smith showed that it costs a Pennsylvania or New York farmer about 50 per cent more to raise a hog or a steer than it costs the Iowa farmer and that the latter can ship his cattle to the New York market and sell them cheaper than the Pennsylvania farmer.

Mrs. Frank A. Pattison of Colonia, N. J., who was for some time in charge of the experiment station maintained by the New Jersey women's clubs, spoke on Scientific Management in Home-Making. She showed how, by the introduction of mechanical devices, such as patent dish-washing machines or vacuum cleaners, it might be possible to minimize household drudgery without employing a servant and without using paper dishes or bare floors.

Everett P. Wheeler of the New York bar laid the high cost of living to increases in rent, due to governmental requirements and increased' taxation; increases in the cost of food because of governmental inspection and regulations; legislation shortening the hours of work and increasing wages; the syndicalist movement and other influences that add to cost of production.

An interesting comment on the general discussion was made by Christine M. Frederick,

national secretary of the Associated Clubs of Domestic Science, and consulting household editor of the Ladies' Home Journal, who pointed out that the whims of women were in no small way responsible for the high cost of living.

H. B. Fullerton, of Medford, L. I., director of agricultural development for the Long Island Railroad, was the first speaker at the afternoon session on Public Control. He told of the development of the "Long Island Home Hamper," which is a system of delivering, direct from producer to consumer, standard hampers containing food products at an established price.

Mrs. Elmer Black, member of the advisory board of the New York Terminal Market Commission, discussed Communal Benefits from the Municipal Terminal Market.

Dr. Mary E. Pennington, chief of the Food Research Laboratory of Philadelphia, showed in a masterly fashion the contribution made by cold storage warehouses by providing mechanical means of food preservation and thus equalizing supply and demand regardless of seasons. Dr. Pennington pointed out that chickens kept for twenty-four hours under average ice-box conditions of the private family, changed more chemically than those kept for months in cold storage warehouses.

Clyde L. King, instructor in political science, University of Pennsylvania, urged municipal control of wholesale terminal markets to reduce cost of distribution. Said he:

"This plan of placing terminal wholesale facilities under municipal control and operation will unquestionably make for the elimination of certain of the middlemen, will make for the payment of higher prices, because of the large number of buyers present, and will give to retailers a greater choice of goods.

"The situation as to the retailers of food products in the city can well be illustrated by the situation in Philadelphia. There are at the present time in this city about 490 chain stores, 700 members of the Retail Grocers' Associations and 4169 independent grocers. In addition there are 258 delicatessen stores, 200 butchers, handling some groceries, and 1923 variety stores.

"This makes 1190 chain stores as compared with 6550 independent stores. It is clear that the maximum point to which prices can be boosted by the retailers is that fixed by a subsistence wage on the part of these small independent stores."

Irving Fisher of Yale University, in his opening remarks at the evening meeting, emphasized the growing belief that the real significance of the increased cost of living was to be found in changing the value of money.

The most striking address of the evening was

1913

an appeal by Frances Perkins, executive secretary of the Committee on Safety of the City of New York, for the living wage.

"HIRING A SHEET FROM A MISSUS"

In a recent strike Miss Perkins found that many of the girls in factories lived away from home, many coming from rural districts, and that most of them lived by "hiring a sheet from a missus." That means that two or three of the girls slept in one bed, with a cup of coffee thrown in with the "hiring" in the morning. Many of these girls had coffee and rolls for breakfast, lunch and dinner, with an occasional extravagance, such as a fifteen-cent dinner. Their wages ran from $4 to $5 a week. Other girls, according to Miss Perkins, buy bread and bananas for meals, the bananas being great fillers.

Another speaker on this subject was Paul U. Kellogg, editor of THE SURVEY, who talked on the Wage Scale and Immigration. He outlined the proposal of transferring the economic regulation of immigration from the seaboard to the centers of congested industry by applying the minimum wage to unnaturalized citizens after the manner of child labor legislation. It would go far, he argued, toward bringing the common labor market to normal.

Margaret F. Byington, associate director of the Charity Organization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation, pointed out at the session on Waste and Extravagance, that scientific ratios of nourishment, while probably accurate quantitatively, in the number of calories to be supplied to the different age groups, might justly be criticised on the side of cost, as various elements tend to make assimilative power different in different cases. The sedentary worker cannot, for instance, digest the heavy, cheap food of the manual worker, and the infant's modified milk makes its food not cheaper, as scientific ratios would make it, but dearer than the older child's.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of The Home: Its Work and Influence, in a paper on Waste of Private Housekeeping, stated that:

"Industrial progress follows lines of specialization, organization and interchange. Domestic service is unspecialized, unorganized and self-supplied. For all men and women to perform their own house-service separately would be the lowest line of industrial efficiency; for each man to require one whole woman, with more if he afford it; to perform his house-service is next to the lowest.

can

"The waste of labor involved is over 40 per cent of the world's full output; fifty women doing work for fifty men, which could be done by ten Women if

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specialized, organized and interchanging their products. The 'waste of plant,' the kitchen space, cooking apparatus, dishes and utensils, fuel, with breakage, etc., is at least 90 per cent. The waste in purchasing is the difference between the cost of a steady supply at wholesale and the entire expense of all retail service and delivery equal to at least 60 per cent. The waste in efficiency is the difference between highly specialized professional work, and the grade of labor possible to the lowest average-practically all women, under conditions of overwork, if it is done by the housewife, or, of eternal apprenticeship, if done by servants."

Mrs. Julian Heath, founder and president of the National Housewives League, explained the work of the league. H. W. Hess of the University of Pennsylvania raised active discussion by his paper on Advertising: Waste or Necessity, Which? He claimed that advertising was a necessity and socially advantageous. Samuel H. Barker, financial editor of the Philadelphia North American, discussed the effects of false capitalization.

At the session on the Minimum Wage, Henry R. Seager, professor of political economy, Columbia University, pointed out the social factors involved in the introduction of a minimum wage, showing that we must be prepared for the elimination from industry of certain groups now employed and their maintenance in some fashion. The minimum wage to Professor Seager is only part of a general scheme including social in

surance.

H. La Rue Brown and Mathew B. Hammond discussed the minimum wage from the experience of Massachusetts, of Australia and New Zealand. Scott Nearing, instructor in economics, University of Pennsylvania, discussed the existing wage scale and pointed out that to a large extent the wages paid in the United States are not up to the necessary minimum.

The first address at the closing session, on How Can the Cost of Living be Reduced? given by Dr. Shaw, editor of the Review of Reviews, traced the development of the co-operative movement in this country and abroad and indicated the role that productive co-operation might well play in the development of our industrial institutions. He maintained that poverty is decreasing, while wants increase.

Martha Van Rensselaer, chief of the Department of Home Economics of Cornell University, who told wittily of the difficulty of securing women's interest in household affairs, they frequently failing to recognize as do their husbands their own importance in our economic institutions.

The last paper was by Amos R. E. Pinchot, a lawyer of New York, who pointed out the re