From August 7, 1910

WHEN FUTURE HISTORIAN COMES TO 1910: Will He Look Us Up with Interest, or Pass Us by with a Grunt (PDF)

Back in 1910 the New York Times Sunday Magazine had a regular weekly column in which two characters known as the Office Radical and the Office Philosopher debate two sides of an issue. I’ve read a few of their debates while doing research for this blog, but I haven’t published any of their columns here so far. But this one was too good to pass up.

In this week’s column, they debate whether or not anything interesting has happened in 1910 that would be worth future historians looking at, especially as compared to all the interesting stuff their own historians have to look back on.

The Office Radical is sure that “some future historian will be ransacking the newspaper files and official records of 1910 the same way our present-day historians are ransacking those of, say, 1859 or 1770.”

The Office Philosopher says, “I’ll bet you 10 to 6 he doesn’t look at them for anything but Peary and the airships.”

I read this as I sat in the microforms room of the New York Public Library, doing research for this blog. I’d been researching the other 1910 articles I’ve posted over the last couple months, on topics that do indeed include Robert Peary and airships. And when I saw this discussion my eyes got wide and I thought, “They’re talking about me!”

I felt like Bastian in The NeverEnding Story when he realizes that the book he’s reading is talking specifically about him. Maybe this means I should write a post in which I wonder if future historians will ever look back at blogs of today with the same fascination I have in looking at newspapers of 1910.

So, obviously, I side with the Radical on this one.

From July 24, 1910

WHY SOME CHILDREN ARE ALWAYS LAZY: Experts Have Made a Study of This Familiar Weakness in Childhood and Suggest a Cure (PDF)

Maybe your child isn’t deliberately lazy. He might just be defective. Keeping in mind that a healthy child takes 8 years to complete 8 school grades, you can use this handy guide to see how long it might take your child to finish school, depending on what kind of defect your child has:

Defective vision: 8 years
Defective teeth: 8.5 years
Defective breathing: 8.6 years
Hypertrophied tonsils: 8.7 years
Adenoids: 9.1 years
Enlarged glands: 9.2 years

Woe is the child with enlarged glands and defective teeth. Luckily, these defects can all be counteracted with proper nutrition. This scientific study is based on a sample size of 27 children.

From July 17, 1910

WOMEN TRIUMPH IN NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION: Mrs. Eliza Flagg Young Placed at the Head of the Organization Heretofore Controlled by Men (PDF)

I don’t want to gloss over the main point of this article, which is that Eliza “Ella” Flagg Young became the first female head of the NEA, so take a moment to let her great accomplishment settle in. Now there’s something else I found while researching this article that I want to discuss.

For some reason, Eliza Flagg Young comes up in several articles on-line about homeopathy. This excerpt at homeopathic.com quotes from a book called The Consumer’s Guide to Homeopathy by Dana Ullman, who also runs the site and is a frequent contributor to The Huffington Post. He wrote:

Eliza Flagg Young, MD, a nineteenth century physician, once said, “Every woman is born a doctor. Men have to study to become one.” Although this may be a controversial statement, what isn’t controversial is that women tend to be the primary health care providers in most families. In the vast majority of homes women are responsible for watching over the health needs of the children, and by their shopping and cooking, they are responsible for fulfilling the nutritional needs of the family.

Because homeopathic medicines are considerably more amenable to home care than are conventional drugs, it is predictable that American women have had a history of interest in homeopathy.

Eliza Flagg Young, MD? Was the first female head of the NEA, who dedicated her life to education, also a physician? That seemed unlikely, so I researched further. In fact, Eliza Flagg Young did receive a doctoral degree from the University of Chicago in 1900, but it was a Ph.D in education, not a medical degree.

I found the quote correctly attributed to “Dr.” Ella Flagg Young, as that was her title, in several places including medical books. But I only see the false attribution of an “MD” degree on homeopathy sites. I’m not sure if the error predates Ullman, or if he made the illogical jump himself.

Coincidentally, while researching another article I posted this week about a movement to get kids to stop kissing, I came across a relevant quote by Flagg Young in an Ohio newspaper. Here is the quote (emphasis mine):

The rumor that a campaign was to be instituted in the public schools of Chicago to enroll pupils and teachers in the new organization was met with a denial by Supt. Ella Flagg Young, says the Chicago Inter-Ocean.

“I think more harm is done by directing children’s attention to disease than can be offset by the new ideas advanced by kissing,” she said last night. “As to the merits of the scheme to stop the practice of kissing, I cannot say. I am not a doctor.

Is it really possible that a homeopathic expert didn’t check his facts? That he made an assumption unsupported by evidence? That he found a connection where there is none? That seems so unlike homeopathy.

From July 17, 1910

OUT OF DOOR SCHOOLS ARE GROWING IN POPULARITY: Germany Adopted Them with Unusual Results and New York, Boston and Other Cities Are Experimenting Along the Same Lines (PDF)

For some reason, it seems to have been difficult for poor people to spend time outdoors:

One of the most perplexing problems that parents or teachers used to face is that of the delicate school child. Some little girl had scarlet fever. She was quite well, but had been left pale and anaemic. The doctor sagely said that she should be kept in the open air. She, on the other hand, did not care to lose a year in her standing at school, and perhaps she could ill-afford to do so. Or, again, a boy whose parents were delicate began to show signs that he might have inherited some tendency to disease. Again the mandate, “Open air”; and the parents, if they were poor, were likely to reply, “Yes, but how?”

With the rich this situation was always easily handled. There are schools which make a specialty of outdoor exercise, or a child may be taken out of the classroom and sent to the country with a tutor. Neither education nor health suffers in such case, but with the poor it has been a very different matter. Their children have barely time to go through the elementary schools before they must go to work, and, in fact, only a minority of them accomplish even this; and even if it was readily decided that health is the first consideration, the only fresh air available was to be found in the streets or in parks where the all of the “gang” may come upon the child at any moment.

The solution: outdoor schools!

The ideal open air school is one situated either in the woods or in some park large enough to be a satisfactory imitation… In New York, so far, there has been no such school camp, but at the present time twenty classrooms are being remodeled so that they may be used for open air classes, while on the famous out-of-commission ferryboats anchored off hospital piers there have been ungraded schools for some time. The remodeled classrooms consist of three walls and some shade. Except in rainy weather the children are as much outdoors as though they were on a veranda. The children who need it are given a rest hour and made to lie down and sleep in the middle of the day. It is a good idea, only a trifle less good than the really truly out-of-doors school.

From July 17, 1910

ODD RENTALS THAT ARE PAID FOR FAMOUS PROPERTIES: A Rose Pays for a Church, a Clover Blossom for a School, Fish for a Clubhouse and Flags for Great Ducal Estates (PDF)

This article is all about weird things that are paid for rent of a building, usually by a group or organization. Just before the article was written, Flint Union School in Michigan made a great deal with the landowner: a 99-year lease in exchange for a single clover blossom each year. This means the lease should have just expired last year, but I can’t find any information about this school and whether or not it still exists, let alone whether they’ve had a rent hike since then (a condition of the lease was that using the land for anything other than school purposes would terminate the lease).

From July 10, 1910

“LITTLE MOTHERS” WRITE PLAYLETS WITH HELPFUL PLOTS: The Authors Are Only Twelve Years Old but They Have Grown Up Ideas About Keeping Babies Well (PDF)

The Little Mothers’ League was a club for girls in public school that taught them how to properly care for babies. Started in 1910 by Sara Josephine Baker, the idea wasn’t as much to prepare them to be parents themselves, but to give them the means to help their parents by taking care of their siblings. By teaching these kids, the Board of Health could get information about good habits and hygiene to parents who were too busy to seek out information themselves.

The article reprints several short plays that were written by members of the Little Mothers’ League to illustrate what they’ve learned. Here is one of them:

The first play was written by “E. K.” of Public School 22 and deals with the dangers following the common belief that a breath of fresh air will kill the baby.

Acted by two girls and a baby in a dark, uncomfortable room, with the windows shut up as tightly as possible.

Miss Smith — (Coming into Mrs. Jones’s, as usual.) — Good morning, Mrs. Jones. Why does your baby cry so heartily?

Mrs. Jones, (somewhat terrified,) — She seems to have some fever, and I do not know what to do to her.

Miss Smith — Well, why do you not go to see a doctor about it? (Looking at the windows and at the baby’s wrappings.) I know what it is. She feels too warm. You need to open the windows and take some of her wrappings off her. Then you will see how more comfortable she will feel, and she will also begin to play around on the floor.

Mrs. Jones, (takes some of the wrappings off the baby and opens the windows. Then, seeing how the baby stops crying and beings to play around on the floor, she says) — Miss Smith, I thank you very much for your kind advice, and I would like to know where you have learned all of these useful things.

Miss Smith — (Showing her badge to Mrs. Jones,) — Why, Mrs. Jones, I am a member of the Little Mothers’ League, and this is where I learn all of these very useful things.

The other plays printed in the article teach “the horrors of grocery milk”, that you should listen to your doctor instead of your neighbors, and that pineapple is not good food for babies:

Mother — Baby wants something to eat.

Child — (Mother) What?

Mother — I guess a piece of pineapple.

Child — Mother, what, pineapple for a baby?

Mother — What’s the matter?

Child — You do not mean pineapple for a baby, do you?

Mother — Yes, I think baby will like a piece very much.

Child — No matter if the baby will like it or not it is not healthy for babies.

Mother — Who told you that?

Child — I belong to Little Mothers’ League. They teach us how babies ought to be kept.

Mother — You did not tell me that. I would have stopped giving it to the baby a long time ago.

This should really be an Off Broadway production.

From July 3, 1910

GOOD SCHOOL LUNCHES FOR THREE CENTS PROVE A SUCCESS: And for a Penny More Dessert Is Supplied — That Is the Interesting Result of Experiments by the School Lunch Committee (PDF)

It’s nice to read an account of a School Lunch Committee that cares about affordable nutrition in schools where poor children are often malnourished.

For a child who is really very ill-nourished one meal a day is not the solution of all its troubles, but it goes a good way toward helping. Moreover, the luncheons are planned so carefully that for each 3 cents the child gets almost half the number of calories that scientists have declared necessary for a day’s nourishment. So the one meal does a good deal. There was some talk when the subject of this experiment was first broached to the effect that it was unnecessary, that no children went to school complaining of hunger. It was the old trouble of confusing hunger with malnutrition. But now, armed with facts and figures, the committee is ready to prove its case. And then they will doubtless ask, “What are you going to do about it?”

Everybody knows that children who have not a fair start in life are likely at some time in some way to become a charge to the State. Fortunately only a small proportion of them ever come to this, for if it were the rule there would be no money for anything but caring for invalids and paupers; still, whenever a child is neglected the State runs the chance of having some day to pay for it.

On all sides we hear about race suicide, and we have it drilled into our ears that the nation whose birth rate declines is well started on the road that leads to degeneration. To all of this everybody is constantly saying “Amen” with pious fervor. Meanwhile what children there are in the country may die from malnutrition without anybody becoming particularly excited over the fact.

The country wants children; the country must have children; and then when children do come the country does not seem to feel that it is its business to keep them alive…

It would really seem to an impartial observer from Mars or some other logically minded planet that we ought either to take care of the children when they are here or else drown them as soon as they are born.

Jamie Oliver would be proud.

From May 8, 1910

SUNDAY SCHOOLS THAT TEACH CHILDREN ANARCHY: A Thousand Young Persons Are Being Trained in New York to Be Successors of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkmann (PDF)

I saw this headline and I thought it was just some overblown sensationalism. But then I read the article, and it turns out they’re literally talking about anarchist-run schools. In particular, they point out the a particular Sunday School on Avenue A, run by Alexander Berkmann, a “leading member of the anarchist movement in the 20th century” (quoting Wikipedia).

I scoffed at first because I typically think of schools as places with strict rules to follow. How could anarchists run a school? But the more I read, the more the school sounded pretty good. It’s just on Sunday, so the students presumably attended a normal school during the week, and it seems like it probably provided thought provoking counterpoint. Here is some of what Berkmann told the Times about the curriculum:

The pupil of the Anarchist Sunday school is taught to reason. The teacher only serves to direct their attention to a problem.

“One child,” said Berkmann, “wanted to know whether he should pray. ‘My mother wants me to pray,’ said the child, ‘but my father says that it is not necessary.’”

“Did you answer the problem?” he was asked.

“No,” he said. “I try to keep back my own views and develop the mentality of the children that they may form their own opinions and arrive at their own conclusions. The question was answered by a little girl, who said, ‘Praying is good because it relieves the soul.’”

Another attempt of a Sunday school pupil along this line was made when a youngster requested to know if it was possible for people to know what God wants them to do.

These occasional inquiries as to the spiritual life have generally ended in the Anarchist Sunday schools with the proposition that some of the remarkable things in life can be understood and that there are questions which never can be settled. The mental attitude of the children might be put in this way: We are not certain whether there are grounds for the belief that we should pray.

That, of course, leaves the question well in the field of agnosticism. The teacher of anarchy does not, with the children, declare that there is no God. Nor does he say that there is a God. The Sunday school class goes frequently to the Museum of Natural History, to Central Park, to the Zoological Gardens, and other places where, with the teacher, nature is studied.

That sounds pretty good to me. At least until the part later where Berkmann speaks against having laws. But in general, I like that the students were being taught to think for themselves and not just blindly follow authority on at least one day a week.

Wikipedia has more to say about the anarchist schools here.

From May 8, 1910

IS COEDUCATION A FAILURE? TUFTS AND PENNINGTON SAY “YES”: “A Menace to Any College,” Says President Hamilton of the Former — President Read of the Latter Announces a Change (PDF)

[T]he committee said that it had held personal conversation upon the matter with a large number of members of the Faculty of Liberal Arts. Each and every one gave it as his opinion, formed carefully and deliberately after several years’ teaching and observation, that the interests of both men and women would be best served by a segregation of the sexes.”

Tufts remained coed, while Pennington went back to being an all-boys school. It stayed that way until 1972.