=The Interest and Work of Women in This Process of Political
Change.=--In every one of these new forms of approach to individual
life by the general public through law, tax-supported opportunity, or
special grant of official aid, women have played a distinct and a
large part. When, therefore, women entered formally into the body
politic of these United States, they entered into a place of power
already familiar to them in many of its activities. Indeed, they had
helped to outline and to make effective many of those activities and
came into a new relation to them only by virtue of a recognized
access of control over their administration. When government was
merely a restraining or a military power over individual life, there
might be to many minds an incongruity in women assuming voter's
privileges and duties. When government became a means for conserving
and nurturing and developing individual life, mothers, at least, could
be easily seen to have proper part in its functions.
=Health a Social Enterprise.=--To briefly rehearse this list of
political activities is to show marked changes in social ideals. We
have entered upon a crusade against preventable disease and for the
better physical development of all citizens and potential citizens.
This crusade now makes the official Boards of Health, the hospital and
medical service, the nurse's vocation, and the lay volunteer support
of all these, the outstanding features of our community life.
Epidemics used to be considered visitations of an avenging Providence
for the people's sins. So they are in essence and in modern
translation of old ideas, a punishment by Nature for broken laws;
experiences to be ashamed of now that we know how to prevent them.
Deaths of babies, once mysterious dispensations of Infinite power,
have come to mean indictments of community and family for failure to
furnish right conditions for infant life. Deaths of mothers in
childbirth, leaving older children without suitable protection and
care, once thought events to which to be resigned, however sad and
pitiable, are now seen to be preventable calamities for which society
is to blame. Avoidable cripplement and invalidism of workmen, once
considered either their own fault or unexplained misfortune, are now
listed as cause for receipt of sickness and accident benefits under
Workmen's Compensation Laws. Premature old age, due to overwork and
undernourishment, is on its way to be proceeded against as a record of
social neglect. All waste of life's vigor and happiness which is
indicated by lower levels of health and strength in any class or age
than can be secured by the more favored is from now on recorded as
social failure and social fault. Hence, the state and all manner of
private agencies are at work to make physical standards higher and
physical conditions better for all. When we remember that the pioneer
worker in organization of Boards of Public Health and the founder of
the American Public Health Association, Dr.
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