Civic improvement; Urban women; Women in public life
As in city clean-up work and other social activities, so in their
housing reforms, women have enlisted the aid of school children, forming
them into juvenile leagues to act as housing inspectors for the more
obvious and outward defects. Boy Scouts have become greatly interested
in certain cities in the work of educating tenants to a sense of
responsibility for obedience to health laws and also in pointing out
violations to the authorities, not only on the part of tenants but of
landlords also. A picture at once comes to mind of a little member of a
Juvenile League pointing out to a tenement owner certain needs and
improvements which she had been taught to regard as requisite—a picture
printed in _The American City_ to illustrate the work accomplished by
children. Both men and women have been earnest in enlisting the sympathy
of children, partly for the actual inspection help rendered by them, and
yet more for the sake of educating the children in proper standards of
living in order that they may demand for themselves decent conditions
through pressure on their parents while they are minors and through
individual, social, and political activity when they are adults.
The importance of far-reaching power for the health officer is realized
by women housing reformers as well as by men. For example, Mrs. Bacon,
who was so instrumental in securing the enactment of the Indiana state
housing law, dealt with this subject at the second national housing
conference held in Philadelphia, in her paper on “Regulation by Law.”
Mrs. Johanna von Wagner of California did the same under her title of
“Instructive Sanitary Inspection.” The spirit of the conference showed
an earnest desire to coöperate with public officials, extend their
powers, and add to the constructive suggestions pointing the way to
improvement in city housing. The women delegates and speakers shared
this spirit and contributed to the practical suggestions as well as to
plans for coöperation.
HOUSING ASSOCIATIONS
Women are not only interested in the special or local housing problems
of their own district or city. They are actively affiliated with the
National Housing Association and take part in its national conferences
They thus coöperate with the men in the great work of arousing the
nation to a knowledge of the deadly peril of low standard homes and to a
sense of the immediate urgency of reform.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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