Civic improvement; Urban women; Women in public life
Dr. C. Annette Buckel, of Oakland, California, was a director in the
Mary R. Smith Trust for delinquent children from its beginning and took
a personal interest in each little girl in the cottage homes. So keen
was her concern for handicapped children that at her death she gave her
home that the proceeds might help in promoting special training for
them.
Knowing that venereal diseases are responsible for a certain amount of
feeble-mindedness in children, women have backed the legislation in
several states for health certificates for marriage, for one thing. The
prohibition of the marriage of the unfit or feeble-minded adults is a
measure in which they are also interested as well as in proposals and
practices that deal with sterilization and compulsory commitment to
institutions.
Colored children, although in general they are only slightly behind
white children, are now beginning to receive some of that special
attention which they so much need and deserve. In addition to the
investigation of mentally defective children, a study is being made by
Frances Blascoer of the living conditions of colored children in New
York City whose school progress has been retarded.
Blind children in New York City receive education from their earliest
years as a result of the agitation and legislative work carried on by
Mrs. Cynthia Westover Alden of the International Sunshine Society and
others. This last winter similar educational care of the blind children
of the state was secured through the efforts of Mrs. Alden and the
personal appeal to the legislators by a little blind girl, Rachel
Askenas. Hitherto children under eight years of age had not been
admitted to institutions for the blind. Now during those most receptive
years they will get the necessary foundation for impressions which play
so vital a part in the lives of normal children.
Special schools for foreigners have generally been started by women, we
feel safe in claiming, after a review of all the evidence at hand. The
Civic Club of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, composed of men and women,
inaugurated the work among foreigners in Pittsburgh and Allegheny, but
the women seem to have given most of the time necessary to make it a
success.
Some months ago the judge of one of the courts in Savannah, Georgia,
started the movement for free night schools for those who have to work
by day. “Amid many discouragements, through months of wearying
opposition, he would be inspired to renewed effort in behalf of an
all-embracing education for the poor, by the knowledge of similar work
done on a small scale by a few women in a rector’s study. And every now
and then the helpful assurance would be given that the Woman’s Club was
anxious for the success of the movement. He only learned of this because
his wife was a member of the club.”[4] Night schools are regular
municipal institutions in the larger cities.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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