Euthenics, the science of controllable environment Part 9

CHAPTER VII

In a store an advertis.e.m.e.nt reads: "Any kind of tea you prefer; no charge whatever."

She: "The women look so tired when they come in, and in ten minutes they are so rested and refreshed."

He: "Ready to go home?"

She: "Why, no--ready to do some more shopping."

_Spectator, The Outlook, December 18, 1909._

Something in motion and something to eat attract the crowd.

The social worker is just beginning to realize what the manufacturer and the department storekeeper have long since found out.

Why is it not legitimate to "attract a crowd," to do them a good service in showing them how to save money as well as in impelling them to spend it? It is wiser to _show how_ before explaining why.

The force of example, the power of suggestion, should be used fully before coercion is applied. Exhibits and models come before law.

The psychology of influence is an interesting study (see Munsterberg's article, _McClure's_, November, 1909). Its principles have been grasped and used by those who exploit human feelings for their own gain. The student of social conditions should make a wider and better use of a real force.

Publicity is perhaps first. Exhibits showing existing conditions often shock people into attention, for it is inattention more than anything else that prevent betterment.

It is said that "a knowledge of danger is the surest means of guarding against it," but this knowledge must be translated into belief and the danger be brought home to the individual as a member of the community.

Exhibits may often suggest for existing evils simple remedies never thought of before. They should never suggest the one idea without the other. Even though the remedy is not worked out, it should be called for. America's inventive power may well be turned on its own social affairs as well as on adaptation of European machinery.

The man considered in these pages is the man in community environment, and the discussion is as to what controls this community life. It will be acknowledged by all thoughtful persons that the prime control lies in the purpose for which the community exists. If for selfish gain, then all is sacrificed to that end. Men and women become mere machines and children are only in the way until they, too, may be put into the service.

If it exists for mutual help and general advance in civilization, then the leaders in the community take into account the elements that contribute to the future as well as those for the immediate present.

In the confusion of ideas resulting from the rapid, almost cancerous growth of the modern community, made possible by mechanical invention, the people have lost the power of visualizing their conception of right and wrong, a power which made the Puritan such a force in early colonial times. Heaven and h.e.l.l were very real to him and were powerful factors in influencing his daily life. The average man today has no such spur to good behavior. Perhaps the sword of Damocles must be visualized by such exhibits as the going out of an electric light every time a man dies, by the ghastly microbe in the moving picture, by the highly colored print or by a vivid reproduction of crowded quarters. The social worker has been doubtful of the real value of such exhibits, but such reminders have their place in a community accustomed to the advertising of less worthy subjects.

A decided recognition of the value of exhibits is found in the advertis.e.m.e.nt of a company: "We design and equip Exhibits on Tuberculosis, Milk, Civic Betterment, Dental Hygiene, Saner Fourth of July. Have you our catalogue?" Much of our educational work for the dissemination of useful knowledge would gain in power and directness from an adaptation of the methods of the man skilled in promoting commercial interests. He knows how to apply the right stimulus at the right time in order to arouse the desired interest.

In many ways the adult is but the child of a larger growth, who needs something concrete to make him understand. And so have grown up the great industrial fairs and exhibitions. One comes away from these wondering that so much, both good and bad, is being prepared for him, and stimulated, usually, to work out certain suggestions and better many of the present conditions. Both the manufacturer and the consumer have been helped.

Wherever it is possible, a working model ill.u.s.trating the chief features to be explained should be installed. The expense of this kind of exhibit has in the past been prohibitive, and moreover the use of such "claptrap" has been frowned upon; but scientific knowledge is no longer to be held within the aristocratic circle of the university. It is to be brought within the reach of the man in the street, and to make up for the wasted years of seclusion experts now vie with each other in putting cause and effect not merely into words but into pictures, and even into motion pictures. The fly as a carrier of disease is now shown in all its busy and disgusting activity. The lesson of awakened attention by such means is being learned, and soon lessons in botany, in gardening, in housewifery, will be given through the eye, to be the better followed by the hand.

Of all means, that product of man's ingenuity, the moving picture, is destined to play the greatest part in quick education. It is the quintessence of democracy.

The extension movement in education is an evidence of a new social ideal. It is a true expression of democracy that the university and school can be utilized by the busy working people. Museums that at one time were only for the educated who by previous training could understand them now a.s.sume as a privilege the educating of all the people. Schools of art and science, also, through lectures, bulletins, guides, and special exhibits, extend a generous welcome to the public.

The citizens ought to be a gladder, sadder people, stirred and delighted and grateful for much that the city affords; sad and shocked by some of the forbidding, existing conditions. That is the power of an exhibit, so to visualize a condition that the mind really conceives it, never again to recover from the shock, to be unmindful of such possibilities of degraded existence for human beings.

The influence of these great expositions is of a most subtle kind, not often to be traced, but there is a noticeable change in the estimation in which Home Economics is held dating from the time of the Mary Lowell Stone Home Economics Exhibit held at the Exposition in St.

Louis in 1905. This ill.u.s.trated the application of modern knowledge to home life, chiefly in economic and aesthetic lines, all bearing upon the health and efficiency of the people. The Chicago Exposition in 1893 had its Rumford Kitchen, an exhibit under the auspices of the State of Ma.s.sachusetts. This practical ill.u.s.tration of scientific principles modified the ideas of the world as to the place and importance of cookery in education. Indeed, there seemed a distinct danger that other lines would be neglected, so that when the Exposition at St. Louis was determined upon this legacy of fifteen years before was drawn upon to show the wide scope of the subject as it had been developed.

Boards of Health might pave the way for a better understanding of their rules and regulations if they would have temporary exhibits in public places of some of the conditions known to them but unsuspected by the average citizen and taxpayer.

Traveling exhibits may show local and temporary conditions and may call attention to needs demanding immediate remedy--with the remedy suggested.

Permanent exhibits in museums should, on the other hand, teach a deeper lesson. They should always be constructive and should be replaced when the conditions have changed. The modern idea of a museum is a series of adjustable exhibits with distinct suggestive purpose.

Such are found in the Town Room, 3 Joy Street, Boston, the Social Museum, Harvard College, the American Museum of Safety, and the Sanitary Science Section, American Museum of Natural History, New York.

The distribution of the printed word has become so universal that it would seem as if every family might be influenced by it; but the scientific t.i.tle, or the size of the book, or the scientific terms seem forbidding, and so the whole question is thrust aside.

In the past, newspaper science was largely discounted as sensational and only one-tenth fact. Scientific workers were largely to blame for this. They could not take the time to explain the meaning of their work, and the few things they were ready to say were worked over out of all semblance to truth by the writer who must have a "story" and who had not the training in "suspension of judgment" which the scientific investigator knows to be necessary.

There is no concern of human life that cannot be made interesting, and the magazine writers of today understand that art. Read the newspaper and the world is yours. It is all things to all men. The popularizing of knowledge is now proceeding on somewhat better lines.

Intermediaries between the laboratory and the people are springing up to interpret the one to the other. This work is good or bad according to the individual writer. Most of it is still too superficial. Here is one of the most fertile fields for the educated woman, since the evils of which we complain have to do so intimately with woman's province, the home and the school. There is hope that the trained, scientific woman will take her place as interpreter. Her practical sense will give her an advantage over the young man who has never known other home than a boarding house.

But the expert knows that the man of "practical affairs" wants and needs certain knowledge, and so seeks another way. Our Federal government, through the departments of Agriculture and Education; the State Boards of Health; the educational inst.i.tutions, have with care and accuracy formulated this knowledge and are sending to the people, in the form of bulletins meeting their interest and requirements, knowledge in concise and readable form, and so most valuable. More than five hundred thousand copies of Miss Maria Parloa's bulletin on Preserving have been distributed by the Department of Agriculture.

These efforts by both men and women have meant independent scientific research, which is often the only available knowledge for the housekeeper. It is bringing to them in their "business" of life the same help that the men on the farm and elsewhere are receiving in theirs.

But the written word, however clearly put, can never reach the untrained as can the voice and personality of an earnest speaker with a compelling vitality. Lectures by those who have been engaged in research themselves, so that they have absorbed the spirit of the laboratory--not by those who have merely smelled the odors of the waste jars--are ten times more valuable than even the most attractively ill.u.s.trated articles. It is well that the personality of the human being is an a.s.set, and that there is a stimulus in hearing and seeing the person who has accomplished things. There is always a power in the spoken word. The government, with its public lectures, recognizes this as well as the private organization, and today ignorance is necessarily due only to indifference.

Ill.u.s.trated lectures followed by literature are of inestimable value if rightly and not sensationally given. Even then, the seed must have time to sprout.

Man has reached his present stage of civilization, however we regard it, by an incessant warfare against adverse conditions. Enemies, man and beast, surrounded him; mountains and rivers obstructed his pa.s.sage; fire and flood swept away his dwellings; but ever onward the inward impulse has carried him.

It is interesting to see how the same vocabulary is transferred to the warfare for social betterment, "campaign," "warfare," "battle,"

"fight," "weapon," "corps," "army." And the fight to be won can only come through knowledge, its dissemination and then its application.

Publicity today means cooperation and democracy--all to help, all to be helped.

All the foregoing methods should be used in these campaigns for health, with the dictum, "Man, know thyself."

CHAPTER VIII

_Both child and adult to be protected from their own ignorance. Educative value of law and of fines for disobedience. Compulsory sanitation by munic.i.p.al, state, and federal regulations. Instructive inspection._

The strength of the State is the sum of all the effective people.

_Dr. Edward Jarvis, Ma.s.sachusetts State Board of Health, 1874._

When the Americans took charge of Bilibid Prison in Manila the death rate was 238 per 1,000 per year: by improving sanitary conditions, this death rate was reduced to about 75 per 1,000: here it remained stationary until it was discovered that a very high percentage of the prisoners were infected with hookworms and other intestinal parasites: then a systematic campaign was inaugurated to expel these worms, and when this was done the death rate fell to 13.5 per 1,000.

_C. W. Stiles._