⏐ VOICES FROM THE PAST ⏐
Some Urgent Social Claims | Excerpted from “Some Urgent Social Claims,”The American Journal of Nursing. SF Palmer, ed. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company; 1907.
IT IS A LONG TIME SINCE I have had the pleasure or privilege of meeting this society, and now that the opportunity has been given me, I am seizing it to speak to you on a subject which is not strictly in the line of our profession but which presses itself upon me, has always since I began to think about anything and every year more urgently.. . I mean the subject of the political enfranchisement of women, which embraces the whole consideration of the many fields in which women are striving for a secure foothold, that they may live and express themselves and share those rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness which Thomas Jefferson declared to be inalienable. There are a number of reasons why I wished for permission to speak to you on this theme. One is that I surmise to the majority of nurses it is a far-off, abstract uninteresting theme, or even, it may be to some, one to be avoided with disapproval, or with the indifference of the extreme specialist toward all outside of a specialty. Another is that I am ardently convinced that our national association will fail of its highest opportunities and fall short of its best mission if it restricts itself to the narrow path of purely professional questions and withholds its interest and sympathy and its moral support from the great, urgent, throbbing, pressing social claims of our day and generation. Another is that I suspect many of
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Dock
you, absorbed in your patients and your direct duties are unaware of how rapidly this once revolutionary proposition is becoming a reality, or of how soon you may be called upon to respond to its actual presence in your midst. Let us go over these reasons with a little more detail. Of old the nursing sisters of the religious orders, closely confined in shackles of mental subjugation and social renunciation, consciously withdrew from all participation in things of the world, had no idea of preventive or constructive reforms, held no radical hopes of remaking the social order about them, but gave their lives to an unquestioning service of reparative and ameliorative devotion. . . . If now, having secured the freedom which was denied to the sister of the religious orders, we shirk its responsibilities and ignore its duties, then we deliberately clothe ourselves again in her narrow-mindedness but without her holy zeal and self-consecration. . . . As the modern nursing movement is emphatically an outcome of the original and general woman movement and as nurses are no longer a dull, uneducated class, but an intelligent army of workers, capable of continuous progress, and fitted to comprehend the idea of social responsibility, it would be a great pity for them to allow one of the most remarkable movements of the day to go on under their eyes
without comprehending it. . . . What I want to make my main point is to insist upon the fastcoming change portended by all the signs of the times, and to ask: are we ready for it? What is to be our attitude toward full citizenship? Shall we be an intelligent and enlightened body of citizens, or an inert mass of indifference? I would like to see our national body leave all smaller concerns to the local societies and consciously make itself a moral force on all the great social questions of the day. Of old we have at times discussed in our national and state meetings, such trivial difficulties as uniforms, perplexities arising from personal preferences of patients for one nurse over another. But now the day has come when we might here decide on our place, our share, and our policy toward the great social claims of education and educational reforms,—industry and the industrial situation—especially as it relates to women— child-labor, its iniquities and dangers (no question more than this has a direct bearing on the public health or the spread of tuberculosis, in which we are taking an active prophylactic part). . . . I would like to hear these great social questions discussed in our meetings. I would like to have our journals not afraid to mention the words political equality for women. I would like to see our local groups give more time to a consideration of their relation
American Journal of Public Health
|
February 2015, Vol 105, No. 2
⏐ VOICES FROM THE PAST ⏐
to other bodies of workers, for it has been said by a wise person that those who only know of their own specialty do not even know that one. . . . To those who are keenly interested in the movement for political equality it is very significant to note the gradual change in the tone of the press, and to see such publications as Harper’s Weekly, and the North American Review, come out openly in advocacy of the political enfranchisement of women. The fact is that modern industrial society is creating a set of conditions which can only be met and properly handled by legally giving women the same place in public affairs which has been her traditional place in the home, for now the home is reaching out into every ramification of public life. For a general and clear statement of this idea nothing is better than a pamphlet written by Miss Jane Addams, called “The Modern City and the Municipal Franchise for Women.” It explains the altered conception of the modern city, compared with that of the medieval one. The problems of the modern city are almost entirely housekeeping questions on a vast scale. The cleanliness and healthfulness of the home; the care of children needs now to be extended to the public school, to the factory, to the shop,–even to the courts, and to the prisons. The care of the young must be extended to the street, to the temptations put in their way by franchise-holding men; to the badhouses, to the saloons, again to the courts, to the jails, to the halls where laws are framed. The health and happiness of the home and vigor of the mother of future generations must be protected in factories, in sweatshops, in caravansary laundries,
in vast unhygienic business establishments,– 4 snug walls no longer bound the domain of the home. These responsibilities do not belong to men alone nor can these conditions any longer be met and adjusted without that organ of self-expression, the ballot. I have been much impressed lately by what I have seen of enlightened women, going disenfranchised, to legislative assemblies to struggle, handicapped, in defense of the children in industry against men, strong in entrenched forts of governmental rule and armed with their ballots. It is a distressing and a pitiable sight. . . . The President.—The paper is open for discussion. Miss Davis.—Madam president, I have been asked to lead the discussion on this paper. I had not the remotest idea of the trend of it, but I am sure that many thinking people believe in giving the ballot to women. We all believe that were the franchise granted to women, the administration of existing laws would be much more effective, and the making of new laws would be much more effective, more exact, and much more humane; for the laws that already exist are good laws but their administration is not always along the lines of humanity. We are striving in a small way to gain legislation in our profession, and to take hold of this question might injure us, and probably would. I do not think Miss Dock means that; I think she means we should all discuss such questions and inform ourselves along such lines, and, we are all well-disciplined, high-thinking women, when the times comes to act we shall know how to make laws and how to have them properly administered.
February 2015, Vol 105, No. 2 | American Journal of Public Health
Miss Boyd.—Madam president, personally I do not believe in women having the franchise. . . . it seems to me that when you go into politics, there are a great many things you have to take up if you go into it fully, and we lose a little something as women, I cannot help feeling that. . . . Mrs. Robb: . . . It seems to me that public school teachers, generally speaking, are not in the position to teach anatomy and physiology that trained nurses are in. I know one woman who came to me in connection with her sister who had to have an operation; she said, “I don’t know anything about that because I don’t know anything about the human body.” Another woman of fifty to whom a nurse was giving massage, said, “What are muscles?” I could tell you many
Lavinia Lloyd Dock, circa 1895. Photo courtesy of the Prints and Photographs Collection, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine.
Dock | Voices from the Past | 275
Some Urgent Social Claims | Excerpted from “Some Urgent Social Claims,”The American Journal of Nursing. SF Palmer, ed. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company; 1907.
IT IS A LONG TIME SINCE I have had the pleasure or privilege of meeting this society, and now that the opportunity has been given me, I am seizing it to speak to you on a subject which is not strictly in the line of our profession but which presses itself upon me, has always since I began to think about anything and every year more urgently.. . I mean the subject of the political enfranchisement of women, which embraces the whole consideration of the many fields in which women are striving for a secure foothold, that they may live and express themselves and share those rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness which Thomas Jefferson declared to be inalienable. There are a number of reasons why I wished for permission to speak to you on this theme. One is that I surmise to the majority of nurses it is a far-off, abstract uninteresting theme, or even, it may be to some, one to be avoided with disapproval, or with the indifference of the extreme specialist toward all outside of a specialty. Another is that I am ardently convinced that our national association will fail of its highest opportunities and fall short of its best mission if it restricts itself to the narrow path of purely professional questions and withholds its interest and sympathy and its moral support from the great, urgent, throbbing, pressing social claims of our day and generation. Another is that I suspect many of
274
|
Voices from the Past
|
Dock
you, absorbed in your patients and your direct duties are unaware of how rapidly this once revolutionary proposition is becoming a reality, or of how soon you may be called upon to respond to its actual presence in your midst. Let us go over these reasons with a little more detail. Of old the nursing sisters of the religious orders, closely confined in shackles of mental subjugation and social renunciation, consciously withdrew from all participation in things of the world, had no idea of preventive or constructive reforms, held no radical hopes of remaking the social order about them, but gave their lives to an unquestioning service of reparative and ameliorative devotion. . . . If now, having secured the freedom which was denied to the sister of the religious orders, we shirk its responsibilities and ignore its duties, then we deliberately clothe ourselves again in her narrow-mindedness but without her holy zeal and self-consecration. . . . As the modern nursing movement is emphatically an outcome of the original and general woman movement and as nurses are no longer a dull, uneducated class, but an intelligent army of workers, capable of continuous progress, and fitted to comprehend the idea of social responsibility, it would be a great pity for them to allow one of the most remarkable movements of the day to go on under their eyes
without comprehending it. . . . What I want to make my main point is to insist upon the fastcoming change portended by all the signs of the times, and to ask: are we ready for it? What is to be our attitude toward full citizenship? Shall we be an intelligent and enlightened body of citizens, or an inert mass of indifference? I would like to see our national body leave all smaller concerns to the local societies and consciously make itself a moral force on all the great social questions of the day. Of old we have at times discussed in our national and state meetings, such trivial difficulties as uniforms, perplexities arising from personal preferences of patients for one nurse over another. But now the day has come when we might here decide on our place, our share, and our policy toward the great social claims of education and educational reforms,—industry and the industrial situation—especially as it relates to women— child-labor, its iniquities and dangers (no question more than this has a direct bearing on the public health or the spread of tuberculosis, in which we are taking an active prophylactic part). . . . I would like to hear these great social questions discussed in our meetings. I would like to have our journals not afraid to mention the words political equality for women. I would like to see our local groups give more time to a consideration of their relation
American Journal of Public Health
|
February 2015, Vol 105, No. 2
⏐ VOICES FROM THE PAST ⏐
to other bodies of workers, for it has been said by a wise person that those who only know of their own specialty do not even know that one. . . . To those who are keenly interested in the movement for political equality it is very significant to note the gradual change in the tone of the press, and to see such publications as Harper’s Weekly, and the North American Review, come out openly in advocacy of the political enfranchisement of women. The fact is that modern industrial society is creating a set of conditions which can only be met and properly handled by legally giving women the same place in public affairs which has been her traditional place in the home, for now the home is reaching out into every ramification of public life. For a general and clear statement of this idea nothing is better than a pamphlet written by Miss Jane Addams, called “The Modern City and the Municipal Franchise for Women.” It explains the altered conception of the modern city, compared with that of the medieval one. The problems of the modern city are almost entirely housekeeping questions on a vast scale. The cleanliness and healthfulness of the home; the care of children needs now to be extended to the public school, to the factory, to the shop,–even to the courts, and to the prisons. The care of the young must be extended to the street, to the temptations put in their way by franchise-holding men; to the badhouses, to the saloons, again to the courts, to the jails, to the halls where laws are framed. The health and happiness of the home and vigor of the mother of future generations must be protected in factories, in sweatshops, in caravansary laundries,
in vast unhygienic business establishments,– 4 snug walls no longer bound the domain of the home. These responsibilities do not belong to men alone nor can these conditions any longer be met and adjusted without that organ of self-expression, the ballot. I have been much impressed lately by what I have seen of enlightened women, going disenfranchised, to legislative assemblies to struggle, handicapped, in defense of the children in industry against men, strong in entrenched forts of governmental rule and armed with their ballots. It is a distressing and a pitiable sight. . . . The President.—The paper is open for discussion. Miss Davis.—Madam president, I have been asked to lead the discussion on this paper. I had not the remotest idea of the trend of it, but I am sure that many thinking people believe in giving the ballot to women. We all believe that were the franchise granted to women, the administration of existing laws would be much more effective, and the making of new laws would be much more effective, more exact, and much more humane; for the laws that already exist are good laws but their administration is not always along the lines of humanity. We are striving in a small way to gain legislation in our profession, and to take hold of this question might injure us, and probably would. I do not think Miss Dock means that; I think she means we should all discuss such questions and inform ourselves along such lines, and, we are all well-disciplined, high-thinking women, when the times comes to act we shall know how to make laws and how to have them properly administered.
February 2015, Vol 105, No. 2 | American Journal of Public Health
Miss Boyd.—Madam president, personally I do not believe in women having the franchise. . . . it seems to me that when you go into politics, there are a great many things you have to take up if you go into it fully, and we lose a little something as women, I cannot help feeling that. . . . Mrs. Robb: . . . It seems to me that public school teachers, generally speaking, are not in the position to teach anatomy and physiology that trained nurses are in. I know one woman who came to me in connection with her sister who had to have an operation; she said, “I don’t know anything about that because I don’t know anything about the human body.” Another woman of fifty to whom a nurse was giving massage, said, “What are muscles?” I could tell you many
Lavinia Lloyd Dock, circa 1895. Photo courtesy of the Prints and Photographs Collection, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine.
Dock | Voices from the Past | 275
