Social Welfare History Project Social Welfare Issues Page 7

Keller, Helen — Story of My Life: Part 1

AS THE feat may seem almost incredible, it may be in order to say at the beginning that every word of this story as printed in THE JOURNAL has actually been written by Helen Keller herself — not dictated, but first written in “Braille” (raised points); then transferred to the typewriter by the wonderful girl herself; next read to her by her teacher by means of the fingers; corrected; then read again to her, and in the proof finally read to her once more.

From Bohemia: Ma and Pa Karas (1940)

Two years ago Louis Adamic, author of “My America” and editor of Common Ground, undertook one of the most ambitious writing projects of our time—an analysis of America’s great melting-pot experiment, based upon 9,500 questionnaires, 20,000 letters of inquiry, 38,000 miles of travel, with the assistance of the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations. This chapter, abridged from the resultant book, “From Many Lands” (to be brought out by Harper & Brothers) affords a wholesome sidelight upon the traditional American resolution of some of Europe’s individual minority problems of a generation ago.

Refugees Here (1940)

How are we going to help the refugees find a place in the life of the nation? How must such help be constructed, to interfere as little as possible with the economic situation and to help the American people benefit from the arrival of the refugee? These questions do not only concern the organizations which were formed to deal with the refugee problem. They are of great concern for the general public. Without its cooperation a policy concerning the refugee can neither be constructed, nor can it work. Without an adequate understanding on the part of the public, the efforts of these organizations will be greatly hampered.

School for Bums (1931)

If you want to know how to make a bum out of a workingman who has had trade, home, security and ambition taken from him, talk to any of the young fellows on the breadline who have been in town long enough to have become experienced in misery. Say a man in this town goes to the Municipal Lodging House for his first night. Until lately, he would have been routed out at five in the morning. Now he can stay until six. He is given breakfast, then he must leave, blizzard or rain. He can go next to a Salvation Army shelter for a handout, and get down to the City Free Employment Bureau before it opens. Or he can find shelter in subways and mark the Want Ads in a morning paper.

Berry Picking and Relief (1935)

By Katherine Blair, August, 1935. “Public relief affords no real security. The family on relief cannot meet its actual minimum needs. If private employment can offer more, we send it men. But we can hardly abandon our people to industry or agriculture which offers them less than relief. Employers will have no difficulty in getting or keeping labor if they can guarantee a certain and adequate wage and decent conditions. The relief client and his family are not lolling on the fat of the land on $7.50 a week.”

Suffrage in the South Part II: The One Party System

In a sequel to his study of the poll tax, this young southern writer further analyzes democracy in Dixie. His findings and his conclusions, carefully checked by southern researchers, are especially significant in this year of national elections.

Suffrage in the South: The Poll Tax

In the South, two thirds of the voting population are barred from the polls by a head tax which is a prerequisite to voting. What this “one third democracy for one sixth of the nation” means to the Democratic party, to the nation, and to the issues of the 1940 elections are revealed in the staggering facts and figures here presented in the first of two articles by a young southern writer.

Technical Training And Industrial Employment Of The Blind In The United States (1908)

Written by S. M. Green, Superintendent of the Missouri School for the Blind: 1908. Most blind people became blind as adults, but most schools barred adults from attending. Sheltered workshops could employ only a small fraction of blind adults, leaving most without any recourses other than relying on relatives or entering a poorhouse.

Our Jobless Youth: a Warning (1939)

By John Chamberlain, October, 1935. “We have seen in our time the revolution of dispossessed youth in Europe, where anything seemed better—to live, and march, and die for—than existence without meaning. Can we give our young people a real stake in life before it is too late? This grave question is put to educators, and all responsible leaders in American life, by one of our best informed and most sympathetic younger writers.”

Carrots from California (1939)

“How much is stoop labor paid in a day?”

“Almost everything is piece rate here. A Mex, working ten hours, can make $2 at pulling and tying carrots, but he has to go like hell. In the pea fields it’s a penny a pound. A white man is good if he can pick more than two hundred pounds a day. Other wages are about the same.