July 18, 1917.
Dear Miss Addams:
I am sending Professor Taylor a "chaser" today. He has Prof. Hull's article and one or two others which I sent him for reading and recommendation. I fully count on using it -- and early in August.
It would have been fairly impossible to have handled it in recent issues -- for just at the time when war developments are throwing an unconscionable burden on our space, to keep abreast of the adjustments of organized social activities to <the> war we have had to go into sixteen-page issues (and cover). This scarcely leaves us room to turn around. I do not know whether you realize that the New Republic, for example, has double the space of the Survey this summer; and of course we have a great rack of weekly obligations to cover general social work and activities toward which, even so, we are not meeting our responsibilities.
Miss Chamberlain raised $2000, and I $1000, toward making it possible to do more adequate justice to the emergent demands of the summer. But we haven't been sure enough of our footing to take advantage of it; for the Carnegie Corporation has declined to renew its $1000 grant in June; and Prof. Taylor had not yet been able to get word from Madam McCormick as to whether or not she will renew her $1000. And we have had other similar losses -- Mrs. Bowen, for example (which is quite understandable); and I had not intended to bother you with respect to it.
But while I have ached to employ the Survey as it should be employed [page 2] this summer if we only had a little "give" as to space, I think that nonetheless we have taken two steps ahead to one falling back; and should enter the fall with sufficient momentum so that we can do a very much more responsible and effective job -- with 32-page weeklies consecutively. By publishing the series of articles on wartime relief work and social service, we have been able to add several hundred new readers among the groups which are endeavoring to equip themselves for that sort of work. It has also brought about a much better feeling toward the Survey from scores of readers and cooperating subscribers who have felt as Mrs. Bowen does.
Mr. Lane's article and pamphlet on the Child Welfare Problem in Wartime strikes out along broader lines, and is, I think, going to be a very real contribution. We publish it in the August magazine. Miss Seymour's on health falls in September. We are spreading them out monthly instead of fortnightly in order to economize, and because various national programs [have] been slow to materialize. They ought to carry conviction as to the validity of the Survey. By keeping expenses down this summer, by demonstrating the staff work, and by clearing our fiscal year, as I hope we shall, we shall not be entering the fall lame, whatever the disabilities and sacrifices in the process; and I need not tell you that I do not want financial embarrassment to come in, to add to and complicate the editorial engineering of the venture -- as would be the case if we [enter] the year with a deficit or if we should lose considerable part of our contributions.
There Mr. Devine's department is a real asset; for the very fact that his approach to issues is so different from my own ought to make clear to all concerned that the Survey is not a personal organ, but a real meeting place for minds. And there is this curious and hopeful fact about Mr. Devine's writing, that while he often gets at things from an altogether different angle from my own, we often end up close together. Thus, when he writes on conscientious objectors or the I.W.W. strikes, I find myself boiling in the first half, [page 3] and sympathizing in the second.
Did you chance to read his rejoinder to Paul Elmer Moore in last week's Survey? It came quite spontaneously and was capitally done.
You will recall that I took up with you at Long Beach the question of handling the conscription issue. The plan has taken shape with the idea of handling the September magazine number as a "mobilization number" with an article by Mr. Keppel and Mr. Lippmann, interpreting the selective draft affirmatively as a social policy; an article by Norman Thomas, integrating the conscientious objectors; an article by Frederick Law Olmsted or some other city planner on the cantonments; and perhaps one or two other articles. Have you suggestions?
Now that you are in Maine, I hope very much to [bewitch] something from your pen.
Sincerely,
Comments