--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Gowans, Ephraim G. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 16 number: 10 published: 1913-08 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Gowans, Ephraim G., "Some Obligations of Citizenship," *Improvement Era* 16, no. 10 (August 1913): 982–989.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera16010unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera16010unse start_page: 982 end_page: 989 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1913-08) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera16010unse publication_year: 1913 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1913, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Some Obligations of Citizenship Some Obligations of Citizenship* \:\ DR. I I'll k \IM G. GOWANS, OF THE UTAH STATE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL, OGDEN Young ladies and gentlemen: It is no doubt to some extent exasperating to you who arc now so able to give advice, to be compelled to listen to the advice of others. For this reason I shall attempt to present for your consideration some thoughts on present day problems affecting our obligations and which as citizens of the greatest nation on earth we are too prone to forget; and if as individuals yen transform this into advice, I shall not object. Be that with you as yon will. 1 take it as safe to assume that we all desire our citizenship to be satisfactory — to be good citizenship ; and this may be defined as citizenship which realizes its obligations and strives ardently to meet them. Now the good citizen is loyal to God and to his country; is obedient to law and believes in law enforcement; has courage to do his duty as a man and a citizen ; loves his work ; and has a laudable ambition in life. But in addition to all this he is possessed of a sense of obligation to all mankind — to the race. He realizes that, of a truth, he is his brother's keeper, that he is under heavy obligation to the past and that he can be absolved only as he dues his duty to the present and the future. This is pre-eminently the age of industry, and good citizenship requires that each one shall be industrially efficient. The industri- ;. development of the past two decades is unparalleled in the history of forty centuries, and surely there is no disposition to minimize the value of America's great industrial contribution to civilization and the progress of the race. But life is not merely a matter of industry. There are many, on the other hand, who feel that the duties and obligations of citizenship are almost wholly political, and it would be short sighted indeed to deny the importance and value of political obligations realized and met. But life and citizenship mean more than the meeting of political obligations. Whatever value we attach to industrial life and activity, whatever value we attach to political life and activity, we must remember that human beings must associate together, and it is to the obligations of citizenship which come into being by reason *.\n address to the graduating classes of the University of Utah, June 4, 1913. SOME OBLIGATIONS OF CITIZENSHIP. 983 of our associations together, that I desire to particularly direct your attention. I lay down the proposition that the development of the social consciousness and the successful promotion of an ennobling social life constitute one of the greatest problems in America today. We are in the midst of a great world movement. Radical changes are taking place in present day institutions — industrial, political, educational, religious. Many old things are passing away, new ones are taking their places. Conspicuous among these changes is the movement toward universal social betterment of the race. Social consciousness is slowly but surely awakening, and as it does so, the realization that the welfare of one is the welfare of all, takes definite form. This movement means better opportunity for the less prospsrous, abounding health for the sick, greater comfort and happiness for the unfortunate, the prevention of poverty, dependency, delinquency and crime, no enforced unemployment, a living wage for those who work, a single standard of morality, and industrial and political opportunity for men and women, and the cure of the deadly diseases of society. It has long been our boast here in America that our public school system affords free and universal education and that the child of the poor has equal opportunity with the child of the rich. We have felt that the education we are providing is genuinely democratic. If we take the case of the high school, however, and look into the problem somewhat closely we find a peculiar condition. Not ten per cent of the pupils of the elementary schools go through the high schools, and nearly all of those who graduate either attend college or enter professional schools. As a matter of fact we conduct high schools largely for the benefit of the professional classes, and the overwhelming majority of our children who are as much entitled to an efficient training for life as the minority, get no benefits of secondary education simply because they belong to a class to whose needs the high school does not minister. Most young people who either do not enter high school or who, having entered, drop out before finishing a course, do so to undertake some kind of work, and they do so because the work is more attractive to them than the school. This condition does not make for better citizenship. The schools will not be doing their duty until the children of the less prosperous classes can find therein a training that fits for life just as surely as it can be found by those who are to follow professional careers. Vocational training has a vital part to play in the world movement for race betterment — for social welfare. Social welfare is the measure by which all values must in the future be determined-— industry, education, government, agriculture, in fact religion itself can be rightly measured by no other standard. Social 984 IMPROVEMENT ERA welfare demands thai the high school shall do more than fit for the professions, and the very spirit of our democracy demands that the children of the less prosperous shall gel as adequate a preparation for life as those of the well-to-do. Vocational life is highly specialized and the preparation therefore must be correspondingly highly specialized. The health of the citizens of a nation is that nation's great a But not yet have we learned to look upon health as a matter of social welfare. Is it not a disgrace that more than a million people die annually in the United States of preventable diseases? At onetime we looked upon this as a visitation of Divine Providence and so we submitted. Now we know that it is all displeasing to God as well as to man, that we ourselves are responsible, and that we can stop it whenever we want to. Putting it in dollars, the American measure, the nation's loss in labor from this cause annually is $2,500,000,000. It is stated upon good authority that in matters of sanitation and hygiene, taking it the nation over, we are seven times as dirty as Germany and ten times as dirty as Switzerland. It sounds better, probably, to say that Switzerland is ten times and Germany seven times as sanitary and hygienic as the United States. Our great trouble is that we have not yet learned to make social application of our knowledge. We are too individualistic. We think that since you and I and John are clean everything is alright and we need not be concerned with the cleanliness or lack of it in others. Truly it has not yet sunk deep enough into our consciousness that the welfare of one — anyone — is the welfare of all. Think of the annual deaths of little babies under one year of age. Think of the deaths from tuberculosis, perfectly preventable. Think of the deaths from typhoid, perfectly preventable also. Think of those who die annually from syphilis and gonorrhea, all preventable. There are going about amongst us always at least two millions of people with syphilis, a disease worse than leprosy, contagious yet preventable, and nothing is being done about it. I dare express the hope, which is indeed almost an assurance, that the complete enfranchisement of women will result in the establishment of such standards of purity in foods, such standards of life and living, such measures of prevention, such safeguards about the home and family, that preventable sickness and death will be looked upon as an unnecessary menace to social welfare and a disgrace to our civilization. The unfortunate classes include the blind, deaf, feeble-minded, insane, criminals, juvenile delinquents, paupers and the aged. In all these cases except the feeble-minded the unfortunate ones are fairly adequately cared for, but in this latter class only about 15 per cent are properly cared for in institutions. I am not an SOME OBLIGATIONS OF CITIZENSHIP. 985 enthusiast over public custodial institutions, but it is anomalous that probably 85 per cent of all other unfortunates are properly cared for while such a small proportion of the feeble-minded are where they should be. There are probably from 150,000 to 200,000 feeble-minded persons in the United States and not more than 20,000 of them are receiving the care and humane attention they are entitled to receive at our hands. This is a matter of considerable moment to society at large because of the rather remarkable fact that the feeble-minded population is increasing at twice the rate that the normal-minded population is increasing, and two thirds at least of all feeble-minded persons are the children of feeble-minded parents or grand parents or both. It is true that a considerable number of feeble-minded persons are in such institutions as prisons, jails, reformatories, and industrial schools for boys and girls, and in a sense are "institution cared-for." But each of these institutions has its specific work to do which is not the care of the feeble-minded and they should not be in these institutions at all. The 20 per cent of adult reformatory inmates, the 25 to 30 per cent of the population of institutions for juvenile delinquents, the 12 to 18 per cent of inmates of prisons, and the 40 to 60 per cent of under-world women, as well as the feeble-minded who are struggling ineffectually to earn a competence in an honorable way, are deserving of better care, not only because of the dictates of our common humanity but because, too, it is a legitimate demand of our social welfare. The most fruitful cause of poverty, dependency, delinquency, and crime is the unsatisfactory home. The home or, biologically speaking, the family is the unit of civilization. A community of satisfactory homes is a satisfactory community — there social welfare is not a problem. The community of unsatisfactory homes, is an unsatisfactory community, and there is the breeding ground of poverty, dependency, delinquency, and crime. That "prevention is better than cure" applies to our social ills just as emphatically as to our individual sicknesses, needs only to be stated ; and social welfare demands that society protect itself from the establishment of the unfit family. To secure a license to teach school, to enter upon a business or professional career, or even to run a peddler's wagon, the applicant must have a good moral character and be vouched for by some reputable citizen ; but to secure a license to marry and to establish one of these units of civilization one needs only to be in the form of a man, to be twenty one years old, not insane, and sober enough to stand up, and forthwith the great State of Utah, through any of her various county clerks, grants official sanction. The unsatisfactory homes already established must be rehabilitated, must be made satisfactory as possible, and we must 986 IMPROVEMENT KRA protecl ourselves, in so far as that may be within our power, from the establishment of such poor homes in the future. Thus will we lay proper emphasis on prevention. There are a lot of social wrongs at the present time that will never he made right until we abolish the double standard of morality and substitute therefor a common standard for men and women. This ancient man-made idea is directly responsible for the damnable doctrine of the necessity and harmlessness of young men sowing wild oats. It is just as unnecessary and as tragically harmful in the case of men as it is in the case of women. When we realize that taking the United States over, six out of every ten adult men have had or now have some form of venereal disease, the expression "tragically harmful" is not too strong, because these 60 per cent of the adult male population are either ignorantly or malignantly sowing broadcast among the race, disease, sterility, pain, insanity, degeneracy, blindness of babies, and the seeds of death and decay. The whole system of commercialized vice is built upon the supposed necessity of sowing wild oats, and it should be acknowledged in deep shame by the men of our nation that they — the men — are responsible for the existence of what is called the underworld. Commercialized vice is organized and promoted by men, it supplies a demand made by men, and the profits go to men. It is therefore a problem for men did I say? Aye! profits. Yesterday on Main Street, I stepped back to let a luxurious automobile pass. It contained a man, or rather an apology for a man who profits by commercialized vice in this beautiful city of ours. The house in which he lives, the money in his bank, the contributions he makes to his church, the magnificent car in which he rides, the money which pays for the education of his children, aye, the very food he eats and the clothing that covers his dishonored and contemptible body, all come from the profits of commercialized vice ; from the bodies and souls of helpless girls more precious in the sight of God than his own. There are wanted today 50,000 young girls to take the places of the 50,000 white slaves who will die in the United States during the coming year. Have any of you young men a sister to spare? And yet all these are our sisters, and we may not turn away. Dean Summer once told the story of the Magdalene, how when she was brought by her accusers before Jesus, He stooped and wrote something in the sand and one by one the guilty Pharisees disappeared, and Wilbur Nesbit wrote these lines which seem appropriate : "We have saved the soul of the man who killed. We have turned to shrive the thief; SOME OBLIGATIONS OF CITIZENSHIP. 987 We restored the pride of the man that lied. And we gave him our belief; But for her that fell have we fashioned hell With a faith all stern and just — It was so of old; and no man has told What our Lord wrote in the dust. "We have sighed betimes our brothers' crimes, And have bade them be of cheer, For the flesh is weak, and the soul grown meek, May yet read its title clear. But we draw away from the one astray, As the truly righteous must. She is cursed indeed — and we did not read What our Lord wrote in the dust. "For the men who thieved and who killed and lied. Who have slain the woman's soul, We have worked and prayed and have seen them made All clean, and pure, and whole. But we drive her out with a righteous shout In our Pharisaic trust. So the man goes free — but we did not see What our Lord wrote in the dust." And what shall we say about alcoholism — the saloon evil ; of the great conflict between capital and labor; of the bad housmg of the poor; of child labor; of enforced unemployment; <>f indecent dance halls; the vicious cheap shows; the demoralizing summer resorts ; all of which evils have their roots not in the individual, but in society itself? Shall the correction of these conditions that we are responsible for be considered as obligations of citizenship or not? Does social welfare demand anything of us in view of these wrongs? Is it possible to escape this "mighty responsibility, or, do we desire to escape it? Your course in life must be the answer to these questions because it will be the test of the quality of your citizenship. Here you are 200 strong, young men and women with magnificent hereditary physical and mental endowments, just at the completion of your training for life. What is to be your answer ? You have youth — that marvelous possession that has been admired and idealized, envied and worshiped, abused and forfeited and is appreciated only after it is lost. You are today the advance guard of civilization, and tomorrow the leaders of mankind Because of your youth you are like a mighty reinforcement to a tired army. The race receives new vigor and impetus 988 IMPROVEMENT ERA from each succeeding generation of young people, and racial progress is correspondingly accelerated. Society has ministered to you benevolently. You have been born of goodly parents. You are free from hereditary and contagious diseases. Your lives have been free from the deadening, blighting social diseases of our time. Your companionships have been clean and satisfactory. Your homes are of a kind to be proud of. Your social activities ennobling. You are educated. You are the heirs of the ages. The treasures of generations of civilization are opened to you. The past pours its bounteous contribution unimpaired into your lap. The best that society — the state — can do has been done for you. You have vision, and power and an appreciation of spiritual values. Your are standing at the golden moment of your lives, now — today. And what is to be your answer? You have character. You have learned obedience, and your obedience is a willing conformity to law. The "Thou shalt not" is now unnecessary in your lives, having been replaced by the 'T will not" of self-control. You have learned to labor and to take joy therein, because work is art and art is work, and there is need of workers. So what is to be your answer? You are under terrible obligations. Youth, health, perfect endowment, education, character, ideals, all speak of your duty and ask now what you will contribute to the future. If ideals fade, if character weakens, if education proves to be inadequate, if youth, health and perfect endowment are dissipated, if you yield to the subtle dangers of professional and commercial life, if you succumb to the untoward influences of business associates, it will be because of unwisdom at this golden moment of your careers — it will be because you do not hear the call to battle ; it will be because you do not bring each day of your best and joyously lay it upon the shrine of service ; it will be because you have not the light to see — you have not the power to do : "Only for these I pray — Pray with assurance strong; Light to discover the way, Power to follow it long. "Let me have light to see Light to be sure and know, When the road is clear to me Willingly I go. "Let me have power to do, Power of the brain and nerve, Though the task is heavy and new Willingly I will serve. SOME OBLIGATIONS OF CITIZENSHIP 989 "My prayers are lesser than three, Nothing I pray but two; Let me have light to see, Let me have power to do." So in the name of humanity, in the name of the man with the hoe and all who are yoked to unfair and unjust conditions, in the name of social justice, and by the authority of God-given conviction of Right, I extend to you the hand of welcome of the workers, and call you to service. Utah needs true devotion today as never before. Elder N. L. Hansen of Brigham City, Utah, writes from Holbaek, Denmark, April 8: "We held a branch conference here on March 8th and 9th, the first of its kind ever held here. It has been suggested that similar branch conferences be held at least once each year in all the branches of the Church in this mission where conditions are such that it can be done. President Bjorkman of the Copenhagen conference and Mission Secretary Robert H. Sorensen, and Elder James Hansen were with us. We had thirty-three enrolled in our Sunday School and had 100 per cent present besides several visitors. We have three classes. Besides a Young Men's and a Yung Ladies' Mutual Improvement Association we have an active Relief society which made their first charitable record by helping a family who are not members of the Church who lost their only child and had no means with which to bury it. The picture shows our Sunday School."