J6 Settlement Jews. JANUARY 3, 1903 A ringing appeal to greatWork Among er social service was made in his address on "Settlement Work Among the Jews" by Rabbi Moses J. Gries, president of the Educational League of Cleveland, at the National Conference of Jewish Charities. Rabbi Gries secured information from forty-nine settlements and forty-two rabbis in all parts of the country, and, in its revised form, the report will prove an excellent contribution to the proceedings of the Conference, now in process of publication. Three of the most striking passages are these: "Conditions are changing. We live in a transition period. We are discovering new facts every day, some of them startling and contrary to all the traditions and the history of the Jewish people. The recent shocking revelations of immorality in the heart of the Jewish district in New York City suggests what may be in all our Jewish centers. I note especially the universal report of a strong tendency to bet and to gamble, leading naturally to things worse than gambling; also with the youth there is much swearing and much unthrift. There seems to be no growth of crime, but there is an evident tendency to juvenile transgression of the law. Proudly we have boasted that Jews are not criminals. Once it was almost literally true. Two Dollars a Year No. I Now there is a Jewish juvenile protectory in New York, and I doubt not in all our large Jewish centers more are arrested than we know, and more boys are in the schools for incorrigibles than we have any reason to be proud of. "Frankly, we are not meeting our problems. We do not know them, or, knowing, we fail to comprehend their meaning and their danger. Was it not Dr. Holmes who said that the training of a child begins with its grandparents? It is the fortune of our children that they are born of a heritage of moral strength; yes, moral strength in the Russian Jewish immigrants, in spite of all the evils of Russia. The Jews are morally clean. It is a warning to us for the future. We should train the children, that there be moral strength in the future grandparents. "The time has come for a new life in the synagogue and new power in the temple-life and power to appeal to and to influence the growing generation, which seems everywhere to be drifting. The temples should follow the churches and should inspire their communities to establish and to sustain 'missions,' if you will. There is no work more religious, if religion be, as we are fond of emphasizing, concerned with life. 'Work not to save the church, but the church to save society.' We work too much to save the temples and to save the Judaism. Judaism should order and inspire the life and the thought of Jews and the world. We must solve the problems here. I cannot too strongly impress upon you the importance of our Jewish problem. It is not enough that the Jew should be no burden to the state. It is not enough that he should live true to the pledge given two and one-half centuries ago, when the Jews were admitted to the New Netherlands with the condition that 'the poor among them should not become a burden to the company or to the community, but be supported by their own nation.' Jews should be assimilated-not merged and not lost-but assimilated so that they will be a vital part of the nation that is theirs by birth or by adoption." Who Work. Whatever they may do For Women at other times, very few in the rush of the holiday season stop to realize that the development of factory and department store which makes the Christmas shopping of the day what it is, has given rise to new social problems-problems which are deeper if less currently vexatious than the transportation possibilities of steet-car strap or the ruffled indignities of bargain counter environment-problems which pre-eminently affect American working women, and which are only beginning to be worked out with some measure of success. a In this issue of CHARITIES are described two lines of effort from which much may well be expected -one, that which deals primarily with the problem of the factory (the Manhattan Trade School for Girls), and through which it is hoped, by beginning young enough, to educate technically skilled craftswomen from among those who must otherwise largely make up the ranks of shop drudgery; the other, which deals with the field of the social secretary, and its infinite possibilities wherever large numbers of workers are brought together. Boston's During the last six Back Yards. months the Boston Board of Health is said to have brought about striking improvements in the sanitary condition of the tenement district. The work consists of clearing the back yards by removing sheds, ells, and other obstructions. The yards are then asphalted and drained. Some parts of the South End have been treated more comprehensively than other quarters of the city, and whole stretches have been supplied with breathing spaces in this way. This rear yard renovation was made possible by an act of 1897 empowering the Board to order the demolition of irremediably unsanitary property. The extent of the work accomplished is shown by the table in a last monthly bulletin of the statistics department, giving the number of houses ordered vacant or demolished during recent months. From January I to September 1, 193 houses were ordered demolished and 175 vacated. Most of these were sheds or ells removed from rear yards; about eighteen were dwellings proper. In November over thirty rear structures were taken down. The Social Settler of the Boston Transcript says of the work: In the exercise of this important power the Board has proceeded from the beginning in a conservative manner, preferring to go slow rather than to take sweeping action which might result in the repeal of the law. It has had to contend with opposition, more or less violent, on the part of property-owners-a fact that has not, perhaps, been sufficiently appreciated by impatient reformers. But although the Board has not moved as fast as the more zealous advocates of tenement betterment have urged, it has, nevertheless, kept moving. And now at the end of about five years of activity under the provisions of the act in question, the Board can point to a record of solid achievement that should receive grateful recognition from all friends of housing reform. The Settler, for one, wishes to record his hearty appreciation of this splendid work. Six Hundred The fourth annual report Classrooms of the New York Depart ment of Education has come from the printer, and shows that at the close of the year ending July 31, 519 schools and departments were within the jurisdiction of the Board, with an average attendance of 398,391 pupils and 11,389 teachers. The total amount of money available for the purposes of public education during the year was nearly $23,000,000. The report says: "The necessity for additional school accommodations in nearly all sections of the city continues, and is certain to become more and more pressing with the growth of population. The overcrowding in many schools and the large number of half-time and part-time classes-a makeshift necessitated by existing conditions are anything but creditable to this great and wealthy metropolis, and should not be permitted to continue. The only remedy is in building more schoolhouses, so as not only to keep even with the demand, but to anticipate it. When once the supply is brought abreast of the demand, it will still be necessary, owing to the increase of population, to provide additional sittings for upward of 25,000 children, or, say, 600 classrooms, every year." Pensions on Pacific. The Directors of the the Canadian Canadian Pacific Railway have determined upon a plan of superannuation. The system adopted calls for no contributions from the employees themselves. In a formal announcement issued December 8, the president of the company made this statement: "The company hopes, by thus voluntarily establishing a system under which a continued income will be assured to those who, after years of continuous service, are, by age or infirmity, no longer fitted to perform their duties, and without which they might be left entirely without means of support, to build up among them a feeling of permanency in their employment, an enlarged interest in the company's welfare, and a desire to remain in and to devote their best efforts and attention to the company's service." A distinct pension department has been created, under the direction of a committee composed of the president, vice-presidents, and the chief solicitor, the offices of which will be in Montreal. Monthly meetings will be held. All officers and employees who have attained the age of sixty-five years may be retired under the new ruling, and those who have been ten years or longer in the company's service will be pensioned. The pension allowances authorized are granted upon this basis: For each year of service an allowance of one per cent of the average monthly pay received for the ten years preceding retirement. For instance, with an employee who has been in the service for forty years and received, on an average, for the last ten years, fifty dollars per month, the pension allowance would be forty per cent of fifty dollars, or |