"Better Babies, Better Mothers, Better City!"

New York Tribune | 20 June 1914

Mother's Day: The Creation, Promotion and Meaning of a New Holiday in the Progressive Era

By Kathleen W. Jones

Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 22, No. 2, An Issue Devoted to Popular Culture Studies (SUMMER 1980), pp. 175-196

Although the sentimentalized image of American motherhood was a product of the nineteenth century, it was not until the Progressive era that Americans adopted a special holiday in honor of that vision. The plan to reserve one Sunday each year for honoring mothers originated with Anna Jarvis, a Philadelphia spinster who intended to memorialize the anniversary of her mother's death through a public holiday. However, initial observances of the new holiday, in May of 1908, did not win immediate popular approval for the continuation of the project. This essay will examine the cultural motives and pressures that transformed Mother's Day from the crank idea of one woman into an annual social custom.

I shall show how the holiday was conceived by Jarvis, furthered by the American Sunday school movement, but not popularly accepted until the meaning of the new celebration was defined by the Protestant churches and then redefined into a secular celebration of traditional but menaced American values. Ministers and lay contributors to weekly church magazines used the holiday to express their fear that middle-class Protestant culture, the culture so aptly characterized by the symbol of "Mother," was increasingly threatened in the Progressive era. Through sermons and didactic stories, concerned Protestants made of Mother's Day an adult celebration of their version of American values. When the holiday proved to be a powerful tool to sustain morale during World War I, the celebration of Mother's Day became a secular expression of loyalty to national ideals. Thus the history of the creation and promotion of the new holiday suggests that during the Progressive era the observance of Mother's Day fulfilled a social function beyond the purely personal mother-child relationship it ostensibly honored. . . .

. . . By 1912 religious publishing firms were offering to the church schools a selection of Mother's Day materials designed to attract youngsters to the Sunday meetings. Church presses produced special programs for Mother's Day, invitation cards, and celluloid carnations to distribute as mementoes. Teachers and ministers were assured that advance publicity through postcard invitations and newspaper coverage (churches were encouraged to buy space if necessary) would secure a large audience. The "successful observance" of the day was defined in terms of attendance, and ministers were advised that because of the "human appeal of the day" it was a "unique opportunity ... to reach the unchurched and the occasional church-attendant."* Sunday schools were instructed to issue special invitations to mothers and to seat them in a place of honor for the day. It was even suggested that the churches provide rocking chairs and child care for very young children, thereby enabling more mothers to attend. Leaders hoped that the attention to mothers would enlist the cooperation of the home in the Sunday school's effort to gain recruits.

*Rev. Jesse Halsey, "The Work of the Pastor: Suggestions for Mother's Day," Homiletic Review 71 (May 1916), 381. The Homiletic Review was published for use by Protestant ministers and contained sermon outlines and suggestions for prayer meetings as well as feature articles on the role of the minister.

"Jesse revolted violently."

McCormick Speaking | April 1952 | Vol. V,  No. 7

JESSE HALSEY

*Having reached the age of retirement, Jesse Halsey, Professor of Pastoral Theology and Liturgics, will terminate his active service to the Seminary with the present academic year. His life-long friend, Rev. Henry Sloane Coffin, D.D., has prepared this statement in which faculty, students, and friends will heartily concur.

Jesse Halsey comes of the Puritan stock which settled on Long Island in 1640. His family’s property has never been bought or sold, but is held under the original grant. In that stable Presbyterian community he was reared and he bears its stamp in his steadfastness to conviction, his shrewdness, his kindly humor, and his level head. He was brought up in its First Presbyterian Church where a conservative faith was taught and firmly believed. He took his B. A. at Princeton University and then entered Princeton Seminary. It was a period when that institution was under the intellectual dominance of Dr. Benjamin Warfield, was rigidly dogmatic and controverted all more recent movements in scientific and historical thinking. Jesse revolted violently.

He left the Seminary and enlisted under the genial and devoted Dr. Grenfell in the mission on the Labrador. There he recovered mental equilibrium and inward calm. Returning he enrolled at Union Seminary in New York and found himself at home in its open-minded devotion to truth and inclusive sympathies. Ever since he has been a liberal in outlook.

After a brief pastorate in a small town he was called to the Seventh Church of Cincinnati. It was a time of theological controversy, and the Cincinnati Presbytery was ruled by a group of die-hards. Halsey and two or three kindred spirits tactfully set themselves to alter that situation and they succeeded. Jesse has always been an outgoing friend who won his people’s confidence and gained the respect and affection of those who worked at his side. He soon became a foremost citizen of Cincinnati and a leading churchman held in esteem by Christians of all communities. He read widely and kept his preaching interesting. He took great pains with public worship and acquired skill in his preparations for common prayer. His good taste and his rich personal life with God are evident in the prayers with which he has enriched the Church.

McCormick wisely elected him in full maturity to the chair from which he has counseled students in their early ministry and taught pastoral theology and the conduct of pubic worship. His ideals are evident in the renovated and restored chapel where his own hands did much of the manual labor. He is a skilled workman in carpentry and painting, as well as in printing—a Bezalel in the artistic arrangement  of the house of worship.

Everyone finds him approachable. He is genuinely interested in people—people of all sorts—and becomes their inspiring friend. His wisdom, his faith, his patience, his loyalty render him a notable adviser. He understands human relations—their frailties and their vast possibilities. He has courage in situations where few, even among Christian leaders, are willing to speak out. And always he had the “sweet reasonableness” which avoids needless clashes. His students known how much they owe him and acknowledge it with warm affection. His fellow-churchmen admire and love him for his stalwart fidelity to conviction, his willingness to shoulder heavy responsibilities, and the bigness of heart which takes on their loads and carries them with untiring perseverance. In his retirement the Seminary parts with a most useful member of its faculty, but his students and fellow-churchmen will continue to possess in him a life-long friend in God.

--Henry Sloane Coffin

"Valuable as is legal aid for the poor, the prevention, so far as possible of the necessity for it, is of even greater worth."

Causes of Legal Aid Need Should Be Attacked* by Murray Seasongood

With all the changes that have come about since my apprenticeship in legal aid in 1902, one wonders why the Cincinnati Legal Aid Society should still be running through the mill, each year, its six thousand or more civil cases and the several hundred criminal cases of its voluntary defender. Since the turn of the century we have acquired social security laws, old age pensions, unemployment insurance, the NLRB and, to do away with the horrors of the "fellow servant rule" and "assumption of risk" workmen's compensation laws. We have acquired also through WPA and PWA relief even to the extent of providing clothing; transportation in some cities (New York e.g.) at far less than cost; blue sky laws to prevent investment in unsound securities; declaratory judgments and arbitration and small claims courts; and teachers' and employees' credit companies. And yet the grind of cases seems to continue unabated and, indeed, to increase.

Must not, then, the legal aid enthusiast look to the causes of the cases coming in and seek to remedy those causes, rather than only to apply the palliative of help for the clients? The ideal legal aid society, or to be specific, the National Association of Legal Aid organizations, should, in my opinion, seek to diminish the causes of controversies in which legal aid organizations are asked to act. I present some subjects which are worthy of study and possibly, action:

First: Sickness insurance and insurance for hospital care. The question of socialized or cooperative medicine is too large a subject for discussion here. But, I became convinced, while one of the trustees of the Julius Rosenwald Fund, of the value of properly managed insurance for sickness and hospital care; especially after visiting the Negro hospital in New Orleans, entirely staffed by Negroes. That system is followed there with the greatest of success and childbirth is handled under the best and most sanitary methods, with instruction to the mother which benefits her and her child throughout life.

Second: The same for dental treatment and general adoption of rulings and legislation intended to curb the injury and awful expense incident to the activities of disreputable practitioners. . . .

Third: Constant and more searching investigation of all kinds of insurance than is afforded by state authorities, is necessary. . . .

Fourth: Loan companies, pawn brokers and professional bondsmen are common causes of financial distress.  . . .

Fifth: What shall be said of installment buying? It stimulates demand by making possible the purchase of numerous articles that would be impossible to acquire otherwise; but it is a frequent cause of distress. . . But not only are the  older kinds of purchases, such as furniture, houses and jewelry, still bought by the installment method, but there are radios, automobiles, watches and clocks, dress suits, dresses, cloaks and furs, and even razors so purchasable. . . .

Sixth: Automobile insurance should everywhere be compulsory, and not to have driving tests and licensing of drivers is really outrageous. How many times has it happened that a wage earner, through no fault of his own, is deprived of his means of livelihood temporarily or permanently, by a wholly irresponsible moron using an automobile. . . .

Seventh: The whole system of treatment of crime is hopelessly archaic. There is very little sensible attempt to rehabilitate the criminal and to allow him to re-adjust himself as a wage earner and supporter of a family.

Eighth: What shall we say of gambling, now largely utilized for "religious" and kindred purposes. Whether, and to what extent, this natural proclivity should be allowed is a subject for more consideration than it is receiving. But, certainly, if it is allowed, it should be under government supervision as is the case of European countries. Anything is better than non-enforcement and the collusion between criminals and low political gangs.

Ninth: More education and much more adult education is needed. Prevalence of existing crime has often been found due to malefactors having no skills for legitimate employment. Prostitution is an example. With better education, too, there would be better government and there is no doubt that the defective local government that pervades most of the United States results in non-use of public resources for the benefit of the localities and of those in them most in need.

Tenth: Finally, there should be a steady effort to reduce the cost of funerals and burials. Cities may conduct cemeteries  (e.g. Ohio General Code Sec. 4154--et sq.). I remember one of my first cases was for the widow of an engineer who was killed by the escape of ammonia fumes. She had an infant child and he left her $500.00, $495.00 of which was used for his funeral. Burial insurance, carried by many, is unduly expensive and results in extravagance in death out of all relation to the customary expenditures during life. Many cemetery associations also degenerate into rackets.

You may feel all this is a very ambitious program that, as some one said of Edward Everett Hale, "His specialty is the universe." My much esteemed friend, Reginald H. Smith of Boston (almost the embodiment of legal aid) said at the 1916 meeting of the Legal Aid Societies in Cincinnati, "The legal aid society cannot undertake to reform the world." While I differ with him on legal aid or any other matter with trepidation, still I make bold to ask, "Why not?" or at least why should not legal aid societies do something of the kind, instead of merely attending to the cases that come before them. Valuable as is legal aid for the poor, the prevention, so far as possible of the necessity for it, is of even greater worth.

Murray Seasongood (Oct. 27, 1878 - Feb. 21, 1983) served as the Mayor of Cincinnati from 1926-1930.

*From an address delivered at a meeting (July 25, 1938) of the Legal Aid Section of the American Bar Association. "The author's first experience with legal aid, in New York, in 1902, made him enthusiastic for this work. From 1930 to 1938 he was President of the Cincinnati Legal Aid Society; he was chairman for some time of the committee on Legal Aid of the Cincinnati Bar Association, during which period the Association made two contributions of $500 each. In 1932 a resolution offered by Mr. Seasongood concerning legal aid study was adopted by the International Congress of Comparative Law, meeting at The Hague, and another concerning the matter of the public defender at the Congress of 1937."

Reprinted from the Journal of the American Judicature Society. c. 1939

A Missionary View of the World

The following recently appeared in the Missionary Review of the World:

Total national income . . . $40,000,000,000
For all church work                 793,000,000
For roads and improving     1,432,000,000
For education                       2,174,650,000
For corn, wheat, cotton
    oats, etc.                           2,460,000,000
For automobiles                   2,769,000,000
For tobacco                          3,500,000,000
For alcoholic drinks             4,000,000,000

When the liquor traffic gets one-tenth of the income of the nation and the churches less than two percent, we see the lines of the forces engaged. There can be no solution until the power of greedy liquor forces has been taken away and they are put out of that destructive business.

The Missionary Review of the World, Vol. 61, Missionary Review Publishing Co., Inc., 1938. 

[Ed note: This is a typed carbon copy on Jesse Halsey's personal 7th Presbyterian Church stationery. The Missionary Review of the World was: "A monthly periodical that documented the great missionary outreach of the late 1800s and early 1900s," and contained "numerous articles and news items of inspirational and historical value."]

'prisoners of hope"

"We Believe" by Francis B. Sayre

In this faithless and materialistic age, those who believe in Christ's way of life must rekindle and strengthen their faith. We live in an age beset with discouragement and despair. The Christian cannot despair. We Christians are prisoners of hope.

We believe that the last word lies with God.

We believe, as Christ believed, that God is the supreme goodness. And we also dare to believe with Christ that God is supreme power. Therefore, we dare to believe in the ultimate and inevitable triumph of goodness.

Those who respond to God's advance by obedience and trust form the society of His children. To that society its members owe an allegiance above every other allegiance. By it all other loyalties are conditioned. Membership in the church of Christ demands specific action in life here and now.

For Christianity is not a dream. It is God's revelation of the only way of life that is finally practical, the only way that can satisfy the insistent needs of human nature. Above all else Christ was a realist. His way actually works. It solves and it heals. Such is the testimony of millions who have tried it. The world cannot function effectively until we learn to put Christ at the center of our lives.

[Ed note: Circa 1938. These paragraphs exist as a carbon copy typed on Jesse Halsey's personal 7th Presbyterian Church of Cincinnati stationery.  Generationally, it would seem the author is this Francis B. Sayre, although from an occupational standpoint the writing seems more aptly attributed to his son, the Very Rev. Francis B. Sayre, Jr. Authorship unresolved.]