She concluded
with the remark that it was queer that the sight of the boy
himself hadn't appealed to her, but that the suggestion had come
to her in such a roundabout way.
She was, of course, reflecting upon a common trait in human
nature,--that we much more easily see the duty at hand when we
see it in relation to the social duty of which it is a part.
When she knew that an effort was being made throughout all the
large cities in the United States to reclaim the wayward boy, to
provide him with reasonable amusement, to give him his chance for
growth and development, and when she became ready to take her
share in that movement, she suddenly saw the concrete case which
she had not recognized before.
We are slowly learning that social advance depends quite as much
upon an increase in moral sensibility as it does upon a sense of
duty, and of this one could cite many illustrations. I was at one
time chairman of the Child Labor Committee in the General
Federation of Woman's Clubs, which sent out a schedule asking each
club in the United States to report as nearly as possible all the
working children under fourteen living in its vicinity. A Florida
club filled out the schedule with an astonishing number of Cuban
children who were at work in sugar mills, and the club members
registered a complaint that our committee had sent the schedule
too late, for if they had realized the conditions earlier, they
might have presented a bill to the legislature which had now
adjourned.
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