The Lexington Civic League: Agent of Reform, 1900 - The Filson ...

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1988] Lexington Civic League 345 By the autumn of 1905 the school board indicated it would consider including some form of manual training in its January budget. During the fall the Civic League continued to sponsor lectures on the subject by such experts as Professor Harry G. Brownell of Flexner University School in Louisville and Chicago social workers and reformers, Marion Talbott and Dr. Sophon- isba P. Breckinridge. (The latter, a sister of Desha Breckinridge, was a professor at the University of Chicago and a pioneer in the professionalization of social work.) Superintendent M. "A. Cassidy professed to be a convert to the cause, but when the school board met in January 1906, it again decided that Lexing- ton could not afford to institute manual training. The next yea1:, however, after the League offered to help finance the initial expenses of the program, the school board appropriated $4000 to begin manual training in carpentry and domestic science.2° At the 1906 session of the Kentucky General Assembly, the Civic League helped to sponsor a juvenile court bill. Drafted by Bernard Flexner and Albert Brandeis of Louisville, the bill was introduced in the house on 20 January. It provided for juvenile courts in first and second-class cities with the county judge as the presiding magistrate, assisted by a probation officer and one other appointee. In an effort to promote the cause, the Civic League sponsored a return visit by Judge Lindsey. On 2 March, the day he spoke in Lexington, the house passed the bill, and on 21 March the senate did also. Upon his return home Lindsey Chairman, Committee on Juvenile Courts," Breckinridge Family Papers, Library of Congress; Ben B. Lindsey to Madeline MeDowell Breckinridge, 7 August 1905, Ben B. Lindsey Papers, Library of Congress. 20 Lexington Herald, 10 September, 24, 27, 29 December 1905, 1, 4 January, 12 February, 5 May, 3 October 1907. Sophonisba Breckinridge's importance in developing an educational curriculum and philosophy leading to the professionalization of social work, as well as her close relationship to Chicago social settlement workers and other Progressives, is amply detailed in Lela B. Costin, Two Sistvrs /or Social Justice, A Biography o/ Grave and Edith Abbott (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 27, 58-67, 119, 184, 194, 227-28 and also in Klottsr, B 'eckln 'idges o/Kvntueky, 189-90, 201-207.
346 The Filson Club History. Quarterly [July wrote Mrs. Breckinridge: "The women of the country are doing the work for the children, and it is such unselfish, devoted and magnificent work as yours... [which has] inspired me to speak the truth in this matter."21 During these years the Civic League also concerned itself with ending child labor and providing for compulsory school attendance. In 1902 Kentucky had passed a child labor law which prohibited the employment of children under fourteen in workshops, mines, mills, or factories except with the written approval of the parent or guardian and the agreement of the county attorney. This exception proved to be a loophole of significant magnitude which the Civic League hoped to circumvent by a more stringent compulsory school attendance law. They lobbied for and helped obtain passage in 1904 of a law which lengthened the school term to six months and compelled children aged seven to fourteen in cities of first through fourth classes to attend school for the full term. At the 1906 legislative session the Civic League also supported a bill creating two state normal schools for the purpose of educating teachers. More sweeping changes than these, however, were needed to deal with the deplorable educational condition of the state. The 1900 census had shown Kentucky to be thirty-seventh in literacy, while only eighty-one of (then) 119 counties had a pub!ic high school. In addition, state superintendents of public instruction for years had called for an end to the district system adminis- tered by more than 24,000 school trustees, many of whom did not want the office and refused to meet their responsibility. Fay- 21 Lexington Herald, 4, 7, 9, 14 January, 2, 6 February, 18 March. 1907; Ben Lindsey to M. M. Breekinridge, 12 March 1906, Lindsey .Papers, Library of Congress; Edward Clopper, Child Wel[ars 17 Kentucky (New York, 1919), 203-204. A rather negative view of Judge Lindsey and the effects of the juvenile court system is presented in David A. Rothman, Censcisnce and Convenience, The Asylum and its Alternatives in Progressive America (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1980), 205-25. 22 Kentucky General Assembly Acts . . . (1902), 44-45; Kentucky General Assembly Acts . . . (1906), 393-404; Barksdale Hamlett, History o/ Education in Kentucky (Frankfort, 1914), 190.
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