USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II > Part 55
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the sandwich rising from the plebeian ham and bread to the aristocratic skyscraper club sand- wich of many storied height and elaborate construction. The lunchrooms of all sorts are busiest at the noon-hours; there are some that serve neither breakfast nor the late afternoon meal, called either dinner or supper, and others that close early in the evening.
The beginning of a distinct night lunch service in Rhode Island was made by Walter Scott, who carried a basket of sandwiches and a pail of hot coffee into a newspaper office, so early as 1858. The venture was successful immediately, and Scott for his long life afterward was a tradition and institution among newspapermen. With the passage of time the newspaper provided a lunchroom for its employes, but Scott was the caterer. Extending the service Scott operated the first night lunch cart "in the world," he was wont to assert, and the asser- tion was probably accurate. The cart at first was only a covered wagon drawn up to the curbstone at a convenient street corner, and the customers ate while standing on the sidewalk the sandwiches and coffee served through a window. In later development this Rhode Island itinerant restaurant was enlarged, and steps and a door were provided, so that the diner might enter and eat within. The cart was drawn to its station early in the evening, and withdrawn early in the morning. The night lunch cart had much to do with establishing the popularity in Rhode Island of the frankfurter. In the evolution of the night lunch cart, discarded horsecars were used. Even later the elaborate night lunch cart of city streets became the model for the "diner," which was substantially a more elaborate lunch cart occupying a per- manent location. Roadside diners, elaborate restaurants built in such manner that the exterior resembles the lunch cart of yesteryears, have become familiar along state highways, catering to the crowds traveling by automobile.
Back in the busy centre, through all the hours of business, one finds restaurants and cafeterias, lunch counters and soda water fountains busy catering to those who eat and drink, in an unending procession. The service is rapid, the food is usually good and some of it is excellent. The enforcement of health and sanitary regulations is a reasonable assurance of cleanliness. There is, however, a monotonous similarity in the daily offering, due in part to the thorough organization of the modern mass service, which extends even to the operation of restaurants, and due also to chain store methods in supplying certain standard types of food for lunch rooms. If one craves a different meal, one into which a friendly chef throws the sauce of individuality, there are still a few places, like the old restaurants, known to the elect.
THE MODERN CITY-STATE-Rhode Island is a city-state in the sense that so large a pro- portion of the population, more than in any other commonwealth, resides in cities or compact communities enjoying the service that is typical of urban life-that is to say, running water, gas, electric light, telephone, drainage for house waste, paved streets, graded schools, police and fire protection, health supervision and public transportation. The business of catering, through retail trade, to the wants of a population averaging over six hundred to the square mile necessitates the thousands of shops, large and small, that line main thoroughfares. Old Town Street in Providence, now North Main and South Main streets, is practically two rows of shops, counting both sides, each almost six miles long, with only occasionally an interloping dwelling. Westminster Street from the great bridge is a business thoroughfare for five miles westward into and through Olneyville Square. Weybosset Street and the Broad Street and Elmwood Avenue extensions reach on for other miles. The shop streets include Smith, Atwell's Avenue, Broadway, Charles and Cranston to mention only a few others in Provi- dence. In other Rhode Island cities similar conditions prevail, and the same is true of com- pact town centres. Rows of shops replace dwellings on main arteries of travel; occasionally a dwelling is raised from its old foundation to crown a row of shops at street level. Houses
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on corners chosen for filling stations are demolished. For residence purposes quieter streets are chosen, and zoning legislation has been enacted to protect these from the invasion of busi- ness. The automobile, replacing the electric tramway, has taken up the problems of dis- tributing population, pushed out from the cities, over the countryside. The small shop fol- lows, catering to the convenience of those whose migration out has produced a new population centre. And thus Rhode Island maintains the quaint appearance of frame houses occupying fair-sized plots of land with an abundance of trees, whereas city life elsewhere too often has involved close building of multiple houses.
The business of providing food and other necessities for so many people is serious. It begins early in the morning, before daybreak, as hundreds of men with carts and horses, usually, distribute milk in bottles at the doors of residences, and milk in boxes of bottles at the entrances to retail stores. Bakery wagons, some huge trucks, deposit boxes of bread, and produce carts boxes and barrels at the doors of groceries and markets. When the store proprietor arrives he finds much to be moved within in the intervals between supplying early customers. Deliveries at homes continue through the day, between the time when the news- boy compresses the morning paper between the knob and frame of the door and the time when another boy leaves an evening paper. The grocery and market wagon is a daily caller, with the basket of provisions ordered in large part by telephone. The laundryman, the ice- man, the coalman or oilman, the woodman and the man who removes ashes, tin cans and other rubbish and waste, the man who trims the lawn, the gas meter reader, the man who reads the electric meter, perhaps the water meter reader, besides the postman once, twice, thrice daily, all these come and go. Then come the pack peddlers, truck peddlers, fruit peddlers, the solicitors for magazines and periodicals, the demonstrators of new machines and appliances, the brushman, the salesmen of various types, the collectors for charity, the ticket sellers and the ordinary beggars.
Milady housekeeper has a busy day if she gives attention to all who call on pretext or errand and yet finds time for housework and cooking, and an afternoon for shopping, charity or recreation. Sometimes she forgets that many of these who call and take her time are engaged seriously in the business of making lighter for her the load of responsibility for the care of a modern house. Of these the grocer and butcher and other purveyors of food assume most, for on them rests the obligation of solving the food problems for the population-of bringing to the state food enough in quantity, variety and quality to feed nearly 700,000 people.
The five other New England states are tributary to Rhode Island in the production of milk, besides the quantities of condensed and evaporated milk that are consumed in Rhode Island and derived from far western sources. Carloads of beef, mutton, pork, poultry, eggs and butter are needed daily, with facilities for storage to equalize receipt and distribution. Canned provisions in trainloads, and fruit and produce pour in, are distributed to warehouses and commission merchants, and thence to stores and eventually to homes. And as it is with food, so also with many other commodities. Rhode Island manufactures some lines for the world, but, as Rhode Island has chosen because of the advantages of her environment and the skill of her denizens to make and sell, Rhode Island must buy the things that are not produced.
OTHER MERCANTILE ESTABLISHMENTS-Besides the department stores and markets, Rhode Island has many large mercantile establishments specializing in men's clothing, hats, and furnishings; women's clothing, millinery and furnishings; shoes for men, women and children; furniture and house furnishings; hardware, tools and machinery; drugs and med- icines ; electrical machinery, equipment, fixtures, and appliances; hardware, tools and machin- ery ; farm implements, tools, machinery and supplies ; paints, lumber, cement, mason's mate- rials, carpenters' fittings; musical instruments and sheet music; books, periodicals and sta-
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tionery ; rubber goods; automobiles and automobile accessories; radio and radio supplies. The persons employed as managers, salesmen and clerks in retail stores selling food and food substances, clothing, dry goods of all kinds, furniture and furnishings, hardware and tools, drugs and medicines, and large and small stores specializing in particular lines; the bakers, chefs, cooks, waiters, countermen and other attendants and helpers in bakeries, restaurants, cafeterias, delicatessen and other establishments cooking and vending food; the drivers of trucks and other delivery wagons engaged in the delivery of goods sold and distributed in wholesale and retail trade; the men employed in the delivery of milk, ice and fuel, and the hucksters selling produce, fruit, ice cream, fish, spring water, carbonated beverages, bakery products, and other commodities from door to door ; the bookkeepers and accountants, buyers, sales supervisors, floormen, personnel managers, advertisement writers and publicity agents, credit men and claim adjusters, and others, including store detectives and watchmen, janitors and warehouse men, number thousands, and the payrolls of salaries, commissions and wages amount to millions annually. Besides catering to the wants of Rhode Islanders, these men handle a great volume of commodities, the ultimate consumers of which reside in others of the New England states.
When Jabez Gorham packed the product of his small factory and silver foundry in a case, and went with it to exhibit and sell the contents to merchants, he inaugurated the prac- tice of selling by drummers showing samples which has been one of the methods used by Rhode Island manufacturers for over a century, particularly in the jewelry trade, but also in others. The regular season in business is anticipated months in advance by the preparation of samples, and several Rhode Island houses are engaged principally in the manufacture of cases for showing samples to advantage. The drummer carries the sample line far and wide over an extended area, displaying samples and booking orders; the measure of a successful season is the order list, because that indicates assured patronage. In textiles some goods are sold by samples, also, but the bulk of the Rhode Island product has been sold through agents operating in New York, and selling from headquarters there the entire output of factories. In other lines Rhode Island manufacturers use both selling methods.
In purchasing supplies of raw material, particularly cotton, Rhode Island manufacturers formerly sent agents through the Southern States to cities which were central cotton markets, and even to large plantations, to buy directly from primary commission merchants or planters. Methods of selling have changed, and cotton, ore and other commodities in modern times are purchased through brokers. Through the genius of merchants and salesmen markets for Rhode Island products have been found; other merchants and salesmen have found outside Rhode Island things that are needed here. In and out of Narragansett Bay the merchant group pour the merchandise which in their hands yields golden profits, and both the merchants who operate intrastate retail and wholesale marketing, and the other merchants who operate in interstate and international trade, have helped to make Narragansett Bay the Southern Gateway of New England.
CHAPTER XXXII. RHODE ISLAND PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM.
S the nineteenth rolled into the twentieth century, Rhode Island was maintaining a complete and modern system of free public schools, reaching into every town and city, and enrolling 70,000 pupils, for whom 72,000 seats had been provided in 538 buildings. The value of school sites was estimated at $5,500,000. Two thousand teachers were employed. Tuition and textbooks were furnished free to pupils at public expense ; the total expenditures for public education were $1,625,000 annually. Chil- dren of school age were compelled to attend some school approved by public school agents; in addition to the 70,000 in public schools, 13,400 were reported as enrolled in Catholic schools and 1150 in select schools. Nineteen high schools reported nearly 4000 pupils. Evening schools and free public libraries supplemented the day public schools. There were, besides, special opportunities for persons deprived of one or more sensory capacities. While the dis- trict system of administration and support persisted in half the towns, it was soon to be abolished (1904). Rhode Island was also soon to repeat (1905), by seeking as commissioner the chief educational officer from another state, what had been done in 1843, when Henry Barnard was called from Connecticut to Rhode Island. The new century witnessed (I) the extension of educational opportunities for defective classes; (2) additional provision for sec- ondary and higher education; and (3) improvement of the entire public school system.
SPECIAL SCHOOLS-Rhode Island provides maintenance and care for blind children, insti- tutional instruction for blind, deaf, dumb, indigent and imbecile children, instruction for the adult blind in their homes, and rehabilitation for persons incapacitated by accident or disease. The General Assembly, in 1836, directed town clerks to report the number, age, sex and pecuniary condition of deaf and dumb persons, and the extent of their education. In 1845, an annual appropriation of $1500 was provided "for the education .
deaf-mutes . . . . and . . of the indigent blind . . . of the indigent
." The appropriation was increased subsequently, and in 1893, "the duty and responsibility of supervising the education of all such beneficiaries" were vested in the Board of Education.
A day school for the instruction of deaf-mutes by the lip-reading method was opened in Providence in 1877. The Governor, who promoted the venture, appointed five beneficiaries of the state appropriation for the education of the deaf as state scholars. The number of pupils grew gradually ; in 1882 the school was reorganized as a state institution. Ten years later a permanent home for the school was built on Hope Street in Providence, and it was reorganized as the Rhode Island Institute for the Deaf, and placed under control of a board of trustees. The name was changed to Rhode Island School for the Deaf in 1926. Attendance was made compulsory in 1898 for children between the ages of seven and eighteen years whose "hear- ing or speech, or both, are so defective as to make it inexpedient or impracticable to attend the public schools to advantage, not being mentally or otherwise incapable." Children three to twenty years of age are received at the school, the primary object of which is "to furnish to the deaf children of the state oral instruction and the best known facilities for the enjoyment of such a share of the benefits of the system of free public education as their afflicted condi- tion will admit of."
The General Assembly, in 1907, made provision for a home and school for the feeble- minded, under the management and control of the State Board of Education. The institution
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is located at Exeter. It provides instruction and education for feeble-minded persons within school age who are capable of being benefited by school instruction, and custodial care for feeble-minded persons beyond school age or who are not capable of being benefited by school instruction. The school is for idiots and imbeciles and other persons of decidedly low-grade mentality ; its work should not be confused with that done for atypical or backward children in public elementary schools. The name of the institution was changed from Rhode Island School for the Feeble-Minded to Exeter School in 1916. The State Board of Education, on its own request, and suggestion that the work was principally institutional rather than educa- tional, was relieved in 1917 of responsibility for the further care and management of the Exeter School, and the institution was entrusted to the then newly created Penal and Char- itable Commission, which subsequently was reorganized as the Public Welfare Commission.
Rhode Island has not established a school or other institution for the blind, although public provision for the blind begins with the babe and reaches to the adult. Babies, that is, children not ready for school, whether born blind or becoming blind in infancy, may be placed by the State Board of Education in suitable institutions; for this purpose recourse is had to the Arthur Home for Blind Babies at Summit, New Jersey. For blind children of school age, education may be provided at state expense at suitable institutions; most are sent to Perkins Institution, a few to Hartford. For over twenty years, from 1908-1930, the Board of Education employed traveling teachers to visit the adult blind and instruct them in their homes. Two teachers travel thousands of miles annually to all parts of Rhode Island, teaching the blind reading and writing, usually by the Braille system, and also occupations, including sewing, knitting, tatting, crocheting, cane and rush seating, etc. Under the auspices of the board two or more sales of articles made by the blind were conducted annually, and the entire proceeds were paid to the blind. The teachers employed in 1930 were themselves both blind. Supervision of education of the adult blind was transferred in 1930 from the State Board of Education to a newly created Bureau for the Blind.
Rehabilitation may be defined as the reeducation or physical reconstruction of a person who by reason of injury or disease has become incapacitated for his customary vocation, whereby the person may be returned to self-supporting employment. The General Assembly in 1918 made provision for rehabilitation of crippled victims of industrial accidents by educa- tion or artificial limbs, or both. The United States entered the field of civilian rehabilitation in 1920, and Rhode Island at the same time that it undertook cooperation with the federal government in rehabilitation on the basis of an even sharing of expenditures, broadened its own legislation to correspond with the federal statute. Under state and federal legislation, rehabilitation is offered to victims of any type of accident, and to persons disabled by disease, whether congenital or acquired. Only persons of extreme age, paralytics, insane, epileptics, and those whose condition otherwise indicates no possibility of successful rehabilitation are excluded. Under the Rhode Island practice reeducation or retraining may be provided in any school or other institution of learning, or in any shop with suitable equipment, or by special instructors or tutors. The state is generous in providing artificial limbs or other prosthetic appliances, usually assuming the entire expenditure as a joint state-federal contribution to assist the injured person. Rehabilitation is not considered successful and statisfactory unless and until the person has been restored to employment under wage and other conditions that at least equal those prevailing at the time of disability. The service is conducted by a director employed by the State Board for Vocational Education, which is the responsible state agency.
On recommendation of the State Board of Education and the Commissioner the General Assembly in 1883 authorized the organization of the State Home and School for indigent children, which was opened in Providence two years later. The original board of control was abolished in 1917, when the school was assigned to the Penal and Charitable Commission, later
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the State Public Welfare Commission. The school receives such children as are declared vagrant, neglected and dependent on the public for support, over four and under sixteen years of age, who are in suitable condition of mind and body to be instructed. Children under four may be admitted for exceptional reasons, and children once admitted may remain in the insti- tution until they are twenty-one years old, unless otherwise ordered. Children of unsound mind are excluded. The object of the school is to "provide for neglected and dependent children, not recognized as vicious or criminal, such influences as will lead toward an honest, intelligent and self-supporting manhood and womanhood, the state so far as possible holding to them the parental relation." The children may be placed out in private families, which undertake to care for them and to provide for their education in public schools. In recent years the placing out system has been extended, with the general purpose of substituting pri- vate home custody and care so far as possible for institutional care. In recognition of the desirability of environmental conditions so nearly as possible corresponding to those outside the institution, children resident at the home are sent to neighboring public schools.
Providence Reform School was established in October, 1850, in compliance with the request in a petition presented to the city council in 1847 by the Providence Association of Mechanics and Manufacturers, and under authorization by the General Assembly, for "the confinement, instruction and reformation of juvenile offenders and of young persons of idle, vicious, or vagrant habits." The school was located in the Tockwotton House, Providence, which previously had been a hotel. The reform school received by commitment persons less than eighteen years of age convicted of offences in the courts, and might receive also persons over five years of age upon request of parent or guardian. The Reform School was a Provi- dence institution, owned by the city and administered by a board of trustees elected by the city council; it received persons by commitment from other towns and cities under an agree- ment for reimbursement by the state for these. The Reform School was investigated at the close of the Civil War on charges that inmates had been persuaded to enlist in the Union army, and that bounties and hand money paid on account of enlistments had been misappro- priated; the charges of misappropriation were not sustained. Again, in 1868, the Reform School was investigated on charges (I) that vices against chastity, decency and good morals prevailed in the school, and that children left it more corrupt than when they entered; (2) that teachers used immodest and disgusting language in the presence of pupils; (3) that cruel methods of punishment, including flogging, were employed; (4) that girls were stripped and lashed, and taken from bed during the night and beaten in nightdress; (5) that names of chil- dren were changed, to prevent identification by their parents; (6) that children were appren- ticed in remote sections of the country, to separate them from their parents; (7) that public property at the school had been misappropriated, and (8) "that a spirit of proselytism and of religious intolerance has prevailed in the school, as is shown by the fact that children of dif- ferent creeds are compelled to attend a form of worship which is contrary to the conscientious convictions of a large majority of them, which is directly in conflict with the spirit of our state constitution, which insures to the inhabitants thereof the liberty of conscience in the following language: 'No man shall be compelled to frequent or to support any religious worship, place or ministry whatever except in fulfilment of his own voluntary contract,' and that the chil- dren of said school are denied the use of books and all religious instruction in the religion of their choice." Major Doyle vetoed a resolution to authorize a select committee to hear the parties for the reason that the council had no power to delegate its own authority in the mat- ter. The hearing proceeded before the Board of Aldermen, beginning December 2, 1868. The testimony of witnesses, with the arguments of counsel, and decision of the Board of Aldermen, taken down at the trial in shorthand, make 1450 pages of a printed report. The Mayor and one alderman, both being trustees of the Reform School, refused to participate in the decision. Five of ten aldermen agreed that two instances of immoral practices by
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officers had been proved, but that the offenders had been dismissed; that other charges, except the eighth, had not been sustained; and as to the eighth: "No sectarianism has been permit- ted in the school. Clergymen of all denominations have been invited to address the school on the Sabbath, and on other occasions, and have been treated in the same manner. No evidence sufficient to satisfy the committee was offered to show that any attempt has ever been made in the institution to proselyte or convert any pupil from one religious faith to another." One alderman agreed with the majority generally, but with reference to the eighth charge said: "In the election of trustees to the Reform School, whenever a vacancy has occurred, the undersigned, since he has been a member of the city council, has always advocated the pro- priety of selecting one trustee from each of the larger denominations, as likely to prove more satisfactory to the community; and the recent investigation has fully confirmed him in the opinion that it would be a decided gain to the institution, if this plan was adopted." Another held that the superintendent's answer to the effect that he would, upon request of an inmate close to death, ask the trustees before summoning a clergyman of the denomination wished, to be a mistake, adding, "in my opinion any superintendent of this institution who would hesitate to allow the consolation of religion to be adininistered in the form desired by the child, under such circumstances, should be promptly relieved from duty." A third alderman held that charges of cruel and brutal punishment of girls had been proved. The petition for an investi- gation had been signed by twenty-seven Catholics, and the most significant charge was the eighth. No testimony to sustain the charge that names had been changed was presented. There was testimony to sustain all other charges ; that is to say, there was evidence that there had been immoral practices, improper speech, brutal punishment, along with other evidence to show that these were exceptional, and that the superintendent had discharged employes on occasion for cause. As to the eighth charge the majority of the aldermen found that there had been no active proselyting, but there was evidence that ( 1) every inmate had been required to commit to memory and recite passages from the Bible; (2) that boys and girls were required to participate in morning and evening prayers conforming to Protestant rituals ; (3) that on the pretext that no sectarian books were permitted, Catholic prayer books and catechisms had been taken away from Catholic children. The superintendent had actually undertaken to exclude Catholic books provided by two of the trustees for Catholic children, and related an incident of finding two Catholic catechisms which had been hidden away and passed from child to child, as the latter had sought to read and study them. On the eighth charge the attorney for the trustees of the Reform School argued:
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