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About The Oregon daily journal. (Portland, Or.) 1902-1972 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 12, 1909)
1 1 itm V : V 's :.V PORTLAND.. OREGON, , SUNDAY; MORNING,' DECEMBER y 12, , 1900 ' v. ,m m i. . ' Crane and Her Work ' "I 1Aa Wfdf;-'--." I for Charity and Ciean- If f(r0 ' , (Q H H imess, rl--;.-': Hji-:Jl II ; fPI'ilif i'k - - .... I ' " , - I :,V ' r , - - ' i I i' ? .. .... . ,1 I ".!' I TTT" JTHO is Caroline BartUlt Cranet ilf The same "question has ' ' been asked ofvall Jhe other conquerors of history Napoleon, Peter, the Great, William of Normandy until the1 inquirers come within hearing distance of them. It has even been asked of Mrs. Pankhurst. Well, Mrs. Crane is a retired member of the clergy, whose home is in Kalamazoo, Mich., but whose' activities are bounded only by the United States. She is the stormy petrel of civic im provement. She is the herald- of the whirlwinds which now so suddenly and fiercely sweep through American towns yes, and big cities and leave behind them a train of sufh moral and. material clean liness that man, with his inborn hatred of housecleaning, domestic or municipal, can 1 only stand aghast. Sometimes, when a local civic improve ment club has appealed to her for help and guidance, she has found the town authori ties already tamed and bridle-wise to the enlightening feminine touch; then so much the better for them. Other times she has found them rearing and snorting defiance to newfangled notions of municipal man agement; then she has as cheerfully stam peded them. Either way, they must go her way. She is the now accepted Joan of Arc for a movement which, without the ballot, has enabled women to wield more real power here in a day than all Great Britain's suffragettes have acquired within two years. And remember, she always comes be fore the storm. the South, in the West, whole cities are bloom ing into order and hygienic decency, with only the beautiful results to' attest the hurricane week-she put in at each of" them, for all the world like some slight, swift-flying 6torm bird, whose arrival portends the . first gusts of the whirlwind that is destined to sweep things clean. ; It was just twenty years ago that Kalama- ; zoo welcomed the arrival of a young woman so attractive that all the 'men began primping' when they got anywhere near her vicinity. Delightful she was, on the strength or wa it the seeming girlish weakness ? of her .pretty, curl-framed face. She was slight, elegantly . delicate, with one of those sweet, appealing ex-pressions-that make the average man think' of the little red schoolhouse and his first girl. Unapproachable she was, too, for she came, of all things,, as a preacher. The "Reverend" attached to her'name planted her solidly on the imposing, dignified statue of Caroline, with never a hope of any man trying to shorten it to tender Carrie. It drew about her the solemn circle of holy church, and left her, singly and. alone, to her poor little congregation of 'Unita rians, as their hope of rescue from poverty and mortgage. Which was the congregation's very ' best good fortune in its history. PRACTICAL IN CHURCH WORK fx- J .' - " jS "" j "KjU1" J ' . J .' ' , ! lin ' ' !' iuMMiim.h,, ..m. i. i.i ii wwwlt,niMMV ., ,,, WHERE MRS. CRANE HAS WORKED A FAIRLY complete list of th cit! and town that have profits! by Mrs, Crana'a inatructlve and constructive crlliclima In cludes: Calumet; Hastings and Bay City, In Michi gan. Concord. New Hampshire; and various char itable and penal Institutions In the utate under the auspices ot the State Board of Charities and Corrections. Kartro. North Dakota. . Daytona, Florida. 8r ran ton. Wllkes-Barre and Erie, In Penn sylvania Louisville, Lexlnson, Frankfort. T'aducah. Owensboro. Hendrrson. Bowling; Green. Hlch- riond. Berea. Harrodsburs:. Cynthlana and tawesville. in Kentucky; with special criti cisms on the Kentucky Slate Prison and sev eral other state institutions, alt tinder auspices of the State Bard of Health and the State federation of Wpmtn'i Cluoa, SUE is" one of the most forceful and pie- turesque female figurr in American af fairs today; yet (he is one of the most feminine of creatures and has, thus far, bee.n least outlined ia relief against the back ground of ber amazing activities. Una or two tufa triumphs aibe has von The blue-eyed, sweet-faced girl preacher proved from the outset to be about the most practical as well as zealous soul in the whole city. She promptly took enough religion out ' of the distant and somewhat intangible heaven to furnish a sound working basis for existence here on earth. She made her church the People's Church, and extended its sympathies until it embraced thousands and thousands. She taught religion as a practical scheme for proving cleenliness an integral part of godliness. Kindergarten, woman's gymnasium, manual training and household science schools sprang up at her ap pealing nods. Kalamazoo, having been con strained from the beginning to accept her as ringed around by that awfnl circle of prohibitive religion, reconciled itself to being merely platon jeally, albeit universally, jealous of her. In the middle ages that sort of regard went to saintly and charitable lady abbesses, solemnly vowed to celibacy. Kalamazoo had just about reached the lady abbess stage in its attitude when, one jitw Year's Eve, its best-belored pastor, while the organ played the wedding march, walked up the church aiJ in her maidea ettaU of the Rev. Hiss Caroline Eartktt. and before the assembled throng could recover from its daze of aitonisb- meat, walked down agaia as th Ker. if rs. Caro line Bartlett Crane, fcrida of the town's leadtEg hav sufficed to give many women enduring chjsiciarj. fame. To ber tbey haft been mere forgotten 1 Kalamazoo, if it could bare defined its feel steps in ber path of prtgresai , la the.East, ia grieved and robbed. It was wholly evident that its. beloved pa.stor, when she planned that un announced wedding before the New Year's Eve reception and musicale, knew her Kalamazoo a good deal better than Kalamazoo knew her. Old Kalamazpolians "Still like to discu. hat would have happened to the leading physician of the town if-they bad suspected, twenty-four hours before the ceremony, that he intended annexing their pretty pastor in the holy bonds of matri mony. But the" portents of disastrr proved all wrong. - The Kcv. Mrs. Crane remained as faith ful and enthusiastic in hr churoh and civic work as the - lev. Miss Bartlrtt had been. Two years 'elapsed before she relinqtmlwd her pas torate, and then it was only to identify herself vt holly with the civic work, whk-h had developed to an extent demanding exclusive attention and Lad finally revealed itself as inr true mission of usefulness. Kalamazoo was. the firt to ferl the storm gusts of civic improvement. Odc of the initisl campaigns was aimed at scouring clean street She organized the women and petitioned for a chance to clean a stretch of street at the regular municipal rates of payment, tho work to be done by the old street sweepers under the women's direction. The city fathers, after some exciting skir mishes, the echoes of which reached -the big city newspapers, were backed into slow assent. The echoes, meanwhile, stirred the metropolitan papers to flare headlines and startling tales of feminine revolutionists. When the time came for the trial of their mettle as practical re formers, all but one of Mrs. Crane's doughty army of women discovered .that the baby had tonsilitis. or their motfiers-in-law were coming on a visit, or their doctor had told, tnem tbey were on the ragged edge of nervous prostration. Nothing daunted, Mrs. Crane pitched in and bosed the job h-relf. There wer many dis appointed people in Kalamazoo after it was over, and tbey were all men. She had cut down the cost of cleaning that stretch of highway from $v39 to 5 per day; had done it strictly along the lines of Colour 1 Waring's Xt w York "whito wings ; naa produce! streets aimoi- etesn cleaning. There can be ck an cleaning and cleanins' that ia exwdinclv dirtr. Kalamazoo. umiK. to ait on. and had done hit comrletelr ir-gV wwili bsvs foua its?U sbocW aikl Wor.MrvKaj,Urted i the ancient whoop-hurrah, male way of wielding the broom and driving the sweeping machines- The city of Kalamazoo hastened to make . her way of street cleaning its own all ' over town. ' ' The indescribably filthy alleys, which every municipal district has turlicd its nosa away from . in the past, were cleaned u by means of Actual photographs reproduced on lantern' slides anil exhibited in public lectures, at which not tb name of a single house owner or tenant-was ever mentioned. : . The pictures were enough. Steel cacs for wastx paper, aided by a campaign of ediKatia that covered ever? body, from the children i tK merchants, ended a nuiaci- t common in th United States as it is absent ia Germany, wh r a polioeman tap you' on tho ,hukk-r if yu drop a cigarette paper. - The now widely 1 adopted ' ytem f ' Y "visiting nurse. who" comes like an angrl rf i 1 and enlightenment to poo HouaeV.lia af.i t-1 with- seriou illno. was 'put into k rri- cn S3 efficient actle ia Kalaaar v. A j n ti r.r-t r age-. small savings hf poc-t fai.ii!.' !!!;.-. fy altered the laws of Michigan r- that tl ; , - (CONTtXVE t OS- is a it r r AG z i t ' .,.... y ;