The very first thing that happens to the folks at home is the going of the man to war. The fact that he is no longer with them is, perhaps, the hardest thing they have to bear.
The members of most families, living together so long and so intimately, having the same blood and the same household traditions, become as much a part of one another as do the various members of the human body. Each one means something to the rest. Thus, the man in the service may have been the business manager and the financier of the home. He may have been the family musician or the artistic member of the household. To him the rest may have looked for the organization of their picnics, parties, and other good times, or he may have been the one who saw the funny side of things and who could be depended upon to bring home the latest jokes or the tales of those amusing adventures that seemingly happen often to some people and seldom or not at all to others.
It is this relationship existing between person and person, between friend and friend, that people have in mind when they say of somebody, "I feel quite lost without him." Would it indeed not be surprising if, on the other hand, the soldier or the sailor did not often wonder, "how are they getting along without me?"
When a man becomes blind his sense of touch and his sense of hearing are said to develop abnormally as if to compensate for his lost sight. The cripple usually is exceptionally dexterous in the use of his other limbs. Precisely this sort of adaptation must take place in the family of the man who has gone to war. Each member must do his or her best to make up to the others the loss that they have all sustained.
Each member by reason of the absence of the man has, therefore, a more difficult rôle to play. It is the work of the Red Cross through its Home Service to try to understand the peculiar difficulties which this involves for each person in the household, and to help that person to meet them.
The heaviest burdens fall almost invariably upon the mother or the wife.
"It is not merely the work that I have to do, it is not merely that I have to be alone responsible for the care of the children, but there is no one who comes home at night." A woman whose husband had recently died thus expressed what perhaps is the hardest of all that the wives and mothers of the men in the service must undergo. Again and again the Home Service worker is called upon to help some lonely woman struggle against her home-sickness for the absent man.
The only son of a widow was drafted. Until then every act of the mother's life had centered about the boy. His health and well-being had been her one concern, while he, giving up all recreation outside the home, had devoted himself to her. His absence seemed to take all purpose from the mother and leave only anxiety. She began to lose her health. She was distraught with worry.
The Home Service worker discovered that the widow did not know how to knit; so she taught her how to make socks, sweaters, and other articles for her son, then to make things for boys who had no mothers to do this for them. At the same time the woman was helped to see how important encouraging letters were in stimulating her son to be successful as a soldier. With this as a beginning, the Home Service worker gradually gave her new opportunities for service and new interests. It became possible for the widow to meet her anxieties with cheerfulness, and ultimately she regained her health.
This same trouble of loneliness brought a young woman to the office of the Red Cross in a certain city. She and her husband had been married only a few months when he enlisted, and she had been unable to endure the empty, friendless hours in the little flat which they had rented.
The Home Service worker introduced her to a pleasant, motherly woman who, she happened to know, wanted a boarder. Home Service involves being acquainted with the right opportunity at the right time! This woman, having been told about the loneliness of the soldier's wife, took her to church with her. A class of girls in the Sunday school was without a teacher, and the young woman was asked if she would fill the vacancy. It was just what she needed. She accepted the responsibility and with a friend at home and work which she enjoys she has begun to feel that she belongs somewhere and to somebody. While the war lasts it cannot be hoped that she will cease to worry, but because of Home Service she has become better able to bear the absence of her husband.
Many of the women who seek through the Red Cross an escape from loneliness have never lived long enough in any one neighborhood to make friends. They have no one whom they have known for years and to whom they can turn for comfort. This is true largely because people in the United States are constantly moving about from place to place. In many parts of the country it is unusual to find a family which has lived in the same locality for a generation. In a study of thirteen-year-old boys in the city schools of seventy-eight American cities of between 25,000 and 200,000 inhabitants, it was found that only one in six of the fathers of these boys was living in the city of his birth, and that among the boys themselves only a few more than half were living where they were born.[1]
The feeling of loneliness and helplessness which comes to many women after the departure of the man is increased by the very complexity and vastness of the war and the many different departments and branches of the service. The mother knows that her son has become part of the army or the navy; she believes that he is in camp, or somewhere in France, or somewhere on the Atlantic. But it is all vague. She does not understand how to obtain word about him when, perhaps, no letter has come to her for several months. It is through the Home Service Section of the Red Cross that she learns how she can communicate with her son, and how, if he is reported sick or wounded, she can obtain particulars about his condition.
Here also she learns about the government allowance to which she may be entitled. She is advised to write to her son and to urge him to insure himself with the government and she is informed about the compensation to which her boy is entitled in case of wounds, sickness, or injury. When there is delay in the payment of the allowance or any other difficulty of this kind, the Red Cross acts as her agent and makes the necessary adjustments.
This and other matters of business furnish some of the most perplexing problems which the mother or the wife has to solve. Hitherto the overhead expenditures of the household—the payment of rent and insurance, the purchase of furniture, and so forth—have been attended to by the husband or, perhaps, by the oldest son. Now when the mortgage falls due—and this has happened frequently—the woman turns to the Red Cross for advice. Shall she renew the mortgage? Is the property worth holding? Can she meet future interest charges? To such questions the Home Service worker must help her to find the answer.
One woman sought the assistance of the Red Cross because her husband, before going to the front, had borrowed $100 from a loan shark giving as security the furniture which was worth many times this amount. The loan shark demanded interest at thirty-six per cent. With the assistance of the Red Cross the woman was able to secure release from this extortioner, to return the principal to him immediately, and to obtain the money her needs demanded.
When the going of the man to war has meant a smaller income for the family, the Red Cross has frequently helped the woman to plan her economies so as not to deprive the home of things essential to its well-being.
Shortly before enlisting, a man had undertaken to purchase by installments a victrola costing $150. Thirty dollars had been invested in this way when he entered the army. His wife had not enough money to support herself and continue the payments. Yet to have given up the victrola would have meant a great loss to her. She needed the music. For her it was a refuge from worry. It cheered her when she was depressed.
The Home Service worker solved the difficulty by persuading the dealer to exchange the machine for one costing $50, and to consider the $30 which had been paid toward the purchase of the victrola as part of the price of the smaller phonograph.
On the other hand, there are women who now have larger incomes than they had before their men enlisted. Often they need the help of the Red Cross even more than those whose incomes have been reduced.
There was one woman who in the words of a Home Service worker "went all to pieces when her husband went away." He was an officer. The oldest son was also in the army leaving the mother with four children, two of whom were working and were receiving larger wages because of the war. The woman had now what to her seemed more money than she could use. She began buying all sorts of things upon the installment plan, a piano, a sewing machine, a graphophone. Some acquaintances whom hitherto she had barely known now became close friends. Their good times were not complete without alcohol, and the soldier's wife soon learned to drink. Her old friends began to neglect her, and her husband, learning of her misconduct, said that he wanted never to see her again.
The Red Cross appealed successfully to the woman's love for her husband and her children. She wanted to do better and the Home Service worker helped her in her resolution. First of all, the family was advised to move to a new neighborhood where the mother would not be under the influence of her undesirable friends. The oldest son was appointed treasurer for the household and a Home Service visitor called upon the woman almost every day to show her how to manage and to strengthen her in her determination to stop drinking. When summer came the mother was sent to spend a few weeks with friends in a distant town who did not know about her trouble. She came back with a still firmer hold upon herself, and when, after much persuasion by the Red Cross, the husband returned from camp on a furlough and found his home as it had been before, he forgave and forgot the weakness which his wife had overcome.
The Home Service of the Red Cross is indeed needed in many instances not only to help women manage with a reduced income but also to give them guidance and counsel when they suddenly find themselves with more money than they have ever had before.
No wife or mother of a soldier or sailor needs to seek employment if, in order to take care of the children or for other reasons, she should be at home. When, because of unusual expenses the government allowance and the payments by the man are not enough to support the family, the Red Cross is ready to help. The Red Cross believes that, particularly in time of war, it is important that the mother should stay at home so as to have opportunity to devote her full energies to the rearing and education of her children. Some women, however, are happier when they are employed outside of the home. Such women the Home Service worker helps to obtain jobs; she tries to see that they are paid fair wages and that their work is done in healthful surroundings.
Sometimes a woman is not proficient in the very kind of employment in which her skill is usually taken for granted. She may not know how to select and prepare the daily meals. To a Home Service worker the parents and four brothers and sisters of a boy who enlisted seemed to be in poor health. A doctor whose advice she sought said after an examination that the whole family was suffering from lack of nourishment. The real trouble was discovered to be that the mother did not know how to cook or what kind of food to buy. As soon as she was taught these first essentials of housekeeping the health of the family began to improve.
Of all the women, however, who need the Home Service of the Red Cross she who is about to become a mother needs it most of all. Thus a young wife came to the Red Cross office and told the worker there how frightened she was at the thought of what she was about to experience.
"If only Jack were here," she sobbed.
"You must meet Mrs. Smith," suggested the Home Service worker. "Her husband and her only boy are both in France. I'm sure that if you should like her she'd be glad to come and live with you for a few months."
The young woman and Mrs. Smith became friends at once and, as the older woman had been a trained nurse, the coming of the baby that has since arrived was converted into a source of eagerly anticipated joy.
At such times and, indeed, whenever there is sickness, the Home Service worker arranges for the presence of a doctor and a nurse, or secures admission to a hospital for the woman, if that is desirable. She sees also that the young mother becomes acquainted with those who can give her instruction about the care of the baby and herself.
No one, of course, can fill the place which the husband or the son has left—neither the Red Cross nor the other members of the family—but Home Service offers to women the kind of counsel and advice which their men would like to obtain for them, and, by helping them out of perplexity, by saving them from loneliness and friendlessness, gives to the men in the trenches or on shipboard that feeling of security about the folks at home which enables them to fight with unimpaired morale.
Review of Chapter III
1. What is the first and hardest thing that the family of the man in the service has to bear?
2. What binds the members of a family together?
3. What must the family do in order to lessen as much as possible the handicap caused by the absence of the man?
4. Give an illustration showing how Home Service helped a soldier's mother to overcome her loneliness.
5. What evidence can you give to show that many families are likely to be newcomers to the neighborhood in which they live?
6. What kind of information can the families of men in the service obtain from the Home Service Sections?
7. Show by illustration how Home Service has helped women in the financial mangement of the home: (a) When there has been a decrease in income. (b) When there has been an increase in income.
8. Is it ever desirable for a woman with children to obtain employment outside of her home?
9. In what phase of housekeeping does Home Service often find that women are unskilled?
10. How does Home Service help the sick?