| Description | In this paper Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury explores 'how we may best train our children to become noble and useful citizens'. Beginning her paper with references to Socrates, Henry VIII, Charles Kingsley and Saint Paul, Taylor Cadbury considers 'early history, where men first congregated together, worked out for themselves a plan of life, and in self-government became aware of their mutual interdependence.'
Bringing her paper into the present day, Taylor Cadbury states:
'Perhaps more just now than at any other time since the first century, are people waking up to a sense of their obligations, and of their real relationship to their neighbours. And yet - it is still only the few alas! who are awake and alive to the hideous inequalities which exist in every town and place'.
Taylor Cadbury refers particularly to people living in 'indecent insanitary confined spaces', criticising poor working conditions which offered 'starvation wages' to men and women, forcing them into disreputable lives. She also condemns political elections based on 'bribery and corruption'. Taylor Cadbury remarks:
'As long as these things are possible let no Englishman boast of our "well governed cities", and let no mother feel that she has equipped her boys & girls for the nobler opportunities of life till she has raised in them an ideal so high of citizenship, that they will come forward when their day of responsibility dawns fired with passionate zeal for Reform.'
Taylor Cadbury refers to the foundations of Christian citizenship outlined in the Bible, advocating consideration of 'the moral questions involved in the acquisition of wealth' and fair terms of employment. She also emphasises the importance of religion in politics in terms of appealing to 'a moral motive'. Taylor Cadbury provides a lengthy example of housing problems and considers 'the duty of citizens in municipal life'. She suggests that 'though it is most important that upright honest minded individuals should take part in politics yet it is mainly I believe to individual well doing that we must look for most reforms.'
In the final sections of her paper Taylor Cadbury considers measures being undertaken to improve social conditions such as the establishment of settlements. She emphasises the importance of 'personal service', suggesting that attention should be paid to the works of John Ruskin on 'social subjects'.
A similar version of this paper was published in 'The Friends' Quarterly Examiner' in July 1896 suggesting that the typescript dates from around this time. |