The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

[This column has emendations. View original version]

      

NEW YORK, Monday—Tonight I am going to a concert given in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. by the Dutchess County Philharmonic orchestra. The soloists are to be Major John Warner, of the New York State Constabulary, who is a fine musician, and Mrs. Lytle Hull, also a good musician, though most people think of her primarily as a patron and ceaseless worker inthe interests of music and musicians.

Last summer, this orchestra gave a concert out of doors at our home in Hyde Park. I feel that small orchestras like this one, springing up throughout the country, mean a growth in the appreciation of music, which is vauable to the nation as a whole.

While I was in Boston the other day, I heard a great deal of the terrible fire which cost so many lives there. A great many precautions are now being taken. No inflammable decorations are allowed in public places, and whatever can be done in the way of assuring safe conditions is being done.

I think, however, that the only real safety lies in the ability of people to remain calm under stress. If the doors had been opened and people had gone out quietly, nothing like the tragedy which occured could possibly have happened. It is panic which always leads to these disasters and I wonder if one should not train a certain number of people and dot them around crowded public places to keep people quiet.

I was interested the other day to see a report stating that approximately four hundred babies a day are now being born to the wives of our men in our military services. The report states: "Many of these young mothers are away from home with no resources other than the dependents allowance for the enlisted men. The American Red Cross is receiving more than 25,000 requests each month from soldiers' wives requesting assistance in maternity care."

When wives join their husbands for a short time near army camps they are not legal residents and, therefore, are not eligible to whatever community services may be open to residents. The medical and hospital care for service men's families, usually available in army hospitals in time of peace, can not cope with the tremendous additional number who now require assistance.

It seems to me that this situation will have to receive consideration by the Congress not only because it is the right thing to do for the men who are in the services, and must leave their wives at home, but because these children are an asset to the nation in the future.

E. R.


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Persons
  • Hull, Helen Dinsmore Huntington, 1893-1976 [ index ]
         American socialite, arts patron, and musician
         [ Wikidata | SNAC ]
  • Warner, John Adams, 1886-1963 [ index ]
         American civil servant and pianist; Superintendent of the New York State Police
         [ NYT ]
Organizations
Geographic
  • New York (N.Y., United States) [ index ]


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, December 15, 1942

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
[ ERPP bio | LC | VIAF | WorldCat | DPLA | Wikidata | SNAC ]

The Zanesville Signal, , December 16, 1942

Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

  • Brick, Christopher (Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]
  • Regenhardt, Christy (Associate Editor)
    [ ISNI ]
  • Black, Allida M. (Editor)
    [ VIAF | ISNI ]
  • Binker, Mary Jo (Associate Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]
  • Alhambra, Christopher C. (Electronic Text Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]

Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project

Available under licence from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

Published with permission from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

TEI-P5 edition published on April 28, 2017.

XML master last modified on May 2, 2022.

HTML version generated and published on May 3, 2022.

Transcription created from a published My Day column instance. The Zanesville Signal, December 16, 1942, page 6