Social and Moral Hygiene

• Other Authors: University of Washington Libraries. Special Collections Division.
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: Press of R. L. David
• Subjects: Leaflets; Public health > Washington (State) > Seattle; Moral education > Washington (State) > Seattle; Sexual health > Washington (State) > Seattle; Strong; Anna Louise; 1885-1970; Pacific; Yukon; Alaska
• Online Access: http://cdm16786.contentdm.oclc.org:80/cdm/ref/collection/pioneerlife/id/8506

This brochure advertises the 1912 "Know Your City" civic institute for Seattle, which was held from May 27th through June 1st, "under the General Management of the Society of Social and Moral Hygiene". The year's theme was "Social and Moral Hygiene". Almost all sessions were held in the Y.M.C.A. building (except for one evening session held in the Eilers Building auditorium), and admission was free to all adults. The institute's program began with a series of "after supper talks" on "The Sex Problem" as related to a wide range of issues, from tuberculosis to wages to education. Other talks in the week that followed included instructions for parents in how to teach their children regarding sex hygiene, surveys of conditions in Seattle, addresses open only to men and only to women, talks on "white slave traffic", and a series of speeches on eugenics for the final day of the program. The Society of Social and Moral Hygiene, which managed the year's institute, was headquartered at 4th and University in Seattle: its president is listed as Professor Edward O. Sisson. The "Know-Your-City" movement began in 1909 when Anna Louise Strong, a resident of Seattle, visited the Schools of Civics and Philanthropy in New York and Chicago. She resolved to adapt their concept of the "summer institute" for the city of Seattle, making the classes open to all citizens (not limited to tuition-paying students, as in the cities she'd visited), and worked with her father, Sydney Strong, to plan the first institute for May, 1909, immediately before the opening of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. The Strongs secured the support of many prominent citizens and local newspapers in the creation of the institute. Its success led to the organization of similar conferences in other cities around the Pacific Northwest, including a "Know Your City" institute in Portland, Oregon in November of 1909, as well as leading the Strongs to continue organizing Seattle's "Know Your City" institutes on an annual basis for several years thereafter.