The White House Conferences on Children: An Historical Perspective

Abstract

Sometimes when I get home at night in Washington I feel as though I had been in a great traffic jam. The jam is moving toward the Hill where Congress sits in judgment on all the administrative agencies of the Government. In that traffic jam are all kinds of vehicles ... There are all kinds of conveyances, for example, that the Army can put into the street—tanks, gun carriages, trucks ... There are the hayricks and the hinders and the ploughs and all the other things that the Department of Agriculture manages to put into the streets ... the handsome limousines in which the Department of Commerce rides ... the barouches in which the Department of State rides in such dignity. It seems to me as I stand on the sidewalk watching it become more congested and more difficult, and then because the responsibility is mine and I must, I take a very firm hold on the handles of the baby carriage and I wheel it into the traffic.