Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/fiftyyearsofassoOOwilsrich FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK AMONG YOUNG WOMEN 1866—1916 A History of Young Women's Christian Asso- ciations in the United States of America BY ELIZABETH WILSON Executive of the Secretarial Department of the National Board National Board of the Young Women's Christian Associations of the United States of America 600 Lexington Avenue New York Copyright, January, 1916. by National Board of the Young Women's Christian Associationa of the United States of America DEDICATED TO THE WOMEN AND GIRLS WHO IN ANY PLACE AND IN ANY TIME HAVE COMBINED THEIR EFFORTS TO BRING IN THE KINGDOM OF GOD AMONG YOUNG WOMEN 331109 PREFACE The purpose of this historical account is to show why and how Young Women's Christian Associations came into being and to indicate that the first half cen- tury is but the beginning of the movement. In order to represent the conditions which called out certain features, the language of old reports, cir- culars, addresses and correspondence has been freely used; while there has been a wealth of these original sources, in some instances it is undated, or annual and biennial reports have not stated the calendar month or year in which a measure was passed or new ventures undertaken. Some of the attempts to deter- mine these dates through comparison of material will probably prove faulty. I wish to thank all the friends who have assisted in collecting and comparing data and who have described historic work in which they had a part. It has been impossible to mention as many individ- ual Associations as might have been desired. Em- phasis has been laid on the recognition of unusual needs and the invention of successful means of meet- ing them and upon the development of phases of work rather than upon the consecutive events in given lo- calities. Elizabeth Wilson. New York City, 1916. TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I--BEFORE 1866 PRELIMINARY ORGANIZATIONS IN GREAT BRITAIN AND AMERICA CHAPTER PAGE I Introduction 3 Status of young women in the United States before the Christian Association. Their work in relation to the home. Higher education. H United Prayer in the United Kingdom . . 7 George Williams and the Association idea (1844). Miss Robarta and other early mem- bers (1855). Prayer Union Branches (1859). First use of the name Young Women's Chris- tian Association. III An Open Door in London 13 Women's occupations in Great Britain (1851). The Knight of W^omanhood, Lord Shaftesbury. The Nurses' Home. The Honorable Mrs. Kin- naird and the North London Home (1855). The Pall Mall Institute (1861). IV Federation Looking Toward the Future . . 19 The Prayer Union and the Home and Insti- tute Branch united (1877). The United Cen- tral Council (1884) leading to founding of the World's Association (1894). iV The Beginnings in America 22 The American Revival of Religion in 1857-58. Mrs. Marshall O. Roberts and the New York ladies (1858). The first factory meeting. The first boarding home (1860). CONTENTS OHAPTBB PAQB International Board Conference and American Committee special convention. Applications for charter membership. Organization Con- vention and election of National Board (De- cember, 1906). PART III— 1906 TO 1916 THE YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIA- TIONS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA XVII The Present National Movement .... 233 Adoption of policies. Development of depart- ments: Office; Publication; Field Work; Fi- nance; Conventions and Conferences; Secre- tarial Training; Home and Foreign. St. Paul Convention ( 1909 ) . Adoption of constitution. The Portland definition of evangelical churches. The Federal Council of Churches. XVIII The Young Women of the Christian Asso- ciations 260 Zirkus Busch gathering at Berlin World's Conference (1910). Emphasis on membership at Indianapolis (1911) and Richmond Con- vention ( 1913). National Headquarters. San Francisco Exposition, XIX The Students 269 State universities and other groups. The Studio Club; Central Club for Nurses. Negro and Indian students. Student activities, re- ligious campaigns, voluntary Bible study, so- cial service, student initiative and coopera- tion. North American Student Council. Com- mission on Restatement of Basis. World's Student Christian Federation Conference, Lake Mohonk (1913). Student Volunteer Movement Convention, Kansas City (1913). XX The City Girls 281 Membership, not buildings. Forms of coop- eration. Building campaigns. Community CONTENTS CHAPTEB PAQE service. Activities inside and outside the building. Summer programs. XXI The Giels in Industry 289 Statement of field. Industrial clubs and As- sociations. Federations of industrial clubs. Club Councils at conferences and camps. XXII The Country Girls 292 County Associations in Illinois and elsewhere. Eight Week Clubs. The county summer con- ference. XXIII The Young Girls 297 First branches; their laggard development. Study of adolescence. Camp Fire Girls' Council. XXIV The Strangers Within Our Gates ... 300 English classes for foreigners. International Institutes, XXV Girls in Other Countries 303 Recapitulation of openings in India. Ameri- can work in China and Japan, South America and Turkey. Foreign students in the United States. American secretaries abroad. Con- trasts in World's Conferences (1898-1914). XXVI The Secretaries 316 Origin of name. Scope and remuneration of office. Association of Employed Officers. Sys- tem of training. XXVII A Prophet Among Women 326 Miss Dodge as president. Her colleagues and successors. XXVIII Mottoes and Spirit 330 Zech. iv, 6 — Prayer Union, American Commit- tee, World's Committee. Gal. v, 13— British Associates, International Board. John iv, 10 — Young Women's Christian Associations of the United States of America. Appendix 335 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS OPPOSITB PAGE The Auditorium, Asilomar Conference Grounds, California 248 Michi Kawai, Secretary of the National Committee of Japan 262 Delegates to the Fourth Biennial Convention, Richmond, Virginia, 1913 264 Headquarters Building of the National Board of the Young Women's Christian Associations .... 266 Young Women's Christian Association, St. Louis, Mo. Modern type of administration building .... 282 Mary A. Clark Memorial Home, Los Angeles, California . 284 Eastern City Conference, Silver Bay, New York, 1915 . . 288 First County Conference, Conference Point, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin 294 Ying Mei Chun, directing gymnastic drill in Shanghai, China 308 Clarissa H. Spencer, General Secretary of the World's Committee 314 Mabel Cratty, General Secretary of the National Board . 322 Class of 1915, National Training School 324 Letter sent by Miss Dodge to all the National Board staff 326 PART I. BEFORE 1866 PRELIMINARY ORGANIZATIONS IN GREAT BRITAIN AND AMERICA FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK AMONG YOUNG WOMEN CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION FIFTY years ago woman 's work was in the home. And such faculty for organization had the mis- tress of the home that she could order the tasks of each season and of each day of the week, could a^ign suitable duties to the elder and younger daugh- ter^, and teach them the varied processes until they became in turn as proficient as she. Up to the middle of the nineteenth century the three chief occupations for women, ** gainful occupations" they were termed, in spite of the meager remuneration for each, were: domestic service, where an American born girl helped in another person's home; teaching school, where the teacher boarded around from house to house in many country districts ; and sewing, where the seamstress usually came to the house of her em- ployer for a longer or shorter time, or in the case of well to do families was a regular member of the house- hold staff. Even outside employments such as working in cot- ton mills were under a semi-domestic regime. The 3 4 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK corporations owned boarding houses for the women operatives, and established in each a matron, usually a widow with daughters in the mill. There was little financial risk in conducting this sort of an establish- ment, for the mill corporation deducted the weekly- board rate from the wages of each employee and paid the amount directly to the landlady. Such was the position held by Lucy Larcom's mother in Lowell, which fact accounted for the eleven year old child going into the mill. The hours of labor ran, or dragged, from five in the morning to seven in the evening, which tallied with domestic rather than business working time. The very church attendance was likewise regulated in paternal fashion, for the mill directors charged up *'pew rent" to each employee, under their system of paying wages partly in commodities. Millwork dovetailed also into the public school sys- tem, because in those early years, teaching was for many mill hands a '*by employment" for the few months in the year when *' school kept." When the weaving and spinning went out of the house, and the weavers and spinners followed on into the mills, there was still a link between factory and home in the hand processes of manufacture carried on in the family living rooms. There is an economic basis of fact as well as poetic fancy in the verses con- taining, *' Hannah's at the window binding shoes." If the situation in the first half of the nineteenth century, with few girls away from home, and a limited range of occupations open to women, did not seem INTRODUCTION 5 such as to require what we are pleased to call As- sociation work in cities, neither were women college students feeling the need of voluntary religious organi- zations. Most of the seminaries and colleges to which women were admitted were built on Christian founda- tions by the prayers and labors and sacrifices of godly men and women, and consecrated to the ** Christian nurture of youth/' Such was Mt. Holyoke Seminary, where Mary Lyon saw visions come true from 1837 to 1849. Such was Oberlin Collegiate Institute, later College, where the influence of Charles G. Finney was felt from 1835 to 1875. Here in 1841 three young ladies graduated from the regular four years' college course, **the first young women in the country to re- ceive a degree in the arts.'' The personal piety of such students and their mis- sionary service here or abroad after graduation, were accepted as a matter of course, by those who arranged the curriculum, prescribed the use of week days and Sundays and rejoiced that the students received in- spiration as well as training to carry out the college ideals. Women had not yet learned to work together in a large way. They were achieving, but by acting as in- dividual forces, not as social elements. Like Lucy Larcom, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Louisa May Al- cott, they were writing ; like Maria White Lowell they were stirring others to write ; or like Ann Greene Phil- lips they were heartening others to efforts on behalf of oppressed humanity. Women came together within parish circles, for ladies' prayer meetings and ** Dorcas 6 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Societies" which made coats and garments and did other good works and alms deeds, but these were al- most entirely local activities. Even the ** Female Cent'' societies did not burgeon into any general for- eign missionary society until 1861, when the Women's Union Missionary Society of America for Heathen Lands came into being. What changed these conditions? Many things; among them stand out three totally unlike factors : the invention of the sewing machine in 1846 ; the great re- vival of 1857-1858 ; and the Civil War, from 1861 to 1865. CHAPTER II UNITED PRAYER IN THE UNITED KINGDOM IN England the early Victorian situation was not unlike that in America at this same time. Some noted achievements there were, due to the fact of the long established civilization, but on the other hand some social delays were occasioned by the con- servatism of that very same settled order of things. There is, thereby, all the more credit to those who had faith enough to regard these mountains as removable, wisdom enough to know where to begin, and grace enough to associate themselves with many others in accomplishing their original purpose or that larger purpose that is sure to develop when like-minded peo- ple cooperate. One such pioneer was George Williams, who came up to London from the provinces in the fall of 1841. That was a noteworthy year in religious history, for the Oxford Movement was at its height ; but the young draper ^s assistant found his religious reading not in the polemic pamphlets of the Tractarian leaders, but in two of Charles G. Finney ^s books, ** Letters to Pro- fessing Christians," and ** Lectures on Revivals." His place of employment, Hitchcock and Rogers, in St. PauPs Churchyard, was of the usual type of **liv- 7 8 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK ing in" drapery establishments, with dormitories on the top floor for assistants and apprentices. These young fellows worked off what spirits were left after their day of fourteen to seventeen hours behind the counter, in a way that left much to be desired. None of George Williams' five roommates professed him- self a Christian, but we are told that there was a Christian fellow in the adjoining inner bedroom who had only four roommates, whom he got to leave so that the two like-minded souls might have a place of prayer. Soon others joined them ; they read together the Finney books, many were converted, larger rooms were used. Then they interested the head of the firm, who provided a chaplain to conduct daily prayers. Life at Hitchcock and Rogers was changed. Young men in other shops also put these ideas into operation. Finally, or to speak more correctly, as a beginning of the story, on June 6, 1844, twelve young men from four different church connections formed a Young Men's Christian Association with religious and social features, rented rooms, and engaged a salaried organiz- ing secretary and missionary to administer and extend the work. This was the origin of the Association idea, that is, young men and young women uniting from different Christian churches for higher all-round development and service and using both religious and secular means therefor. The new movement was so timely and its emphasis so distinct that leading clergy and laymen gave their assistance. His biographer found among George Williams' UNITED PRAYER 9 papers a circular formulating a scheme for a Young Ladies* Christian Association which seems to have been sent out by him in the '40s. But the time for such an appeal to be listened to was not yet come. In the next decade the Crimean War set in motion waves which permanently affected the thought and the work of British womenkind — girls, young women, ladies, and ladies of title, in country and in city, down in the provinces and up in London. Bamet stands in English history as a battle field in the Wars of the Roses; in Association history it ap- pears as the residence of the Robarts and the Penne- father families. Rev. William Pennefather, vicar of Christ Church, known as the founder of the Inter- denominational Christian Conference and the Mild- may deaconess house and many similar institutions, had been given spiritual charge of hundreds of the orphans of the Crimean War, who had been gathered together by the Patriotic Fund workers; and Mrs. Pennefather was deeply interested in them also. The Robarts family included five unmarried sisters, de- voted to works of charity and education. Besides the infant school which their father had built and placed under trustees the daughters supported a school for girls held on their own estate. Many years before Tennyson had said, through King Arthur, **more things are wrought by prayer than the world dreams of,'' Emma Robarts, the youngest sister, was roused by such a realization of the vast possibilities of prayer, that she asked some of her friends in 1855 to pray on Saturday evenings for young women, either for those 10 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK in their own circle or for young women as a class. *'What can we do for them/' she wrote, **how reach and act on them, scattered as they are in every sphere of life ? Look at the young women of our day and re- member their number, their present and future in- fluence. Look at the several divisions of the class : 1. Our Princesses and all who are in the glitter of fash- ionable life 2. Daughters at home of the middle classes 3. Young wives and mothers 4. Governesses in families and teachers in Day and Sun- day Schools 5. Shop women, Dressmakers, Milliners and Seamstresses 6. Domestic Servants 7. Factory Girls 8. Young Women in our Unions, Hospitals, and Reforma- tories, the Criminal and the Fallen 9. Those who are enchained by Judaism, Popery and heathenism **What can be done for them? What means can be used to win their souls to Christ?" As her friends, assenting to this request, sent in their names, she copied these in a list. Heading the first list of twenty-three names in this Prayer Union is that of Mrs. Horatius Bonar of Kelso, Scotland. Each member notes her religious activities and Mrs. Bonar 's record is, ** District and workhouse visiting ; class of girls on Monday at 5 p. m. for Scrip- ture Instruction; Maternal meeting every fortnight; meeting in another district for Mothers every alter- nate Tuesday at 3.*' Seven other Scotch names fol- low, then Mrs. Pennefather's and Miss Robarts* own Miss Emma Kobarts, Founder of the Prayer Union Branch in Great Britain UNITED PRAYER 11 names. Their reports credit Mrs. Pennefather with **Parish and workhouse visiting, Superintendence of Patriotic Orphan Homes, and of Homes in connection with Society for the Rescue of Young Women, Scrip- ture Class every Thursday for young ladies,*' and show Miss Robarts' work to be, ''Sunday morning class of servants and dressmakers, Intercourse and cor- respondence with former scholars.'' Several of the early members lived in Ireland. A Bradford, Eng- land, member reports a class of "adult factory girls." Classes for "apprentices," "grown girls," "shop girls, " " milk girls, ' ' appear. George Miiller 's daugh- ter belonged, and Frances Ridley Havergal, who wrote the Young Women's Christian Association hymn, "True Hearted, Whole Hearted." "In the course of 1859 the first Branch was formed," wrote Miss Robarts; "a band of Christian girls uniting in the name of Jesus for their mutual benefit, and for that of any young women in their re- spective spheres whom they might be enabled to influ- ence for good." These members were largely girls of leisure and education who wanted to become more efficient workers for God. Miss Robarts also explained in the same circular that "the title of Young Women's Christian Association was assumed simply as the feminine of Young Men's," which had already become known to many of the same friends. The local units, however, were called Branches, not Young Women's Christian Associations. That term was usually re- served for the membership as a whole and the usage is 12 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK steadily adhered to by many British ladies, among them Miss Lucy M. Moor, the friend of Miss Robarts and Mrs. Pennef ather and the historian of the British movement. CHAPTER III AN OPEN DOOR IN LONDON MISS ROBARTS' classification of young women was no doubt made more from ob- servation than from statistics. However, the British census of 1851 reported 3,000,000 young women in Great Britain (excluding Ireland) engaged in industrial occupations ; of this number 500,000 were wives helping their husbands either behind the counter, at the desk, or in manufacturing processes. The 39,139 nurses in domestic service largely out- numbered nurses in hospitals and on cases, but the age of those nurses — half olP them were from five to twenty years old — ^helps us to understand that Tilly Slowboy was as true to life as Sairey Gamp or Betsey Prig, who have come to the front as the representative English nurses of that period. As to the living-in system which prevailed for young women shop as- sistants as well as for youths, it was probably a survival from the time when one extra pair of hands was called in to help the shop keeper, of whose family the owner of the pair of hands then became a part. But the family idea had long since been abandoned. The girl shop assistants spent most of every week-day waking 13 14 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK hour in the shop itself. Recesses for meals were of the shortest and even on Sunday the girls were not al- lowed to stay in their own rooms. That knight of womanhood, who has been called the most spiritual Christian of his age, Antony Ashley Cooper, later the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, had spoken with alarm a few years before of the displace- ment of male by the substitution of female labor in in- dustrial occupations at large. Although he had led Parliament to put a stop to the degrading colliery practices where women and girls crawled through dan- gerous passages, harnessed like beasts of burden, drag- ging after them heavily loaded carts, yet women were still laboring in fields and factories. Young girls in dressmaking and millinery trades were working from fifteen to eighteen hours per day. There is no hint at this time of those occupations in business houses which were certainly lighter, but which were monopolized by men. In 1854 telegraph clerk- ships were first opened to women, in 1870 the post of- fice used a mixed staff in its clearing house branch. Only one occupation was genteel enough to engage the well born young woman whose need to earn her bread was sometimes as severe as that of a girl in the lower classes. She might be a governess in a home. For this as for the other gainful occupations no pro- fessional preparation was required, and what she made of the position depended entirely upon her own person- ality and the character of the family where she lived. Ladies as well as hired nurses went out to the Crimean hospitals under the leadership of Florence AN OPEN DOOR IN LONDON 15 Nightingale, that gentlewoman trained in the best in- stitutions of Europe. The Honorable Mrs. Arthur Kinnaird, so says her biographer, *' cooperated with Viscountess Strangford and Miss Nightingale in sending out nurses. ' ' Various institutions were recruiting places, among them a home in Fitzroy Square, London, where nurses might board and prepare for sailing. But the Crimean War had still another effect upon the woman's movement. The Fitzroy Square home suggested to Mrs. Kinnaird a more permanent effort for the benefit of all girls coming up to London from the provinces. To no avail does one search for minutes of a meet- ing where a resolution was passed to establish a Young Women's Christian Association. *' Ladies did not do much with making and seconding motions. They had a cup of tea together, talked about things, prayed over them and then did what seemed best, ' ' explained Lady Kinnaird 's daughter, the Hon. Emily Kinnaird, upon whose shoulders her mother's mantle rests. **You could hardly say when it was organized." But some- time during the year 1855 the decision was reached to enlarge the scope of the Home, and in January of 1856, the Hon. Arthur Kinnaird sent out a circular saying that he had taken over the responsibility of the late *' Nurses Home," although *'as nurses will benefit by it equally with other classes, we are still in a condition to carry out the design of the Nurses Association." By implication one learns that Mrs. Kinnaird was the head of this enterprise, but according to the English 16 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK custom that where gentlemen are contributing funds to women's societies they also administer those funds, the name of the Hon. Arthur Kinnaird is signed as treasurer, with his address and that of his bankers. So the work was begun. During the first year there entered the home for longer or shorter periods thirty- nine persons classified as follows : 21 Governesses, Matrons, etc. 2 School mistresses 3 Matrons of Emigrant ships 9 Nurses from the East 2 Foreigners 1 Young Person in Training for a school mistress 1 Lady in Distress There was a lady superintendent in residence, but as her services were gratuitous she could hardly be called the first employed officer. Neither had the name Young Women's Christian Association been officially assumed, for the circular called the place ** North London Home, Late Nurses Home, or General Female Home and Training Insti- tution.'* However, the main departments of an Association were already outlined. Besides the boarding home there was an employment bureau for *' Matrons, Prot- estant Bonnes, etc." Intellectual needs were recog- nized and partly supplied through the lending library. Social features were combined with the religious activi- ties ; tea was always served in the friendly hour which followed the Sunday afternoon Bible class; there was an afternoon missionary meeting each month ; and the lady superintendent was at home every Tuesday and Lady Kinnaied, Founder of the Home and Institute Branch in Great Britain AN OPEN DOOE IN LONDON 17 Friday evening to young women from any part of London. These departments were emphasized by organizing in the Home a Young Women's Christian Improve- ment Association in 1858, when the second superin- tendent, a nurse returned from the East, came into contact with the girls in business houses who needed a *' Sunday Home'' and opportunities for recreation, in- struction, and Christian companionship. By 1861 there were four homes: one offered full board and lodging for five shillings a week ; two were serving the double purpose of residence and general headquarters. Next came (1861) the Institute at 118 Pall Mall, the first experiment of opening rooms for offices and class rooms independent of any residence. Mr. Kinnaird in a public address made the following distinctions : In what we simply call an Institute no young persons are boarded and lodged. It would be utterly impossible to pro- vide more than a few homes, however valuable these are, and when established they of course are involving house- hold cares, so that a resident superintendent in a Home must, like a lady in a private household, have less time for aggressive missionary work than the superintendent of an Institute, who has comparatively speaking no home cares and very few household duties involving her energy, The moral machinery, which is the sole machinery of an Institute, is applicable to every part of the metropolis as well as to country to^vTis and to districts where facilities for lodging may not be needed. And we also think that some friends who might shrink from the responsibility of starting new homes might more readily be induced to start Institutes, when the work would solely consist in the loving and patient endeavor to gain access to the hearts of those whom the Association is designed to win. (Cheers.) 18 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK People who complain of the length of the name Young Women's Christian Association may care to know that the general circular sent out in 1861 showed the title ** United Association for the Christian and Domestic Improvement of Young Women." The re- ligious and philanthropic leaders of the day appeared on this directorate, headed by the Earl of Shaftesbury, President. It was now a metropolitan movement. *' While there are a few leading ideas emanating from the centre, giving harmony to the work, there is a great deal of practical diversity in the way of carrying it on!'' But a larger federation was ahead. CHAPTER IV FEDERATION LOOKING TOWARD THE FUTURE IN several parts of England the leaders of the Prayer Union branches had been thinking of **a sort of outer circle, or an organization for reach- ing and keeping an influence over girls not eligible for the Prayer Union.'* Some of these leaders were in- terested in the developments which led to the founding of the Girls' Friendly Society in 1875, and thought about an organic connection of the two societies, abandoning the plan, however, because of the Inter- denominational basis of the one, and the Church of England basis of the other. The leader of the London Prayer Union branch was also identified with Mrs. Kinnaird's rapidly expanding work, and since Mrs. Kinnaird was projecting a prayer union in connection with that it seemed reasonable to amalgamate the two. The secretary thus relates the action: — *'One day, quite unexpectedly, Mrs. Kinnaird called at 19A (Young Women's Christian Association Prayer Union Office at 19 A Great Portland Street, London, West) and Miss Robarts and she met for the first time. They settled the name and the card then, and the union of the two Associations in London was effected." This was in January, 1877. In May Miss Robarts died, 19 20 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK having willed to Mrs. Pennefather the presidency of the Prayer Unions, which numbered beside the forty- eight branches in London, about fifty elsewhere in England, sixteen in Scotland, twenty in Ireland, with some form of contact also with the continent of Eu- rope and British possessions in America, Asia and Australia. Perhaps 12,000 members in all were en- rolled. Not only had the Prayer Unions increased, but many Homes and Institutes all over England had spontaneously sprung up, as Birmingham (1860), Bristol (1861), Liverpool (1864), Manchester (1866), etc., etc., so that when reorganization was at hand its outlines naturally became, a London division with Mrs. Kinnaird as vice-president, and a country and foreign division with Mrs. Pennefather as vice-presi- dent. The Earl of Shaftesbury, who had been presi- dent of the Pall Mall Institute, was of course elected president. His autograph letter of acceptance is on file. St. Gile's House, Cranborne, Salisbury. Dear Mrs. Kinnaird: My services to the Single Association are so small that they will be nothing to the Double one. Nevertheless, if you desire me as President I will accept the honourable office, and give what time I can when you summon me to its serv- ices. I urged a similar Institute the other day on the good ladies of Glasgow. They have a Society for young women, but it is a very "wee" insignificant thing. Yours truly, ( Signed ) Shaftesbuby. November 1, 1877. LOOKING TOWARD THE FUTURE 21 This combination provided definitely for country and foreign branches. The nearness of Great Britain to the continent, the familiar acquaintance of Eng- lish women with foreign people and languages, and the Christian responsibility felt for British colonists by the wives of civil and military officials, led on to the Foreign and Continental Division and the Extra European and Colonial Division when the United Cen- tral Council was formed in 1884, and this was the germ ^ from which the present World's Young Women's Christian Association developed. Invitations to the April, 1892, meeting of this United Central Council were sent to America, asking representatives skilled in national administration to attend and remain to form, if the time were ripe, a World's Young Women's Christian Association. Further, when in 1894 pre- liminaries had been arranged and Great Britain, the United States of America, Norway and Sweden had united as the active members of a World's Association, the chairman of the British Foreign and Continental Division, Mrs. J. Herbert Tritton, was made presi- dent. E CHAPTER V THE BEGINNINGS IN AMERICA VERY great revival of religion has certain features which distinguish it from similar manifestations upon other occasions. The historic American revival of 1857-1858 showed three outstanding characteristics: the number and value of prayer circles ; the unity of Christians of different de- nominations; and the large place filled by women as leaders of organized Christian forces. Doctor Nathan Bangs, writing a series of articles in the phraseology of the day, declared that the help of the ''pious female '^ should not be spurned. One of the famous union prayer circles of that winter in New York City was led in the Church of the Puritans on the corner of Union Square and 15th Street by a mem- ber of the Broadway Tabernacle, a young woman of A splendid intellect, personal charm and fervent re- \ ligious life, Mrs. Marshall O. Roberts. The Young Men's Christian Association, organized half a dozen years before, had maintained remarkable meetings in the Reformed Church on Fulton and Wil- liam Streets, and the Methodist Episcopal Church on John Street, and hence it was not strange for the women connected with this ladies' prayer meeting to 22 Mrs. Marshall O. Roberts, First Directress of the Ladies' Christian Association, New York City THE BEGINNINGS IN AMERICA 28 contemplate an organization with aims and methods somewhat akin to those of the men. Accordingly, a meeting was called in the chapel of the New York University on November 24, 1858, and a Ladies' Christian Association was formed with thirty-five charter members, who elected Mrs. Roberts as ** first directress. *' The first constitution, printed in a tiny booklet four by five inches in dimensions, is of historic interest. We, the undersigned, believing that increase of social vir- tues, elevation of character, intellectual excellence and the spread of Evangelical Religion can be best accomplished by associated effort, do hereby adopt for our mutual govern- ment the following: Constitution Any lady who is in a good standing of an Evangelical church, may become an active member by paying one dollar annually in advance. Any lady not a communicant may become an associate member — except voting and holding office. Duties of Members They shall seek out especially young women of the opera- tive class, aid them in procuring employment and in obtain- ing suitable boarding places, furnish them with proper read- ing matter, establish Bible classes and meetings for religious exercises at such times and places as shall be most con- venient for them during the week, secure their attendance at places of public worship on the Sabbath, surround them with Christian influences and use all practicable means for the increase of true piety in themselves and others. One can but notice that the next year after the mem- bers had been conducting meetings in churches, homes, mission chapels, and elsewhere as well as assembling in their general Association prayer service, they 24 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK amended part of this preamble to read, ** fully im- pressed with the belief that their own personal piety may be greatly promoted by associated effort, and that greater influence can thereby be brought to bear upon many of their own sex in this city (who are without those means of social and religious education enjoyed by them) . ' ' They had recognized that their first duty was *'to be'* before they assumed the responsibility **to do/' and the Spirit of God opened their eyes to some unusual opportunities for the service they were prepared to render. New York City led in the print- ing trades and clothing manufactures and there were sufficiently large forces of young women employed by some of these establishments to attract the attention of the Ladies' Christian Association as a field for their efforts. Their 1860 report speaks of religious services for the one hundred women employed in the Tract House, and the five hundred women employees in a skirt factory. A later report sustains the conjecture that this was a hoop skirt factory. A casual observer of that decade would have been surprised if any one had said that the hoop skirt and its manufacture would soon become laughably out of date, but that the fashion of religious services among young women in mills and factories would become universally prevalent. This innovation of the New York ladies antedated by a dozen years any other recorded effort of systematic extension of the Christian Association into young women's work places at the noon hour. All this may have been more or less inconspicuous, but their next venture brought them into great promi- THE BEGINNINGS IN AMERICA 25 nence. The Rev. Heman Dyer had been asked to find a comfortable, safe boarding place for a young woman from out of town. She was, it is said, a minister's daughter who wanted to study for self support and could not afford the prices charged by respectable families and boarding houses. Dr. Dyer reported this . to the new Association and added, **Now ladies, here is \ y your work; open such a Home for such young girls.'* They had no precedent, but they had faith. So they hired a house at 21 Amity Place for $850 a year rental and opened it on June 1, 1860. Twenty-one found their way into the family the first year; for the most part students of wood-engraving, drawing and paint- ing in the School of Design for Women, and teachers and needlewomen. Other homes in other localities were later rented and properties purchased. This re- quired incorporation, which took place in 1866 under the name Ladies' Christian Union, but the aim of the members and their double devotion to their Wednes- day prayer meeting and to the Christian welfare of young women did not vary. Mrs. Roberts ' enlistment of young girls of leisure in this enterprise finds place in a later chapter, PART II. 1866 TO 1906 LOCAL AND NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES CHAPTER VI THE FIRST YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTUN ASSOCIATION IN AMERICA 4 4 ^^^>i ANNOT something be done by benevolent ■ ladies that shall remain a permanent in- X^ , ^ stitution?" This was the question asked by Mrs. Lucretia Boyd, a city missionary of Boston, de- pressed by the deplorable state of things existing among the self supporting girls whom she met. Her regular duties took her from house to house, from street to street, month after month, and she knew that many young women were rooming and boarding them- selves in the attics of lodging houses where the better rooms of the lower stories were occupied by young men. Few made a part of any pleasant social circle, but were either lonely and discouraged or ready for chance acquaintance at railroad stations, on the street or in places of worldliness and folly. Some of these girls had been religiously educated and had sufficient inherent strength to resist the downward tendencies of city life, but others were unconscious of their own danger. Young women were continually coming from all parts of New England and the Maritime provinces to earn their living in Boston, but there was no agency offering protection or advice to them as strangers. 29 so FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK When ill they were neglected, when out of work they were helpless. Mrs. Boyd set in order the facts made up from her diary entries of several years, and roused the interest of some of the leading Christian women. She received a hearing at the Boston City Missionary Society as she outlined the plan of a Young Women's Christian Association, and it looked as if the desired permanent institution were to be compassed in 1859. One of the women, Mrs. Edwin Lamson of the Park Street Church, discussed the plans with her pastor. He thought the women could not do all this alone, and that the men would not help in the undertaking, yet he presented the matter to the ministers' meeting. His brethren evidently saw eye to eye with him, for they decided that it would be hazardous for the ladies to undertake such a scheme, and seemed to believe that in advising them against it they were kindly prevent- ing them from making a failure. Nonplussed, the women saw no way to go ahead in establishing a Chris- tian organization in opposition to the leaders of Chris- tian affairs, and action was indefinitely postponed. This unfavorable response from the clergy was all the more unexpected because they had been most active a few years before in forming the local Young Men's Christian Association, although a sea captain, Thomas V. Sullivan, was the real moving spirit. He had read in his denominational paper, The Watchman and Be- fleet or, an account of the London Young Men's Chris- tian Association written by an American theological student visiting London and reporting upon this novel organization, *' where there is no turning a crank, no FIRST AMERICAN ASSOCIATION 31 doing good by proxy, a society which asks for sym- pathy, prayers and active cooperation, which asks for men, young men, nothing more." Captain Sullivan is said to have visited the London Association, to have become as enthusiastic as the previous American visi- tor and to have lost no time in imparting his knowl- edge and enthusiasm to the young men in his own home city. They advised with their pastors and Boston or- ganized on December 29, 1851, the first Young Men's Christian Association in the United States. They afterwards heard that Montreal, Canada had taken the same step some weeks before. "Within a year, 1,200 men had joined and the first quarters had been out- grown. Only one conclusion can be drawn from this un- happy attempt at interdenominational work for girls, namely, that the pastors knew the needs of the young men of the community much better than the needs of the young women. They probably had not realized that young women were entering the business world to such an extent that the reasons for ''the combination of effective religious appeal with a humanitarian social-service emphasis upon a better environment for the tempted young man" were becoming valid also in the case of young women. This realization came a little later when some one said, ''The considerations that have led to the formation of a Young Men's Christian Association apply, if possible, with increas- ing force in the case of young women, who from their position and sex are more unprotected and more help- less." And the next time the call for the young 32 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK women of Boston was sounded, it was heard and heeded. Another city missionary had become aroused to the interest of orphaned, homeless and otherwise unpro- tected girls. There was thought of establishing a home for young women who came to the city in search of instruction or employment, but that particular feature was postponed and decision made *'to organize on the plan of the Young Men's Christian Associa- tion.'' On March 3, 1866, thirty ladies met at the J home of Mrs. Henry F. Durant in Mt. Vernon Street and adopted a constitution under the name of the Boston Young Women's Christian Association. I Its object was **the temporal, moral and religious \ welfare of young women who are dependent on their ^/ own exertions for support." ^ Its basis of membership was that **Any Christian woman who is a member in regular standing of an Evangelical Church may become an active member of this Association by the payment of one dollar annu- ally." Its duty, as carried into effect by the board of man- agers, was **to seek out young women taking up their residences in Boston, endeavor to bring them under moral and religious influences, by aiding them in the selection of suitable boarding places and employment, by introducing them to the members and privileges of this Association, securing their attendance at some place of worship on the Sabbath, and by every means in their power surrounding them with Christian as- sociates. It shall be their duty also to exert them- "^♦rjitrttiirtHU. » COXGRKGATICNAL HCUSE, Where the Boston Association First had Rooms (By permission) FIRST AMERICAN ASSOCIATION 33 selves to interest the churches to which they respec- tively belong in the objects and welfare of the Associa- tion, and to use all practicable means for increasing its membership, activity and usefulness. ' ' The hostess of that day, Mrs. Durant, was unanimously elected president. The new society had a name. It was soon to find a local habitation. Two rooms were secured in the Con- gregational building at 23 Chauncey- Street; these were comfortably furnished by the generosity of friends and were opened in May. The reading room was par- ticularly large and airy, and with papers and maga- zines, a few books and a loaned piano, it was a cheerful place to which to ask young women. The general secre- tary, Mary Foster, with her attractive personality and lovable disposition, was a wise counsellor to the many girls who came in complaining of low wages or no work or loneliness in the city, and at each weekly meeting of the board of managers she was able to bring to the members opportunities for the personal service they had enlisted to do. Miss Foster advised about getting positions and homes. In six months she had found boarding places for fifty girls. Light drinks and luncheons were served in the rooms, which were open day and evening except Sunday. Although **such healthful recreation as might be offered" was provided, yet the chief social resource seemed to have been that of finding a ready listener accessible at all times, '*A heart at leisure from itself, to soothe and sympathize. ' ' During the first year a singing class was started aS J 84» FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK well as the Bible class and the Thursday prayer meet- ing. Another of the dreams of the projectors came true in that the Good Samaritan Hospital offered free care to members who might be ill. So seriously did the managers accept their self im- posed obligation that they sent a circular letter to the pastors of country churches that first season, relating how the duty of extending sympathy and protection to young working women in Boston had been recog- nized, and how they stood ready to fulfill all the terms of their constitution. An embarrassment of riches followed. More applications for rooms and board re- sulted than they could satisfy with the places they were able to recommend. By this time the sentiment for a Home was unani- mous, and a second circular was issued calling for financial help, which was the means of securing the two houses at 25 and 27 Beach Street. When altera- tions and furnishings were completed at a cost of about $40,000 the property was dedicated on February 19, 1868. On the list of subscribers to this fund is the name of Professor Henry W. Longfellow. Here were found lodgings for eighty, and imme- diately questions of eligibility arose which were de- cided as follows: In admitting young women to the privilege of the Home, the managers feel that they are called upon to discriminate in favor of the younger class of applicants and of those who do not receive large compensations. It is obvious that these classes need the aid, protection and sympathy of such an Institution. Those who are older, and whose principles are more firmly established, can better take care of themselves FIRST AMERICAN ASSOCIATION 35 elsewhere. A few such as are intelligent and truly religious belonging to this class will be especially welcome on account of their influence upon their associates at the Home. As the Institution is not designed to be a reformatory, no one will be admitted whose references in regard to character are not perfectly satisfactory. A list of the occupations followed by members of the Beach Street family a few years later suggests rather accurately, no doubt, the openings for self supporting women of that day, though the fact that the record was made shortly after the great Boston fire may affect somewhat the classification as given ; Seamstresses 114 Clerks in Stores 27 Compositors 7 Machine workers 7 Milliners 10 Bookfolders 6 Vest makers 5 Book keepers 4 Tailoresses 2 Copyists 2 Cap makers 2 Teachers 2 Artists 2 Telegraph operators I Students of Music 2 Students of Book-keeping, Drawing and Elocution 10 Blind Girls 2 205 If the family had diversified occupations by day they were at night a homogeneous group as far as age was concerned, for few more than twenty-five years old were received, and suitable homelike customs could be i 36 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK maintained. The ten o'clock closing hour pleased one New Hampshire mother. ''I have been so glad/' she wrote, *'that such a restraint was about my child liv- ing in your city ; I could wish you closed even earlier. ' ' The evenings at home offered much that was pleas- ant to do. Besides what had been begun in Chauncey Street there were classes in Astronomy, Botany, Physi- ology, Penmanship, and Bookkeeping. The library was constantly enjoyed in spite of its regretted de- ficiency in books of poetry, and there were two home evenings each week aside from the special times of *' social amusement during the hours of leisure." A provision for associate membership among any young women of good moral character, and the fact that the dining room of the house was conducted on the restaurant plan, meant that many young women in addition to the lodgers in the home had a part in the Association. Many more wished to take advan- tage of the employment bureau who were practically unassistable. It may be that no such word is found as yet in the dictionaries, but the condition it describes is familiar to even amateurs in social organizations. At a time when Boston was credited with 20,828 needlewomen the annual report records the ''need of competent dressmakers, seamstresses, machine work- ers, and capable nurses," the feasibility of **a depart- ment of instruction in these branches of employment for young women that require time and experience in preparation for them," and a desire to ''open and maintain a Training School." Not only because Boston was the first city in Amer- FIRST AMERICAN ASSOCIATION 37 ica to use the name Young Women's Christian As- sociation does this history go into details that cannot be repeated in other instances, but also because from the first it has had a rather sjnnmetrical development, not emphasizing one department inordinately above another. It also originated many lines of work which have been adopted into the whole movement, its basis has been one which guarantees its purpose in spite of changing personnel of working force, it has adhered to formative instead of reformative measures and it has been of large service to other Young Women's Christian Associations and other betterment agencies by training women for their administrative and teach- ing staffs. It has still another distinction — it was the field in which Charlotte V. Drinkwater poured out un- stintingly thirty-two years of service. Hers was a leadership so unselfish one wonders how it could be ef- ficient, but so efficient one realizes it must have been unselfish. When the city wished to widen Beach Street and of- fered the Association a reasonable sum for its prop- erty, the managers decided to plan and erect a new building. Although the Hartford Women's Christian Association, whose organization had been inspired by Boston, had in October, 1872, entered its new home, the first in the country to be constructed for such a purpose, yet the Boston Association undertook as its own original problem to devise a structure so appropri- ate to the needs of girls that they should find in it a typical Christian home after the New England pat- tern. One means of raising the $120,000 needed for t/ S8 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK the new property was a mammoth ten days' fair at which $38,000 was cleared; this included the sale of a piano for $850, of a valuable India shawl and other expensive articles, since the memory of the great Sani- tary Commission Fairs of Civil War days still lin- gered with the public. Further funds were raised by subscription, and on October 14, 1874, the new War- renton Street Home opened its doors for two hundred residents, who could secure board at the family table, and room, light, heat and personal laundry for $3.00 up to $5.50 a week. An adjoining house on Carver Street was purchased at the time for the employment bureau. Nothing could be further desired as to phys- ical equipment, but the person to make it serve the young women was yet to seek. Mrs. Edwin Lamson of the Boston Association Board of Managers was also a trustee of the Lancaster Girls' Industrial School, where Miss Drinkwater had been as teacher and matron for six years and had been developing among the girls heretofore untried plans. With the invitation which the Boston board extended to her to become superintendent of the building came these carte blanche instructions: ** Build it up by your own originality; no one can tell you how to do it, and the men's prophecy of women's failure must not be fulfilled. ' ' Accordingly when Miss Drinkwater arrived on the first of April, 1875, she began to take account of stock and discovered amid the bills payable a coal bill for $500. When she went down to lead the sixty-six boarders in their evening devotions, she be- gan to learn the next secret, that the thirty or more FIRST AMERICAN ASSOCIATION 39 girls who had come in from Beach Street were truly loyal to the Association, but the others seemed to con- sider their presence there as a favor. She soon put the pieces of the puzzle together ; an unpaid bill for coal resulted in sparing use of it, a cold house, and an all- round chilly atmosphere. While the loyal members en- dured this discomfort as manfully as possible the oth- ers frowned, murmured and complained incessantly. The janitor when ordered to put on more steam said that the boiler would burst if the pressure ran above seventy pounds, and he would not go beyond that. On his next day out the new superintendent called in the steam fitter who had installed the heating system, learned every detail of it and kept her own counsel. Soon there came a wretchedly cold, stormy day when she knew the girls would be coming home drenched and dismal. She called the janitor to her office, told him to make a grate fire in the company back parlor, and put on seventy-eight pounds of steam. **But seventy is all the boiler will stand." **You may put on sev- enty-eight and I will be responsible for the conse- quences." The house began to warm up. As Miss Drinkwater saw the girls returning, she opened the basement street door, saying, *'Come in here and lay off your wet wraps, and then after supper come down to the back parlor." Adverse sentiment began to melt. Soon the girls told others in their places of business that the Warrenton Street Home was a good place to live in, and by the May board meeting the number had risen from sixty-six to ninety-one. But summer was ahead, with probably a more diffi- 40 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK cult situation as to vacant rooms. The residents and staff wrote letters to friends all about, extolling the merits of this new building and asking that they and their friends come and see them in town at one dollar a day. * * The few newcomers who ventured to test our accommodations were reckoned as so many trophies for the cause, and we spared neither time nor strength in entertaining them.'' This summer campaign was as effective as the original letter to the New England min- isters in 1866, for when fall came on the house was filled with the girls for whom it had been put up. In fact, some fastidious young persons who had an- nounced that they "didn't like the street" and ''didn't want to be considered objects of charity" now com- peted with each other for rooms for the coming year. Convention delegates and other transient guests poured in and were glad to obtain cots for the nights, or even to get bedrooms outside and come in to join the family in parlors and dining room. Yet there was something more than good manage- ment which was making that home a success: "sanc- tified common sense, ' ' the owner of this quality called it, common sense evidenced by care in assigning the one or two roommates so that the necessary compan- ionship would be enjoyable and beneficial; delicacy in gaining and retaining the confidence of members of the family; alertness in anticipating and gratify- ing wishes; resourcefulness in providing home amuse- ments; cordiality in inviting young men friends to the house ; tact in promoting voluntary literary, social and religious organizations in the home; and depend- FIRST AMERICAN ASSOCIATION 41 enee upon the Spirit of God for daily wisdom in reach- ing and elevating the soul, which was the primary object of her work. Out of the employment bureau and its perplexing problems rose much of the strongest future work. Again and again had the demand for good household helpers overwhelmed the secretary, who saw only a meager number of women for whom the Association could conscientiously vouch among the crowd await- ing positions. Some who might have been efficient, were not, because of personal discrepancies; some could not take places, some would not take them, others took them but did not keep them. Again and again the question of a training school for domestic service, or a kindred institution, was before the managers. Finally, a little later, a house next door was rented for a bureau of instruction, with a boarding depart- ment and arrangements for girls of sixteen years or more to secure a three to six months' course in all do- mestic branches, including sewing and laundry work. As the plan progressed it seemed wise to grant com- pensation to students after a certain duration of resi- dence, and as the course included some study of Eng- lish subjects as well as religious instruction the gradu- ates went out with a good economic and moral prepara- tion for a calling in which the demand was unabating. In 1879 were held, three times weekly, cooking classes taught by Madame Favier and attended by women of leisure, or any who wished domestic instruc- tion but could not come into the three months' resi- dence required in the domestic training school, of 42 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK which some six or eight were taking advantage. But the most interesting development of this cooking regime was that a donor — a man, as might be reason- ably expected — offered a course of twelve lessons in cookery to a class from the public schools, and Mr. Swan, head master of the Winthrop School, sent twelve girls from the senior class, who finished their studies with a May Day Exhibit, in 1880, and with enough general satisfaction so that this course was followed the next season by another taught by Mrs. Webb, a graduate of Miss Parloa's normal class. This was experimental work in a double sense, as the subject had not before been taught in the Boston schools. The combination of boarding house and bureau of instruction was favorable to the training school class, but the other students hoped for a place distinct from that where meals were being prepared. All of this was due in good season. Then too, the employment bureau, while dealing exclusively with domestic occupations, could not be of much help to the steady stream of young women whose strength or aptitude fitted them better for other du- ties, and for these some systematic effort must be made. One day three Canadian sisters, all wearing mourn- ing, came in asking advice as to how to begin making their way in the world. The eldest had applied for a position at the post office, thinking that would be congenial and remunerative. She learned that there were no vacancies and already several thousand ap- plications on file. Upon the superintendent's advice the elder began the study of bookkeeping, the second FIRST AMERICAN ASSOCIATION 43 entered nurse's training and the youngest worked for her board in the home and went to public school. This incident of girls unfitted for anything, searching everywhere for a chance to earn their bread, deter- mined the opening of a Business Register, which ever afterwards sought places for girls, as the domestic em- ployment bureau continued to seek girls for places. With this registry the Mercantile School, as the busi- ness classes were termed, and other educational de- partments closely cooperated. Dr. Edward 0. Otis inaugurated a course of Emergency Lectures in 1883 which were so popular as to be immediately repeated. On December 8, 1884, the new building at 40 Berke- ley Street was dedicated. It contained the training school and other educational departments, and the employment bureau, assembly hall, offices of adminis- tration, parlors, and reading room, large dining room and sleeping rooms for one hundred and fifty-six resi- dents. On the fifth floor was the Durant gymnasium, (l the first to be incorporated into a Young Women's } Christian Association building. Physical education as ' now conducted was the outgrowth of a class in calis- thenics taught by one of the boarders in 1877, of ath- letics in the park in 1882, and of a few simple exer- cises originally prepared for the residents in the War- renton Street Home, with a few chest weights on closet doors and in the corners of hallways as apparatus, in 1882. That same year free instruction was offered a i , ^ class from the Association in Miss Allen's famous gym- i nasium. The board of managers had heartily accepted and made the uniform suits required, and the super- 44 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK . intendent accompanied the class during the first sea- { son. The first teacher in the Durant gymnasium was ^ \ Anna Wood of the Wellesley College gymnasium fac- \ ulty. The calls for domestic help kept growing louder. v/ Sometimes Miss Drinkwater would count twenty housekeepers looking for maids where she could, see one girl whom she could recommend, with almost any price put upon her services. She knew there were girls coming into the city who needed the very kind of work in homes here offered and who needed still more the protection and advantages of other depart- ments in the Association. So one April morning in 1887, Miss Drinkwater rose at five o^clock and walked to one of the docks. An old wharf hand stopped his sweeping to hold speech with her. ''Every steamer brings girls who don't know where to look for work. Well, well, am I not glad to know that the women of Boston have awakened to the needs of these girls!'' The way opened later to have one secretary give her time to meeting steamers and following up the various and unfolding needs of the young women who came. In July, 1887, Miss M. E. Blodgett of Mt. Holyoke College, a girlhood friend of Miss Drinkwater, as- sumed this new position. Girls who were helpless be- cause they could not speak English, learned how to talk and act and think like Americans. Circulars and newspapers carried the address of this unusual ''In- telligence Office" into German and Scandinavian com- munities of both continents, and strangers began to look it up on arrival. As the Young Traveler's Aid FIRST AMERICAN ASSOCIATION 45 Association of Boston had already begun to be of use in the same way, so far as receiving travelers was con- cerned, a meeting was held to divide the territory. This society remained in charge of the railroad sta- tions and the Boston Young Women's Christian As- sociation of the docks, where boats from Atlantic coast states and provinces and transatlantic ocean steamers landed hundreds of women passengers on a day. In the first three months Miss Blodgett was able to serve five hundred and eight girls through channels within and without the Association. Every year there was a keener desire for a school of domestic economy and industrial arts, or, as some one termed it, **a college for mental, spiritual and physical culture/^ This should train girls in house- wifery as a ladylike accomplishment, as a means of self support in families or institutions, or as a profes- sion in training others in schools or missions. Mrs. Ellen H. Richards of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a personal friend of the superintend- ent advised on the prospectus which Miss Drinkwater drew up before it was presented to the managers for adoption. ^'It*s all right," she said, ''but what you have put into this curriculum requires five years." The impossibility of a one year course attaining the end was sure ; to keep students five years was equally impossible, so a compromise was made on a two years' course. Though the board of managers was somewhat ap- palled, Mrs. Durant, the president, whose name is known in academic circles in connection with the y 46 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK founding of Wellesley College, believed in it, and in the fall of 1888 the school opened with a month of public demonstration lectures by Mrs. Emma P. Ewing of Purdue University. Instruction in domes- tic economy covered cooking and general household management, purchase and care of family supplies, home sanitation, home dressmaking, home millinery and economical selection of wearing material. In- struction in industrial arts embraced industrial draw- ing, clay modeling, carpentry for household needs, wood carving and light upholstery. The experimental kitchen was a model of its kind, for it was a large airy room fitted up as a laboratory with individual equipment for each student and with charts, a food museum, and other teaching appliances. The regular classes met here day and evening for cook- ing lessons, the normal class secured their advance in- struction here and twice a week, the twenty girls in the Training School for Domestics were taught here. Among the teachers and lecturers in Domestic Sci- ence in various years have been Miss Emily Hunting- ton, Mrs. Mary A. Lincoln and Miss Anna Barrows. The Normal pupils were resident and paid inclusive charges from October to June as in any girls* school for general culture. Of course religious education was not overlooked and presently from the original Bible classes there devel- oped an evening Bible school with prescribed courses leading to examinations. On Saturday evenings, the Rev. James M. Gray of the Gordon Training School, which at that time had no evening classes, offered a FIRST AMERICAN ASSOCIATION 47 Synthetic Study of the Bible. On Tuesdays there was Bible Geography and History by Miss Lucinda J. Gregg, and on Thursdays Bible Interpretation by the Rev. J. M. Orrock. Naturally this led to a depart- ment for Christian workers as a part of the Normal Training School and the whole was formally termed ** School of Domestic Science and Christian Workers." Nor was it strange that Miss Drinkwater, who was in constant demand for preparing papers and other pro- gram duties for Association conventions, should be considered the natural head for a department of As- sociation Organization. This she gave in two months' courses for five years (1897 to 1901 inclusive), and from the forty or more students there went out some devoted and capable secretaries to Women's and Young Women's Christian Associations throughout the country. Thus for thirty-three years of nearly continuous la- bors Miss Drinkwater 's mind, might, soul and body strove for young women, her neighbors in the gospel sense. After the presentation of the secular depart- ments upon one occasion, the question was asked her, **What is the Boston Young Women's Christian Asso- ciation doing in the line of religious work?" This an- swer was given: ''Soul winning and Christian charac- ter building through a score of means." These were cited in a paper read at the International Board Con- ference in 1893. 1, Personal efforts of directors and resident officials to bring strangers under moral and religious influence. 2. By aiding them in the selection of suitable boarding places, and by friendly visits and relief in trouble. 48 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 3. By securing their attendance at some place of worship on the Sabbath. 4. By introducing them to Sabbath School and Church Socials and surrounding them as far as possible with Christian associates. 5. By a free distribution of printed cards of invitation to religious services held in the Berkeley Street build- ing, also by tracts and leaflets. 6. By meeting girls at the wharves who arrive as strangers on our shores and ministering to their bodily and spiritual needs. 7. By daily family worship in each of the Homes. 8. By weekly home prayer-meetings and Sabbath morning devotions conducted by Christian young women of the Home. Bible classes for all. 9. By object teaching in Bible study through models, charts, maps and blackboard work. 10. By practical application of the truth to individuals. 11. By personal appeals to the unconverted. 12. By letters of transfer from one Association to another. 13. By loans and gifts of money to poor but worthy girls, temporarily ill or out of work, or otherwise in special need. 14. By aiding ambitious girls to an education with the hope that their talents will be consecrated to God's service. 15. By the aid and influence of Christian teachers in Schools and Class Department. 16. By equipping young women with a systematic course of Bible Study and Scientific Homemaking, and send- ing them out as Missionaries, Teachers, Young Women's Christian Association Secretaries, Pastors' Assistants and organizers of different kinds of re- ligious works throughout the country. 17. By practical training in all forms of Mission Work under the leadership of a Christian worker, in Girls' Clubs, Free Kitchen Gardens and Industrial Classes conducted and sustained by the Association. 18. By teaching young women the proper relation of body to mind and spirit and their personal responsibili^ to God in its care and development. FIRST AMERICAN ASSOCIATION 49 19. By placing the unskilled under religious influences while being trained in some branch of industry. 20. By teaching the ignorant to read, and furnishing them with Bibles. 21. By warning the willful of danger and pointing them to Christ. 22. By letters of sympathy and counsel to the absent. 23. By private seasons of prayer with inquirers. 24. By the truth of God unfolded to doubters and skeptics. By the above means the entire work of the Boston Young Women's Christian Association is permeated with general religious instruction. CHAPTER VII OTHER PIONEER CITY ASSOCIATIONS WHEN these two groups of Christian women in New York and Boston who had organ- ized on behalf of self supporting girls were augmented in June, 1867, by a similar society in Hartford, Connecticut, a third title had been in- troduced, Women's Christian Association, but the aim, ** improving the welfare of self supporting young women," the active membership within Evangelical churches, and the duties of managers, were almost identical with those of the two Associations previously established. This was not strange. The first president, Mrs. Charles B. Smith, in a reminiscent anniversary ad- dress forty years later, told how her husband's niece, Mrs. Marshall 0. Roberts of New York City, had spoken at the Ladies* Union prayer meeting in the Pearl Street Church of Hartford upon the text, * ' The Master is come and calleth for thee, ' ' in the winter of 1867. The recently organized Young Men's Christian Association of Hartford, the knowledge of what Mrs. Roberts was doing in New York City, and correspond- ence with Mrs. Durant, president of the one-year-old Boston Association, helped the ladies of the Hartford 50 OTHER CITY ASSOCIATIONS 51 prayer band in deciding whether to undertake preven- tive or reformatory work. ''Each was a great work, but they must be separate, and in our infancy we could undertake but one. ' ' When the preventive pol- icy had won the day and a home for self supporting girls was in prospect Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, one of the leaders, remarked, *'I*m going to lobby to be matron of that home.'* But they did not wait for that home. A few hun- dred dollars was raised to lease rooms in a business block on Asylum Street from which the landlord who lived near by really received more than his rent, for he said he delighted to sit and listen to the singing of the girls at the rooms. That very autumn a lady subscribed $1,000 for the nucleus of a building fund. To this, the first organization of ladies in the city, much help came from the clergy and well known oc- casional speakers, such as H. Clay Trumbull and D. L. Moody and the famous "Singing Evangelist," Philip Phillips. Reckoning exactly, the Women's Christian Associa- tion of Providence, Rhode Island, antedated Hartford by about six weeks, but the deliberations of the man- agers as to reformatory versus preventive measures ended in a compromise, and the home which was opened in Providence on July 23, 1867, combined the two features. But the experiment proved the unde- sirability of the arrangement, a separation was made and a new constitution adopted so that the Associa- tion might really in its present form be said to date from March, 1868. Other cities organizing Women's 52 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Christian Associations in the years immediately fol- lowing covered both these branches and other forms of institutional work. In this connection it has been said, While many of the Associations at their origin took the work of the Young Men's Christian Associations as a type for their own, it was soon found out that the requirements for successful work among women were much more varied than for men. In the newer communities where few charitable societies existed the Associations must embrace and sometimes confine themselves to fields of labor already filled by societies in older cities. Thus the charge often made, that "the Young Women's Christian Associations and Women's Christian Associations embrace all sorts of things," appears on the surface to have truth, but under- neath all the variety liea the one common purpose, never lost sight of by any Association, to do all things possible for the elevation of women physically, mentally, morally and spiritually. To the establishment of a third Young Women's Christian Association in Pittsburgh, which dates from 1867, the productive religious sentiment of that decade also contributes, as is seen by the following extract from one of its reports: During the session of a Christian Convention under the direction of Rev. Mr. D. L. Moody and the Young Men's Christian Association, when the spirit of God, invoked by the presence and prayer of these lovers of God and their fellow men seemed present in power, a request was made to Rev. Mr. Moody that he would tell of the wonderful work of the women of London for their own sex, and so instruct the women of Pittsburgh and Allegheny that they too might lend a helping hand to the destitute and suffering and save the tempted. He addressed a large meeting of interested men and OTHER CITY ASSOCIATIONS 53 women, who were anxious for this new departure for the cause of God and humanity, and thus on the spot a Women *s Christian Association was organized and $1,640 subscribed as an initial offering. So powerful was this impulse that in 1875, when Pittsburgh entertained the Third International Con- ference of Women's Christian Associations, reports were submitted from ten distinct branches in order of their date of organization, — the Temporary Home for Destitute Women, Home for Aged Protestant Women, Boarding Home for Working Women, Sheltering Arms, Women's Foreign Union IMissionary Society, Gilmore Mission, Bible Reader's Mission, Ladies' De- pository and Employment Office, Hospital Committee and the Young Women's Christian Association of East Liberty. Westward the star of empire continued and in 1868 two Women's Christian Associations were formed in Ohio, Cincinnati, and Cleveland. Of the former Mrs. John Davis, its first president, said, *'The instrument under God in the formation of this Association was a member of the Young Men's Christian Association of Cincinnati who saw the need and suggested the work. This young man, now a missionary in China, has the satisfaction of knowing we are reaping a rich harvest from the small seed he planted." The first result for girls was the opening of a home in March, 1869. ''They have a well ordered, contented household with a good table, neat rooms, and a general compliance with rules. But the work of the Association is not limited to the care of young women at the Home. 54r FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK They have organized a city missionary work, visiting in the hospitals, county jail, city prison for women, house of refuge, work house, etc., seeking to cheer and encourage a class so much neglected, to lead better lives.'' Public sentiment was so strong in Cleveland that the old hall at the corner of Superior and Seneca Streets, then the home of the Cleveland Young Men's Christian Association, was crowded to its utmost ca- pacity at the initial meeting. ''Almost immediately a Missionary Committee was formed, the city was re- districted and a certain definite tract assigned for visitation to each patronizing church." The next year they secured property and opened a boarding home in November, 1869. And still further to the west St. Louis women had been saying, ''There should be a place of safety in this great western city for young women thrown upon their own resources for maintenance." A vacant building had appealed to them as particularly avail- able for such a home, and they had even fixed upon a clergyman and his wife to be its proper guardians. Presently the way opened, as is recorded in the first report. In November, 1868, Mr. H. Thane Miller of Cincinnati, who was in attendance at a Christian con- vention in St. Louis, invited the ladies of that city to- gether that he might urge upon them the necessity of Christian labor among and for their own sex. This call was responded to by seventy-five or more ladies, among them many earnest Christian workers with the inquiry in their hearts, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" OTHER CITY ASSOCIATIONS 55 His earnest appeals for sympathy, for counsel, for aid, for a Christian Home for Women, made more forcible, if possible, by a recital of incidents that had fallen under his own observation, entranced the audience and led them to feel that his lips were touched with pentecostal fire and his soul clothed with poetry as with a garment attuned to the very essence of holy song. Could this be lost, his zeal, his song, which might be said "to animate the dead and move the lips of poets cast in lead"! Let the sequel tell. The sequel was the organization of the Women's Christian Association of St. Louis, which within four months had leased, furnished and opened a boarding home. Under a still further variety of circumstances did the other pioneer city Associations come into being. Mrs. Marshall O. Eoberts, first directress of the La- dies' Christian Union of New York City, invited a company of young women of leisure to meet at her home at 107 Fifth Avenue on February 10, 1870, where they formed a Young Ladies' Branch of this Union which next year became the Young Ladies' Christian Association of the City of New York, and in 1876 changed the title to Young Women's Christian Association. Utica also dates from 1870, and Phila- delphia, which ''received its first call and inspiration from Mr. Miller, who addressed Christian women on * Women's Work for Her Own Sex,' " also Washington, D. C, Dayi;on, and Buffalo. In 1871 Newark, New Jersey, Germantown, Pennsylvania, and Springfield, Massachusetts, wheeled into line. Some eight or ten other cities were listed up to this time as carrying on work which either lapsed shortly afterwards, or be- came absorbed in other general movements where the 56 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK features they had been emphasizing rightly belonged. Because of the variety of purpose and method indi- cated above, it was natural that the constitutions of the later pioneers varied more than did the three first formulated. In a number * ' any woman upon the pay- ment of the membership fee'^ might become an active member. Almost every one of the pioneer Associations started some work which later became a prominent independ- ent philanthropy or charity in the city. Examples of this are the Woman's Exchanges for sale of women's handwork which the Women's Christian Association of Cincinnati, St. Louis and many other cities evolved and put upon a paying basis before they were inde- pendently maintained. The Board of Associated Charities in Cincinnati and many other relief organ- izations elsewhere had their rise in a Women's Chris- tian Association. For eleven years the Young Ladies' Branch of the Women's Christian Association of Cleveland developed work for children, until in 1893, the Day Nursery and Kindergarten Society of Cleve- land became a chartered institution in care of the five day nurseries and six kindergartens thus originated. This roll might be indefinitely extended. *'The elevation of women physically, mentally, morally and spiritually" was not only forcing women into unsuspected fields of opportunity ; it was also re- vealing unsuspected capacities that were henceforth abundantly made use of. CHAPTER VIII IN certain cities, the Young Women's Christian Association expressed the maternal concern which Christian women felt for young women getting a foothold or making their way in unfamiliar surroundings; in other cities the Association resulted from the sense of sisterhood through which a few ear- nest Christian young women were led to work for the things which they and the others wanted. Some of these beginnings were rather humble. The St. Joseph, Missouri, Association, organized in 1888, said in an anniversary meeting that there was **a list of about twenty names as charter members, with no money and little time," but the secretary of the pros- perous Association, Martha Fisher, remembered to add, ' ^ but many promptings of the Holy Spirit born from the consciousness of an effort put forth *in His name/ " Some of the methods may have been ama- teurish, as this survey shows. ' ' In our own city there are 1,500 self supporting young women — 375 are not under home influences, 515 are in factories, 238 in offices, 184 are teachers, 173 seamstresses and 390 do- mestics." But if the premises were perhaps inac- curate the conclusion was correct enough. *'With 67 58 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK these statistics before us, can any one doubt the need of a Young Women 's Christian Association ! ' ' This was indigenous growth : Kalamazoo, Michigan (1885), Lawrence, Kansas (1886), Ypsilanti, Michi- gan (1887), and Topeka, Kansas (1887), started be- fore the days of State secretaries. The influence of graduates of Mississippi Valley coeducational colleges was felt by many of the early city Associations, even Scranton, Pennsylvania, organized in 1888; for the first president, Mrs. L. M. Gates, who made Scranton the model for a period of years, was Helen Dunn of Hillsdale College, Michigan. Mingled with the spirit of consecration which was really the motive power of these capable young women, there was frequently a feminine outburst of envy. ' * I don't see why we girls can't have a place like the Young Men's Christian Association to go to." And through their own struggles they did come to possess such a place in one city after another, a place where they could work together and where the workers them- selves shared in the objects of the Association as stated in the constitution almost universally adopted — "The object of this Association shall be the improvement of the spiritual, mental, social and physical condition of young women." In some cities there were already women's organiza- tions including in their various activities the housing of young women or specializing in that. This was the case in Minneapolis in 1890 where the Women's Christian Association, an outgrowth of the Ladies' Christian Aid Society, had for twenty years repre- YOUNG WOMEN'S ORGANIZATIONS 59 sented the evangelical churches of the city in relief work for families, an industrial school for children, and other good work. At that time it was devoting its energies to homes for self supporting young women, for transients, for aged women and aged ministers. In the churches there was a very active Christian En- deavor Union and the young women of its Central Committee sought in vain for some quiet spot down town where they might meet at noon for consultation and prayer. Plenty of places they found for obtain- ing food and even talking at the table, but no place where they could have a committee meeting with prayer. Again it was said, '*The young men can go to the Young Men's Christian Association, I wish we had a place of our own. ' ' These Christian Endeavor leaders called an evening meeting in February when the new state secretary of Minnesota was to be in town, and begged the State Committee for guidance in opening a **real city Young Women's Christian Association." The State Committee promised help on condition that they could show they were in earnest by holding a Young Women's Sunday afternoon meeting regularly until spring, and the girls responded by electing a provi- sional committee to have charge of this. This com- mittee was made up of a recent graduate from coedu- cational Carleton College, at home for a year or two, another girl of leisure, a practising oculist, a business girl, and the young wife of the general secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association. They kept up the meeting and their determination grew week 60 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK by week. When spring came their state secretary re- turned from the convention of the International' Young Women's Christian Associations (see Chapter XIV) held in Scranton, with abounding revelations of that work, which served as both pattern and inspira- tion, and Miss Nettie Dunn, general secretary of the International Committee, was able to make a prom- ised visit at the same time. After consultations with the ladies of the Women's Christian Association who had been hoping for such an institution in Minneap- olis, but had felt unable to add another department of their own, after evening committee meetings of girls and day committee meetings of women, the Young Women's Christian Association was formed and be- gan to look about for a location. This was secured in October * * in an attractive suite of rooms, ' ' so the first annual report said, and although some callous people called it an ordinary apartment or even a flat, to the enthusiastic charter members it contained **a secre- tary's office, reading room, parlor, class room, com- mittee room, kitchen and bath." It was furnished by donations of things new and old, including a library of 380 books, and was opened at once for the religious and social occasions which formed most of their early program. It certainly was a place in which to work together, for out of the 127 active members, there were twelve standing com- mittees, counting in all 102 names, but it was not a place of general resort, and any skilled financier will see that these two initial departments were not revenue-provoking. Even the references to employ- YOUNG WOMEN'S ORGANIZATIONS 61 ment were gratuitous. One of the dearest illusions was early dispelled, that is, that by opening a room, putting a name on a door and asking a hostess to be present to receive, troops of shy strange girls would thereby appear to make the acquaintance of the hostess and be entertained by her. Definite invitations were accepted, indefinite invitations were not. *'Are you reaching the factory girls?" inquired one patient business man, writing out a check because he had confidence in the lady who presented the little . red leather subscription book to him. *'My sister * >; went up to your rooms to entertain them one evening ^y last week, and she said nobody came except some ^ ' of the regular members for something else." The embarrassed secretary accompanying the board mem- ber explained that two girls from the shoe factory and one from the woolen mills had attended a sociable a few evenings later and said they had a splendid time. However, the kindly criticism set them to thinking and later on quarters were secured with regard to the gymnasium classes which Abby Shaw Mayhew taught, and to the lunch room and those other features which girls always know they want, and the location was on a street to which one did not have to be personally conducted. Out in the middle west the term ** working girls" was conspicuous for its absence. In a newer civiliza- tion and especially in college towns, so many girls worked or were making themselves capable of doing so that the participle was generally omitted. In many cities which were rapidly increasing in population 62 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK during the period of 1880-1890 and thereabouts, such responsible positions were being held by young women in railroad and newspaper offices, in wholesale and re- tail business houses and elsewhere, that when the Kansas City, Missouri, Young Women's Christian Association in 1890 launched the expressions *' busi- ness women" and "business girls," other communi- ties gladly followed that example in nomenclature. Two or three young business women in Toledo had formed an independent Young Women's Christian Association with a score or so of members, and had rented a small upper room where they met for re- ligious meetings and an occasional social festivity, in- viting others to join them as opportunity offered. They were not affiliated with any state or national body, fearing that they might be taxed in proportion to their membership. Still they were so desirous of uniting with the International Committee that they sent to Chicago for a traveling secretary to come and explain matters. There was a full meeting, to which was presented the plan of financing state and national work by voluntary gifts, and when the speaker closed with the patriotic principle that these budgets were ** Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute," there was a unanimous vote in favor of affiliation. That was December, 1891 ; in a few months the Toledo Association had a new suite of rooms, nearer the center of town and nearer the ground, and called Agnes Gale Hill as general secretary. They increased their mem- bership in a year more than five times over, entertained the International Convention in 1893, and in 1894 of YOUNG WOMEN'S ORGANIZATIONS 63 their own will and upon their own initiative sent out their beloved secretary as the first American repre- sentative to a foreign field and never since relinquished that support. CHAPTER IX CITY DEVELOPMENT AND STANDARDIZATION THROUGHOUT all the early years the satis- faction of local divergencies was giving way to the effectiveness of reasonable similarity. Christian Associations for young women, whether con- ducted by women or by young women, were growing more like each other as experience taught the value of cooperation between elder and younger. The Women's Christian Associations were forming Young Ladies' Branches or Junior Committees or adding daughters' names where mothers' names had been en- rolled. The young women's organizations were de- pending more and more upon the older women on boards of management, and the ''heavy committees, like those on Finance, Rooms, and Noon Rest." Young women were studying a city, learning what a Young Women's Christian Association was doing in other comparable places, and might do in their own communities, and then challenging with these facts and prospects the older women to work with them in bringing these things to pass. And when a petition signed by hundreds of girls had been the means of bringing a Young Women 's Christian Association into being, the signers were naturally the charter members, 64 CITY DEVELOPMENT 65 and still more naturally, no question was raised as to whether self supporting girls might be members either active or associate. These charter members from home, schools, factories, offices, shops and stores were the Association itself, active for the most part, look- ing for all the help which the older Christian women, clergy, heads of local movements, and secretaries of State and National Committees, could give, but not waiting for the action of any of these, nor dependent upon the strength or weakness of any of these, in at- tempting to plant the institution which they felt they and the other girls needed. What did they expect to realize? There are cer- tain Association features which are the deposits of decade after decade. Others come in or go out with the civic or economic or educational manifestations, local or nation-wide, but the permanent features change only in aspect, or emphasis, and even the temporary are seen to respond to some fundamental need of a girl, her respect for her body or the expan- sion of her mind or the realization of her soul. As has already been seen, the North London Home of 1855 and the Boston Association of 1866 contained the germ of almost all the departments which forty or fifty years have only served to develop. Each of these departments has a miniature history of its own which properly finds its place in any account of the rise of city Associations, for while **a Young Women ^s Christian Association is greater than the sum of its parts, ' ' these parts have yet to be taken into account. 66 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Prayer meetings were the atmosphere in which the Young Women's Christian Associations were born and grew into usefulness. Because the need for housing young women under a hospitable Christian roof seemed paramount, all the seventeen Associations listed as pioneers soon made a Boarding Home the center of their interests, with the exception of the New York City Young Women's Christian Association, which, beginning as a branch of the Ladies' Christian Union, did not duplicate the work the latter had been carrying on for a decade. This is one reason why it is difficult to classify the re- ligious elements of the early programs, since the meet- ings for the young women at large cannot always be distinguished from the family prayers of any Chris- tian household. But from the very first, before any homes were opened, there were weekly devotional meetings. The board members met for spiritual communion and found in their hours of intercession light for the path ahead and a deepening confidence in the divine leader in whose name they had assumed unusual responsibili- ties. Many a woman has acknowledged that in these Ladies' Prayer Meetings where week after week the same familiar company gathered, pleading requests common to all, she learned how to speak to God aloud in prayer and found courage to lead such meetings or to conduct larger assemblies as the way opened up later on. . The Thursday evening prayer meeting in the very first rooms of the Boston Association was another type CITY DEVELOPMENT 67 of devotional meeting which has been followed by- weekly prayer services in probably every Associa- tion throughout the country. How the religious element permeated the boarding homes of a city has already been seen from Miss Drink- water ^s summary of means used in the Boston Associa- tion. But the first large attempt to build up a religious service for young women of the whole city was that of the New York City Association. In 1872 there met for a Sunday afternoon Bible class seven women ; six of these were young women without Sunday school relations, the seventh, the teacher, was Ella Doheny. As became the custom those present on that first day left their names and addresses and from this record of attendance grew up the membership roll. Miss Do- heny gave herself unsparingly to preparation for the lesson, usually a continued exposition of one book of the Bible with special application to the members of the class; workers in other departments cooperated heartily in extending to young women who came into the library, the employment bureau and other parts of the building, personal and cordial invitations to this meeting. In time this class grew to an enrollment of 2,000 with an average attendance of 600. The chap- lain, as Miss Doheny soon became, went regularly with a group of members before the service, but later these United Workers, as they called themselves, held their devotional meeting on an evening during the week. Thousands of women visiting New York found their way into this Sunday Bible class and carried into 68 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK many states the memory of the dignified service from which radiated uncounted lines of helpfulness to its members and visitors. The Easter observances were so largely attended that two overflow meetings were sometimes provided in other rooms after the spacious chapel was filled. It is not strange that on the south wall of this assembly room close to the platform where as teacher and leader she had dominated the life of that influential Association, there should have been erected by the class a bronze tablet bearing these words : In loving memory of ELLA DOHENY. Entered into lite eternal February 3, 1910. Won in youth by the Scripture, called by this Association and identi- fied WITH ALL PHASES OF ITS WORK FOB FORTY YEARS. SHE SERVED THE LORD CHRIST AS A MINISTER TO WOMEN IN THE TEACHING OF THE WORD AND IN THE CUBE OF SOULS. I HAVE CHOSEN YOU, AND ORDAINED YOU, THAT YE SHOULD GO AND BRING FORTH FRUIT AND THAT YOUR FRUIT SHOULD REMAIN. Somewhat after the English terminology this serv- ice was called a Bible class, although its teachers pre- sented the lesson in the form of an address and others took part only in the verse reading and opening and closing exercises. In most of the Associations which began work with only a suite of rooms for headquarters, the Sunday afternoon ** gospel meeting'* was the heart of the whole organization. It was a taken-for-granted ap- CITY DEVELOPMENT 69 pointment; one did not say '*a'' gospel meeting but **the" gospel meeting. In 1888, when the state of Kansas reported twenty-one Associations, twelve in cities and nine in colleges, the Gospel meeting was the main element of each local report, with an attendance of twenty, thirty-four, sixty-five, etc., as the case might be. These little gatherings were very simple. The music was chiefly singing from a Gospel Hymns col- lection accompanied upon a cabinet organ. A differ- ent leader took charge each week, opening the topic announced for the day in such a way as to elicit the cooperation of the other young women in testimony and prayer. Sometimes a ''Bible Reading" was given, either prepared by the leader or carefully se- lected from some of the religious periodicals to which it had been contributed by a well known Biblical student. Sometimes a decision meeting was held where girls determined to follow Christ and ''come out on the Lord's side.'* The power of the meeting was often inverse to the self confidence of the leader, just as it was often out of proportion to the size of the town. Indispensable to the gospel meeting was the invita- tion committee, thus charted in the first model consti- tution adopted by most of the Associations of that era. "The Committee on Invitation shall seek to promote the attendance of young women at the rooms and meet- ings of the Association by personal solicitation and dis- tribution of invitations and in every other available way." These available waj^s measured the ingenuity and the consecration of the committee. When Associations grew larger and multiplied de- 'J 70 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK partments, the religious emphasis was more dis- tributed, yet in certain cities, as Aurora, Detroit, Omaha, and Harlem, one felt that she had not really visited the Associations, unless she had met with them on Sunday afternoon. The preliminary circle of prayer for God's blessing on the meeting, the decora- tions of the assembly room, the ushering, the reception committee, the leader of the singing, the choral class in evidence as choir, the cordial presiding officer, the speaker of the afternoon (usually a prominent Chris- tian worker from within or without the city), the audience of members, friends, and strangers and the after meeting, strengthened the belief that Christ him- self is the solution of every girl's every problem, and that it is the business of the Young Women's Chris- tian Association to help girls find this out. A hospitality offered for many years by the Brook- lyn Young Women's Christian Association was the Sunday evening supper after the Bible class, to which thirty-five guests remained each week after the gen- eral social hour which followed the assembly room service. The vesper tea of Association House, Chicago, played a great part in the history of the Sunday meetings, and these two examples other Asso- ciations have imitated, though frequently the break- ing of bread together could mean little more than a social cup of tea and a sandwich or wafer. As to the early Bible classes, they were of two kinds. One was the open Bible class where a text book or printed outline might or might not be used, but where there was always an opportunity for the members to CITY DEVELOPMENT 71 answer and ask questions based upon a study of a prescribed topic or portion of Scripture assigned for the lesson. The class period was usually some week day evening hour, the teacher some earnest but prob- ably self taught Bible student and the attendance at the class large or small, dependent almost entirely upon the personality of the teacher. Slich Bible classes have had the most direct evangelistic results. Out of one class in Connecticut where the average at- tendance for four years was twenty-five, it was said that twenty-three had become Christians, and many others were brought back into Christian allegiance. On the other hand the Worker 's Training Class was preferably small, composed of women of spiritual ex- perience who wanted to do the work of personal evangelism. Upon most of the early convention pro- grams this subject was placed to be treated by the strongest person available. The names of Mr. C. K. Ober, Mr. L. Wilbur Messer and Mr. John E. Mott appear in this connection. The latter thus defined a Worker's Bible Training class as **a class which en- ables Christians by special Bible studies and by actual participation in personal work to lead others one by one to Christ. ' ' Because of its confidential character, this class was almost invariably led by the general secretary; manuals were used which had been pub- lished by these men and others. Once a month the missionary meeting might be found on the topic cards for the Sunday afternoon. If the meetings were notoriously poor they occurred 72 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK less often, if they were notably good, ten or twelve a year were not too many. In states where the recog- nized leaders were Student Volunteers for the foreign field who after reaching their appointed posts kept up a large personal correspondence, missionary spirit was easily cultivated. Kansas and Michigan and Illinois owe much to Jennie Sherman, Annie Laurie Adams, Jean and Nellie Dick, Emma Silver, Bernice Hunting, Belle Richards and Eula Bates in this connection. Not until 1894 after the formation of the World's Young Women's Christian Association did mission- ary giving focus upon distinctly Young Women's Christian Association objects. That was after Miss R. F. Morse had begun to collect money for the sup- port of work done by American secretaries on the for- eign field and by the first general secretary of the World's Committee, herself an American. About the year 1900 there seemed a great enlarge- ment of religious activities throughout all the city Associations. Such as had been content with one or two small classes were multiplying these to meet all sorts and conditions of Bible students. Drop-in classes were held at the noon hour ; clubs were organ- ized which gave the first part of the evening to Bible study. Women's morning classes were securing the leadership of the best Bible students among the pas- tors and whole departments were succeeding the single committee which had been expected to carry this es- sential burden. More Associations began to call em- ployed officers to administer this department under the title of Bible Secretary or Religious Work Di- CITY DEVELOPMENT 73 rector, retaining elsewhere the former title of Chap- lain. In such capacities Charlotte H. Adams had come to Pittsburgh in 1894 and Dr. Anna L. Brown to Boston in 1899. Even if the first Young Women's Christian Associ- ation had not undertaken to help young women find places in which to work they would have been asked to do it both by the young women and by the general public. Yet probably in no other department has there been expressed more lively dissatisfaction than here, because in securing a position for an applicant there is a double obligation : the bureau hopes to sat- isfy both the employer and employee; repeatedly neither is satisfied. Even in the best administered offices this is bound to happen, since many applicants are not qualified by health, training or disposition to earn a respectable weekly wage, but they and their friends are sure **the society ought to do something for them," because the Young Women's Christian Association name includes the word Christian, and they return after each failure not disappointed in themselves, but a little critical of the society which has disappointed them. Otherwise keen-sighted peo- ple are often slow to appraise the market value of the working capacities of dependent members of their own families. Since the only permanent employed officer in many of the early Associations was the ma- tron of the boarding home, whose waking hours were filled with discharging her first duties to the residents, volunteer committees on employment kept certain 74 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK hours at the Employment Bureau, meeting would-be employers, and girls and women looking for work, all the while depending upon the records on the desk for continuity of treatment. This method, which seems so haphazard and lamentably unscientific as to be wholly inadequate, had at least two arguments in its favor. The ladies of the committee and board knew as individuals the exact situation with which they as an organization were trying to cope, and further, there was a personal acquaintance revealing sympathy and desire to help, which often reached a happy out- come even if not the outcome either had at first an- ticipated. Many a girl who came to learn ''how to make a living" has found through the employment bureau "how to make a life.'* Mrs. E. P. Terhune, president of the Women's Christian Association of Newark, New Jersey, read a paper at the Pittsburgh conference in 1875, pleading for the moral courage in American families to have the daughters taught some useful trade, not profession, to be selected with wise regard to her taste and aptitude. So much more difficult was it also considered to find places for teach- ers, governesses, saleswomen, seamstresses, etc., than for domestic helpers that Philadelphia, New York and other Associations exerted all their energies within these and similar occupations, leaving the other plac- ings to agencies already established. Certain other Associations held, however, that many of the existing agencies were commercial and that the Association had more to give an applicant than a mere statement CITY DEVELOPMENT 75 of how many there were in the family and the weekly remuneration she might expect. Contrasts between labor conditions in the home and out of the home were constantly discussed and philoso- phies were based upon the advantages and disadvan- tages of both. One analysis of the domestic worker's position was made in 1873 with the greatest frank- ness. **It must be admitted that the amount of ab- solute labor required of a housemaid is often entirely disproportioned to her strength. Think of a single girl doing the washing and ironing for a family of ten people, more than half of whom are adults; and at the same time, with only the help of a nurse girl, who must be ready to take baby at any time, doing all the other work of the family, the cooking, sweep- ing, scrubbing, dusting, washing dishes and tending. To do this she must begin work two hours before male laborers, and continue at it until two hours after they are through, unless she be one of the exception- ally quick handed. For this she is fortunate if she receives the sum of three dollars per week, an amount entirely inadequate to the amount of service rendered. Why, even the washing and ironing of such a family is of itself enough to occupy a girl for full three days in the week, if the labor were as equally parcelled out to her as it is by the contractor to his men who sweep the streets. The sewing machine has added im- mensely to the work of the laundress in multiplying tucks and puffs and ruffles. The complications of trimming with which even one garment is adorned, 76 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK require as much time in crimping and pressing and fluting as would have served for half an ironing in an old fashioned family. If we are told that pecuni- ary circumstances will not justify the employment of a laundress, or indeed of any more expenditure in the direction of help, we inquire, why must restric- tions in expense be confined to this particular depart- ment of a home? If clean clothing, well cooked food and prompt and orderly service is a necessity why not curtail from the luxuries in order to secure it? We think there will have to be concessions before we can expect cheerful and contented helpers in our fam- ilies. The drudgeries will have to be provided for, even if it be at the expense of indulgence in other di- rections.*' It is humiliating to realize that forty years later this is still an unstandardized occupation, although the Commission on Domestic Service ap- pointed by the National Board to report at the Con- vention of 1915 showed that it was not disregarded. All the three earliest Associations carried on work for a couple of years before a boarding house was opened and in this time were mindful of that clause in their constitution about aiding young women **in the selection of suitable boarding places," but there was a basic conviction in the hearts of members of the administrative boards that to provide a Christian home for girls was an obligation they might not long postpone. The story of how the Women's Christian Associa- tion of St. Louis achieved its end might almost be a CITY DEVELOPMENT 77 chapter from the recording secretary's minutes or the annual report of any of the pioneer Associations. A committee was appointed to lease a building suit- able both to the wants of a large growing city and to the financial ability of the Association. A new build- ing with a sunny corner exposure presented itself. It contained about thirty rooms; there was a dining room extending the width of the building, also pantry, laundry, cellars, etc. In order for the unincorporated society to be able to secure the house for a year, a gentleman interested offered to take the lease from the landlord and receive the rent from the board as it could be raised. An appeal which was then sent to the Protestant churches asking each to furnish one or more rooms met with so prompt a response that in a month the home was formally opened. Inspection showed parlor and library at the left of the main en- trance, on the right an office and a sewing room. For the equipment of the sewing room two loaves of cake had been sold **0n 'Change'* and four sewing ma- chines (Wheeler & Wilson, Singer, Florence, Grover and Baker) had been donated. The many bedrooms were ''furnished in a becomingly neat and homelike manner, the walls hung with pictures, the mantels ornamented with vases, the black walnut sets of fur- niture cosily set in, the table with its bright covering, the beds faultlessly white, all speak of comfort if not of luxury." Within eight months one hundred and nine boarders were received, of whom twenty-three were seamstresses, ten were students, and the others variously employed. The reference committee gave 78 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK preference to the younger girls as permanent resi- dents, and the price of board ranged from three and a half to five dollars. Change and lack of work made the income uncertain, especially in the summer, and the Executive Committee asked for a contingent fund to relieve specific needs, since some of the members of the family were left at times without means of support except a share of the orders which came in to the sewing room as piece work. For purposes of administration in this boarding home in St. Louis there were at first committees on the Home, Admission, Supply, Visiting, Lectures, etc. The first September there was added a Committee on Social and Intellectual Culture which assisted in or- ganizing '*a club for intellectual improvement by means of reading, etc.,*' which met each week in the parlor, and arranged social functions for members and friends. There was also a Religious Committee, al- though the chief religious service was house prayers conducted each evening after supper by the superin- tendent, Mrs. Shepard Wells. Frequently a city pas- tor took charge of the devotional hour. Winter homes began to be a necessity, but summer homes were a luxury. The first venture of this kind was made in 1874 by Philadelphia. Its long cher- ished hope for an Association residence offering rest and recreation during the summer months was sud- denly realized when Mr. James A. Bradley donated a lot at Asbury Park, New Jersey, one of the favorite CITY DEVELOPMENT 79 beaches of the Atlantic Coast, only a short ride dis- tant from Philadelphia. Prompt measures were taken to erect a building and that very season *'Sea Rest ' ' was opened. Later additions enabled the house to accommodate one hundred and twelve guests and as the usual stay was limited to two weeks and the inclusive price for board was little over three dollars a week, many hundreds of women every year were able to enjoy the sea air and ocean bathing, to whom a sea side visit or even a change from city life would otherwise have been virtually impossible. On Conan- icut Island in Narragansett Bay the Providence As- sociation leased two farm houses in 1878 and fur- nished them for a vacation home conducted on much the same plan. In some Associations parties were made up to go to Vacation Lodges for week ends, or for a longer stay. Rest Cottage, which the heroic invalid Jennie Cas- siday founded and bequeathed to the Women 's Chris- tian Association of Louisville, was like the others in its aim to be a house for which Christ was the recog- nized head. She herself used each week to send a letter here to be read after Sunday morning prayers, and in this was always a bit of Bible exposition which she had worked out in hours of pain and thought, or as in this one case, had quoted from another: *'In Galatians, the fifth chapter, one reads of the fruit of the spirit. Love is the first thing and all else can be put into it. Joy is love exulting ; peace is love in re- pose; long suffering is love on trial; gentleness is 80 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK love in society; goodness is love in action; faith is love on the battlefield ; meekness is love at school, and temperance is love in training," The personal element which pervaded this Vacation House has also been felt in the Summer Cottage of the Milwaukee Association at Genesee Lake, AVisconsin, which Mr. Walter Lindsay put up in 1896 in memory of his wife, Mary KJQOwles, one of the charter mem- bers in Milwaukee. With its fifty acres of land it is what might be called a **self contained" estate, for rowing, swimming, tramping and extensive nature study may be enjoyed without leaving the premises. Amazing discoveries were made from time to time by every group of people who thought at all on what people are pleased to call Association problems. One discovery was that not so large a proportion of non- residents in comparison to real citizens as had been superficially supposed made use of even the privileges of the Association, to say nothing of cooperating in such a way that they would initiate further privileges which might be still further extended. Dependent upon this is the second discovery, namely, that there are not, as reckoned by the census, as many non-resi- dent as citizen young women in the majority of cities. If these discoveries were made by the board or ac- cepted by them, which for practical purposes is all the same, their attention was paid to young women who did not need shelter, as generously as it was af- forded those for whom this led the train of necessi- ties. Boston recognized this when the Beach Street CITY DEVELOPMENT 81 houses were opened and the dining room was con- ducted on the restaurant plan open to outsiders, but since that same dining room must cater to the resident family, it fell so far short in that requirement that when the Warrenton Street home was opened the fam- ily table was made the unit. The early Associations were too simply organized and too insufficiently equipped to meet the four separate issues which must be faced between eleven and two o'clock daily by an Association actually satisfying its natural constit- uency, which calls for a large central lunch room with rapid service and low prices to accommodate girls who are down town every day and want to make their noon hour reach around luncheon and errands; a well ap- pointed lunch room with attractive menu and service for people who are willing to spend time and money to obtain them and, like to find them in the Association ; a seven days in the week dining room arranged as to hours of meals and other features for transient guests whose rooms may be in the same building or in private homes in the neighborhood; and besides these, the family table of the Association residence, where menu, ^ service, grace at meals, personal acquaintance and con- versation are such as might be found in any Christian household and can be observed here even though this be a family of forty. Much of the bitter criticism of the Young Women's Christian Association which, so far as the public press is concerned, is usually lim- ited to the boarding home, comes from trying to unite these four features with one dining room, one matron and one domestic staff. 82 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK The first conspicuous attempt to afford a woman ^s hotel to distinctly transient guests was made by the New York City Young Women's Christian Associa- tion in 1891, when the ** Margaret Louisa" was opened at 14 East 16th Street. The beautiful building con- tained rooms for seventy young women, a restaurant seating one hundred and twelve and was given en- tirely equipped, by the one donor, Mrs. Elliott F. Shepard. When the Philadelphia boarding home department was well under way a lodging home under another roof was added and a restaurant was opened in 1872, which was visited within a year by one hundred or more girls and women each noon. A substantial din- ner of meat and vegetables was served for from ten to twenty cents or soup with bread at a charge of five cents. One day when a record was kept it was found that forty-three persons had secured a meal for five cents and the other seventy-one had dined at an aver- age price of not more than seven or eight cents. After a time one comer of the room was railed in, carpeted and supplied with reading matter and made into a pleasant waiting or lounging place. At its very organization in 1883 Baltimore decided to offer both mental and physical food, and the com- mittee appointed to secure rooms were charged to find such as were suitable for reading room, lunch room and kitchen. In less than two months these rooms were found in the central part of the city and scores of girls had enjoyed the savory meals, the few min- utes' peaceful loitering in the bright cozy parlor CITY DEVELOPMENT 83 where newspapers, magazines, and books were at hand, and the personal acquaintance with members of the employment and lunch committees who were always present. It is worthy of notice that five years later when the Baltimore Association had entered its new building it referred to these first quarters as the shabby upper room, approached through a dark alley up a rickety flight of outside steps, where the Young Women's Christian Association established herself, a veritable Cinderella among her elder sisters, treated with contempt by many of those whom she wished to serve. Perhaps the credit of naming this combination of luncheon with other features may be awarded to Poughkeepsie, which in 1886 described its *'Noon Hour Rest" as a place *^ where neatly spread lunch tables are in readiness every noon from twelve to one o 'clock for the accommodation of girls who bring their lunch to their places of employment. Hot coffee, tea and milk are served at a very small fee. From its lunch room the girls bring their work into our sunny pleasant parlor, where music, reading and conversa- tion make the noon hour the shortest of the day." Soon the Noon Rest had swept the country ; the name was popular, the idea back of it was exactly what many had been looking for — an invitation to bring or buy luncheon as one preferred and to expect to re- main for the rest of the noon hour. Concerts, Bible classes, popular talks, brief programs by artists en- tertaining in the city, fancy work instruction, every imaginable Association propaganda could be intro- 84 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK duced, in case the guest could finish her luncheon in time to enjoy some of these features and get back to desk or counter within sixty minutes. Private school alumnae associations helped annihi- late the time difficulty with the self service plan called ** Cafeteria. " Probably Kansas City, Missouri, was the first Young Women's Christian Association to in- stall this system, modelled after the Ogontz Club in the Pontiac Building in Chicago, and its neighbor, the Wildwood Club, maintained by Miss Kirkland's School. The room first opened in March, 1891, and was soon exchanged for a larger one, where the mem- bers passed between the brass rail and the counter, studied the menu poster, selected tray, cold foods, hot foods, waited for the penciled check, spread the table, ate and talked, carried back dishes and paid their way out at the other door in the same time they would ordinarily have spent waiting for a table and the return of the waitress with the food they had ordered. The novelty attracted attention, small cit- ies with limited equipment and few departments of wide appeal could do a service to the women of the town which was readily appreciated, and the small expense of supervision and labor made it pay almost without exception. **To have a good time, to get to know each other" — these were the goals to which the social department committees set their united front, even when an As- sociation was so small that one person as a committee CITY DEVELOPMENT 85 of the whole planned most of the good times and the members already knew each other. A cardinal point of the Association compass was the feeling against calling entertainments for revenue only, social affairs. If the scheme for such had arisen in the finance committee or in a ways and means com- mittee hoping for a new building or despairing over an old mortgage, to such committee should belong the labor and glory of putting it through. Both labor and glory were of a surety involved in such mammoth manoeuvres as the Exposition of Authors in St. Louis in 1875, and the Great Bazaar which the New York Association held ten years later in the Academy of Music, opened by the chairman, Mrs. D. H. McAlpin, and the Governor of the State, Samuel J. Tilden, for which Mr. R. C. Morse was chairman of the Press Committee, and which printed a daily paper to which Bryant, Holmes, Holland and other eminent authors contributed. Entertainments in which members took part or to which membership tickets admitted them, or which collected a small sum for delegates^ expenses, some- thing for which no appeal was made to the outside public, and yet from which the young women gained real pleasure, were not barred out of this category, as the returns were measured by a good time, not by increased funds. Holidays have always been scrupu- lously observed and the best publicity on behalf of membership was found to be the souvenirs which girls carried home from Hallowe'en or Valentine 86 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK festivities and exhibited to their friends the next day. But the Associations kept growing larger and the social committees which had been arranging one gath- ering each month and worrying over the budget basis therefor, realized that the occasions most enjoyed were not those when they had tried to cater to the entire membership, although their concept of democracy tried so to convince them. The times most keenly enjoyed were the social hours in connection with some regular work through which girls had begun to know each other, and whose acquaintance could be deep- ened, where newcomers could be welcomed into a cir- cle which they would meet again and again. The pic- nic supper of the bicycle club, the birthday party for a teacher or secretary, the celebration for which guests were invited to the boarding home, all these could be planned for by the participants with as much hilarity as was actually enjoyed on the evening in question, and the social committee proper could con- centrate on the large affairs. The lunch room equipment was put to use, and banquets brought out the members for the annual business meeting of the Association. Open house on New Year's Day or on Washington's Birthday was a time for cooperating with the Young Men's Christian Association. Sum- mer picnics in parks and winter picnics in gymnasi- ums — every season was utilized. A new conception of democracy was acknowledged. That democracy in which girls could plan their good CITY DEVELOPMENT 87 times in connection with their classes led on to the clubs, where working together made a short cut to a new social life, or playing together. Outside of the Girls' Branches, where the children's office-holding had the club flavor, the first real self governing club may have been that resulting from Miss Grace H. Dodge's visit to Baltimore in 1887. In the Harlem Association in 1894 the prevailing spirit seemed to be club spirit, for that year the Birthday Building Club, the Literary Club, and the Annex Choral Club all voted themselves into life, to be followed in 1895 by the Colgate Chrysanthemum Club, which either because of its brilliant name, or of the relation held to it by IVIiss R. F. Morse, who had been associated in club life with Miss Dodge, seemed to hold the front of the platform for many years. In the days when there were no free public li- braries, and memberships in corporate libraries or rentals for books were costly, in the days when there were no free evening schools, in the days when there was no available trade or technical instruction for girls, in the days when household arts had not been academically formulated, the Christian Association, which recognized mental culture as a necessity in the whole development of young womanhood, undertook to collect libraries, teach English branches and gen- eral subjects, provide classes preparing the pupils for self support, and gather the untrained into classes in sewing, cooking and other domestic accomplishments. But even when these educational agencies appeared 88 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK in community after community the city Associations had still their task before them in making books ac- cessible to busy girls, or cultivating or guiding the-ir choice in reading; in supplying evening classes at the hours when employed young women could attend, and for such blocks of time as they could devote to study, also in stimulating them to begin and heartening them to continue ; in studying the labor market and opening classes from which graduates could reasonably hope to go into occupations for which they had showed nat- ural aptitude ; and in seizing the first opportunity to secure teachers of the common household subjects which everybody declared all girls should understand, but for teaching which no provision had apparently ever been made. For many years the word ** Library," as applied to Young Women's Christian Associations, custom- arily presented to the mental vision a room contain- ing shelves and a table for reading matter, not a col- lection of books for which shelf space had been pro- vided. Lacking a library endowment, the supply of books depended upon occasional ''book socials" where friends cheerfully parted with books they thought girls ought to read, because they knew they them- selves did not wish to read them, or upon spasmodic efforts of the library committee to secure the price of a certain new book from an individual donor. Lacking a librarian the distribution was restricted too often to fixed hours of attendance by the library com- mittee, hours which were not always frequent enough to accommodate many people whose weekly visits to CITY DEVELOPMENT 80 the building might not coincide with them, though for those who could attend it was very satisfactory. The other method, free access to the shelves at all times by the patrons, who selected their own books and made note of such as they withdrew, resulted in a more general use. More books were taken out and vastly more failed to come back. Just as a pleasing notion once prevailed that or- ganized Christian work for young women could be postponed until the young men of a city had been adequately and permanently taken care of in these respects, so there seemed to be an unwritten declara- tion of confidence that any girl who would be at- tracted to a Young Women's Christian Association by a library was of such serious tastes that she "did not really need the Association" so much as others, and hence efforts that might have built up a library were directed toward equipping a gymnasium or put- ting an addition on the boarding home. Occasional exceptions to this state of things were York, Penn- sylvania, among the smaller, and New York City among the larger Associations. Go teach the orphan boy to read. The orphan girl to sew, was the scathing advice meted out to Lady Clara Vere de Vere by the first person in Tennyson's poem. Not the orphan, however, but the Lady Clara was to benefit from the process, and so in the primitive years of Association education where a class was formed be- cause there was an available volunteer teacher, where 90 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK there was no thought of payment, where the number of lessons in the term depended on how soon a class could be got under way, and how long the teacher would meet the class or could hold it together, the benefit accruing was as often to the teacher as the class. For example, a tall school teacher all through a long cold winter regularly met a class in which a little dressmaker was the most devoted student. By spring the dressmaker had found her chance in a pre- paratory school where she could partly earn her way, and the teacher was communicating with a home mis- sion board concerning a new sort of teaching. Sta- tistical reports would have been too voluminous to print if all the similar incidents in fifty years of edu- cational classes could have been written out. Without question common English branches and fancy needle work were taught to small groups in al- most every city Young Women's Christian Associa- tion, and many of those which bore the name Women 's Christian Association, but Boston definitely reports a class in singing the first year (1866), and a little later classes in astronomy, physiology, penmanship, bookkeeping, botany and history. Leaving at one side for a moment the trade or teachnical classes, we find in New Haven and other cities classes in entertaining reading, then German, current events, drawing, Eng- lish literature. First Aid to the Injured, choir music, elocution, Latin, and French. ]Most of the Boston topics are repeated here and there except astronomy. No other educational committee seemed ever to have the ambition to hitch its wagon to a star. As work CITY DEVELOPMENT 91 went on and courses were more definitely outlined, fixed school terms, class fees, paid teachers, both day and evening sessions, and certificates for completed courses were gradually introduced. But it is in the realm of classes in which students prepared for remunerative positions that the service of the Young Women's Christian Association has been most hugely appreciated by young women, and by the community at large. The need for encouraging young women to fit themselves for self support was one of the first lessons borne in upon employment committees and boards of directors, and they determined in offer- ing such classes to make the hours, scope of work, rates, and all circumstances convenient and beneficial to intending students. As early as 1868 bookkeeping was taught in connection with penmanship. The Civil War had called women into offices and clerical training was in demand. In 1874 Philadelphia in- troduced telegraphy. In 1880 New York City made a success of a class in phonography, the practice of which in connection with typewriting was said to be the **most remunerative for their sex"; later on type- writing alone was advertised with the explanation that *'some firms prefer typewriting to penmanship." In 1880 retouching photograph negatives was taught and a class of eight competent women graduated, then photo coloring, crayons, and India ink drawing, and in 1884 technical design and free hand enlarging. In Boston and New York and elsewhere the busi- ness branches soon grew into a commercial depart- 92 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK ment or mercantile school. After eight years the superintendent in the former city was able to say they had as yet had no pupil returned to them as in- competent. Care was always taken to inculcate a sense of the responsibility of a stenographer's posi- tion and the confidential nature of the information of her employer's affairs which she possessed. Most pronounced has been the success of the art department or school of the New York City Association, which in course of time offered a three years' course fitting graduates for positions in numerous fields of art and applied design. Silver and gold medals have repeat- edly been given this Association for exhibits at In- ternational Pairs and Expositions here and abroad. No doubt the parallel of Lady Clara Vere de Vere 's efforts — if she did make the attempt — to teach the orphan girl to sew, would have been found in the many industrial schools undertaken by churches and missions and by many Women's Christian Associa- tions. But the instruction in sewing, dressmaking, and millinery given to young women who wished this skill as a personal accomplishment, or a means of earning a living, is the more natural theme in this study of Industrial Education in the Christian As- sociation movement. If the Crystal Palace . Exhibition of 1851 was to have a permanent effect upon industrial and mechan- ical arts, there was also an American event of that same year which affected women's industrial relations in a degree previously unbelievable. This was the CITY DEVELOPMENT 98 perfection of the sewing machine, by which in that one year Wheeler & Wilson brought out the circular bobbin type, Singer the vertical needle and shuttle type, and Grover and Baker the double needle and two spools type of machine, all based upon certain of the original features which Elias Howe, commonly called *Hhe father of the sewing machine,'* had pat- ented in 1846. These were followed in 1857 by Wil- cox and Gibbs' single thread machines, and after 1867, when royalties were removed, many others ap- peared in the market. Pessimistic communications of the period indicate that *' woman's weapon, the needle,'* had somehow been turned against her. Ma- chines were so expensive that two dollars was p^^id for daily rent of one, if a seamstress wished, or was obliged to cater to customers who looked for modish machine stitching instead of hand sewing. In every boarding home where the occupations of the residents were enumerated in any available rec- ord, seamstresses always headed the list, and needle- women might also be listed under other classifications as well, when they were machine operators upon one specified product, such as vest makers and cap mak- ers. This proportion would have been higher if the seamstresses, who were given room and board during their engagements in private homes, could have had rooms over Sunday regularly reserved for them by the Association and thus have been enrolled, but there were usually so many applicants for the full seven days of the week that any two day plan seemed im- possible, although the hardship it worked to the seam- 94 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK stresses was recognized by the Association and openly regretted. The sewing room in the St. Louis board- ing home has already been noted as one means in help- ing the seamstresses to keep their economic footing in these perilous transition times. One remembers that the Ladies' Christian Union of New York City had been organized twelve years before it established the Young Ladies' Branch. As was both desirable and inevitable, maintenance of their Association boarding home had led to the estab- lishment of an employment bureau and this was trans- ferred to the Branch, which endeavored to find places for teachers, housekeepers, first class seamstresses, etc. More than this, they set aside quarters for a fine needlework department for which were donated **One best Wheeler and Wilson sewing machine from Hon- orable Peter Cooper, one best Singer sewing machine donated from the French Fair by the subscription of several ladies, one Elliptic best sewing machine from St. Luke's department of the Methodist Fair voted to the Association by numerous friends." A dozen more Elliptic machines were furnished by a gentleman who also gave the services of a competent teacher. In February, 1872, a class in machine sewing began, which later on graduated thirty-two members, most of whom at once secured good positions. That fall Wheeler and Wilson extended a similar courtesy in furnishing machines and teachers, but later on the department paid its instructors and bought machines of various makes. The class beginning that fall worked four hours daily for four weeks, and supple- CITY DEVELOPMENT 95 mented the mechanical instruction with a hand finish- ing course in order to learn the nicer details of sew- ing and become fully prepared to enter families as seamstresses. Springfield, Massachusetts, taught ma- chine operating as women came in with their own sewing to the rooms for a social evening. German- town, Pennsylvania, conducted a sewing school regu- larly four evenings of the week for girls employed in mills during the day. A three months' period of instruction from 8 A. m. to 5 p. M. was required in the industrial school which the Young Ladies' Branch of the Cincinnati Associa- tion conducted at this time. It had both a primary and a dressmaking department. Sewing was included in the curriculum of both the Boston and St. Louis training schools and out of sewing classes came the students for the dressmaking classes, and the cutting and fitting classes with costume design as an ultimate goal. While ''almost every one'' could teach sewing in popular estimation, if she were herself a skilled seam- stress and dressmaker, the science of cooking waited for its general presentation until there were competent professional teachers of the subject. It is said that the modern form of instruction in the Household Arts sprang from the renewed inter- est in all these lines at the time of the Centennial Ex- position in Philadelphia in 1876, but cooking had been already reduced to academic terms in the State Agri- cultural College of Iowa at Ames (1869), in the Kan- 96 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK sas Agricultural College at Manhattan, and in the Illinois Industrial University (later the University of Illinois) at Urbana in 1874. Here Lou Allen (later Mrs. Gregory) taught household science in the *' first college course of high grade in the United States, if not in the world.*' Eastern progress cen- tered around distinguished teachers of cooking who began as lecturers and demonstrators. One of these authorities was Juliet Corson, who started in 1874 a free Training School for Women in New York City. A ladies' cooking class was formed the next year and in 1876 in her own home she opened the New York Cooking School. From January to April, 1879, there was an attendance of 6,560 in public and private classes under her direction. In 1877 she copyrighted a Cooking School Text Book. New England was led in this movement by Maria Parloa who lectured in New London in 1876 and in Boston in 1877, opening that fall a school on Tremont Street. The next year she organized a Domestic Science department in La- sell Seminary, Auburndale, Mass., and the following year she lectured at the assembly of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, at Chautauqua, New York, and at the Boston Cooking School which had been founded that same year. Its principal was Mrs. D. A. Lincoln. Attention has already been given to the instruction in cooking which the Boston Association in 1879 gave to members of the Training School for Domestics, also the day and evening classes for general students, and the class from the Winthrop School in the spring of CITY DEVELOPMENT 97 1880. Educational authorities say that instruction in household subjects in Boston was at its start supported by private funds in classes outside the school, and the claim that this Boston Association class was the be- ginning of cooking lessons in the Boston public schools has never been disproved. In the city of St. Louis there was public sentiment favoring the establishment of a cooking school, and the Association had been hoping and working for a training school in which cooking instruction should find a place. Consequently at their invitation Miss Corson came out in April, 1881, and gave a series of ten morning and afternoon lessons which were so well attended as to net $1,200 for the Association treasury, and the interest in cooking as a domestic accomplishment as well as a trade was extended. By the fall of 1882 a house had been leased and various ladies had gathered up classes from among their own acquaintance to start the movement. Young ladies' cooking clubs in the early eighties were popular social functions throughout the country and many of the Association classes were more social than technical in character. One finds records that ' ' six brides-to-be ' ' or * ' six young men going camping ' ' were enrolled here and there. In 1887 there were already Association classes in Cincinnati, Worcester, Poughkeepsie and New Haven, usually under teachers trained in Boston. The Connecticut city held a course during July and August for a class composed of sixty-eight pupils, largely girls employed by the day in stores and factories. 98 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK While the laboratory method was partially em- ployed, in that every pupil had a hand in the prepara- tion of the food, yet individual equipment was rarely introduced before the late nineties, after which time it was considered essential. Milwaukee made an in- novation by including a model apartment of parlor, bedroom, dining room and kitchen in its building, dedicated in 1901, and here housekeeping as well as cooking could be properly demonstrated. As the local Associations became better equipped they were in a position to receive classes in dietetics from nurses' training schools and other public insti- tutions. Up to the present time (1916) no Associa- tion has undertaken to give complete training for nurses, but the need in every home of at least one member able to give something better than the over- devoted, under-intelligent care of the sick common in most families has led many Associations to offer a trained attendant's course. The Brooklyn Associa- tion gave much attention to discovering new types of women's work and in 1890 opened a course of train- ing to fit women for convalescent and chronic cases as a salaried occupation. Dr. Eliza Mosher and other physicians helped lay out the course and gave part of the lectures. Qualified women who completed the course of forty lessons were able even at first to secure salaries of from eight to twelve dollars per week. Others discovered their own talents and began regu- lar hospital training. While it would be a gratification to study the mer- CITY DEVELOPMENT 99 its of the different systems of physical education, and to believe that the various Associations discussed these before introducing this department, yet the truth is that the Young Women's Christian Associations were largely following in the wake of all sorts of influences and practices already active in the communities. To some people physical education meant gymnastics as strenuously exemplified by the Turn Vereins of the resident German- Americans. This meant to them a hall with heavy apparatus, acrobatic feats and Sun- day parades. To others it meant a Young Men's Christian Association building with a gymnasium, baths, a salaried director and a large budget. To many others it meant that misconception or dilution or caricature of Dr. Dio Lewis' adaptation of the Swedish free movements which under the name of ** calisthenics" appeared on the daily program of the public schools. This succeeded through the first com- mands of ** stand up straight, shoulders back," in curving the spines of the executors of the orders, until the violent thumping of clenched fists upon flat little chests, accompanied by vocal counting 4-4 time, had somewhat counter-balanced the affliction. To some a little later it meant *'Delsarte," which being com- monly interpreted by a young woman who had ''taken a course of lessons" meant throwing the weight on the ball of the foot, and with the wrist leading, and the eye following the hand, going rhythmically and to soft, slow, sad music, through classic postures of the torso where must be strength, and angelic wavings of the extremities where must be freedom. ^ 100 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK When gymnasium classes were formed the system adopted depended upon the physical director secured, and the extent of her teaching depended upon the place which was called gymnasium and the amount of equipment it could or did contain. Hope Narey in Boston, Mary S. Dunn in Kansas City, and Abby S. Mayhew in Minneapolis were three creative phys- ical directors to whom the entire Young Women's Christian Association movement in America and abroad owes deference and gratitude. As Boston had shown ingenuity in fastening up chest weights — the first practical developing appliance in this field — ^to the doorways of a boarding home, so other Associa- tions used their rented rooms in such a way that every square foot of floor space served a multiple pur- pose, for the one large area must be lunch room at noon, assembly hall on Sunday, social center at the demand of the entertainment committee and gym- nasium whenever classes were scheduled. By 1887 Philadelphia, Poughkeepsie, and New York City reported classes in light calisthenics ac- companied by the piano. The next year Coldwater, Michigan, and Newburgh, New York, had the same, but Scranton, Pennsylvania, had fitted up a room for a gymnasium with rings, Indian clubs, dumb bells, wands and a chestweight. Worcester was holding four classes weekly in ** physical culture including voice training. '* More than in any other department democracy was felt here. A gymnasium suit and team play obliterated social and educational parti- tions. With the recognition of the body as the tern- CITY DEVELOPMENT 101 pie of the Holy Spirit old members got a new vision of a complete life and new members began to ** be- lieve in the Young Women's Christian Association." After this time a gymnasium must be reckoned with in organizing an Association and in renting rooms or planning a new building. Board members realized its value and glibly answered questions and argued that the work itself combined strength and elasticity of muscle with beauty and grace of movement. Worcester, Brooklyn and Newburgh were among the early owners of gymnasiums constructed in their buildings, but not till Buffalo and Montgomery in 1905 succeeded to Young Men's Christian Association buildings did any Young Women's Christian Associa- tion give swimming instruction in their swimming pool. Later on a pool, or merely a plunge, began to be thought a requisite for any organization of this character. Lord Shaftesbury showed his interest in the protec- tion of young girls by paying for placards which the several railroad companies allowed to be put up in the terminal stations of London in 1885. These gave addresses of Young Women's Christian Association Homes and Institutes both in London and provincial towns, from which representatives would come to meet upon application any girls arriving in the city who had no friends there to look after them. This was in connection with a Traveler's Aid department and secretary working at 17 Old Cavendish Street, when that address was headquarters of the London Associa- 102 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK tion. So strongly was the pressing need for protec- tion brought out by the press at that time, that the necessity of a movement to unite forces willing to help and to avoid overlapping was felt. A meeting was called at Exeter Hall of some twenty-two different so- cieties engaged among women and girls and a per- manent union effected under the name of the Trav- eler's Aid Society, with a standing committee of men and women. Lady Frances Balfour was president and her associates represented the Girls' Friendly Society, Young Women's Help Society, Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants, the Re- formatory and Refuge Union, Protective and Rescue Society for Jewish Girls, National Vigilance Associa- tion and Girls' Helpful Society. One might say that it was **in bound" travelers whom this society was to assist, but for *'out bound" passengers the British ladies had already been concerned for nearly thirty years through their connection with the British Ladies' Female Emigration Society. But the out- bound travelers of the old world became the inbound travelers of the new, and both British agencies had been long in communication with Association homes and friends in America before the Boston Young Women's Christian Association actually formed a de- partment in charge of a secretary (1887). The Chi- cago Association in 1888 had a Traveler's Aid de- partment and a transient home in connection with it. Matrons at stations and ferries were provided in Kan- sas City and St. Louis, Missouri and San Francisco as a beginning. It frequently occurred that long CITY DEVELOPMENT 103 after the necessity of this work had so appealed to the station officials that they had added the matron to the pay rolls of the company, the Association was asked to nominate suitable persons to the vacancies, and to advise with them about matters much as if she represented only the Association. In the ceaseless debate between the advocates of domestic and factory labor, the anti-factory speakers have cited not only the long hours but the unpleasant surroundings of factory and mill operatives. In this regard the same error exists that always makes trouble when people generalize about any human beings, young versus old, native versus foreign, rich versus poor, and attach to hundreds of thousands, the charac- teristics or the circumstances that may have pertained to a few individuals. The ease with which statistics are gathered about manufacturing establishments aids this. People easily fancy so many girls, coming from such-looking mills, where they have been doing such and such things, going along such streets to such homes, and flatter themselves that they **know fac- tory girls.'* It was not with such a spirit that the devoted women of the New York Ladies* Christian Associa- tion had visited at noon in the American Tract House and a hoop skirt factory. They were fresh from an uplifting, regenerating, rejuvenating religious experi- rience, which made the whole city of New York a place for which Christ had died, and although timid and hesitant over the ordeal, they found their way 104 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK to the places where girls were and at a time when they were at liberty. Probably they had personal ac- quaintances in these places through whom the visits were arranged. It was not such a spirit which caused the Germantown Association as soon as it was organized to open a night school where sewing and other womanly arts were taught, where social life was enjoyed and where a Bible class held the main place in the weekly program. Many Associations had regu- lar campaigns of invitation into workrooms and places of business. If it was convenient for the girls they boarded at the Association homes and had a hand in everything that was going on. There was no dis- tinction in membership, but the fact finally had to be faced that in many cities the home and business localities of thousands of girls were too far away from the Association for the rank and file of industrial workers to know or care whether there were any Young Women 's Christian Associations. It was then that the people at the center who really did know, and really did care, began to think of ** ex- tending*' the Association to where the girls really were. Some Associations, Baltimore (1889), Scran- ton (1891) and Milwaukee (1893) found rooms for a miniature Association in a part of town nearer the homes or the factories. Dayton went even further in 1892, and their work- ers had a regular Monday appointment at the National Cash Register factory, for what was called the ''Busy Girls' Half Hour" in the workroom after luncheons were eaten. Health, dress and morals were themes CITY DEVELOPMENT 105 for practical talks — Bible verses were memorized. The meetings, which always opened with prayer, were mutual exchanges of ideas about Christian helpfulness, for many of the group were leaders in their own church organizations. One November day the **Busy Girls" showed one hundred and seventy-five jars and glasses of fruit which they had collected for the Dea- coness Hospital; at Easter a similar offering was ready. More cities worked out the same plan. Charlotte Adams made regular visits to bakeries and cigar factories in Pittsburgh, from 1894 on. Maude Wolff's visits in the Milwaukee factories in 1895 are another paragraph, as is Isabel Smith's picturesque bicycle trip to a Kalamazoo paper mill one May day in 1897, carrying a large baker's roll as her text book for a talk on the Feeding of the Five Thousand. Her comrade was a board member bearing her guitar to accompany the gospel hymns sung heartily by men, boys, women and girls all seated on bales of rags and piles of paper. The clubs that grew out of these, the revelations of leadership, the addition of a member to the secretarial staff whose sole duty was in indus- trial plants, such as Neva Chappell in Minneapolis in 1900 — all this is but the preface of a story of which we are even now living only the beginning. As has been seen, the first building erected con- tained dormitories, but in New York City in 1887 a new type of structure made its appearance. Under the title, ''Certain Forms of Women's Work for Women," Helen Campbell contributed an article to *'The Century Magazine" for June, 1889, which was 106 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK splendidly illustrated and aroused attention all over the country. The bare description of the building follows. January 18, 1887, saw the dedicatory ceremonies and the simple but beautiful building, five stories in height, was thrown open for public inspection. Brick with red free- stone arches and trimmings was the material employed, terra, cotta ornamentation being freely used, the result being one of the most attractive facades among the many examples of good work which New York now oflFers in this direction. A vestibule with tiled floor gives access to a broad hall, finished like the entire interior in ash, stained to produce the effect of antique oak. Wide double doors open on the west side to the social parlor, thirty feet square, with carved mantel and cheerful open fire, on the east to the employ- ment room and their various offices, while back of both is the chapel, running completely across the building and some 70 X 40 feet. On the second story is the library running across the entire front, two small rooms at each side being partitioned off — that on the east as reading and reference room, on the west for magazines and periodicals. The third, fourth and fifth stories are devoted to the class rooms, including typewriting, stenography, machine and hand sewing, dress cutting and fitting, bookkeeping and arithmetic, and technical design; in short, all the branches in which women engaged in over thirty trades may desire to fit themselves for more efficient work. In all these, save dress cutting and fitting, instruction is free to members whose small yearly fee gives opportunities in every direc- tion. On the fifth floor are two art rooms with artists' sky- lights, one of them occupying the entire back of the build- ing which is slightly narrower than the front. An Industrial Room gives seamstresses an opportunity of exhibiting their work, fancy and otherwise, and orders are taken for every variety. Monthly entertainments, concerts, recitations, et cetera, give needed diversion, and a small gynmasium with a skilled teacher is the satisfactory climax of the work undertaken. CITY DEVELOPMENT 107 This type of administration building was found practicable for small as well as large cities, which Newburgh and other places soon proved. Almost all these departments were matters of evo- lution, as were indeed the whole city Associations; in a way the Associations were led on, one by one, to meet the fundamental necessities of girls: religious fellowship and instruction, individual needs of em- ployment, protection, housing and food, acquaintance with the right kind of friends and books, study for culture and self support, physical preparedness for life, and a chance to work together in being useful to the whole community. CHAPTER X THE ORIGIN OP STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS THE Woman's Student Movement within the Young Women's Christian Association had its beginning in the coeducational colleges of the Middle West. Among these may be included the colleges closely- related to one religious denomination even if not con- trolled by it; the state universities of which only the undergraduate department was taken into account ( for the graduate departments were chiefly the schools of law, medicine and dentistry, often situated at the metropolis of the State, away from the main seat of the university, at the state capital or other smaller city) ; and the normal schools, which offered an aca- demic course of two years beyond college entrance requirements. Both colleges and normal schools had large preparatory departments enrolling more or less mature students who were accepted into college life in accordance with their age and ability, not their class rating. The exact functions of university, col- lege and normal school were not always consciously distinguished. Young women chose the state uni- versity because of the variety of courses offered, the better equipment and the larger faculty. They at- 108 ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 109 tended their denominational college in their own State as a matter of course, or because they lived near by such in ease they were of another church connec- tion. Aside from the young women who wanted to teach school and attended the normal school as the logical preparation for their chosen profession, there were also the daughters of educationally thrifty par- ents who went to a normal school because they could fit themselves for self support there in half the time it would take if they went to college, a quantitative rather than a qualitative analysis of the matter, one might almost say. For the person seeking the bachelor's degree in arts or science in the '70 's or '80 's there was slight varia- tion in the courses of most colleges except that Greek, in the classical course, added a third year in the **prep" department as the scientific course meant only two years' preparatory work in which there was no Greek. The weekly schedule ran along in solid blocks of five, — each of the five days of the week an hour long recitation in Latin, one in some other lan- guage, one in mathematics, until history and mental philosophy and moral philosophy and the other higher studies were reached. Alterations in the curriculum were gradual and were accomplished mainly by the advent of a new professor *'from the East" or the return of some distinguished alumnus who **had been East" fitting himself for an alumni chair. That elec- tives were slow in finding a place was not due alone to fondness of the Board of Trustees for those sub- jects which must be dropped from a student's course 110 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK in order to allow him a choice — one does not easily forget the consternation over the rumor that a col- lege proposed to graduate a student without Latin — but the delay was also due to the meager resources of library and laboratory and the short list of faculty members as well. Perhaps the faculty was small, but in instance after instance it was a faculty of great teachers and great men. The president was usually an ordained man, from some New England storehouse of learning; his classes in logic and evidences of Christianity were the meet- ing places of souls and minds for students possessed of both. When the president did not play the part of guide, philosopher and friend, an intellectual giant with the heart of a friendly child, there was always sure to be some ** grand old man'* on the faculty, from whose steadfast personality the character of individu- als and the very character of the college caught their tone. In two or three instances this ranking person- ality was a woman. Usually the preceptress, or lady principal, was content to teach four classes in modern languages each day, preside over the ladies' dormi- tory and administer the rules of the college both for town and out of town girls, interpreting and enforc- ing the regulations ''concerning the Association of ladies and gentlemen." The faculty sat in a row on the rostrum at chapel, and the men took turns in giving out the hymns, reading the scrip- ture lesson and offering prayer ; but it was the presi- dent, or in his absence on preaching or financing tours, ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 111 the vice-president, wlio gave the notices and made talks beginning, *'It has been brought to my attention — " The college building occupied little space on the ample campus which had been laid out in the early days of the town. Perhaps the college had been the motive for building the town. If the chapel were larger than the church of the corresponding denomina- tion it was the main community audience room. If the church were larger it was upon that platform that students rehearsed in the unaccustomed rainbow col- ored light of a mid-week afternoon, those orations and prize declamations, which admiring relatives from all over the state would come to hear. The men's dormitories rarely had commons, but the students made up boarding clubs at private houses, or took their meals at the women's hall, or boarded them- selves. Sometimes young women were granted per- mission by the faculty to set up their own housekeep- ing in furnished rooms, and a few girls lived with even less expense by working for their board in a family which understood and accepted the college hours, namely, morning recitations at eight, nine, ten and eleven, afternoon classes at two and three o'clock and chapel at four. Sometimes chapel began the day in- stead of closing it. In the denominational coUege many of the faculty felt very deeply their responsibility for the **cure of souls" and expressed this not so much in the required chapel services as in the mid-week college prayer meeting, in the Day of Prayer services on the holi- day granted the last Thursday of January, and in 112 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK those revivals of religion which sometimes followed upon that day of prayer or upon the Evangelical Alliance Week of Prayer in which the churches united the first week of January. To these general services must be added the young ladies* prayer meeting, which the preceptress led each week and in which many a girl, who had made a decision for Christ in a larger meeting began that religious expression which she found not only a result of growth, but a means to growth. Back of this the constant intercession of parents and pastors at home could be reckoned on for certain young folks whose careers had been guided toward college in the hope that they would not be dis- obedient to the heavenly vision to which they had not before responded or had followed only haltingly. The last call of the whole college course was some service during Commencement Sunday, led, perhaps, by an alumnus, when some one who had been appar- ently uninfluenced by any manifestation of religious life or teaching during the past four or six or seven years would rise and say, **I could not leave this col- lege without testifying that I go out as a disciple of Jesus Christ." Then the professors forgot their heavy schedules and their scant salaries irregularly paid, and their remoteness from intellectual resources and the faintness of any hope of bettering these con- ditions, they forgot the tedious faculty meetings, and the indifference of undergraduates and the criticisms from within and without; they thanked God for one more student ready to live, and took courage for the next incoming generation. ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 113 Commencement Day was the brightest jewel of Commencement Week, which crowned the year. Each member of the graduating class delivered an oration, and the valedictory and salutatory honor speakers could indulge in a few words of Latin to match the sonorous sentences of the president, as with dignity he placed his silk beaver hat upon his head, rose and bestowed the diplomas upon men in frock coats and girls in puffed and trained white muslin dresses, and wearing pink roses in their hair. Bunches of garden roses and bouquets of vari-colored flowers had greeted the close of each address, they came in showers from galleries and seats in the old chapel, but if in the new church were carried up by ushers and banked up the whole corner where the class received the congratula- tions of their friends. Then came Commencement dinner with toasts. Some one must represent the graduating class, but rarely a girl, although she might be intellectually gifted enough to have just produced the valedictory oration. But in the evening when the alumni (where now the class truly belonged) and fac- ulty and townspeople met at the president's '* Levee," as this annual reception was called, the white muslins and pink roses were the center of attraction. Educa- tion was Coeducation. Each college was divided into halves, not by aca- demic standing, nor by sex, but by two rival camps known as literary societies. Subdivisions were by sex, for as the men were lined up into Philalatheans and Adelphians, so were the young women into Athenas and Hesperians. The Philalatheans and their sister 114. FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Athenas collaborated not only in the college year, but during vacation skirmished to bring in the members equally coveted by the Hesperians and their brothers the Adelphians. The decorations of their halls, the solidity of their Friday night debates, even their par- ticipation in religious and general college issues, were conducted on the strictest partisan lines if society spirit was running high. The social life of the undergraduates centered around the receptions, sleighing parties and boat-rides of these societies more than around class matters. Other voluntary organizations such as the college newspaper board, the foreign missionary society, the oratorical society, the college chorus, lacked flavor in comparison. This same competitive spirit marked the intercol- legiate relations, which were in early days limited al- most entirely to the state oratorical contest, from which champions were sent to the inter-state contests, and the winning speakers and winning orations were never forgotten by a grateful constituency. But knowing each other, appreciating each other, co-opera- ting in anything at home or abroad — that was not dreamed of. Had it been dreamed of, would it have been desired? On the main line of the Chicago and Alton railroad, two miles north of Bloomington, the state of Illinois had established in 1857 the Illinois State Normal Uni- versity, and the village had taken the name of Normal. Here in 1872 the cultural features of education were fully recognized and the faculty were interested in ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 115 graduating not simply teachers, but men and women with a working idealism that would stir them to take a hand wherever they might find themselves. It was a congenial soil in which a voluntary religious organ- ization of young women might spring up and flourish. Some of the student girls realized a need for a meet- ing for Bible study, Christian conversation and prayer where no restraint would be felt and which would not interfere with attendance at church services or Sun- day school. Three other students and two friends from one of the churches met with Lida Brown in her room, Sunday afternoon, November 12, and after all had prayed they talked over the possibility of a regu- lar meeting in a larger place where more would feel free to attend than might come to a private house. The committee appointed that afternoon reported dur- ing the week that the vestibule of the Congregational Church had been offered, and here they met regularly, with increase in both attendance and interest owing largely to revival meetings held in town under the preaching of Mr. Hammond the revivalist. To make these meetings permanent an organization seemed de- sirable and a committee brought in a constitution on January 19, 1873, in which they had hoped to be original, but at the last moment could produce nothing better than the borrowed constitution of the Young Men's Christian Association of the school. They styled themselves the Young Ladies' Christian As- sociation of Normal, Illinois, but in September, 1881, after a new constitution had been adopted in the spring, were satisfied to become merely Young Women. 116 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Their officers were president, Ida E. Brown (Mrs. James Gary) ; vice president, Ida Witbeck (Mrs. Charles De Garmo) ; secretary, Emma V. Stewart (Mrs. I. E. Brown) ; treasurer, Lida A. Brown (Mrs. William P. McMurry). The secretary was very em- phatic as to their relation to the Men's Christian As- sociation and repeatedly explained, ''This Young Women's Christian Association is not an offshoot of the Young Glen's Christian Association. The only part they took in the formation of our Association was that of a goad. They wearied us by saying continu- ally: 'Why don't you form an Association similar to oursT This was after our prayer meeting had grown too large to be handled without some system and we were debating about what it was best to do. They also kindly lent us their constitution and by- laws, upon our application. With the organization of the prayer meeting they had nothing to do, not even the part of the importunate widow." Soon the attendance outgrew the vestibule and the body of the church was used for meetings, until it burned in the spring of 1873, when the basement of the Methodist church was placed at their disposal. These meetings were usually led by one of the mem- bers, each appointed by her predecessor, and upon such topics as The Love of God, Faith, Prayer, Praise, Christian Work, Christ, the Rock. All present were invited to speak. Both men and women led the eve- ning meetings, which they held with the Young jMen's Christian Association. Soon these were held each Tuesday evening and a twenty minute noon prayer Ida a. Brown Emma V. Stewart LiDA A. Brown Jennie Leonard Hattie A. Lawson Founders of the First Student Association ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 117 meeting for girls met twice a week in the White Room of the University Building, In this same building the business meetings found a place in the recitation room of the preceptress or of one of the professors. The leadership of these services and the rotation in office occasioned by electing new officers and execu- tive committee each of the three terms of the school, with an extra committee for the vacation term, cer- tainly gave to all of the members a chance for de- velopment of their gifts. There were also several standing committees, and special committees from time to time, as for example, ''a committee consisting of two members from each of the churches was ap- pointed to confer with those who had recently become Christians, about joining some church.'^ "Each of the churches" meant Presbyterian, Baptist, Congre- gational, Methodist and Christian. Other special committees planned neighborhood work. The minutes were faithfully kept as may be seen from some of the entries. A Committee of three was elected to appoint one person in each row of seats (evidently in the Normal Assembly Hall) to speak with those sitting in that row and ask them to join our Association and to attend the meetings. The Association passed the following resolution, whereas Mr. D. C. Elliott had procured for the Y. L. C. A. free of expense a Record Book which is even better than they had expected to get for themselves, therefore Resolved, that this Association tender him sincere thanks for his kindness and that a copy of this Resolution be presented to him. A Committee was appointed to join with a similar com- mittee from the Young Men's Association in providing a literary entertainment for the Association. These commit- 118 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK tees decided it would be better to hold a sociable, which was accordingly provided for by the two Associations with the assistance of some of the Normal residents in preparing Bupper for the evening. The music, toasts, speeches and supper passed off very pleasantly. (This was at the open- ing of the school year, 1875.) As the young ladies had been aiding the poor by soliciting such things as were thought necessary for them a motion was made and carried that such work should be made a part of the permanent work of the Y. L. C. A. Term after term the minutes show the evangelistic temper of the meetings. "At the close of the meeting a chance was given for those who wished to become Christians to manifest it by rising. Several availed themselves of the opportunity. An inquiry meeting was held at the close of the meeting." "An after meeting for young Christians was held in the parlor.' *"Two of our students asked for prayer for themselves." *'Voted that a committee be appointed to see the pastors and working members of the different churches to see if they will not enter heartily into union with us and have meetings for the promotion of Christ's kingdom." "Our last Association of this term — Tlie topic was, 'The Christian on his vacation.' An earnest appeal was made to the young people not to stop work after leaving Normal, but to form other Associations wherever they might go. An invitation was given for any to identify themselves with God's people. One young lady rose for prayers. In the after meeting several very earnest prayers were offered." "Five expressed their desire to become God's children." Further cooperation with the Young Men's Chris- tian Association was the work of supplying current periodicals for the students' reading table, furnish- ing reading material for the racks at the railroad sta- tion, posting bulletins of church and Association serv- ices and holding joint prayer meetings at the homes ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 119 of members. They also attended state conventions as re^lar delegates from 1873 to 1881 and as correspond- ing members or visitors from 1882 to 1884, and made financial contributions. Young Men's Christian Association conferences held in Normal and Bloomington early in 1881 and again in 1884 had also brought the whole membership into touch with the broader Association field, its aims and policies. Mr. L. D. Wishard, student secretary of the International Committee of the Young Men's Christian Associations, addressed the girls, speaking of the Intercollegiate Movement and stating reasons for the Young Women's Christian Association's existence, independent of the Young Men's Christian Associa- tion, congratulating the young women of Normal that their student Young Women's Christian Association was the first of its kind in the country. It was not until after these addresses that the position of corre- sponding secretary was created and the new officer was asked to correspond with as many other Associa- tions as possible. One of the first communications she read before the Association was a letter from Mrs. H. Thane Miller of Cincinnati, ''encouraging us in our efforts to do Christian work." The Normal Associa- tion, now in its second decade, was ready to meet that fall with its sister Associations in Illinois and the word Intercollegiate was to be translated into terms of young women's work. Four other student Young Women's Christian As- sociations are known to have come up spontaneously in the '70s and others in the early '80s before there was 120 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK any outside suggestion toward organization. At Northwestern College, conducted by the Evangelical Association at Naperville, Illinois, an hour's ride west of Chicago, the preceptress, Miss Cunningham, met the young women students in her own room every week for an hour of religious worship and fellowship. Timid girls felt free to participate in this informal meeting and finally, with her cooperation on Novem- ber 4, 1875, *'they formed an organization for their own growth and the salvation of unsaved girls and the promotion of Christian work." This they called The Young Ladies' Christian Association until 1884, when they changed their name and became a part of the Illinois State Association. One who entered college as a freshman in 1880 found the letters Y. L. C. A. painted on the doors of the long narrow room which the faculty had given the Association, and which they used for prayer service and business meetings. It would have seemed a sacrilege to use it as a study room and it was too small for social purposes. The Association at Olivet College, Olivet, Michi- gan, dates from October 21, 1876. The constitution adopted that day stated their object; "to promote the spiritual and social welfare of the young women of Olivet." One of the prime movers in this effort was Miss ]\Iary Burnham, at that time principal of the Fe- male Department of the college. The first president was Minnie Cameron (]\Irs. J. V. Hartness), later president of the Lansing City Association. Rosamond Hunt (Gordon), Flora Lewis (Gallup) and Ella Starkweather were the other officers. They held meet- ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 121 tings of their own within and outside the college, also combined with the college Young Men^s Christian Association and the Women *s Missionary Society of Olivet in other services. The State Normal School Association at Carbondale, Illinois, dates from the same year, as will be seen by the first entry in their minute book. Young Women's Christian Association Model Room S. I. N. U. Tuesday, Oct. 17, 1876. At the close of the Young Ladies' Prayer Meeting a proposition was made to change the prayer meeting into a Young Women's Christian Association, which met with general favor. The following officers were elected for the first term: Miss M. Beech, President, Miss Debbie Decker, Secretary, Miss Lizzie Sheppard, Treasurer. A com- mittee consisting of Misses Middleton, McAnally and Mason was appointed to form a constitution and by-laws to be presented at the next meeting. Then followed the names of twenty-four charter mem- bers. On October 30, 1877, the Lenox College Young Women's Christian Association at Hopkinton, Iowa, was formed after consultation with the officers of one of the Illinois Associations. The Young Men's Chris- tian Association of Lenox College, which had been organized the year before, was the first of its kind in Iowa and its constitution was the basis of that which the young women formed. Another interesting beginning was made at Doane College, Crete, Nebraska, in 1880 under the name of Young Ladies' Society of Co-workers. The band of 122 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK girls held at first a daily noon prayer meeting of their own and had a Sunday afternoon prayer meeting with the Young Men 's Christian Association. This in time became the regular college prayer meeting, and the girls maintained their own service at the Sunday hour. They led in the Nebraska State Association, changing their name in 1883 to Young Women's Christian As- sociation. There were other college young women even more closely in touch with the Intercollegiate Student Move- ment, however, than these; they were the women students in colleges where the words Young Men's Christian Association were construed to mean Students' Christian Association, and they were mem- bers in good and regular standing; they became of- ficers, committee members, leaders of meetings and regular delegates to state conventions. It would be more easy to detect this phenomenon were it not that in Young Men's Christian Association reports, hiitials of these persons' names were printed instead of the sex-betraying Christian names. The table of student Associations in the International Young Men's Chris- tian Association Year Book under the date of 1882- 83, lists its officers in this manner: ** Lawrence Uni- versity, Appleton, Wisconsin, president, A. Wilson; corresponding secretary, C. Althouse." It does not indicate that Miss Annis Wilson was a prize mathema- tician then in her sophomore year, and that Miss Carrie Althouse was the best soprano singer on the campus. Those two titles, Young Men's Christian As- ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 123 sociation and Students' Christian Association, had been in vogue since 1858. Mention has already been made of the great revival of 1857-58 and one noteworthy result in New York City, the for- mation of the Ladies' Christian Association. A most enlightening study might be made of the insti- tutions and organizations originating in revivals of re- ligion which brought to people who walked in dark- ness a great light, and gave them incentive and power to follow that light. During the revival in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that winter, there arose in the Uni- versity of Michigan a demand for a Christian organiza- tion of a more positive and stimulating type than the Union Missionary Society of Inquiry formed ten years before. A Students' Christian Association was begun in January, 1858. Women had not as yet been ad- mitted to the University, but on their arrival in 1870 were identified fully with this Association. That same year, 1858, students at the University of Virginia had been attending a series of revival services held in the Baptist church of Charlottesville by the pastor, Dr. John A. Broadus. Some of these students had been conducting mission Sunday schools and they had been thinking of unifying all the voluntary re- ligious work of the university if possible. On October 12, 1858, a Young Men's Christian Association was organized, adopting a constitution based upon copies of those of the Young Men's Christian Associations in London, England, and in Boston. So hearty a deter- mination did this new Association possess to become a part of the world movement that a clause was inserted 124 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK granting membership privileges to members of other Young Men's Christian Associations while at the uni- versity, and almost immediately it entered the con- federation of Young Men's Christian Associations in North America. Other student Young Men's Chris- tian Associations arose, some spontaneously, some en- couraged by Robert Weidensall, the first employed of- ficer of the International Committee. In 1877 the leaders at Princeton University, which had just changed its Philadelphian Society into a Young Men's Christian Association, invited students from other colleges to send representatives to the In- ternational Convention of the Young Men's Christian Associations at Louisville, Kentucky; twenty-five re- sponded from twenty-one colleges in eleven states. L. D. Wishard, who with William Earl Dodge, Jr., had been active in Princeton, was asked to become a visiting college secretary because of his familiarity with such work when previously an undergraduate in Hanover College, Indiana. Hanover was in a section where co- educational colleges prevailed and Mr. Wishard was perhaps prepared for the interpretation of the words * * Young Men ' ' in the title of the Christian Association as he encountered it on the tours he made in the suc- ceeding years. When he visited Normal, Illinois, he saw the women's Association at work. That was really a young woman's movement for young women, capable of logical expansion, which could not be said of the other situation, for while the active presence of women students might be helpful in certain localities it could ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 125 hardly carry weight throughout the whole United States, where in some sections coeducation was not even a debatable question, as it had been decided in the negative without debate. There was at this time no national organization of Young Women's Christian Associations. Delegates from Women's Christian Associations and Young Women 's Christian Associations had met at Hartford, Connecticut, in 1871 in a conference which had oc- curred biennially for the ten years since. At two of these conferences a member of the International Com- mittee of the Young Men's Christian Associations, Mr. H. Thane Miller of Cincinnati, had taken part in the program. Mr. Miller's bride, formerly principal of Mt. Auburn Young Ladies' Seminary, was also corre- sponding secretary of the Women 's Christian Associa- tion of Cincinnati. With these friends, it is said, Mr. Wishard discussed the problem of the withdrawal of the young women from the student Young Men's Christian Association without disturbing the local Christian work. Mrs. Miller consented to bring before the Conference of the Women's Christian Association (which had now become International), on October 12-15, 1881, at St. Louis, the question of establishing relations with Young Women's Christian Associations in colleges and seminaries. After Mrs. Miller had re- ported from the Young Ladies' Christian Association of Mt. Auburn Institute and stated that the object of the organization was the development of Christian life in the members and those over whom they have in- fluence, Mrs. John McDougal, president of the Assoeia- 126 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK tion in Montreal, Canada, stated that she had received a communication from the Christian Women's Educa- tion Union of Scotland requesting that the young women of America be asked to affiliate with them in Christian work in schools. The conference felt that the importance of the work represented by Mrs. Miller could not be over-rated and asked her and Mrs. Lam- son of Boston to act as a committee to see what could be done and report at their earliest convenience. The next day Mrs. Miller reported from the Committee upon Work Among School Girls as follows: Believing that great good can be accomplished by the organization of Christian Associations in connection with the young ladies' colleges and seminaries of our country, and that thereby the members of such schools will become familiar with and trained in the methods o-i the Women's Christian Association of our land, therefore Resolved: that a committee of three or five be appointed by this Conference whose duty it shall be, by correspondence and other methods, to encourage the formation of such or- ganizations in young ladies' schools and colleges, and se- cure from them, as far as possible, a representation in our future conferences. The resolution was adopted and Mrs. Miller as chairman of the committee collaborated with Mr. Wishard. His duties took him among the coeduca- tional colleges and into the student conferences where women were present. A circular signed by Mrs. Miller and entitled ** Young Women's Christian Associations in American Colleges and Seminaries" was sent out widely. This narrated the action of the St. Louis Conference, omitting the phrases limiting its scope to women's institutions, since Mr. Wishard 's problem ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 127 was in coeducational colleges, and stated the objects to be gained by separate organization, and special ad- vantages as well. There are special advantages to be desired from the formation of these Associations in co-educational institu- tions. First. Young women will naturally feel an increased sense of responsibility in the work of an organization bear- ing their own name. Second. The existence of two Christian Associations in a co-educational institution will secure that healthful, stimulating competition which greatly promotes activity. Third. Many young women will feel more free to speak and act in meetings of their own than in those in which young men are present. Fourth. The organization in co-educational institutions of a special Association for young women by doubling the number of officers and committees, will double the number upon whom rests special responsibility. In schools and colleges exclusively for young women the proposed organization will not in any way interfere with existing societies or methods, but by bringing these societies into relations with those of other institutions will lend in- creased efficiency to their present methods of work and each society will become a means of help and inspiration to every one. The circular announced that a constitution espe- cially adapted to the purposes of the Association could be obtained upon application. This model constitution in its '83 and '84 editions stood for constitution, by-laws and departmental poli- cies all in one, as citations will show. "The object of this Association shall be the development of Christian character in its members and the prosecution of active Christian work, particularly among the young women of the institution." "The active membership of the 128 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Association shall consist of lady students and teachers of this institution who are connected with an evangelical church and have been elected by a majority vote of the members present at any meeting. Only active members shall have the right to vote and hold office." "Any lady student or teacher in the institution may be elected an associate member by a majority vote of the members present at any meeting." "The corresponding secre- tary shall be chosen from the incoming Junior class. She shall conduct the correspondence of the Association." "Un- less otherwise ordered, all standing committees shall con- sist of one from each class. They shall report to the As- sociation at each regular business meeting." "The Associa- tion shall hold a Social Reception for new students at some time during the first two weeks of the college year, for the purpose of impressing them with the advantages to be derived from their union with it." At both the International Convention of the Young Men's Christian Associations held in Milwaukee in May, 1883, and the International Conference of the Women's Christian Association held in Boston in October of the same year, Mrs. Miller was present and reported sending out the circulars. Mr. Wishard kept up extensive visitations and in many places, as at Ot- terbein University, Westerville, Ohio, he helped form, from a Young Ladies' Prayer Meeting which had been kept up many years, a parallel Association to that of the young men's organization he was officially as- sisting. The Young W^omen's Christian Association of Merom Christian College (1883) seems to have been the first started in Indiana. Others that year were Illinois Wesleyan at Bloomington, Illinois; Parsons College, Iowa Wesleyan, and Cornell Colleges in Iowa ; Albion, Hillsdale and Kalamazoo Colleges in Michi- ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 129 gan, and Wooster University, Ohio. The year 1884 saw a great reinforcement: the state universities of Wisconsin, Illinois and Nebraska and many denomina- tional colleges, among them Knox College at Gales- burg, Illinois; DePauw University at Greeneastle, In- diana, Coe College at Cedar Rapids, Iowa College at Grinnell and Penn College at Oskaloosa, Iowa ; Wash- burn College at Topeka, Kansas; Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota; Lawrence University in Wis- consin. The first student Association of the south, at Greenville and Tusculum College, Tennessee, also dates from 1884. As these were coeducational institutions one is not surprised to find that the young men as well as the young women and many of the faculty of both sexes discussed the proposed *' special advantages" pro and con. Little was to be gained locally from segregation, some thought, and they were not sure what might be gained in wider relations. Mr. Wishard's visits were the most tangible evidence of any general body inter- ested in Young Women's Christian Associations, and he represented then and previously the Young Men's Christian Associations, which he was magnanimously advising the women to leave for their own good. He did not publish the fact that his committee, not Mrs. Miller's, had printed the constitutions and circulars which he told them to secure from her in Cincinnati. But back of all questions of administration it must be remembered that for a strong appeal to the un- converted the young women had looked to the state secretaries of the Young Men's Christian Association, 130 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK who in their rounds through their territory were ac- customed to hold evangelistic services in the college chapel for all students, or in the churches for college and town communities together. For their Bible study courses they looked to the office of ' ' The Watch- man," the Young Men's Christian Association organ of that day, in which ''Leaves from a Worker's Note Book ' ' and other popular texts were issued. For their intercollegiate fellowship they depended upon the Young Men's Christian Association conferences, state and district, which might be within reach, and in the ar- rangements for which they had been officially remem- bered. After state Associations were formed these con- ferences were sometimes really joint meetings called by the state committees. The men delegates were college faculty and undergraduates, not the general member- ship from city and railroad Associations. Speakers of international reputation made addresses, students made reports, and Young Men's Christian Association sec- retaries led discussion upon topics like the following : *'The Opportunities in College Life for Making Ke- ligious Impressions upon Young Men ; How Is the Y. M. C. A. Improving Them?" *'The Adaptability of the Y. W. C. A. to College Girls ; What It Is Doing and Can Do." *'The Promotion of the Missionary Spirit in College. " ' ' The Bible Training Class. ' " ' Intercol- legiate Relations." ''Claims of the General Secre- taryship upon College Graduates." "Individual Work, Its Importance and Blessedness. " " The Two- fold Purpose of Association Work — Saving Men and Qualifying them to Save Others. ' ' ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 131 On Sunday there were separate consecration meet- ings in the morning, and gospel meetings in the after- noon, with a great rally at night for state and national presentation. Certain hours on Friday and Saturday were taken by the young women for their own busi- ness meetings, when the alumnae, who had been As- sociation leaders in their undergraduate days, unified this year 's meeting with its predecessors and the state executive committee was elected for the next year. This sort of training made the conduct of a state convention of young women alone no matter for alarm or distrust. Even in the sections where the young women assembled for their first state gathering at a separate time and place apart from the men, some of their prominent women workers had attended these coeducational conferences and knew how to build the program, and some of the Young Men's Christian As- sociation leaders would come to speak, to lead the finance meeting and to advise on the general policies in case they should be asked to do so. Perhaps there was an undercurrent of conviction on their part that such effort was well expended and that whatever strengthened the women's Christian organization in any college would also further the interests of the men. Some of these Young Men's Christian Associa- tion secretaries had daughters of their own among the undergraduates and counted the girls' convention a good day's work in their year. Over the signature of Bell Bevier of Wooster Uni- versity, as chairman, the Ohio State Executive Com- mittee sent greetings to the young women in colleges 1S2 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK and seminaries in Ohio telling of the organization of a State Association during the winter of 1884 (February 14-17) and calling a convention of their own at West- erville, the next February. The circular said, ** Per- haps never again in our lives will our field of labor be either so large or so personal as during the days of our college life. The desirability of some organized method of work that can be adopted by the educated Christian young women of our country is evident, and what more pleasant bond of union could be found.'* Michigan had formed the first State Association at Al- bion, also in February, 1884 (convention held 7-11), and Iowa, at a convention in Cedar Rapids attended by fifty delegates from college and one country Young Women's Christian Association, formed the third State Association on November 15 of that year. Their far-reaching Iowa spirit was shown by their response to an appeal of one of their number with a subscription of one hundred and five dollars for **an International College Secretary, a young woman," who, they confidently expected, would be secured dur- ing the coming year. Their constitution did not con- fine the organization to student Associations ; a group anywhere was eligible. Remember that the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor had been known less than four years and had not found its way in any appreciable degree into the Mississippi Valley. At joint conventions in January of 1885, at Whitewater, Wisconsin, and at Bloomington, Illinois, the third and fourth State Associations were effected. In April at Greencastle, Indiana, and in December at ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 133 St. Paul, Minnesota, the sixth and seventh State As- sociations were formed; Kansas and Nebraska fol- lowed in 1886. In all these states, an Executive Committee was elected, representing in its membership each local unit. The main officer was the president, some capable un- dergraduate, who was then at liberty to select one of her friends as secretary, upon whom the duties of the treasurer also fell, for both state and local financ- ing were simple almost to the point of being negli- gible. By the fall of 1887 prominent alumnae were being called as state secretaries. Ida Schell entered upon her duties at the close of the Iowa Convention in October, and though she was teaching at the same time, managed to report by the fall of 1888 that she had made twenty-three Association visits, occupying thirty-four days and traveling 2,581 miles. For this and other work throughout the year, chiefly corre- spondence, she received an honorarium of one hundred dollars and about as much for traveling expenses. Nellie Knox, who assumed a similar position in Ohio in December, 1887, had by April visited twenty-seven points and traveled over a thousand miles. Kansas claims the record for full time employment of a secre- tary ; Mrs. L. P. Bradford of the committee served for April and May, 1888, and Jennie Sherman from June on. Illinois was only a few days behind, for Eula Bates commenced work that same April. Never were four young women more unlike: Miss Knox, quiet, forceful, with a clear vision of the possi- bilities in the Association; Miss Schell, substantial. 134 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK unselfish, a natural bearer of other people's burdens; Miss Sherman, keen, alert, giving God the credit for the seeming miracles tliat constantly resulted; Miss Bates, gentle, gracious, instinctively making the right approach. All were guided by the Spirit of God to whom they looked for guidance in this untried path. None stayed on to watch her work past the pioneer stage, for one married, one studied medicine, one took a missionary appointment in India and another in Turkey under her church board. None broke down from nervous prostration, although the travel was as exacting, the correspondence as taxing, the strain in interviews and meetings as great as in any subsequent era. Three years later (1891) all but two of the thir- teen organized states had the full or part time of a secretary. This advance meant, of course, a larger State Committee at a permanent headquarters, a regu- lar treasury, and sub-committees to care for groups of Associations and the various headquarters duties such as planning the secretary's schedule, arranging for conventions and issuing publications. Now that the intercollegiate idea was expressed through joining like Associations of college women in the State Association, the dependence upon the Young Men's Christian Association was discontinued, as other means became accessible. The young women helped each other and themselves; the results were proving their claim most often made, that the Young Women 's Christian Association had as its distinct object ''the development of Christian character and the prosecu- tion of active Christian work among young women." ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 135 For spiritual appeal to the uninterested girls they had now the visits of their own state secretary, of their own national secretary and of rare Bible teachers like Naomi Knight, who made tours among the Associa- tions. For their Bible study courses and meeting topics of the Young Women's Christian Associations, the national committee (see chapter XIV) was making some provision through The Quarterly and The Evangel, although the International Committee of the Young Men's Christian Associations kept ahead for many years. For ideas on conducting Association work and for spiritual vigor which the workers craved, they had their own state and national conventions, be- sides their secretaries' visits, and after 1891 their own summer conferences. Two styles of railroad connections were afforded to the towns where a large percentage of the first college Associations were to be found. One was the branch railroad, upon which two trains ran daily each way to and from a larger railroad center several hours distant. The other was the main line where local traffic was accommodated — inaccurate use of the word ! — ^upon the through trains which were scheduled for convenience of passengers arriving at Chicago or Pittsburgh or Buffalo, or St. Paul or Omaha or Kansas City, not that of pilgrims to the academic groves which the student secretary was seeking. Street rail- ways were found in few college towns; unseaworthy hackney carriages and very commercial omnibuses were used for depot service at charges that would have seemed too cheap had they not matched the 136 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK vehicles so exactly. In order to avoid short night journeys and yet not to be en route at the afternoon and evening hours when the students were most at liberty to meet with her, the secretary was repeatedly taking local trains due to depart at seven o'clock in the morning, or boarding through trains due to pass through towns at four o'clock, but frequently belated. Dormitory breakfast hours at 6 :30 or 7 :00 o 'clock sometimes fitted in to this schedule, sometimes not. There were no lunch counters at the stations, no dining cars on the trains as a rule, but even if there had been, the state treasury could hardly have afforded to pay for the seventy-five cent and dollar table d'hote meals then obtainable. There was for some years no state office, and even when the state officers were will- ing to help they were often busy teachers and under- graduates, who had really less time for Association correspondence than had the state secretary. When the difficulties arising from newness of the position and the secretary's natural diffidence at venturing forth unpiloted upon uncharted seas have been mentioned, all the disadvantages have been swept away and there can be fully acknowledged some of the many pleasures and satisfactions of those visits to the early student Associations. First, the welcome ; dele- gates to the preceding conventions had helped raise and give the money to put a secretary into the field, they believed in the office, and wanted the officer to spend as long a time in their college as she could. Sometimes she stayed a week, rarely speaking in chapel or leading the college prayer meeting, but holding ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 137 daily meetings with the girls, talking with those who called at the dormitory guest chamber about their own Christian lives, teaching them to pray for them- selves as they surrendered themselves into Jesus Christ's keeping. She talked with the president about **how to get the girls to work on committees/' and with the treasurer on **how to get the girls to pay their dues," and with the chairman of the devotional committee about **what kind of topics to have," but there was no drawing up of policies for each com- mittee. Often she gave a Bible reading and once at least spoke about the state work, but her main business was to bring the leaders of the Association and the professed Christian workers into the fulness of spiritual light and power which she knew from expe- rience could come only from claiming the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and to encourage the others whom she might meet to rouse their wills to lay hold on Jesus Christ for salvation. The secretary tried to represent in herself what the Young Women's Christian Associ- ation fully meant. One of them once alluded to her first contact with the movement in this way: **We were awakened to a new and vigorous type of personal service in an every day working religion that sought to make every day a day of opportunity." The un- dergraduates believed that their secretaries were able to make good use of opportunities and sometimes when bidding one good-by at the railroad station would in- troduce her to a fellow passenger who had not come under the influence of the last few days. CHAPTER XI THE INTENSIVE GROWTH OP STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS RAPID expansion was seen from 1886 on, ex- pansion into new territory, the East, the Pacific Coast, the South; into new types of institutions, such as women *s colleges; into more state universities and normal schools and independent sec- ondary schools. The centers least affected were those where a desire for aggressive evangelical women's or- ganizations had not crystallized, and those where the lady principal felt herself so responsible for the spiritual culture of the young women under her charge that she dared not divide this responsibility with a student society of any kind. Every new Association called something forth from the others and added something to them. Good ideas were not copyrighted and few knew the origin of those most eagerly seized upon. Each successive edition of the model constitu- tion incorporated as standing policies what had been independent experiments a little while before. A natural goal for the membership committee had been * ' every young woman in college. ' ' Faculty mem- bers and former members in town were eligible, so that occasionally the total membership exceeded the num- ber of young women registered. More often, however, 138 GROWTH OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 139 the membership consisted of as many of the girls in the residence halls, and from those families which had come to town for the sake of the college, as could be secured as members the first term of their college life. Daughters of families with strong local affiliations and of those residing far distant from the university cen- ter, members of the schools of music, expression, etc., when not resident in the dormitories might or might not identify themselves with the Association. Then a new conception was evolved; a Reception Committee was constituted to have charge of the special efforts to reach the new students at the begin- ning of the year, and also throughout the year plan a social life for the Association which should unite all young women in the institution in a Christian sister- hood. The social program at first had been brief but striking in its innovations upon that most conservative element, college tradition. For decades the first general social occasion in many colleges had been the formal receptions tendered by the rival literary societies in alternating years or as close together as the faculty would allow. The new students were expected to attend without fail, were judiciously escorted, lavishly entertained, and ful- somely impressed with the master idea of the evening, namely, that a college career would be unendurable unless the student were at once proposed for the en- tertaining society. When the first delegates reported from some convention that in some colleges the Chris- tian Associations had been given right of way in social matters at the beginning of the year some of 140 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK the Association leaders faced a painful dilemma. If they fell into line, the literary society of the opposi- tion might get more members than their own, whose turn it was to entertain. If they did not fall into line, they would be justly despised by the colleges which had already made the sacrifice. They usually solved the difficulty by holding the Association re- ception the first week and offering even more sumptu- ous entertainments by the literary societies after- wards. Then the informal receptions for the girls alone found place here. Another innovation was the Student Handbook, sent out to intending students with a letter of welcome through the long vacation or given out at the regis- trar's office. These pocket manuals were usually issued with the Young Men's Christian Association and gave the current and historical information about the college, the Associations, and the community, which new students were sure to need. Leadership of the religious meetings grew to be more formal than the occasional custom of assigning each member in alphabetical order had made possible. Topics were more carefully selected, and topic cards were presented in advance, following out a general scheme by which gospel meetings, missionary meetings, opportunities for presentation of religious movements, each had a place. Instead of one noon prayer meeting in an administrative or recitation building, small prayer circles met in the residence halls at an evening hour. The early period of private prayer. The Morn- ing Watch, was becoming known as ''the secret of a GROWTH OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 141 strong Christian life for a busy student/' and officers and committee chairmen often met weekly in prayer together even when there was no regular cabinet meet- ing. For any series of evangelistic meetings pro- jected by college authorities or by the Association as such, there was careful organization of invitation giv- ing and of personal interviews, so that each woman student not known to be a Christian might find help through these meetings. When attendance at chapel and church was voluntary the Association members supported these loyally, as they did the class prayer meetings, separate missionary meetings, or other gen- eral religious gatherings not under the Association auspices. The growth in Bible study was tremendously quick- ened through summer conference delegates, who often declared they did not know before that the Bible was written for thinking people and were charmed to find that a book that had met the old, old needs of centuries of human lives had anything to say to nineteenth cen- tury undergraduates. The distinction made between a general Bible class and a workers ' training class has already been noted. There has been no time when a student Young Women's Christian Association could fulfill its obligation unless there were several young women concerned with relating the lives of individual students to their Lord and Master Jesus Christ. But even the best methods became trite and meaningless when followed in the letter and not in the spirit. For this reason the valuable early texts fell into disuse, but the work of personal evangelism which these were 142 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK designed to further, has again in these later years come to the front, as the real meanings of membership are better construed and the obligations of leadership are being assumed, not with a note of interrogation, but with affirmation of the supremacy of the spirit. Missionary interests have been almost from the first closely connected with the Student Volunteer Move- ment for Foreign Missions, which dated from the sum- mer of 1886, the same season in which the State Com- mittees formed the National Young Women's Chris- tian Association (see chapter XIY). So dear a prerogative is the sending and receiving of greetings at all conventions, that one does not always pay too strict attention to what the content of such messages may be. That could not have been the case, however, with the following communication. Mt. Hermon, Mass., July 31, 1886. To the Representatives of the Young Women's Christian Association at Geneva, Wisconsin: The two hundred and eighty college students representing ninety-eight College Young Men's Christian Associations, now in session in their school for Bible Study at Mt. Her- mon, Mass., send Christian greeting to the Young Women's Christian Associations of the United States about to con- vene at Geneva, Wisconsin, with a view to forming a Na- tional organization. We rejoice to hear of your Convention and its purposes because we believe that God is waiting to show that as He has blest the exclusive Evangelical work of young men for young men so will He also set His seal of approval upon the work of young women for young women. We con- gratulate you, first* because your meeting will be a notable event in the history of the special Christian work of the age. Secondly, we congratulate you upon the tact, energy, and GROWTH OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 143 devotion shown in your arrangements for the proposed con- vention and in the plans which you purpose in it to carry out. Thirdly, we congratulate you also upon the opportunity you are about to have for receiving the outpouring of God's blessing in a like way to that we have enjoyed. And we invoke upon you and your deliberations at Geneva, and upon the great work you there may plan and organize, the blessing of our Heavenly Father. By the Committee: Howard H. Russell, Oberlin College, Chairman A. M. Cunningham, Illinois State Normal S. C. Bartlett, Jr., Dartmouth College P. B. Guernsey, Madison University O. A. Lewis, Carleton College E. H. Rawlings, Randolph Macon College E. C. Whitney, Amherst College John McDougall, McGill University J. R. MoTT, Cornell University This was the historic month of July when at the invitation of Mr. D. L. Moody, men had assembled from universities and colleges in all parts of the United States and Canada to study the Bible in this place apart. This first student summer conference was also the birthplace of the Student Volunteer Movement. It is said that ten days of the conference had gone by before the subject of missions was even mentioned in the Conference, but some had come with the conviction that out from that large gathering God would call some to consecrate themselves as foreign missionaries. One of this number was Robert P. Wilder of Prince- ton. He, his sister Grace Wilder, and others of that missionary family had prayed unceasingly for workers not only for India, their home land, but for all other sections of the unevangelized world. When the invi- 144 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK tation was given at Mt. Hermon to those thinking seriously of foreign service, twenty-one came together. They began to pray that the Lord of the harvest would separate many of these delegates to the great work. Then the answer began to come. After two weeks of thinking and praying there occurred the * ' Meeting of the Ten Nations, ' ' where sons of missionaries in China, India and Persia, and young men of America, Japan, Siam, Germany, Denmark and Norway, and an Ameri- can Indian, each told in a three minute address that his coimtry needed more workers from that very group of students and ended by repeating *'God is love" in the language of the country he represented. The num- ber of intending missionaries increased from twenty- one to nearly fifty. It is said that missions became the topic of all conversation, everywhere. Each volunteer approached others and one by one men came in to announce that they had won the victory over self which set them free to follow Christ's command. When the farewell meeting of the Conference as- sembled there were ninety-nine enrolled; when it closed one more had announced his decision and an even one hundred college men stood as volunteers for the foreign mission field. The Cambridge Band and its tours of the British Universities was then in people's minds. They re- called the dynamic impression made by these seven conspicuous leaders in Cambridge University life as they presented the claim of the unevangelized world to other undergraduates and led the way out to China. Many had been stirred that very winter by J. E. K. GROWTH OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 145 Studd's account of it while he was visiting American universities. The volunteers at Mt. Hermon approved such a scheme of deputations and selected four men to visit throughout the country, laying before other students the reasons which had led them to offer their lives. That year Mr. Wilder and Mr. John N. For- man visited one hundred and seventy-six colleges and divinity schools in the United States and Canada, going two by two for the most part, rallying students around the idea of the evangelizing of the world in this generation ; an idea which seemed as visionary in 1886 as it seemed justified in 1913. Like a revelation of the apostles of the primitive church seemed the visit of these two men of prayer to many of the institutions when they came. Like a miracle seemed the response. Twenty-one hundred students volunteered that year; five hundred of these were from the student Young Women ^s Christian Associations. The percentage was even higher in some later seasons. Robert E. Speer, Lucy Guinness, Clarissa H. Spencer and Hor- ace Tracy Pitkin were among the later traveling secre- taries. How to make the movement permanent seemed to be answered in 1888 by appointing an Executive Com- mittee of one each from the International Committees of the Young Women's Christian Association and Young Men's Christian Association and a third person to represent the Inter-Seminary Missionary Alliance. Mr. John R. Mott, the first chairman, has continued in office ever since. The great Student Volunteer Movement conventions, occurring once in a student 146 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK generation, the mission study texts, dating from the course on Missions in the Apostolic Church published in ^'The Student Volunteer^' in 1893, the missionary institutes at the summer conferences, the instigation to missionary reading and giving on the part of the whole student body, are only means to the end of con- vincing students of their opportunity and obligation in answering the world challenge for the spread of a world Christianity. Wherever a college had undertaken, before the As- sociation was organized, the support of a missionary or foreign student or school or other special work under the church board with which the college was aflBliated, as was many times the case, the missionary department assumed that obligation before con- tributing missionary gifts through other channels. After 1894, when the state secretary of Iowa was called to become general secretary of the World's Young Women's Christian Association, and an alumna of the University of Illinois sailed as the first American sec- retary to India, there was lively interest in these two new avenues for missionary giving. Students who were in college January 20, 1895, will remember the dime banks which were sent out by Miss R. F. Morse, the American member of the World's Committee re- sponsible for raising funds in this country, and the re- quest to hold on that day an Oriental tea, or in some other way to present the interest of foreign Young Women's Christian Association work and collect fifty dimes for the world's treasury. Intercollegiate relations were most evident at the GROWTH OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 147 time when delegations were being made up for the state and national conventions and for the summer conferences, which began as a Summer Bible and Training School in 1891. These developed more for volunteers than for employed officers and by 1902 had begun a still further specialization, one conference for students only. But the widest reach of intercollegiate fellowship was the inclusion of the Student Young Women's Christian Associations in the World's Student Christian Federation, which was formed in 1895 in the following way : In 1887 Professor Henry Drummond of Edinburgh University visited the Northfield Men 's Conference ; in 1888 a delegation of twelve students came from the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Utrecht. James Bronson Reynolds of Yale made several tours among continental and Levantine universities in 1889 to 1892, concentrating his attention on the student situation in Paris. John R. Mott spent the spring months of 1894 in the British colleges and attended the Keswick student conference when the British College Christian Union was formed. Mr. Wishard had lately returned from his world trip in which student Associations had been developed in mission lands. Prince Bernadotte of Sweden invited student leaders to Vadstena Castle in the summer of 1895 and two hundred accepted. Delegates came from the United States and Canada, representing the Intercollegiate department of the Young Men's Christian Associations of North America, through which the student organ- izations affiliated with the International Committee of 148 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Young Women's Christian Associations were given membership; from the British College Christian Union, representing both men and women students in Great Britain and Ireland; from the German Chris- tian Students' Alliance ; and from universities in Den- mark, Sweden, Norway and Finland, about to unite in the Scandinavian Student Movement. The widely scattered student Associations in non-Christian coun- tries were counted as a fifth IMovement, represented by Mr. Wishard as the foreign work secretary. Dr. Karl Fries of Sweden was elected chairman and John R. Mott general secretary. For twenty years they have stood by the task the Federation assumed that day : 1. To unite student Christian movements or organizations throughout the world, and to promote mutual relations among them. 2. To collect information about the religious condition of the students of all lands. 3. To lead students to become disciples of Jesus Christ as their only Saviour and God. 4. To deepen the spiritual life of students. 5. To enlist students in the work of extending the King- dom of Christ throughout this world. Ten years later at the Zeist, Holland, Conference, a women's department of this Federation was created and two of the most remarkable women of this gener- ation were appointed to leadership which rallied women students of all types and faculties. Professor Lilavati Singh of Lucknow College, India, was made vice-chairman. She had been introduced at the Ecumenical Missionary Conference of 1900 in New York City as a young woman who had read Green's Miss Ruth Rouse, When Representing the Student Volunteer Movement GROWTH OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 149 History of the English People through seven times in her eagerness to acquire the English language. It was after hearing Miss Singh's address on the Ke- sults of Higher Education, of which she was herself an exponent, that Ex-President Benjamin Harrison said, * ' If I had given a million dollars to foreign mis- sions, I should count it wisely invested if it led only to the conversion of that one woman." The western world had little time to see the results of Miss Singh 's influence upon the woman's movement, for her death in 1909 cut short that career which would have been a revelation to people unappreciative of Oriental in- tellect and little acquainted with the history of woman's education in India. Miss Ruth Rouse of Girton College, Cambridge, the general secretary, is well known in America, which she first visited in 1897 as a representative of the Student Volunteer Move- ment before taking up residence in Bombay in the Missionary Settlement of University Women. Then the International Committee of Young Women's Christian Associations prevailed on her to postpone her plans still another year, and she returned to this country for special student work during the next academic year. It was during this stay that she and Miss Grace H. Dodge talked together at the time of the New York metropolitan conference about what Christian life in educational centers in other lands might be if the student Associations of America would rise to their opportunities, look far afield as well as upon their own campuses and take a share worthy of the name among the women students of the world. 150 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK From this interview resulted the more adequate place which American women students have since assumed in foreign student affairs. It will be remembered that the first organization called itself the Young Ladies' Christian Association of Normal, not of the Illinois State Normal University. Every Association since has felt some call to outside activities, both for the natural expression of an un- selfish Christian life, and because many communities have offered appealing fields for the service which could be rendered by college women, endowed as mis- sionaries, speakers, Bible teachers, sympathetic visit- ors, or organizers of groups for entertainment or study. Mission Sunday schools have been a favorite commu- nity enterprise and from these have resulted churches or Young Women's Christian Associations or other permanent institutions. From this training many a girl has gone out from University or normal school, into some isolated town or village so untouched by any organized church that this young teacher has called a Sunday school into being, recruited teachers, herself acted as superintendent, and changed the whole face of affairs. When student Associations are near cities this outside work committee has had literally no end to its opportunities, and when it has been near the open country its response has meant even more self sacrifice on the part of the members, who have made their way along the snowy roads on their Sun- day and week-day appointments of winter after win- ter. Nothing but preoccupation in the subject of the GROWTH OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 151 meeting, or an enthusiasm which was blind to all physical objects, could have made endurable some of the rooms in which the early student Associations held their meetings. These were chiefly college reci- tation rooms where settees and the professors' desk were the only furniture, and where the blackboards, covered with geometrical demonstrations with and without the subscription Q. E. D., or corrected French prose sentences, were the only mural decorations. In 1890 only twenty-three Associations reported rooms and only a part of these were large enough for the purposes of an assembly room. In 1900 there were one hundred and forty-nine, many of them dignified and attractive. Although the subject of a building for Association headquarters at the University of Iowa had been broached for some time and pledges had been made to secure one, yet Brihton Hall in Philadelphia was given to the Woman's Medical Col- lege of Pennsylvania Association in 1888; the Iowa building, Close Hall, was dedicated in November, 1891; and the next year Stiles Hall was erected for the Association at the University of California. These were both administration buildings for both men's and women's Associations. The Otterbein College building was dedicated in 1893. All sorts of experi- ences have resulted from renting a large house near the University campus and opening it as Young Women's Christian Association headquarters with home accommodations for the secretary and several members. Other Associations have been amply pro- vided for in the women's building designed for head- 152 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK quarters for all the women's organizations. This as- sures the general secretary a strategic location for her office. From the very first every Association has craved for its president a student of outstanding rank, in scholarship as well as in administrative ability and Christian influence. But how to exercise the second requisite without detriment to the first qualification was at times a problem. This led the University of Wisconsin in 1895 to elect a graduate, Mary Arm- strong, as general secretary at a nominal salary. Es- telle Bennett was called to the University of Minne- sota in 1896. Other universities adopted the idea, though they often found that the woman they wanted was a graduate from another university, was com- manding a higher salary, and needed a more thorough professional training than was at first taken into con- sideration. Some of these secretaries have been of the greatest help in introducing student government, or bringing recognition to higher standards of stu- dent life as well as in Association administration and in working on vital problems of thought and life with individual students. Each decade placed certain new emphases. Even the terms were being reversed : * * The Christian Student*' of the nineteenth century became **The Student Christian" in the twentieth. CHAPTER XII COUNTRY ASSOCIATIONS IT may be said that the Young Women's Christian Association in rural communities has been ex- pressed in terms of the college, the city and the county. The time is coming when it will express it- self in terms of the country. The first intimation of country work is found in Iowa. In a letter dated February 9, 1885, one reads, The weather with us this winter has been very severe, the thermometer reaching 39° below zero. We have been obliged to give up our Bible class, as the weather has been so very cold we were unable to get to our places of meeting. Some of our members had a distance of four or five miles and it made it almost impossible to attend. To-day the fiercest snow storm that I ever saw has been raging. It commenced yesterday afternoon and I am afraid will rage all night. God pity the poor. Again under date of April 23, 1885, from the same correspondent there is another communication. We feel more encouraged not only by our being able to have our regular Bible class again, but the manner in which the girls have taken hold of the work. They all seem more interested in Bible study than last summer, and we all felt that we were profited by last summer's work. We have held several Gospel meetings with the Young Men's Christian Association of Pleasant Valley lately, and expect to hold them as often as we can, for they have been very well 153 154 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK attended, notwithstanding the usual bad spring roads. At one of these, two started on the right way. In the last year, three or four of my most intimate friends have been brought to Christ. Our Bible class has twenty members and our Association about the same. This was the Association in Pleasant Valley town- ship, Johnson County, Iowa. The school house, which provided a true religious center, was situated seven miles from Iowa City, the seat of the University of Iowa, and four miles from the nearest church. In the summer of 1884 the young men in the neighborhood organized a Young Men's Christian Association after the pattern of the student Associations to which sev- eral belonged, and a few months later the young women adopted a similar institution. Each organization had its own business meetings and Bible class sessions, for which they came together in private houses. The joint gospel meetings were held every other Sunday evening at the school house, with an average attendance of sixty, and were con- ducted by leaders chosen alternately from the two Associations. They set an example followed by the young people in adjoining neighborhoods. There were also social gatherings and lectures. After a few years when some of the leaders had left home for professional service in the Association movement and elsewhere, the Pleasant Valley work lapsed, but the results had already been recorded as * ' elevating social pleasures, interest in higher literary culture and forming of sterling Christian character." This Association had also been a charter member of the Iowa State Young Women 's Christian Association COUNTRY ASSOCIATIONS 155 and one of its officers had been on the committee which drew up the articles of organization of this first State Association in which affiliation was not limited to stu- dent Young Women's Christian Associations, but open to any Young Women's Christian Association in the State, provided its object was the maintenance of prayer meetings, Bible study, individual effort and the development of missionary interest. For a time, enthusiastic Association leaders, going home to villages and small towns or becoming teachers in these small communities, frequently organized what they called local Or city Associations, but what were really the spirit and activities of their beloved college organization transplanted bodily into another soil. That all did not flourish was not so much due to the sterility of the soil as to the fact that the plants were not adapted to it, or that the field was often abandoned, though rarely neglected by the gardener. Of the first twenty such Associations listed in five States in 1887, only one had as many as eighty-five members; that was in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which had Association rooms and the beginnings of a genu- ine city work. Eighteen of these town Associations were found in Iowa, Kansas and Michigan, in which states the Christian Endeavor Movement, started in 1881, was just getting a foothold. In one or two cities in Ohio there were Women's Christian Associations, conducting a class in sewing for little girls or helping in relief work, but as far removed from genuine Young Women 's Christian As- sociation work in small towns on the one hand, as these 156 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK student Association extensions were on the other. Evidently these were not the right ways. But not for a moment were the girls forgotten. People were thinking, and occasionally some one wrote out her thoughts : Many girls in country regions have ambitions which grow faster than their opportunities; they long for some- thing more than their circumstances will allow, or the place affords; their active spirits grow restless and dissatisfied, and, allured on by bright prospects of good positions, educa- tional and social advantages, they speed city-ward. This is not as it should be. Let no one think because a place is too small to demand and support a full fledged Young Women's Christian Association, that therefore nothing can be done for young women. Another solution was coming, and as in two pre- ceding plans of Young Women's Christian Associa- tion work in country and small towns, coming from the devotion of former student Association leaders. A Carleton college graduate of 1896, teaching in the High School of Preston, Minnesota, was asked to form a class for Bible study. As the interest grew, some of these class members became pupil teachers for other circles in Preston, and hearing of what was going for- ward in Preston, women in other small towns in Fill- more County formed Bible circles. The Minnesota State Committee kept in close touch and took counsel with Mr. Robert Weidensall, the pathfinder of the International Young Men's Chris- tian Association, who had added to his pioneer efforts in student and railroad Associations, an exploration of the rural and small town field. The result was COUNTRY ASSOCIATIONS 157 that he had brought under way county Associations in Illinois, Nebraska, Kentucky and elsewhere. The state secretary of Minnesota, Helen F. Barnes, ar- ranged a convention of the Bible circles of Fillmore County for December 31, 1897, to January 2, 1898, Mr. Weidensall was one of the speakers, and when the delegates had organized the first county Young Women's Christian Association in the world, he met with the County Committee and helped in outlining their work. The convention, like the Bible circles, gave first attention to study of God's word, but there was a social evening in the Preston Association circle rooms — for Preston was the exception to the rule in having local headquarters — and other helpful con- vention features. In March, 1898, Dodge County also effected an organization. By spring there was the following County roster in Minnesota: Fillmore County: Preston — three circles (for seniors, young ladies and juniors), Cherry Grove — a senior and a junior circle. Spring Valley, Etna, Fillmore, Washington, Hamilton, Granger. Dodge County: West Concord, Kasson, Dodge Center, and a country class near Dodge Center. Olmstead County: Stewartville, Cummingsville, Eyota. Other Bible circles on the same plan had been started out of the State. As the Young Men's Christian Association had made a pre-eminent success of county work with a supervising secretary, so the Minnesota workers learned conversely that a secretary was indispensable, 158 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK because without one, the local circles lost interest and gradually disbanded, and the county Association dis- integrated. The full scheme had not been tried, it ceased, not failed. People still had faith in some far off event, or plan, or leader, which would help the country girls come into their own. CHAPTER XIII THE CONFERENCES OP THE WOMEN *S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS THE Women's Christian Association of Hart- ford, Connecticut, invited the officers of all similar Associations known at that time to come and celebrate with them their fourth anniver- sary, on Sunday, October 8, 1871. The Sabbath was devoted to the anniversary exer- cises, held in the Pearl Street Church; the following Monday and Tuesday to the conference, in the same church, for which fifteen delegates had come from JBoston, Providence, Lowell, Buffalo, Washington, Cin- cinnati and Philadelphia. The presiding officer was that elect lady, Mrs. John Davis, president of the Association in Cincinnati. The program was made up of reports from these eight cities and from thirteen others not represented by delegates, in addition to discussion of the follow- ing topics : 1. What are the greatest obstacles to the successful work- ing of our Associations? 2. How shall we secure efficient committees? 3. How shall we establish systematic payments? 4. How shall we best gain a permanent influence over the industrial young woman ? 159 160 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 5. What is the best method of Bible teaching in the classes of young women connected with the Homes or Associa- tions ? 6. Is it expedient to have a department for the more thor- ough training of sewing girls in the Homes? 7. Is it economy or promotive of family feeling to have the Home table on the restaurant plan? Mr. H. Thane Miller of Cincinnati, who had a bent for organization and a gift of song, sang frequently, as well as spoke. One selection was *'More Love to Thee, Christ," which had just appeared. Mrs. Lamson of Boston described the Young Women's Christian Association homes in London which she had lately visited. A trip was made to the still uncom- pleted Hartford building. The news of the Chicago fire was made known, and resolutions were sent to the women in Chicago. The call to the conference had emphasized the meet- ings for prayer, social converse and discussion of im- portant questions which would be both pleasant and profitable for those actively engaged in "striving to protect and to benefit in every way their young sis- ters, who are toiling for their own and others' sup- port, with many trials and temptations." This was all realized and a resolution was adopted providing for similar meetings to be held at intervals of not more than two years. To carry this resolution into effect a committee of arrangements was appointed, which selected Philadelphia as the place of the next meeting. Here forty-eight delegates from seventeen other As- sociations listened to a comprehensive, lucid address Women's Chkistiax Association, Hartford, Conn. First Building Constructed for Association Purposes W. C. A. CONFERENCES 161 by Mrs. Davis, the retiring president, in which she reviewed the work for young women and other kinds of ministry offered by the organizations represented, counting among the results already attained, the ex- tent of the movement and the spirit in which it was carried on. As before, the program was occupied chiefly with reports from cities, and discussion of top- ics previously announced. These were opened by papers on ** Boarding Homes for Young Women, How Can We Best Secure the True Aim of Such Homes ? ' ' *' American Girls for Domestic Service," and an ad- dress on *' Personal Consecration to Christ Essential to Success in Association Work," by Mrs. Hannah Whitall Smith. When the question arose as to the eligibility of voters, it was decided that any member present of any Christian Association should be con- sidered a voter ; and a list was printed in that report of thirty-two cities where Women's Christian Associa- tions were established, two containing Young Women's Christian Associations, two Young Ladies' Branches were also mentioned, thirty-six city Associ- ations in all in the United States. So far no organization had been effected for this conference. In Pittsburgh in 1875, however, the question of a more definite form of organization was presented and a constitution was adopted providing — ^under the name of Conference of the Women's Christian Associations of the United States and Brit- ish Provinces — for an executive committee *' charged with the selection of topics for the conference, with the examination of the credentials of delegates, with the 162 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK selection of persons to open these topics or to present papers upon them. They shall prepare and publish a report of the conferences, conduct correspondence with, and encourage visitation among the Associations, promote the work of existing societies, stimulate or- ganizations in places where they do not already exist, and transact such other business as may be entrusted to them by the conference." There was also pro- vision for a financial policy and for the appointment of a general secretary. In order, however, to have more time for thorough discussion, this constitution was reconsidered before adjournment, and a commit- tee authorized to provide possible substitutes for cer- tain of the sections. In consequence the Montreal Conference of 1877 adopted the following constitu- tion : Article I — ^Name This organization shall be called "The International Conference of Women's Christian Associations." Article II — Object Its object shall be mutual conference about the work of these Associations. Article III — Meetings The meetings of the conference shall be held once in two years. Article IV — Representation Each Association of one hundred members or less shall be entitled to two delegates, and for every one hundred mem- bers one additional delegate. The accompanying rules provided that at the clos- ing session of the conference the president should ap- point **a committee of three whose duty it shall be to W. C. A. CONFERENCES 163 arrange for the next conference by making selections of topics for discussion and appointing persons to open the same. They shall also prepare a program for all meetings. The secretaries, with the assistance of the president, shall prepare and publish the pro- ceedings of the conference,*' and further, that **no standing or special committee shall contract any money indebtedness without previous appropriation from the conference.'* During the Philadelphia Conference of 1873 com- munications from Rome, Italy and Salt Lake City, Utah, had led to the appointment of a Foreign Com- mittee and a Home Committee to look into the possi- bility of aiding evangelical work in these two centers. This action and the opening of Associations in Can- ada, had led the Committee on Arrangements for the following meeting to call for an International Con- ference, and to invite Associations of other countries to send delegates. Such a delegate was Mrs. P. D. Browne of Montreal, who brought with her an invi- tation for the 1877 Conference to come over the bor- der into Canada. Quebec and Belleville, Ontario, sent accounts of work. Frances Ridley Havergal wrote a poem for the occasion. Mrs. Pennefather of London (who was afterwards successor to Miss Ro- barts as head of the Prayer Union) sent a paper on Reformatory Work, and another on The Deaconess House of Mildmay Park. Protestant mission work in France and Holland and Canada was reported and a letter read from Mile. Anna de Perrot of Neuchatel, Switzerland, with whose name the Union Interna- 164 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK tional des Amies de la Jeune Fille is connected. Sim- ilar reports were rendered for two or three succeeding conferences. The Foreign Committee appointed in 1873 recom- mended later that the work under consideration in Rome be referred to the existing Missionary Societies, and the Home Committee presented a list of Associa- tions in good condition and active sympathy the one with the other. As truly as the personnel of these Conferences rep- resented the Christian devotion and power of the women of the time, so the papers read by these ladies reflected the economic aspects of women's lives. Mrs. Terhune's brilliant paper on **Our Daughters,'' read in 1875, has already been cited. A quotation from Mrs. McCollins' paper read in 1877 may find a place here. Every conceivable machine for labor-saving is invented. Work that would take days to perform by hand is done in so many hours. Even the devices of Dame Fashion, which were entirely beyond the scope of machinery when first introduced, are at once seized upon by the remorseless in- ventor, and before the article attains to common use, the iron shaft and buzzing wheel have stolen from human fingers the work that would have secured a competency to hundreds. Every department of labor has been invaded by this inex- orable genius, agricultural, manufacturing, mercantile and domestic — ^yea, even science and art are robbed of much that is pleasant to the eye by the inevitable machine. With all this we are now struggling, but wait until Time, the great harmonizer, shall adjust all these innovations to the needs and capacities of the human family. Many of us remember the hue and cry raised by the farmers and others when the railroads were first opened W. C. A. CONFERENCES 165 through our country. There would be no work for man or use for horses! What would become of all those connected with the stage coaches, etc., etc.? But look now, and be- hold the hundreds employed by the railroads where the tens were needed by the stage coach. The inventor has created this necessity for laborers. Take the sev/ing machine, which has a place in every family. How loudly it was cried down at first, but with it has come an increased demand for sewing. New styles and stitches, endless hemmings, tudcings, frillings and ruflflings, that would never have been dreamed of, are the result. Inven- tion has created the necessity. Other notable contributions to these conferences were the papers by Miss Juliet Corson in 1879 on ** Cooking Schools/' and by Miss Grace H. Dodge in 1885 on ** Practical Suggestions Relating to Moral Elevation and Preventive Work Among Girls." Among the visitors to the New York Conference in 1887 were the English party consisting of Lord Kin- naird, who had just succeeded Lord Shaftesbury as president of the British Young Women's Christian Associations, and his sisters the Honorables Emily and Gertrude Kinnaird, Mr. G. L. Dashwood, a generous patron of the London Associations, and Professor Henry Drummond of Edinburgh, who had been teach- ing Bible classes at the Young Men's Student Con- ferences at Northfield. Their observations on Chris- tian work, as done by women in the States, were most illuminating, as were their accounts of similar activi- ties on their side of the water. The steady increase in equipment, forces and re- sults of the constituent Associations was after all the most absorbing topic at all of these ten conferences, 166 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WOEK shown by the local reports and the practical papers written by the women who had brought these things to pass. This advance has already been noted in the preceding chapters on local city Associations, their organization and development. The future of the conference will be treated later on. CHAPTER XIV THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION — LATER THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE PUBLICATIONS, Correspondence, Visitation, Conferences: the members of the Student Young Women's Christian Associations thus dissected their special desires to be realized from a general movement. These had been furnished through their neighborly relations to the Intercollegi- ate Young Men's Christian Association, but, as the Iowa Convention had voted, they wanted **an Inter- collegiate secretary of their own, a young woman." Mrs. Miller's committee did not seem able to help in these regards. The conferences of 1881 and 1883, at which it had been appointed, had neglected to make any appropriation, although most deeply interested in the work for which they held their committee re- sponsible. The monthly periodicals, valuable to the Women's Christian Associations, were primarily the organs of local city Associations and did not approach student questions. The same was true of the biennial conferences, and no representatives from the Wom- en's Christian Association were sent to attend the state conventions where the bulk of the membership came together to discuss topics germane to their par- 167 168 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK ticular concerns. The young women felt that these elements might be supplied if back of the Interna- tional Conference there were an international organ- ization, constituted with both city and student inter- ests in view, and electing at conferences a permanent committee or board, to execute between conferences the wishes there expressed by the representative of the local Associations. With a fixe'd headquarters and a committee sitting regularly to consider student matters, there could be a large, helpful correspond- ence and the publication of necessary supplies, and a college secretary could be sent out to visit individ- ual student Associations and meet with the large groups of delegates who attended the state conven- tions. Consequently in the fall of 1885 the seven organ- ized states at their conventions or through their execu- tive committees united in framing a resolution to be of- fered to the conference which was to be entertained by the Women's Christian Association of Cincinnati in October, 1885. Ajina Downey, the state chairman of Indiana, and Ida L. Schell, chairman of Iowa, accompanied to this conference Naomi Knight of Nebraska, formerly of the Northwestern College Association of Illinois. Other students were present and gave verbal reports. It had been the expectation of the committee to present at that same session the following proposi- tion. 1. That a permanent international organization of the Young Women's Christian Associations be formed whose THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE 169 object shall be to promote the physical, social, mental and spiritual welfare of young women, whose membership shall consist of Young Women's Christian Associations whose active, i.e., voting and office holding membership, shall be limited to young women who are members in good standing of an evangelical church. 2. That a permanent executive committee be appointed by the Convention to oversee the execution of its plans in the development of its work. However, in many private conversations with lead- ing women at the conference, not one was found will- ing to support the proposition at that time. It was only eight years before at Montreal that their pres- ent working constitution had been substituted for that of 1875, which had proposed a permanent organ- ization. Many Associations were carrying on impor- tant departments other than the promotion of the physical, social, mental and spiritual life of young women and might not wish to limit their activities. The large range of work did not call for a uniform basis, and while in most of the earliest formed As- sociations the active members were communicants of evangelical churches, it would not be feasible to recommend that basis for general adoption. With- out such a regularly organized body to define its func- tions any executive committee would naturally be impossible. The college representatives, fearing that a public presentation would only cause trouble and come to nothing, since they had been informed, un- officially of course, that the resolutions if presented would be laid upon the table indefinitely, did not offer the resolutions they had prepared, and some of the ladies understood that action was to be postponed 170 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK until 1887 when it would be up for free discussion at the New York Conference. But the girls did not seem to realize that and reported to the State Com- mittees that they had failed in their mission. That they had come with a mission, and that mission a proposition to unite in a new organization, was un- known to the main body of delegates, who supposed from the local accounts and the report of the Commit- tee on Schools and Colleges, that these student As- sociations belonged to the conferences in the same sense as the delegates from cities belonged. The invitation to participate in the conference had always been gen- eral and hearty and no definite application to join was made by any organization. Societies doing the work of Women's Christian Associations were eligible to send representatives and read reports: only the number of delegates from each was limited. These meetings were for the purpose of mutual conference ; in fact, it was definitely held that delegates were sent to get information rather than to decide measures. At the students' conventions, however, the regular dele- gates came from the evangelical Associations which had applied for affiliation. Women guests from other Associations, no matter what their form of organiza- tion, were received as corresponding members only. Hence the local Associations did not suppose they be- longed to the International Conference, to join which they had not made application, and the State Associa- tions did not suppose they belonged as they had not been encouraged to unfold a plan of joining which THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE 171 they came to the conference to propose. There was complete misunderstanding on both sides. When the state student conventions were informed that nothing had been accomplished at Cincinnati relative to a National Young Women's Christian As- sociation, they decided to unite among themselves, and elected delegates to a Constitutional Convention, to be held at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, in August, 1886. Several states, keeping closely in mind their hope for a national woman secretary, pledged funds in advance for the purpose ; others followed the example of Iowa still further and amended their constitution so that other than student Associations might be incorporated into the proposed body. Lake Geneva, like Lake Chautauqua, and other small inland bodies of water, has acquired a reputation from the assemblies congregating there, which carries such weight in certain circles that the question of its own natural beauty is rarely raised, but its contour, its wooded banks and its shining waters had been lovely in themselves long before public attention was called to the place. At one of the promontory-like entrances to Williams Bay, west of the town, a clergyman 's fam- ily had for some years conducted a camp for Chris- tian people of congenial tastes, and here at Camp Col- lie, secretaries of the Illinois and Wisconsin Young Men's Christian Associations had planted the first sum- mer conference, under the name Western Secretarial Institute, in 1884. At that time the Chicago trains which afforded the best railroad connection, reached 172 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK only the town of Lake Geneva at the eastern end of the lake, from whence steamboats carried the passen- gers to the few hotels and private homes located at other points along the shore. The Association men brought their families and made the season vacational as well as vocational in character. Most of the young women student leaders who had graduated were teach- ing in high schools or colleges, hence the summer was the propitious time for their meeting. The wives of some of the leading secretaries, interested in the student work, were to be at Camp Collie in August of 1886, hence the invitation to hold this convention at Camp Collie came about very naturally and was ac- cepted all the more readily, since Chicago was the geo- graphical and railroad center of the nine states co- operating and Lake Geneva was only two hours dis- tant. Nineteen delegates met on August 6 at Bay View Cottage, Camp Collie, and continued in session a full week. Misses Knight and Schell explained the out- come of their visit to Cincinnati, the items of the articles of organization as approved by the state con- ventions were discussed, there was much prayer and quiet consideration of the whole subject — for it was a solemn responsibility, this launching of a national Christian movement — and then on August 11, 1886, the National Association of the Young Women ^s Chris- tian Associations of the United States was formed. Its object was the organization and development of Young Women *s Christian Associations for the promo- tion of the social, physical, intellectual and spiritual ROBT WEIDENSALL, SBCRSTARV Ol- THii EXfiCirriVK COMMI ouNC wen's christian associations 1 UW1T»D STATES AND BRITISH PROVI N( Na 148 Madison 5»treet. CK^^^-^^Jud CO. w -^ ^gf;iy& (^2:^^-*^^^^M2l [^l^i 71 R . . M y^L^ '^ -'■^^1 K^J ^^B [■I il i£| nm ^w^B Wmi HI • '*'«'BK! ISgH 1^ -*^Jnr mt 1^ ■ all ^^ ^~ t w j^ ' ^ ^8 i'l Pi 1 ^^1 '^?l^E^ f*^^l Hl^l "m^Bp,^/^ ^B ^H ^^^M «H '_«; PH H^H ' ■■■■ ^^H^^^w WB IIH'j^^S^V?'' 'iS^J^mM hI^B|: fllgwl ^^Bl^^^^^l^r ■*T"f^^^ ^^B^^*"™™"™ ^^^Hi^ "i~ •^ o HH O PS ^~' o ;=! o <5 THE CITY GIRLS 285 dive and laugh. They came week days and Sundays into long or short course Bible classes, and for vespers, and for meetings and classes which they planned and conducted for fellowship in soul growth, fellowship with their known friends, and with other young women not of the fold but who could really become one flock and might own one Shepherd. Outside the building they have been just as truly on their own Young Women's Christian Association premises, as they have frequented the downtown lunch rooms or played on the athletic field or congregated as students of high schools or business colleges or met in temporary quarters rented in the locality that best met their convenience. Some of the members of col- ored branches worked so splendidly in the great finance campaigns that they can erect their own beau- tifully appointed headquarters. The last clause in the recommended city constitution of 1912 makes this all plain by stating the purpose. To associate young women in personal loyalty to Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord; to promote growth in Christian character and service through physical, social, mental and spiritual training, and to become a social force for the ex- tension of the Kingdom of God." A once popular hymn began, Throw out the life line across the dark wave. Some decades later we realize that the enemies of girls' souls are working when the lights are brightest. So the modern Association steps over its own thresh- old. 286 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Where cross the crowded ways of life Where sound the cries of race and clan Above the noise of selfish strife We hear Thy voice, Son of Man. Some of the most powerful evangelistic messages which the girls of a city ever went to hear were de- livered in theatres. The Rochester Association in 1904 paid $458 for an opera house and speakers for four Sunday afternoons. Two thousand girls in Los Angeles represented to that community the abundant life which Christ came to bring, by giving the Pageant, The Ministering of the Gift, in 1914. They have or- ganized Know Your City weeks where by lecture and visitation information was gained and diffused about the status of the city at that very moment. The City Council, Public Health, Child Life, Courts and Jails, Charities, Welfare Work, Industrial Life, Amuse- ments, Housing Conditions, Immigration and kindred conditions and institutions were discussed. They have cooperated with the churches of which they are a standing committee on young women's righteousness, in occasional and protracted religious meetings, they have found teachers for classes and sometimes pupils for the teachers. Groups of members have met in homes to study the Bible, or the unfolding page of the foreign Association story. They have come together Sunday afternoon on a shady lawn for a quiet service or have brought sacred music into a far corner of a city park. Hundreds and thousands of members in the Central and Eastern states have lavished their time and strength as loyal church members during great THE CITY GIRLS 287 evangelistic campaigns, and then kept on through the following months and years after the tabernacle was dark and the voice of the evangelist and the sound of the singing were no longer heard in that city, helping into Christian tastes and habits the new followers of their own Lord. They have carried Travelers' Aid work alone or in conjunction with other societies, they have been in league with police departments to conduct to the Association headquarters girls and women who were perishing because they did not know where to find these Isles of Safety, or did not know that there was any such thing as a Young Women's Christian Association to ensure safety. And several cities watching the tide of affairs added to their staffs "police women," as the protective agents were styled. *'You build a great building and then you try to see how much you can do outside it!" Yes — for the weeks of opportunities are not all in the winter, as was once taken for granted. The summer program is often as heavy, though vastly different. From 1910 to 1912 the number of summer camps and cottages in- creased more than 200 per cent. These are not all owned outright; college dormitories in the suburbs sheltered guests who turned trolleywards every morn- ing; winter homes have been put at the disposal of Southern Associations, even state barracks have been loaned when girl guests from the whole municipality were invited. Neighboring Associations have set up their tents side by side and within the Field Commit- tees' great camps on the lakes or ocean, and among the hills and mountains, city girls have come together 288 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK for the summer season. "We came, two girls to- gether, for two weeks. We went away knowing two hundred girls and will never stop being acquainted with them/' But the clearest proof of the democracy of the Young Women's Christian Association, some one has said, is the City Summer Conference, and among the 1,502 city delegates at six conferences in 1915, coming from 224 places, there was a record of 83 occupations in which they spent their work days, and 38 church affiliations through which they worshiped on Sunday. Might one say that the democracy aimed at is of the nature which does not declare ' ' I am as good as she is, ' ' but ''She is as good as I"? L CHAPTER XXI THE GIRLS IN INDUSTRY ** Y ET US resolve that in the new body we will work with girls, not for them." This was the thought of a letter written to the chairman of the Joint Committee in 1906. An invitation to grown up people to '^Come and work with us" is almost as acceptable as an invitation to children to ' ' Come and play with us. ' ' And among the 1,199,452 women in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits, the 142,265 saleswomen, the 21,980 telephone and telegraph operators and the 328,935 employees in laundries, there were hundreds of proved leaders al- ready a part of the Young Women's Christian As- sociation. Not the cities alone but the prairie towns with their canning factories, the hillside villages with their water powers, the fruit regions with their pack- ing houses, become industrial centers, and when girls come together in any kind of a center, association is possible and the Young Women's Christian Associa- tion may be needed. It was reported in 1909 that 14,877 young women in the industrial field had some part in the weekly classes and meetings held in mills and factories and business places, while 3,046 were club members in 289 200 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK eighty-nine Associations. Fifty-five industrial and extension secretaries were helping in bringing people together and working out plans which needed an out- side ally. Besides this general extension of manifold interests from the main administration there were several separate industrial and branch Associations. Early in 1904 young women in the cotton mill vil- lages of the Piedmont section/ South Carolina, were able to open a local Association by the generosity of the mill managers, notably Mr. Thomas F. Parker of the Monaghan Mills, Greenville, who set apart a place for the general activities and a cottage for the general secretary and teacher of household economics. In 1905 the office and factory employees of the Larkin Company of Buffalo evolved an Association with classes and most of the usual all-round features as a branch of the Buffalo Association, and this scheme was adopted in many details in several other manufactur- ing houses, chiefly in New York and New Jersey. The next step in working with this great group, one third of all the women over sixteen years of age in gainful occupations at that time, was a resolution adopted at Indianapolis in 1911. That ill order to make more far-reaching the contact of the Young Women's Christian Association with women in industry, the extension of Association work into factories through noon meetings, classes and informal clubs be con- tinued, and whenever possible in preference to organizing Associations within factory walls, the establishment of rented centers in the industrial sections of cities be advo- cated and employers be encouraged to contribute to the funds of the central Association which shall employ the secretaries in charge of this work. THE GIRLS IN INDUSTRY 2S1 And after this came Federation. For nearly a score of years the self-governing club in the factory had been the favorite form of cooperation. In cities where club officers and forewomen from several estab- lishments met to discuss common interests, it was nat- ural to think of making closer contact between the club memberships. Detroit projected the idea of a Feder- ation of Industrial Clubs from the original Grace Whitney Hoff League, begun in 1908. Then Akron and other cities followed. This has developed as an industrial movement which belongs to the girls, ac- customed to self government by the management of their own factory clubs, and finds a place in the City Association through membership there taken for granted in the club membership. It is true that the great summer conferences were democratic and catered to all tastes, but so much was offered, conscientious club leaders followed so exacting a program schedule, that the joyful days failed as va- cation. The club girls' daily councils were the heart of their whole conference. This made easy transfer- ence to the vacation camps of the Field Committees, and in 1913 the club girls' council was discontinued at Silver Bay and the club members of the North- eastern Associations came together at Altamont, New York, and those of the Delaware, Maryland and Penn- sylvania Associations at Camp Nepahwin, Canton, Pennsylvania, for conference on their own work, and quiet hours of Bible study and intimate religious meet- ings to gain inspiration to do what they saw before them. Other sections continued the idea. CHAPTER XXII THE COUNTBY GIRLS TV ^EMBERS, not equipment," is equally ^ I %/| *^^ active principle of work in the coun- i ▼ J. try, but members with the cooperation of a secretary of their own, working toward a higher spiritual and mental and social and physical and eco- nomic plane. In the series of resolutions adopted at the St. Paul Convention in 1909 the unit of organizations for towns of 12,000 and under, and adjoining communities, was fixed as the County Association. At the same time there was more or less discussion of rural development, but in the ''Secretaries' Association" Conference which followed in Plymouth Church, Minneapolis, the keenest interest centered in the section for county workers, when Elizabeth IMcKenzie recounted the bursting into Association life of Woodford County, Illinois. A girls' club in the little college town of Eureka, Illinois, had found a way to open up clubs, Bible study, and a class in physical education in the college gym- nasium taught by the physical director of the Peoria Association. This was the beginning, and on October 17, 1908, girls and women came together in the Pres- 292 THE COUNTRY GIRLS 293 byterian Church at El Paso and organized a county Young Women's Association. In April there were two hundred and sixty-nine members in seven branches in small towns, ranging up to 2,545 in population. In Roanoke they had furnished rooms, used as a center for the farmers' wives who came to town for shopping, and for their own classes in gymnasium drill, normal Bible study and shirt waist making. Washburn mem- bers held their gymnasium class in a board member's home. The El Paso girls turned their Christmas Gift Club into a self-governing evening club which they named **Alta Vista," and took for it the altruistic motto, **Give to the world the best that you have, and the best will come back to you." An alumna of the University of Illinois who had also been graduated through the various degrees of committee, cabinet, and conference of that student Association was chairman of the local committee in Minonk where a Bible class of twenty-two and a sewing class of eight were the stated weekly gatherings of members. There had been nearly five hundred present at the seven social gather- ings held during two months in the whole county. The college girls were also heard from at Minneap- olis. Another report came from the University of Michigan, where a group of seniors whose homes were in small communities had formed a club to study what they could do for their home localities after leaving college. In line with this was the account of a class, other than of seniors, in the University of Kansas As- sociation, studying what may be accomplished through the channels of home, church and school in small com- 294 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK munities. Each member determined to work out some of the methods during her vacation days and to report progress. Under these two heads have the women and girls of the small towns and country been developing their Association life, permanent county organization, and summer Eight Week Clubs. **How can I, except some one shall guide me?" is not only the cry of the solitary traveler in the desert between Jerusalem and Gaza, it is the cry of the isolated girls of the country districts of the United States. The Eight Week Clubs which Helen F. Barnes started in Texas and elsewhere stood for eight weeks of learning how during the col- lege year, and eight weeks of passing on in the sum- mer vacation, passing on in that most difficult of all fields for new enterprises, one's own home neighbor- hood. The girls who came back to college had so much to tell that was new and absorbing and girls who stayed on at home had so much to do and think of that was new and suggestive, that nation-wide expansion was next in order and in the spring of 1913 a detailed plan was sent to all student Associations offering a certificate of Commendation for Community Service to clubs making adequate report of adequate service. These certificates were signed by Miss Dodge and by Miss Jessie Woodrow Wilson of the National Student Committee. The purpose as stated in the outline could almost be pieced together line by line from the reports of the three following seasons. To bring the girls and young women in smaller communi- ties together during the summer vacation season for the pur- THE COUNTRY GIRLS 295 pose of learning some of those things which mean a happier and more useful life; to unite them for definite service to their home neighborhoods; to learn about the work of the Young Women's Christian Association, and to be of help in bringing its opportunities to other girls in the country and small towns. The reports for 1915 give figures as follows: 213 Eight Week Clubs with a total membership of 3,668 girls and with leaders representing 98 different col- leges. Any team work soon means a conference. The title of the Central City Conference was changed to Cen- tral City and County in 1914, and there were eighty representatives from fourteen counties who enjoyed it but asked for their own conference for 1915. This the National Board arranged at the nearby site, Con- ference Point, by which name old Camp Collie again comes upon the Young Women's Christian Association scene. Here in 1886 nineteen college girls from eight states had started their National Association, a work so visibly feeble that almost anything might break it down. Yet within eight years it was seen around the world and must be modeled after in India and else- where where the World's Committee had oversight. Here in 1915 eighty-three girls from the small towns and open country of twelve counties in seven of these same states, and four others, came together for the first county summer conference, and no one dares pre- dict what they may achieve in that same space of years. So much for facts. The inspiration comes to many through memorizing the ** Helen Gk)uld Bible Verses," as the list of Scripture passages is called, for learning 296 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK which Mrs. Finley J. Shepard gives every member a copy of the Bible. Although the offer is open to all Association members yet the country girls seem to have more quiet time for committing verses to memory. Inspiration comes to others through the county camps like Camp Chedwell of Chautauqua County. Inspira- tion comes to all through cooperating with country churches and realizing that while the county Young Women's Christian Associations are a part of a new country life movement, they are also part of an es- tablished Christian order centuries old, adapted not alone to ''yesterday/' but equally well to ''to-day and forever." CHAPTER XXIII THE YOUNG GIELS **X" ITTLE Girls' Christian Association.'' y^ I This comprehensive title was the name M J which a company of children in Oakland, California, were pleased to take thirty-five years ago. Their desire to become an auxiliary of the Oakland Young Women's Christian Association was granted, and though their Saturday morning's meetings did not continue for any length of time, nor their charitable exertions in collecting clothes and distributing them to the poor families persist until all the deserving and undeserving of the town had been freshly clad, yet the children were happy, did much good and were over- joyed at the thought of being lawfully connected with an international movement. More persistent has been the girls' branch in Pough- keepsie, which claimed for many years to be the only definitely organized branch of its kind in the country. On March 30, 1886, girls from ten to sixteen years of age formed a miniature Association and within a year counted one hundred and ten members and a secretary of their own. Bertha Van Vliet. They had raised i money towards furnishing a reading room, and a game room. They had also a spacious hall for enter- ^ 297 ' y- 298 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK tainments and calisthenics, but were not content with this and found time during the three afternoons of each week for cooking and music classes. They chose their own members as leaders of their Monday half hour devotional meetings. Young girls were in evidence in most of the city Associations, sometimes welcomed as **the women of to-morrow, ' ' sometimes unwelcome and sometimes con- sidered a natural detriment because older girls did not like *'to find the rooms full of little girls,'' as the fact was sometimes hospitably stated. They were always allowed in a Saturday morning gymnasium class, how- ever. In the '90 's the Association tried to assemble all the junior activities in some form of branch organ- ization on the segregation principle. Even so late as 1909 there were only ten junior department secre- taries. But the girls were to have their day. As the self governing clubs made their way along, young girls kept proving in them their capacity for self-control and cooperation. They showed that they could be on hand and not under foot. In the rooms or building a line between children and girls of Association age was drawn. Then the secretaries began confessing that they needed to know more about girls before they could deal fairly and justly and affectionately by < individual girls, and they took the topic of the Adoles- cent Girl for their Minneapolis Conference in 1909. ^After that they "stayed not for brake, and they stopped not for stone"; they besieged the National Board for help and they took counsel with the active THE YOUNG GIRLS 299 girls in their own Associations, the high school students and grade girls, the girls who had stopped school to go to work and for other reasons. They put a plank into the platform of the County Association. All the resources of the Association were now opened everywhere. The National Board through many volunteers and secretaries took part in those days and months of consultation in the Board Room of the National offices and of demonstration at the Studio Club before the arcana of the Camp Fire Girls were first revealed to an eager audience at the annual meeting of the whole Board in 1912. Many local Associations and one Field Committee followed the example of calling a secretary for the Girls' Department. In four years the membership has increased eighty per cent, and the value of mem- bership even more greatly. In 1915 two conferences were held for high school girls alone. This was necessitated by the rapidly de- veloping student movement among secondary school girls manifested by clubs, branches and Associations under city, county and older student leadership. In large cities where there are several high schools, unions of these clubs have been effected by the organ- ization of High School Councils, the last word in younger student initiative. CHAPTER XXIV THE STRANGERS WITHIN OUR GATES THE first immigrant girl in whom Americans as a whole have been interested was Pris- cilla Mullens, whose domestic graces and social readiness as appreciated by John Alden and Captain Miles Standish have been recorded for us by Longfellow. Girls coming over the border from Canada and the English speaking arrivals of the mid- dle of the last century fitted into United States conditions almost imperceptibly; the Germans and Scandinavians of the next generation also went with swift steps straight into domestic occupations in American homes. When the Young Women's Christian Association folk realized that to the difficulties all strangers in a strange land encountered, these newcomers added the handicap of ignorance of the still stranger speech, they attempted English classes for foreigners in many places. These were usually informal Thursday after- noon affairs. The girls came as regularly as they could, got acquainted with each other and their volun- teer teachers, learned to read a little, tried to master the English consonant combinations and ceased the afternoon with a little fancy work and coffee drinking. 300 STRANGERS WITHIN OUR GATES 301 The teachers, for the most part, knew little of phonet- ics or of Grimm's law, but if they were sympathetic the pupils made headway enough to merge into the regular departments of the whole Association. But this took many years and only a few went unswerv- ingly on. All America began to think more about the for- eigners on our shores. Christian prophets like Ed- ward A. Steiner waked up the churches; the Women's Home Missionary Societies began to think of what lay here and over the sea, outside Ellis Island, to which they had largely confined themselves; and the Na- tional Board of Young Women's Christian Associa- tions appointed a Committee of Research and Investi- gation. Then there appeared in December, 1910, an open door on Manhattan Island and a new term in the Association encyclopedia, an * ' International Institute ' ' of the Young Women's Christian Association. Later this removed to 113 East 34th Street. Girls released to New York City by the port officials were called upon a few days after they arrived by a visitor speaking their own language, explaining to them the ways of working and going about and living in this new part of the world. Invitations to free English classes for other Finns or Italians or Syrians were accepted, then came acquaintance and friends and a grasp of spiritual truth. Trenton, Lawrence, Massachusetts, and Los Angeles adopted the same plan, namely, a branch headquarters accessible for foreign people, an Ameri- can Immigration secretary, foreign visitors, teachers and director of special activities. 302 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Back of this are efforts to connect American help- fulness to the organizations in the old home lands; and on every side are efforts to relate the new Ameri- cans, as soon as may be, to the best institutions and forces in the land they chose or were forced to adopt. CHAPTER XXV GIRLS IN OTHER COUNTRIES ALL the young women upon the globe are not claimed by the United States of America in its membership, but from India, China, Japan, the Argentine and Turkey, they have asked for American leaders, and therefore seem to stand in a closer relation to us than do young women of other na- tions working independently or with assistance of other secretaries of the World's Young Women's Christian Association. Before there was any thought of the city Associa- tion or national committees or secretaries, mission- aries who had once been Association workers had made use of the Association plan of members and officers and committees with the school girls they were teach- ing. ;Mrs. Wishard wrote of several such during her early work tours, and The Evangel occasionally printed messages from such student groups in Naga- saki (1889), Hang Chow (1890) and Tung Cho (1892). That they were truly indigenous and not a mere projection of the foreigners ' American notions may be seen from incidental extracts of this corre- spondence. We were in all nineteen members in it, but now there are thirteen — some of them have gone to their homes and 303 S04 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK some were married, and some have gone to learn other things. One with us is a new member. She was baptized this month on the second Sunday. We must pray for you in America: we know that is a good work we should do. Zech. iv:6. That is true a good motto, also we have written it on the blackboard. Are there any girls in your Association who have studied the Holy Bible from Genesis to Malachi? Our first class has studied and been examined on every book. We had such a good letter in English from Nagasaki Japan School Assistant. They told us the Association of theirs was organized May, 1€89, and we have answered to them. Miss Guinness wrote the book, "In the Far East." We have seen her. She lives in Honan, China. Last year in the June month she was here and attended our Wednesday evening prayer meeting; such very kind words to exhort us in the 14th chapter of St. John. She is a very lovely lady. I write this English myself, but I cannot very fast. Signed by a Chinese teacher. It has already been seen how India came into con- tact with America through calling a secretary to Ma- dras in 1894 who became national traveling secretary two years later, which was about twenty years after the first Indian branches had come into existence. Miss Maud Orlebar of England had reached Calcutta early in 1894. Even when Agnes Hill was succeeded in 1908 by Ethel Hunter of Scotland as national secretary, the American bond was still strong, for Miss Hunter got her technical preparation at the Secretaries' Train- ing Institute in Chicago and was in constant com- munication with the United States. It sounds like the most ancient of ancient history to read in the report of the world's conference in 1898: GIRLS IN OTHER COUNTRIES SG5 European and American leaders in China are made much of and their presence is eagerly desired at all the social occurrences. They would confess themselves that they are encouraged to lead very empty and thoughtless lives. I venture to hope that our Young Women's Christian Associa- tion with its Bible reading has been of some use to some of them. The only two immarried girls in the place joined us. . . . And in our day China is opening. The Chinese young woman in her soft and brilliant dress, with her broad brows and her skilful fingers, is about to step upon the world's stage. She has a natural love for going about and seeing what is new. She would travel more now if she could be sure of her inn. The time may soon come when the Yotmg Women's Christian Association home, on native lines, will be added to our missionary agencies, and be to travelers what at present our boarding schools are to students. Nearly a score of years passed before this hope was realized. When the honorary secretary of the Canton Branch forwarded this account, there were three other small branches in China, likewise of English speaking ladies, in Shanghai, Foochow and Hong Kong : the latter was the most vigorous and had formed a Chinese branch of forty members. Foochow was supposed to be the first place where Chinese women students started their own Association by formal adoption of a constitution. This was in the Methodist School and Seminary in December, 1898, through the help of Mr. Fletcher S. Brockman, national secretary of the Young Men's Christian As- sociations of China. This little band of girls faith- fully kept the Morning Watch and found out many ways of showing Christ's spirit in the day schools around and in the hospital. 306 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK The China National Committee received Miss Ber- ninger in November, 1903, and after a year which she spent in language study, they were able to reorganize the Shanghai Association and open a house on the Yang tze poo Road, near the cotton mills. The girls and women employed there in western processes of manufacture took very kindly to the western ideas of Christian friendliness as expressed in this branch. Sometimes more than four hundred visitors dropped in to see Miss Berninger during an ordinary week and once during the first sixteen days after her return from vacation she made 1,088 callers welcome. In the autumn of 1905 A. Estella Paddock arrived as the first national secretary. Miss Reynolds in her oriental tour of 1900 met with the pioneer Association of Japan, that of Yokohama, and with other ladies keen on calling an American secretary for work among the girls of government schools, alumnae of mission schools and girls in fac- tories. An experienced American secretary replied, but not from the United States. A. Caroline Mac- Donald, city secretary of the Dominion Council of Canada, offered to go, and the Canadian Association with a generosity amounting to sacrifice, let her go out in 1904 and generously supported her as national secretary of a sister country. Theresa Morrison was the first secretary from this side of the border. She went out in 1903. Japan is rich in native leaders; Miss Michi Kawai is the Japanese active member of the World's Com- mittee and Miss Ume Tsuda, the leading woman in GIRLS IN OTHER COUNTRIES 807 the Japanese world of education, is president of the Tokyo Association. Both were college students in the United States. Even as far back as 1907, when women from other oriental lands met in Tokyo in the eighth World's Student Christian Federation Con- ference, they recognized that the national work would not bear the hall marks of Canada or the United States or of any foreign country, but would be dis- tinctly Japanese. Action and reaction are equal. As calendars go, it was half way between the Paris World's Conference in June, 1906, which discussed with utmost elaboration the lines for demarcation be- tween church missions and missionaries supported by Christian Associations, and the extension of the Young Women's Christian Association into other lands, and the organization of the present national movement with a foreign department on a par with the home work, in December, 1906, that the first Amer- ican secretary, Emma Jean Batty, took her departure for South America. Like all American secretaries, except those in India, she was confronted by a new language, but the first months were occupied with re- organization of the Buenos Aires Association for Eng- lish speaking girls, which dated from 1890, and search for a central building. Six tiny rooms, up a flight of seventy-two stairs, were used as a boarding home, where seven regular members of the family hospitably made room for frequent transient guests and more than a score took luncheon daily, and in seasonable weather both English and Spanish speak- ing girls came in for Bible classes. Exorbitant 308 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK rents have always made finding a location a serious problem. From the United States the pioneer Association secretaries went out to Turkey in 1913 as the pioneers had gone to China in 1903 and to South America in 1906. And again like Miss Berninger in Shanghai, Frances Gage had once been a missionary in Turkey in Asia. She had a fine background of language and customs. Anna Welles, appointed to student work in Constantinople at the same time, had been for some years a resident of Paris and an active force in the Student Hostel. The great war which began in 1914 not only cur- tailed the usual work in South America and Turkey, but called out the Association forces into necessary relief measures. New opportunities of this kind have also been responded to by the Associations in India. Ten newly appointed secretaries went out in 1915, two to India, one to Japan, and seven to China. In these three countries the summer conferences have come to be spiritual power stations as in the older As- sociation lands. The building era has come to Japan and China as to India. Through the combined efforts of the Japan National Committee and the Pacific Coast Field Com- mittee, the greater part of the money needed for the Tokyo Building has been secured and the building was opened in the autumn of 1915. In Shanghai arrangements have been made with the Southern Methodist Mission for land and buildings which enabled the national and local work to take ad- GIRLS IN OTHER COUNTRIES S09 vance steps such as the organization of a Physical Training School for Chinese women, which opened October, 1915. For this the Director of Physical Ed- ucation for Women at the University of Wisconsin, Abby Shaw Mayhew, had gone out in 1912, and Ying Mei Chun had returned in 1913 after thorough pro- fessional preparation in the United States. Secre- tarial residences in Canton and Foochow had also been provided. Foreign Associations seem much more a part of the American sisterhood than they could otherwise seem even with secretaries going out and returning on fur- lough, because students from Oriental, Latin Amer- ican and other foreign countries are studying in colleges, universities, preparatory and professional schools all over the United States. They are members of student Associations and guests at summer confer- ences as well as at special functions which Mrs. Helen Gould Shepard and other members of the foreign de- partment have arranged. That summer of 1900, when one picked up the morning paper with reluctance, fearing to see that still more missionaries had been borne down by the fury of the anti-foreign outbreak in China, that sum- mer when Christians, wherever gathered, in church or camp, almost sought to dictate to God for a speedy end to the struggle, brought forth a harvest in the fall of 1914, which would never have been dreamed of in those days of weeping — ^twelve Chinese girls ar- rived in the party of students sent to this country by their government for education in different subjects. 810 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK And the money to be drawn upon for ten of these bursaries was the indemnity fund granted by China to the United States for those losses in 1900 and re- turned by our government to the Chinese treasury. In these years the Young Women 's Christian Associa- tion has so fitted in among things Chinese that it was the China National Committee which was entrusted with administering the examinations and arranging the departures, and the National Board of the United States which received them here at the Training School building, telegraphed about admission to the desired schools, and stood by during the students' in- evitable fall shopping. Best of all since the Associa- tion is only a department of the church, it was learned that ten of these students had come from mission schools, that all the indemnity students were Chris- tians, and two of them were pastors' daughters. Still other countries turn their eyes to America when seeking executive officers. In the British Amer- ican Association established in Paris in 1904, under the inspiration of Mrs. Grace Whitney Evans Hoff, first president of the Detroit Association, the staff has been almost continuously made up of Americans at the main building, long known at No. 5 Rue de Turin, and at the Paris Student Hostel which has been, since 1906, the shadow of a rock in a weary land to women studying under the faculties of the Universities and those others who knew neither where to look for tui- tion nor abiding place. Through the World's Stu- dent Christian Federation certain American secre- taries or volunteer workers studying abroad have co- GIRLS IN OTHER COUNTRIES 311 operated with continental women students in univer- sity advance steps. Even before Australasia had any regular national confederation, Adelaide called an American secretary, Esther L. Anderson, who went out in 1907, to be fol- lowed in 1911 by Helen F. Barnes as secretary of the National Association formed four years previous. From all the five countries where the American foreign department has sent out secretaries, students have come to the Training School, and from Canada, France, Eussia, South Africa, Finland, Norway, Switzerland, and Great Britain students have come also, for observation and training. They aim not to transplant but to select some of the ideas for grafting into either older or younger Association growths. In thinking of the World's Association which bands all these lands together, one notices how stages of progress are marked unconsciously by the successive World's Conferences. The first met in London from June 14 to 18, 1898, at the invitation of the World's Executive Committee, it is true, but in a way it was the British Association asking their sisters to visit them, since hospitality was offered in private homes for some days before and after the conference proper ; 204 of the registered delegates were from Great Brit- ain, the other 192 came, nineteen from India, four- teen from the United States, thirteen from Sweden, five from Italy, three from Canada, one from Nor- way — these were the seven regularly aifiliated coun- tries — and one or more from each of eleven additional continental and extra European lands; and all the 312 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK program sessions were in English, although in the business meetings there was much informal translat- ing by the presiding officers, and in the devotional meetings there were prayers in many tongues that helped to make Pentecost and the Whitsuntide season very real. The English ladies realized the diversity of administration with such delicacy that the com- munion service was not a stated part of the program, but was held the morning after adjournment lest any might fear they had been forced to accept the ritual of an alien state church. It was in a way a retrospective conference, for few of the 1898 delegates had been in that little group which in 1892 had decided that the time was ripe to effect world federation. Still smaller was the group to which the drafting of the constitution had been re- ferred. And even in those countries (four at the outset, three in the next four years), which had legally adopted the proposed constitution through action of conventions or executive committees, the members at large were not very familiar with the scheme, and much explanation of that action was sought and was graciously and patiently given. Another link with the past was the reception at Exeter Hall tendered by Sir George Williams, the founder of the whole Chris- tian Association movement, upon whom Queen Vic- toria had conferred knighthood in 1894 when the par- ent London Young Men's Christian Association cele- brated its Jubilee by entertaining the World's Con- ference at the British capital. Yet the deliberations were all constructive. It GIRLS IN OTHER COUNTRIES 313 would hardly seem, looking back to the morning when the constitution was adopted, that any delegates would object to the first Article: ''Name, This or- ganization shall be called the World's Young Wom- en's Christian Association," but one delegate rose to protest on the grounds that Christians are to flee from the World, the Flesh and the Devil. But she was fully content when reminded that *'God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son." The recommendation of an International Week of Prayer brought most keenly to mind the geographical differences of Northern and Southern hemispheres, which must be observed even when people's hearts are all at one. October was proposed, then November. This was satisfactory except to South India, which would be in the monsoon then. But India's large delegation undertook to bear with this inconvenience and the date, which has never been changed, was agreed upon. The designs for a world's badge were also presented then and every one knows the incident relative to the language of the inscription. Around the circle of the globe the world's motto was to be printed. But in what language? Should it be a separate tongue for every country? That would not be a uniform universal badge, A Scotch mind, trained to philosophical niceties, suggested printing the motto in the original Hebrew of Zechariah iv, 6, and each wondered that she herself had not hit upon so happy a solution. One cannot forget the social meetings: that at the heart of London, the Mansion House, when the Lord 814 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Mayor and Lady Mayoress received the delegates in pomp and circumstance, and as soon as seats were taken for the program, an honorable attendant lifted the mighty gold chain of office from the mayor 's neck and he listened with the others to the remarkable ad- dress of Isabella Bird Bishop, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and to the other speakers of the evening; that at the heart of England, when by train and char-a-hancs we journeyed to a glorious country estate and then sat under the shade of a cen- tury old tree to listen to a Bible reading by one of the hosts; that at the heart of the British Empire, when we were received by royalty in the Dean's Gar- den at Windsor and stood at divine service in St. George's chapel, and walked through state apartments and listened to a message sent from Victoria, Queen of England and Empress of India. And now came Stockholm, 1914. Again there was royal recognition. Again there were delightful ex- cursions, but here there were only 325 from the en- tertaining country in proportion to 463 from twenty- two other countries. Each of the eighteen national Associations was represented, several of them far be- yond voting capacity, but the members were welcomed as visiting delegates. The program was as interna- tional as the delegations. Sweden generously permit- ted the use of French, German, and English as the official languages and was content to have only the public addresses interpreted into Swedish. There was a union Communion service on Sunday, and whereas in the immediately preceding conferences the sacra- Clarissa H. Spencer, General Secretary of the World's Committee GIRLS IN OTHER COUNTRIES 315 ment had been offered by clergy of three church bod- ies, that delegates might receive it each after her own custom, this time all partook together of the com- munion after the Lutheran order, as administered by clergymen of the Swedish National Church, and all the children of the Heavenly Father were together in their Father's house and at His table. Previous conferences had discussed matters of organization. The Stockholm Conference dwelt, it is true, with ad- justments that come from growth and national ex- pansion, but the conference theme reduced the organ- ization to the place of a necessary intermediary. This theme was stated as, **The Unfolding of the True Plan for Woman in God's Purpose for the World." There was appeal made for public service, for Chris- tian women to take their due share of the municipal work of their nations, but the supreme obligation laid upon the women assembled in that conference was the winning of the individual soul for the King- dom of God. About 800 delegates represented about 670,000 members in all parts of the world. It is a beginning. One sentence phrased by Dr. A. Johnston Ross stands ever as an explanation of the close relation de- sired between the girls and women in other lands and the members of the Young Women's Christian Associ- ations of the United States of America. It is only when that mystical collectivism of the East, and the individualism of the West, and the strenuous gravity of the North and the tender passion of the South, have all been brought in together to study the mind of Jesus, that we shall be able to understand what God has given us in Him. w CHAPTER XXVI THE SECRETARIES ^^^ "Y T-^^ ^^ y^^ ^^y 'secretaries'?" is a ques- tion repeatedly asked by people un- familiar with Association traditions. That was the title used in calling the first person to spend his whole time in Christian Association work and receive a salary for his services. George Williams and his colleagues could awaken interest in personal Christianity among the young men in their own drapery establishments, they could project plans outside, they could make their Sun- days the longest working days of the week, but when by 1845 the Hitchcock-Rogers example had been fol- lowed in all parts of London and fourteen business houses had branches, there must be a man free to go about, to execute as well as to devise plans, to look after affairs on week days as well as Sundays. J. H. Tarlton, a city missionary who had been con- ducting morning worship for the employes of Hitch- cock-Rogers, seemed suitable as this salaried organiz- ing secretary or missionary, and he was asked To act as assistant secretary, to attend all general meet- ings of the Association, to assist in conducting services in houses when they want help; to establish and render as efficient as possible district Associations; to form by cora- 316 THE SECRETARIES 317 municating with Christian young men in the large towns and cities of the Kingdom, branch Associations (it may sometimes be necessary that he should visit young men in illness) ; and make himself generally useful among the class to which his efforts will be directed, by pointing them to "the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world." He was evidently a secretary, a unifying force, a chap- lain, an organizer, a friend to young men, a general factotum and an evangelist. His sphere was not only London but any part of the United Kingdom. Mr. Williams is said to have supplied most of the ideas and much of the enthusiasm while Mr. Tarlton car- ried them into effect so he was evidently an adminis- trator also. Little is said about his duties as host, and as the London Association was housed its first five years in a room in a hotel, those were probably so incidental that no one considered them worthy of mention. But in America the woman secretary was first of all a hostess, even though like Mary Foster in Boston in 1866, the realm over which she presided was only two rented rooms. Many of the employed officers elsewhere in early years were happy to welcome girls to the one room which for utility eclipsed the cottage furniture which Goldsmith says ** contrived a double debt to pay, ' ' for this one room, bounded on the north by a desk, on the east by a piano, on the south by a gas stove, and on the west by a reading table, was office, employment bureau, audience room, noon rest parlor and library, all in one. When the boarding home was the dominant feature, the superintendent 318 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK of the home was also manager of the employment bureau and organizer of other departments of work. The records of the Young Ladies' Branch of the La- dies' Christian Association show that Mrs. M. C. Uhler, the clergyman's widow who was their first sec- retary, received $50 per month. This was a maxi- mum wage for a long period for positions where no living was provided. Traveling secretaries from 1886 on were evangel- ists, advisers, correspondents, organizers, too, though curiously enough Nettie Dunn, the pioneer traveling secretary, organized no Associations whatever during her first year of office. Visitation claimed all her time. Most of the state workers' visits were made to colleges and the secretary was paid a small salary and expenses of board, whenever hospitality was not oifered. At the first national convention at Lake Geneva, in 1886, there were no secretaries present, because there was none in the movement at that time. Three years later nine of the seventy-four delegates to the second national convention in Bloomington were secretaries, one national, four state, three local city. They found time for a little conference together before the con- vention began, for it has always been recognized that the distinction between volunteer and professional work is genuine. The volunteer worker selects the task for which she is naturally fitted, and stays by it as long and does as much or as little as devotion and circumstances and other claims allow. Her service may strike any note of the Association scale. The THE SECRETARIES 319 professional worker is held to a standard, the Associa- tion is her ranking claim, and she binds the separate notes into a harmonious chord. Every national Convention since then and many state meetings have been made the opportunity for formal or informal discussion of the problems for which these women had made themselves responsible in becoming salaried workers in the Young Women's Christian Associations. After the organization Convention of 1906 there remained for a three days' conference at the Park Avenue Hotel, New York City, one hundred and forty-nine superintendents, secretaries, clerks, and di- rectors of departments, for three days of acquaintance and inspiration. Miss Dodge explained what *' Coop- eration of the Secretaries in the Development of the New Movement" would mean, and there were other speakers. The Minneapolis meeting of secretaries following the second national Convention claims to have started the immediate advance in girls' work through the powerful addresses delivered on these topics. The Importance of the Study of Adolescence, How a Girl's Early Belief May Be Developed Through the Student Association into Mature Christian Faith, The Girl in the City High School, in the Private School, in the Small Town High School, The Cooperation of City and Student Associations in Developing and Training Individual Girls, What Has Led the Young Men's Christian Association to Inaugurate Its Present Work for Boys. At this conference also the beginnings of 320 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK county work were made the basis of a morning pro- gram as suggestive as it was absorbing. How the Young Women's Christian Association Can Meet the Appeal of the Times in Its Secretarial Work was the theme of the Indianapolis Secretaries' Conference of 1911, following the third national Con- vention, and the theme was treated through commis- sions on city and student problems which sent out their findings to members in advance, so that discus- sion could be instant and intelligent. The debate of five years concerning the name of this body was set- tled in favor of the progressives when the constitu- tion was adopted. The name of this Association shall be the Association of Employed Officers of the Young Women's Christian Asso- ciations of the United States of America. The object shall be study and conference concerning the questions that affect the efficiency of the salaried staff of the Young Women's Christian Associations. Thus this gatliering of three hundred members de- cided to enlarge the terminology so as to describe the whole staff, not only that section known as secretaries. The link between the United States and other coun- tries was seen in the constitution's provision that em- ployed officers trained in America, as well as outgoing workers, could be active members while serving As- sociations affiliated with the World's Association. The importance of the technical department was seen by provision for sectional organization when the department directors desiring such a branch consti- tute one-tenth of the paid up membership. Under THE SECRETARIES 321 this provision the directors of physical education at once formed a department organization. O wad some power the giftie gie us To see oursel's as ithers see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us, and foolish notion! This was the theme of the Richmond Conference of Employed Officers in 1913, and Church, Social Serv- ice and Student criticisms were presented. But the consciousness of helpless ignorance on the questions considered by the Commission on Social Morality had led the Committee to invite Dr. Richard C. Cabot to offer a course of three lectures on The Consecration of Affections. The sessions of the conference are al- ways closed and the verbatim reports are circulated only among members, but the addresses by Dr. Cabot could not be churlishly kept by the five hundred mem- bers of the Employed Officers' Association. The Na- tional Board printed them in a small book, *'The Christian Approach to Social Morality" and in Dr. Cabot's larger book, ''What Men Live By," the ideas which set the workers at Richmond to thinking those April days, have now become current throughout the reading world. Asilomar was the scene of the next conference. A Commission on the Secretary's Efficiency reported on the physical, intellectual, social, professional, spir- itual and economic aspects of the question. Una Saunders, executive of the Dominion Council of Can- ada, gave a series of addresses on The Woman Move- ment, Mabel Cratty, another series on Women Work- 322 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK ing Together, and Anna V. Rice two talks on the Re- ligious Trend of the Times. Michi Kawai spoke Sunday morning when the auditorium was dedicated. The beauty, retirement and sense of proprietorship at Asilomar made for a poise of mind suitable for reflec- tion and decision. These recommendations were adopted. In the light of what we have heard these last two days, we who are present realize afresh the claims of the King- dom of God. We recognize that the mere passive accept- ance of these claims is not adequate, but that day by day and year by year we must face the issues involved in making the Kingdom of God a reality, and having faced these, de- termine our course and act. Our committee would therefore urge: That we here as- sembled dedicate again our lives to the bringing in of the Kingdom of God, cost what it may, and that we endeavor, through the power and might that come from Bible study, and the knowledge that comes from reading and discussion, and the daily practice of meeting the moral challenge which is never absent from responsibility, to make ourselves fit leaders of women. That other employed officers aside from secretaries are recognized as practising their professions within the Young Women's Christian Association is evi- denced by the system of training of the National Board. As soon as the preparatory Training Centers had been well set up and the second class graduated from the National Training School, a study was made of Association education for physical directors and a six weeks' summer course planned for 1911 in con- nection with Teachers' College, Columbia University, which put a physical director of both Association and academic experience, Abby Shaw Mayhew, in their Mabel Cratty, General Secretary of the National Board THE SECRETARIES 323 regular summer faculty. To this summer school was transferred from the Field Committees the prepara- tory work for student secretaries. A Training Cen- ter course for secretaries in city colored branches was also introduced, since most of the candidates were teachers and could not make use of the Training Cen- ters conducted during the school year. The plans for 1912 were much the same. But in 1913 the National Training School had moved into its magnificent new building where more serious academic work could be undertaken in the summer school. An independent faculty was made up of professors and instructors from recognized schools of physical education, who gave both theoret- ical and practical courses of study. An even larger group of salaried officers were the superintendents and matrons of Association residences and lunchroom and cafeteria directors, hence a short advanced course of four weeks in Household Economics was added to the other three departments in 1914. The season of 1915 followed the same divisions. In the meantime women who had been on local supervisory staffs from one to twenty-two years, and scores of women tested through other experience, had been enriching their lives through the full academic year of the regular graduate National Training School course. The United States has never usurped inter- national rights, but owing to the commonly accepted business and professional status of women in America and the recognition of salaried employment in the Young Women's Christian Association as a profes- 324. FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK sion ranking with teaching and the newer forms of social service, technical training was more advanced here than in any other country, not even excepting England, where the location of the World's Head- quarters would make an international school most con- venient. Because of its graduate character in relation to the preparatory Training Centers the National Training School does not emphasize practical work. Its aca- demic course and the observation of and general par- ticipation in Association activities are sufficient to fill a student's time in New York and the vicinity. The five semesters in Gramercy Park before it was announced that the Training School was to be given a new home, were long enough to teach very forcibly the requirements for a model building. The school must be residential, there must be reception rooms, and offices, library, large and small lecture rooms, sem- inar room, there must be single rooms for students, accommodation for faculty and administration staff, a common living room, a dining room large enough for the occupants of all bedrooms and for additional guests, and amid all other considerations in construc- tion and equipment, the health and safety of the fam- ily must be kept in mind. All this and more, too, was granted in the eleven story headquarters building, in its new quarters at 135 East 52nd Street, New York City, in which the fifth academic year opened Septem- ber, 1912. The endowment which every college has learned to expect is yet to be provided. Two small bequests to ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^T^p ^Bf ^^^^^^^^^KiF*~ ^MSKb^ flP^^^tal^L^^^^^^H 1^^ ^BBLji !:^"'^S ^^^^^^^■■^^ ..MMig^ "a^T"^* "^^^.^ ^^^H^^HB ^^^^^^^^^^^^1^.. jr S^^k* ^^J lEtj THE SECRETARIES 325 The American Committee transferred to the National Board were at once appropriated toward the support of this professional school, and one handsome gift was made to the library by Mr. and Mrs. L. Wilbur Messer of Chicago. CHAPTER XXVII A PROPHET AMONG WOMEN AN institution is distressed by change; it fears disturbance and disintegration. A movement craves change; in this way it will attain to progress and achievement. Miss Dodge had repeat- edly said that she would continue as President of the National Board not longer than a ten years' term, but her co-workers refused to listen. Her power of close observation was exceeded only by her power of a long look ahead. Everybody had confidence that the Young Women's Christian Associations of the United States would be moving, and moving in the right di- rection, so long as she was president. But a higher form of confidence yet was to be revealed by the Amer- ican Association members; it was faith to continue building on the foundation she had laid. December of 1914 at headquarters was full of plans for the coming Convention in Los Angeles in 1915, and with preparations for the Panama-Pacific Ex- position. Miss Dodge had attended all the Conven- tions—New York, 1906, St. Paul, 1909, Indianapolis, 1911, Richmond, 1913, and was planning for the Cal- ifornia journey, making Association visits en route. She presided at the December board meeting ; she met 326 Deceober 16, 1914 Uy dear Miss Thoburn: It l8 & pleasure tc think that we aure co-vorkers and I feel very cloee to my friends these days. It is near the close of the year, the eighth of our new Association move* ment. As we ai-e entering into a new year, and the one ^en we are to have a Conveniicn, I want to write to all of you vho are partners with me in our work. We are national and have to consider those who work in the North, South, East end West; the girls in industry, the city girl, the country, the student, end the girls in other countries as well as the strangers within our gates. Will you not write me your view of our organization, and how we can improve it? I know so well the red tapism which we feel hampers us in our work, and how easy it would seem to us to work alone and to have things Just as vre wish. I have felt this so often, and yet could we grow all over the country as we have grown without organi- sation or red tapism? I would like you to send me con- structive criticism - any plan you would prefer to the one we have appoint ea. I would like the criticism in writing. We may not be able to adopt all the ideas but I would like as your leader to have your views and then I will want to confer with certain personally. As I say, we are co-laborers and you and I should freely talk things over. I cod sorry I have other interests so cannot give the National Board all my time. I want 1915 to be a good year of growth and development. With freedom guarded by organization and God's great help, we should do much during the coming year. I hope that a very happy New Year will come to you all and that the spirit of peace and good will may be in our midst as it has been so wonderfully in the past. Please feel me your friend and companion in all the work. 7aithfully yours. ■^^tdUc4f.S^i^ President. Letter Sent by Miss Dodge to All the National Board Staff A PROPHET AMONG WOMEN 327 with the staff the next day; she went to Boston for the meeting of the Board of Trustees of Constantino- ple College, of which she was president. On the 22nd of December she led the Christmas service in the as- sembly room at Headquarters, reading with her posi- tive glad emphasis, * ' Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you ; let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. He that believeth shall not make haste. Rest and be still.'' **A wonderful Christmas to you, my friends,'' was her farewell word. Christ- mas fell on Friday that year and the next afternoon there was at her home one of the beautiful Christmas parties of Oriental students whom she loved to en- tertain. But she was unable to come downstairs to greet her guests. The next morning, Sunday, December 27, she was not, for God took her. When her hand was lifted, knowledge of the multi- fold activities of her busy years began to flood in. Such knowledge she had always suppressed and many of the daily papers searched their files almost in vain for printed announcement of her deeds or her bene- factions. But friends in every station in life con- tributed to make up the record which places her as a formative power second to no woman of this period except Florence Nightingale. She was a constructive pioneer in education for practical life. She initiated cooperation in social work; she led in the protection of women, and she introduced a Christian statesman- ship that works through college women in all lands for a society in which educated women must take a 328 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK place unconceived by any previous generation. ''Probably no other woman in history has done so much for the direct uplift of young girls — always reaching out for the young girl/' Thus spoke a wise Christian woman of four score years when she heard of her death. The National Board had lost only one other member by death, Mrs. Malcolm D. Whitman, who died in December, 1909. As Janet McCook she was made a charter member of the Board when she was only twenty-four, but she embodied the four-fold ideal as few had ever done, through her beauty and vitality, her mental vigor, her personal charm, and the spirit- ual vision illuminated by obedience. Her Bible classes of her own friends in her own drawing-room, of the Barnard College Christian Association in her own Alma Mater, of groups of younger girls in New York City, and at Silver Bay Conferences, were re- nowned. The fruit of these classes was shown when one new phase of Association work after another was started in New York City by people to whom the Young Women's Christian Association was totally un- known or hopelessly unappealing until she revealed its scope and possibilities. As Mrs. Marshall 0. Roberts was first directress of the Ladies' Christian Union, and after her death the title was not used, so the National Board despaired of ever finding any one to fill Miss Dodge's place. They recognized that she had given the presidency a content impossible to demand of any successor, and they divided the duties of the office she had held, ere- A PROPHET AMONG WOMEN 329 ating a new office, Chairman of the Executive Com- mittee, to which committee many business details had always been referred by the Board. In the winter of 1915 they elected two charter members of the board to these positions: Mrs. Robert E. Speer was made President of the National Board, and Mrs. John French, Chairman of the Executive Committee. CHAPTER XXVIII MOTTOES AND SPIRIT IN those earliest days when Miss Robarts was seek- ing to make the tiny little Association known in order to increase the number of its praying mem- bers, and to unite them locally into bands under lead- ers whom she named their secretaries, she sent out modest leaflets from time to time, undated, although from the context the dates have been somewhat ac- curately assigned by her co-workers. Perhaps about 1860 there appeared the paper headed Young Women's Chbistian Association Prayer Union Motto: "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts." — Zechariah iv, 6. One sentence read, **The Young Women's Chris- tian Association affords opportunities of work for God within the reach of all, and the Prayer Union binds the workers together, and is the source of all strength and success in the work of the Young Women 's Chris- tian Association.*' Nine suggested means of useful- ness were cited, beginning with * * Example in conduct, dress, etc., to manifest Christian consistency and sepa- ration from the world," and ending, **The encour- agement of total abstinence principles." When the Prayer Union and Institute Branches of- 330 MOTTOES AND SPIRIT 831 ficially united in 1877, after many individuals had been personally connected with both, it was decided to adopt some uniform nomenclature. They called ** members" those who joined the Prayer Union, those who had entered into a living union with Christ by faith, and taken as * ' The only principle of action the constraining power of His love shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost." Those who could not as yet say that they desired to be absolutely and avow- edly on the side of Christ were called Associates. The Prayer Union motto was retained for the ''mem- bers," and for the Associates Mrs. Pennefather, in 1877, chose the general motto, ' ' By love serve one an- other" (Galatians v, 13). The Total Abstinence diamond shaped badge was much admired and finally made the general badge, with the general motto upon it. This blue enamel diamond pendant bearing the words, *'By love serve," has been worn in every part of the world. When the Young Women's Christian Association Quarterly first appeared in Chicago in 1888, the words, *'Not by might nor by power but by my spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts, ' ' were printed in the heading of the little eight page paper, and elsewhere there was a note explaining that that was the motto adopted by the Associations affiliated with the National Com- mittee. Consequently, in 1894, when the World's As- sociation was being formed of only four national com- mittees, these two countries might naturally suggest the motto already dear to them as a suitable keynote for the combined movement. 332 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK The Honorable Emily Kinnaird, in speaking to a company of British and Americans that year, drew attention to the motto already adopted by both con- tinents and expressed the hope that the Association would ever go forward in the strength and inspira- tion of such a motto. As is known, the first World's Conference adopted these words upon the official badge, and this text of warning and promised strength has appeared upon official papers ever since. At the Montreal Conference of the Women's and Young Women's Christian Associations in 1897, a committee on a badge for members and Associations connected with the International Board brought in a design which bore on an enclosed triangle the words, **By love serve," which was accepted as the motto. Even the people who do not care for badges appre- ciate the stable fact of which the badge is the outward symbol, and it was with great satisfaction that the members at large learned that the National Board had chosen from the tenth chapter of the Gospel accord- ing to John, these words as a part of the official seal. **I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. ' ' This became also the motto of the entire national organization. The previous mottoes referred to the Christian woman undertaking something for her Lord and Mas- ter. They spoke of human deficiency and divine power, of human love poured out in divine service. The new motto speaks of Christ's own thought for the girls at the beginning of life, relates Him to them MOTTOES AND SPIRIT 333 and them to Him, and opens to them a future exceed- ing abundant, above all that they could ask or think. In the decades ahead, as in the five decades already compassed, Jesus Christ, the same, yesterday, and for- ever, can be recognized as the central figure of the Young Women 's Christian Association. cseist is the end, for christ was the beginning, Christ the beginning for the end is Christ. APPENDIX CHRONOLOGY 1844. 1851. 1855. 1858. 1859. 1860. 1861. 1866. June 6. London Young Men's Christian Association organized. December 9. Boston, Mass., Young Men's Christian Association organized. English Prayer Union formed. English Institute Branch formed by enlarging scope of Nurses' Home. January. Students' Christian Association organized in the University of Michigan (not co-educational). October 12. Young Men's Christian Association of the University of Virginia organized. Young Women's Christian Improvement Association started in the Home in London. November 24. Ladies' Christian Association organized in New York City. Agitation for Young Women's Christian Association in Boston. June 1. Boarding Home opened in Amity Place, New York City, by Ladies' Christian Association. Meetings held in New York factories by Ladies' Chris- tian Association. Pall Mall Institute opened in London. March 3. Boston Young Women's Christian Associa- tion organized (name first taken in America). May. Rooms opened in Chauncey Street, Boston. Mary Foster became secretary of the Boston Associa- tion. Thursday evening prayer meeting in rooms of Boston Association. Singing taught in Boston Association. Name of Ladies' Christian Association changed to Ladies' Christian Union of New York City. 337 ^ ^,y^\„y^• $39 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 1867. April 23. Providence Women's Christian Association organized. June. Hartford organized Women's Christian Associa- tion. July 23. Providence Association opened combination Home. Pittsburgh Women's Christian Association organized. Astronomy and physiology taught in Boston Associa- tion. 1868. February 19. Beach Street property occupied by Bos- ton Association. Dining room of Boston boarding home conducted on restaurant plan. Penmanship and bookkeeping taught in Boston Asso- ciation. March. Providence Association reorganized on protec- tive lines. June. Cincinnati Women's Christian Association or- ganized. November 10. Cleveland Women's Christian Associa- tion organized. December. St. Louis Women's Christian Association organized. 1869. Botany taught in Boston Association. 1870. February 10. Young Ladies' Branch of the Ladies' Christian Union of New York City organized by Mrs. Roberts (later Young Women's Christian As- sociation of City of New York ) . Women's Christian Association of Dayton, Ohio, or- ganized. Women's Christian Association of Utica organized. Women's Christian Association of Washington organ- ized. Women's Christian Association of Buffalo organized. November, Women's Christian Association of Phila- delphia organized. 1871. February. Women's Christian Association of German- town, Pa., organized. June 22. Women's Christian Association of Newaxk, N. J., organized. CHRONOLOGY 339 October 9-10. National Conference of Women's Christian Association held at Hartford, Connecticut. Women's Christian Association of Springfield, Mass., organized. 1872. February. Class in machine sewing conducted by New York City Association. Ella Doheny commenced Sunday afternoon Bible Class in New York City Association. Philadelphia Association opened restaurant for women. Hartford dedicated first building erected for such pur- poses. November 12. Young women's meetings for prayer began at Normal, Illinois. 1873. January 19. Young Ladies' Christian Association of Normal, Illinois, organized by Normal School stu- dents. 1874. Boston Association occupied Warrenton Street building. Sea Rest, at Asbury Park, N. J., opened as summer home of the Philadelphia Association. History taught in Boston Association. Telegiaphy taught in Philadelphia Association. 1875. C. V. Drinkwater became Superintendent in Boston. October 12-15. Women's Christian Association Con- ference became international. November 4. Young Ladies' Christian Association of i Northwestern College (later Young Women's Chris- tian Association) organized. Exposition of Authors held in St. Louis. 1876. October 17. Young Women's Christian Association or- ganized in Southern Illinois Normal University, Car- bondale. October 21. Young Women's Christian Association of Olivet College, Michigan, organized. 1877. Union of Prayer Union and Institute Branches in London. Princeton University Yoimg Men's Christian Associa- tion led in Intercollegiate Movement. October 30. Young Women's Christian Association of Lenox College, Hopkinton, Iowa, organized. Calisthenics taught in the Boston Association by one of the boarders in Warrenton Street Home. i^ y 340 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 1878. Providence Association conducted summer home on Conanicut Island. Kensington and Crewel classes held by New York City \ Association. 1879. Domestic Training School, Boston. Ladies' Cooking Classes, Boston. 1880. Public School Cooking Class in Boston Association. Phonography, typewriting, photo negative, photo color- ing and painting on china classes in New York City Association. Young Ladies' Society of Co-workers organized in Doane College, Crete, Nebraska. ( 1883 changed to Young Women's Christian Association.) 1881. February 20. L. D. Wishard spoke to the Young Ladies' Christian Association at Normal. April 23. New Constitution adopted by the Young Ladies' Christian Association of Normal. September 11. Name of Young Ladies' Christian As- sociation of Normal changed to Young Women's Christian Association. October. Committee on Young Women's Christian As- sociation work in colleges and seminaries appointed by the Sixth International Conference of Women's Christian Associations. St. Louis Association offered a public course of cook- ing lessons by Juliet Corson. Technical design and free hand enlarging taught in New York City Association. Little Girls' Christian Association in Oakland, Cali- fornia. \ 1882. Boston Association sent class to Miss Allen's gym- nasium. Household Training School opened by St. Louis Asso- ciation. 1883. Course of Emergency Lectures instituted by Boston. Baltimore opened rooms adapted for noon lunch as prominent feature. 1884. Young Women's Christian Association of Pleasant Val- ley township, Johnson County, Iowa, organized. February 7-11. First State Young Women's Christian CHRONOLOGY 841 Association organized at Albion, Michigan conven- tion. February 14-17. State Young Women's Christian As- sociation of Ohio organized. November 15. Iowa State Yoimg Women's Christian Association organized. December 8. Berkeley Street Building, Boston, dedi- cated. It contained the first Young Women's Chris- tian Association gymnasium in America. United Central Coimcil formed in Great Britain. 1885. Kalamazoo, Michigan, Young Women's Christian Asso- ciation organized. Great Fair held by New York City Association. Travelers' Aid placards posted in London. Delegation from State Associations attended Interna- tional Conference of the Women's Christian Associa- tions at Cincinnati. 1886. Lawrence, Kansas, Young Women's Christian Associa- tion organized. March 30. Poughkeepsie Girls' Branch organized. "Noon Hour Rest" conducted by Poughkeepsie Associa- tion. July. Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Mis- sions originated. August 6-12. National Association of the Young Women's Christian Associations of the United States formed at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Mrs. John V. Farwell, Jr., elected president of the National Committee of Young Women's Christian As- sociations. December. Nettie Dunn became general secretary of the National Committee of Young Women's Christian As- sociations. 1887. February. Bertha Van Vliet became secretary of the / Poughkeepsie Girls' Branch. Ypsilanti, Michigan, Young Women's Christian Associa- tion organized. Topeka, Kansas, Young Women's Christian Association organized. V 842 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Exhibit of class work in millinery and dressmaking held in Philadelphia. Self-Governing Club organized by Miss Dodg€ in the Baltimore Association. Calisthenics taught in New York City, Philadelphia, and Poughkeepsie. Hope Narey became gymnasium instructor in Boston — '88, physical director. July. Mary E. Blodgett became Travelers' Aid in Boston. October. Ida L. Schell became state secretary of Iowa. December. Nellie Knox became state secretary of Ohio. 1888. St. Joseph, Missouri, Young Women's Christian Asso- ciation organized. Scranton, Penn., Young Women's Christian Association organized. Brinton Hall, Philadelphia, given for headquarters to the Women's Medical College Association. Physical education in Worcester, Scranton, Coldwater, Michigan, and Newburgh, N. Y. Current Events class held in Worcester. Advanced classes in cutting and fitting held by New York City Association. Boston Association opened School of Domestic Science. Young Women's Cliristian Association Quarterly pub- lished by the National Committee of Young Women's Christian Associations. 1889. Constitution of the "National" Association of Young Women's Christian Associations changed to "Inter- national" to admit Associations in the British Prov- inces. First national gathering of secretaries at Bloomington. Young Women's Christian Association Quarterly changed to the Evangel. Branch Association opened by Baltimore. 1890. Kansas City, Missouri, Young Women's Christian As- sociation organized. Mary S. Dunn became general secretary and physical director in Kansas City. Toledo, Ohio, Young Women's Christian Association organized. CHRONOLOGY 848 Trained attendants' class opened in Brooklyn. 1891. March. The Cafeteria system introduced into the Kaa- sas City, Missouri, Association. Close Hall occupied by the joint Associations of th« University of Iowa, Iowa City. Minneapolis Young Women's Christian Association or- ganized. The International Conference reorganized into the In- ternational Board of Women's Christian Associa- tions, in 1893 The International Board of Women's and Young Women's Christian Associations. Mrs. C. R. Springer elected president of the Interna- tional Board. Summer Bible and Training School held at Bay View, Michigan. 1892. Preliminary meeting of World's Young Women's Chris- tian Association in London. . Summer Conference removed from Bay View, Michigan, \y to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Abby S. Mayhew became physical director in Minne- apolis. Busy Girls' Half Hour established by Dayton in the National Cash Register works. 1893. Northfield Summer Conference established. Exhibits at the World's Columbian Exposition by both National bodies. 1894. April, Initial number of the "International Messen- ger" appeared. Organization of World's Young Women's Christian As- sociation. Annie M. Reynolds became general secretary of the World's Young Women's Christian Association. Agnes Gale Hill called to Madras, India. Toledo Association raised support for Foreign Secre- tary. Harlem Association Clubs, "Birthday Building," "Lit- erary" and "Annex Choral," organized. 1895. World's Student Christian Federation formed. Industrial extension begun in Milwaukee. Maude Wolff, secretary. 344 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Mary Armstrong became general secretary at the Uni- versity of Wisconsin. Colgate Chrysanthemum Club formed in Harlem Asso- ciation. 1896. Summer Cottage on Genesee Lake, Wisconsin, given to the Milwaukee Association. 1897. Boston Association offered courses for Young Women's Christian Association secretaries. December 31, 1897, to January 2, 1898. Fillmore County, Minnesota, Convention. 1898. First County Association organized. March. Dodge County (Minnesota) Young Women's Christian Association organized. First World's Conference fixed World's Week of Prayer in November and adopted motto and badge. Charlotte H. Adams became Religious Work director in Pittsburgh. 1899. International Committee of Young Women's Christian Associations became The American Committee of Young Women's Christian Associations, releasing Canada. American department of the World's Committee created. Dr. Anna L. Brown became Religious Work director in Boston. 1900. Neva Chappell called to Minneapolis as extension secretary. Support of a national secretaryship assumed by one donor. 1901. Headquarters opened by International Board at the Chautauqua, N. Y. Assembly Grounds. Milwaukee included a model housekeeping apartment in its new building. 1902. Division of Student and City Conferences at Silver Bay. 1903. The Bulletin replaced the International Messenger as oflScial organ of the "International Board." Headquarters opened by the International Board at the Southern Chautauqua, Mont Eagle, Tenn. Martha Berninger appointed first secretary to China. Theresa Morrison appointed first secretary to Japan. CHRONOLOGY 845 1904. Secretaries' Training Institute opened in Chicago. ^ Monaghan Mills Association opened in Greenville, S. C. Louisiana Purchase Exposition Travelers' Aid work instigated by International Board. 1905. May 24. The Manhattan Conference considered union of the two National bodies. Woman's Department of the World's Student Christian Federation formed. Exposition Travelers' Aid Committee formed for Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland. / Swimming taught in pool in Buffalo and Montgomery. ^/ November 2-7, The 18th Biennial Conference of the International Board voted for union, Baltimore. 1906. January 2-4. A special Convention of The American Committee Associations, Chicago, voted in favor of union. t Emma J. Batty appointed first secretary to South America. December 5-6. First Convention of the Young Women's Christian Associations of the United States "^^ of America, New York City. December 7. Miss Grace H. Dodge elected President of the National Board. 1907. February. Initial number of The Association Monthly appeared. The Studio Club of New York City opened rooms. 1908. September 23. National Training School opened at •** No. 3 Gramercy Park. October 17. Woodford County, 111., Association organized. First Federation of Industrial Clubs formed in Detroit. 1909. National organization completed at Second Biennial Convention, St. Paul. Organization of the Employed Officers Association. Employed Officers Association considered "Adolescence" as theme of their Minneapolis Conference. 1910. Central Club for Nurses established in New York City. International Institute opened in New York City. 1911. Boston Metropolitan Student work undertaken. April. Third Biennial Convention held in Indianapolis. 1912. Annual members elected by Ohio and West Virginia Field Committee. 346 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK . Camp Fire Girls' movement developed. Council of North. American Student Movements formed. National Headquarters in New York City erected. New York City Metropolitan organization effected. September. The National Training School opened its fifth year in its new building, 135 East 52nd Street, New York City. 1913. March. Initial number of the North American Stu- dent appeared. April. Fourth Biennial Convention held in Richmond. Certificate offered for Eight Week Clubs. June. Tenth Conference of the World's Student Chris- tian Federation met at Lake Mohonk, N. Y. Industrial Club Councils held at Altamont and Camp Nepahwin. Asilomar Conference Grounds opened. Frances C. Gage and Anna Welles appointed first secre- taries in Turkey. Campaign for $3,000,000 for Yoimg Women's Christian Association buildings in New York City. 1914. December 27. Miss Grace H. Dodge, deceased, 1915. February 3. Mrs. Robert E, Speer elected President of the National Board. Headquarters and Club House erected by the National Board on the Panama-Pacific International Exposi- tion ground at San Francisco. May. Fifth Biennial Convention held in Los Angeles. First County Summer Conference, Conference Point, Lake Geneva. SOURCES AND GLOSSARY Chapter I Abbott, Edith. History of the Employment of Women in the American Cotton Mills. Journal of Political Economy, Vol. XVI, pp. 602-21; Vol. XVII, pp. 19-35. Child, Lydia Maria. Brief History of the Condition of Women in Various Ages and Nations. C. S. Francis Co., New York. 1849. Fairchild, James H. Oberlin, the Colony and the College. E. J. Goodrich, Oberlin. 1883. Larcom, Lucy. A New England Girlhood. Houghton Mifflin & Co., Boston. 1889. Nearing, Scott, and N. M. S. Nearing. Woman and Social Progress. MacMillan & Co., New York. 1912. Penny, Virginia. The Employment of Women. (No pub- lisher.) Boston. 1863. Taylor, James Monroe. Before Vassar Opened. Houghton Mifflin & Co., Boston. 1914. Chapter II Braithwaite, Robert. Life and Letters of Rev. William Penne- father. Robert Carter & Co., New York. 1878. Williams, J. E. Hodder. The Life of Sir George Williams. A. C. Armstrong Co., New York. 1906. Martin, Sir Theodore. The Life of H. R. H. the Prince Con- sort. Smith, Elder & Co., London. 1878. Moor, Lucy M. Girls of Yesterday and To-day. S. W. Part- ridge & Co., London. 1911. Stock, Eugene. History of the Church Missionary Society, London. 1899. 347 348 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Facsimile of title page of first report The First Report of the Young Men's Christian Association for the Improvement of the Spiritual Condition of Young Men Engaged in the Drapery and other Trades by the Introduction of Religious Services into Houses of Business Instituted in London June 6, 1844. Association Men. Vol. XXXIII, Number 10 (July, 1908), pp. 457-469. Go Forward (1905). Historical papers by Mrs. M. M. Gordon, Lucy M. Moor, Jessie Coombs, etc. Sisters. Illustrated pamphlet of the British Jubilee, 1905. Prayer Union circular letters (No. 2 quoted above). No. 2. "To the Members of the Young Women's Christian Association." No. 3. "Young Women's Christian Association Prayer Union." No. 4. "Sketch of the Young Women's Christian Associa- tion" (signed) E. R. "Young Women's Christian Association" (signed) Misa L. M. Moor. "Letter to Y. W. C. A. Provincial Workers." November 12, 1884 (signed) Lucy M. Moor. F. R. Havergal. Other hymn writers connected with the British Associations were Emily Steele Elliott, who wrote, "Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne and Thy Kingly Crown"; Katherine Hankey, author of "Tell Me the Old, Old Story" and "I Love to Tell the Story"; and Mrs. Horatius Bonar, who wrote "Fade, Fade, Each Earthly Joy." SOURCES AND GLOSSARY 349 Chaptee III Cook, Sir Edward. The Life of Florence Nightingale. Mac- millan & Co., London. 1913. Fraser, Donald. Mary Jane Kinnaird. James Nisbet & Co., London. 1890. Hill, Georgiana. English Life from Mediaeval to Modern Times. R. R. Bensley & Son, London. 1896. Hodder, Edwin. The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury. Cassell & Co., London. 1886. Nightingale, Florence. Notes on Nursing. D. Appleton & Co., New York. 1860. January, 1856 — Circular (signed) A. Kinnaird (2). June, 1856 — Circular (signed) A. Kinnaird. Undated — A. Kinnaird; name heads page as treasurer. 1856 — Announcement of Home. 1858 (?) Announcement of Young Women's Christian Im- provement Association. May, 1860— Circular letter to members of Y. W. C. I. A. (signed) M. J. Ivinnaird. July, 1861 — Announcement and circular of United Association for the Christian and Domestic Improvement of Young Women. President, the Earl of Shaftesbury. 1861 — ^A Brief Sketch of the origin, aim and mode of con- ducting the Young Women's Christian Association and West London Home for Young Women engaged in houses of business. 1871 — Pamphlet, "The Christian Association for Young Women." Later than 1877— Pamphlet, "Y. W. C. A. and Institute Union." London Times — August 15, 1911, Biographical article on Florence Nightingale. Go Forward— July, 1901, p. 164. Report of the North London Home, 51 Upper Charlotte St., for 1856, including Rules and Treasurer's statements. Same for 1857. First Report of United Association for Christian and Domestic Improvement of Young Women, 1862. London Young Women's Institute Union and Christian ciation. Report for year 1877. 850 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Speech of the Earl of Shaftesbury (from 1881 report). Annual reports of later dates containing historical references. Chapteb IV Girls of Yesterday and To-day. Money — ^Townsend. The Story of the Girls' Friendly Society. Wells, Gardner, Darton & Co., London. 1913. "Y. W. C. A. Sketches." Illustrated pamphlet prepared for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, 1897. Pamphlet— Ten Years' Record of the World's Y. W. C. A. 1901. Annie M. Reynolds. Chapter V Thompson, Joseph P. The Royalty of Faith — A meditation on the life of Mrs. Marshall O. Roberts. No Publisher. 1876. Reports of the Ladies' Christian Union. 1859-1915. New York Christian Advocate — Nos. 46 to 141, cited Septem- ber 9, 1858. International Conference reports — 1871 et aeq. Report of Ninth International Conference, 1887 — page 109. This antedates the first otherwise known record. The London Y. W. C. A. report for 1885 mentions regular visits begun April, 1885, in laundries in the west of London. The London report for 1888, however, speaks of a special Institute in South Belgravia, when the Y. W. C. A. began separate work among factory hands in 1872. Chapteb VI Morse, Richard C. History of the North American Young Men's Christian Associations. Association Press, New York. 1913. Putnam, James Jackson. Memoirs of Dr. James Jackson. Houghton & Mifflin, Boston. 1905. The Congregational Building was formerly the residence of Judge Jackson. The Watchman and Reflector. October 9, 1861. The Watchman and Reflector. January 15, 1852. Reports of International Conferences. 1871-1905. The International Messenger. 1894-1902. SOURCES AND GLOSSARY 351 Boston reports from 1867-1915. Several of these, e.g. 25th and 40th, contain historical material. Announcements, circulars, prospectuses, etc. Letter from Wm. H. Cobb. Congregational Library. Histor- ical statement, C. V. Drinkwater. Chapteb VII Journal of the International W. C. A. Conference, 1871-1891. History pamphlet by Mrs. M. S. Lamson. Annual reports. Hartford, St. Louis, Cincinnati, New York City, etc., etc. Historical sketches in pamphlet or newspaper form. Occasional copies of Faith and Works. Chapteb VIII Reports of the International Committee of Y. W. C. A.'s, 1886- 1891. Reports of State Associations, 1884 et seq. The Y. W. C. A. Quarterly, 1888-1889. The Evangel, 1889- 1891. Reports, Circulars, etc. Historical material of local Associations. Model constitutions, 1, 2, 3 editions. Our Yoimg Women, 1894, Toledo, Ohio, page 8. Chapteb IX Bevier and Usher. The Home Economics Movement. Whit- comb and Barrows, Boston. 1906. Journals of the International Conferences, 1891-1905. Annual Reports of The American Committee, 1891-1906. The International Messenger, 1894-1902. The Bulletin, 1903-1905. The Evangel, 1891-1906. State Convention Reports, 1891-1906. Reports of local Associations and various printed matter. Articles on Household Arts in Education, Physical Education, etc., in the Encyclopedia of Education. Campbell, Helen. "Certain Forms of Women's Work for Women." The Century Magazine, June, 1889. 352 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Chapters X and XI History of the North American Young Men's Christian Asso- ciations. Williams, Wolcott B. A History of Olivet College. No pub- lisher. Olivet, Mich. 1901. Leonard, Delavan L. The History of Carleton College. Fleming H. Revell, Chicago. 1904. Typewritten Minutes of the Y. W. C. A. of Normal, 111., from 1872 to 1884. Also historical papers of various dates. Reports of The American Committee, 1886-1906. Journal of the International W. C. A. Conference, 1881-1891. Year Books of the International Committee Y. M. C. A. Y. W. C. A. State Committee Reports, 1884-1906. The College Bulletin of the International Committee, Y. M. C. A. The Y. W. C. A. Quarterly, 1888-1889, The Evangel, 1889-1906. World's Conference Reports, 1898 to 1906. Report of Ecumenical Missionary Conference. New York, 1900. Volume I, page 47. Chapter XII The Evangel, June, 1898. State Y. W. 'C. A. Reports, especially Iowa. Journal of the International Conferences of the W. C. A. Annual Reports, International Committee Y. W. C. A's., 1886- 1891. Iowa State Notes, Y. M. C. A., 1887-1889. Historical Sketch of Johnson County Association. Report of State Committee Y. M. C. A. of Iowa, 1886. Typewritten volumes of Memorabilia, by Robert Weidensall. Chapter XIII Journals of International Conferences of the W. C. A., 1871- 1891. Chapter XIV Annual Reports, 1886-1906. Y. W. C. A. Quarterly, 1888-1889. The Evangel, 1889-1906. Typewritten history of the National Organization in India. Hon. E. Kinnaird and A. G. Hill. SOURCES AND GLOSSARY 353 Girls of Yesterday and To-day. History of the North American Y. M. C. A. Resolutions from State Associations to W. C. A. Conference. Proposition carried by the Committee to Cincinnati, 1885. Report of same committee to the State Committees. Circular calling the Lake Geneva Convention. Autograph list of delegates at Lake Geneva, 1886. Pencil list of Associations in 1886. Circulars of the National Committee, International and Ameri- can Committees. Publication list of The International Committee, 1894. Pamphlets on Secretarial Training, Basis, Summer Confer- ences, etc. World's Committee Circulars. Historical pamphlets of the University of Michigan. Alumni Bulletins of the University of Virginia, Jan., 1909, October, 1910. Students fall campaign Handbooks. Letters from original Associations, etc., etc. Typewritten volumes of memorabilia of Robert Weidensall. State Committee constitutions, circulars, etc. The Lawrentian, May, 1884. Student publication, Lawrence University. Circular and constitution sent out by Mrs. Miller and Mr. Wishard. Student Volunteer Movement leaflets. Chapteb XV Journal of the International Board Conferences, 1891-1905. The International Messenger, 1894-1902. The Bulletin, 1903-1906. Brief Handbook. The International Board, 1891. The Philosophy of W. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. A Message from the fourteenth Biennial Conference. Covenant between the International Board and Local Associa- tions. Statistical card. Convention programs, and other pamphlets. S54f FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Papers read at Conferences. Exposition Travelers' Aid Committee circulars and reports. Travelers* Directory, 1898. State Board circulars and programs. Chapter XVI The Bulletin, 1905-1906. The Evangel, 1905-1906. The Association Monthly, February and March, 1915. Journal of International Board Conference, November, 1905. Report of Special Convention of The American Committee, January, 1906. Report of first Convention of the Y. W. C, A.'s of the U. 8. of America. Report of Manhattan Conferences and circular letter from first committee. Circular letters from Miss Dodge. Joint Committee Leaflets, 1 to 8 with supplements. Joint Committee Exhibits. Agreement and Application Form for Charter Membership. Replies to questionnaires. Papers bearing upon terms of union. Iklatcrial relating to Inter Church Conferences on Federation, definition of "Evangelical," etc. Chaptebs XVII TO XXVIII Inclusive The Association Monthly, 1907-1915. The North American Student, 1913-1915. Reports, recommendations and year-books, 1908-1915. Reports of National Conventions, 1906-1915. Reports of World's Conferences, 1898-1914. Joint Committee leaflets. OTHER SOURCES WILL BE CITED IN PLACE "As a corporate body," Association Monthly, Feb., 1907, p. 45. "As I look," Association Monthly, Feb., 1907, p. 42. *TTiat the National Board shall concentrate," Final Report of the Joint Committee, Leaflet No. 8, p. 6. "The symmetrical development," Rep. and Rec. of the National Board to the second Biennial Convention, p. 52. SOURCES AND GLOSSARY S55 "That the National Board shall adopt," First Convention Re- port, p. 15. Table of receipts. Annual treasurer's reports of The Ameri- can Committee. Convention subscriptions, Kansas and Penn. State convention reports. "The strongest are needed," Introduction to "The Claims and Opportunities of the Christian Ministry." Y. M. C. A. Press, N. Y. 1911. "Intensive as well as extensive," Mabel Cratty, Association Monthly, Jan., 1908, p. 568. "The ultimate purpose," Second Convention Report, p. 107. Evangelical Church basis. History of the North American Young Men's Christian Association, pp. 91, et seq., and Leaflet No. 4. Federal Council, Joint Committee Leaflet No. 5. "Der Reichsbote," May 23, 1910. "It may be an audience," page 43, Fourth World's Conference Report. "At least 5000," quoted in Association Monthly, June, 1911, p. 200. See article by Jessie Woodrow Wilson, "What Girls can do for Girls in Good Housekeeping," April, 1913. "Times of Retreat," from Manual of Prayers prepared for Mohonk Conference. See report of Mohonk Conference, Association Monthly, July, 1913. See "Students and the World Wide Expansion." Report of Student Volunteer Convention of 1913. Garden City Report under title, "Social Needs and the Col- leges." See pamphlet given each guest at the "Harriet Judson.'* "Let us resolve," Mrs. Warren Buxton, Joint Committee, Exhibit XIV. "Not the cities alone," see Wage Earning Women. (The Mac- millan Company, 1910.) Report of Dr. Annie M. Mac- Lean, director of sociological investigation undertaken by the National Board in 1907. Woodford County, see minutes of sectional conference in Re- port of Secretaries Association to be had only of members of the Association. S56 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Camp Fire Girls, Association Monthly, March, 1912, p. 43. "European and American," first World's Conference Report, p. 114. Mrs. Wishard, The Evangel, December, 1890, p. 7. The Evangel, January, 1891, p. 9, also January, 1893, p. 7. "We were in all," Evangel, September, 1891. "A Scotch mind," Ten Years Record, p. 15. Dr. Johnston Ross in The Universality of Jesus Christ. The Evangel, September, 1906, p. 25. J. H. Tarleton— George Williams, p. 133. Grace H. Dodge, article in The World To-day, October, 1910. Association Monthly and Supplement, January, 1915, March, 1915. Janet McCook Whitman — see Association Monthly, January, 1910, p. 1. English Mottoes — Girls of Yesterday and To-day, pp. 70-73. Hon. E. Kinnaird. The Evangel, July, 1894, p. 13. ASSOCIATIONS COMPRISING THE YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, JANUARY 1, 1916 Stars indicate charter membership — December 5, 1906. * Previous aflOiliation with The American Committee. **Previous affiliation with the International Board. (Charter Associations coming in between 1906 and 1909 not indicated. ) CITY ASSOCIATIONS Alabama Alabama City Birmingham* Mobile* Montgomery* Abizona Bisbee Phoenix Arkansas Fort Smith Little Rock California Fresno* Long Beach* LoB Angeles* Oakland** Pasadena Redlands Riverside* Sacramento* San Bernardino San Diego San Francisco** San Jos6 COLOBADO Colorado Springs** Denver** Denver, Rest and Recrea- tion Rooms Denver, Scandinavian Connecticut Bridgeport* Meriden New Britain New Haven** New London Delaware Wilmington District of Columbia Washington, Colored Washington** (W. C. A.) Washington* Florida Jacksonville Tampa Georgia Athens* 357 358 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK AUanta* Ottumwa* Augusta Sioux City* Savannah* Waterloo Hawaii Kansas Honolulu* Kansas City* (Center) Idaho Tin i HA Leavenworth Topeka* J^UIDO Wichita* Illinois Kentucky Aurora* Louisville Bloomington Louisiana Chicago* (Assn. House) ^ew Orleans Danville Maine Decatur* Bangor East St. Louis Bar Harbor* Elgin* Lewiston** Peoria* Portland* Quincy* Maryland Rockford* Baltimore** Springfield Massachusetts Indiana Boston Elkhart Haverhill Evansville Holyoke* Fort Wayne* Lawrence* Indianapolis* Lowell* Marion New Bedford South Bend* Springfield** Terre Haute* Worcester** Iowa Michigan Boone Ann Arbor* Burlington* Battle Creek* Cedar Rapids* Bay City* Clinton Detroit* Council Bluffs Flint Des Moines* Grand Rapids* Dubuque* Jackson* Fort Dodge Kalamazoo* Keokuk* Lansing* Marshalltown Muskegon Mason City Owosso Muscatine* Saginaw* LIST OF ASSOCIATIONS 359 St. Joseph Batavia Traverse City Binghamton* Minnesota Brooklyn** Duluth* Buffalo* Minneapolis* St. Paul Cohoes* Elmira Winona Gloversville* Jamestown* Mtrsissippi Lockport Laurel Newburgh* MlBSOUBI New York City Joplin** Central Branch** Kansas City* Harlem Branch* St. Joseph* Bronx Branch St. Louis** (W. C. A.) ' Colored Women's Branch St. Louis International Institute Springfield French Branch** Montana Recreation Center Billings West Side Branch** Great Falls Poughkeepsie* Missoula Rochester* Nebraska Schenectady* Lincoln* Syracuse** Omaha* The Tonawandas New Hampshire Utica** Nashua* Yonkers* New Jersey North Carolina Camden Asheville Jersey City* Charlotte* Newark** Greensboro* Newton* Wilmington Passaic* Winston-Salem Paterson* North Dakota Phillipsburg Fargo Plainfield Grand Forks* The Oranges Ohio Trenton* Akron* New Mexico Canton Albuquerque Cincinnati** New York Cleveland** Albany Columbus** 86a FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Dayton** East Liverpool Elyria Hamilton** Lancaster Newark Portsmouth Springfield** Steubenville Toledo* Youngstown* Oklahoma Oklahoma City Tulsa Oregon Portland* Salem Pennsylvania Allentown** Altoona* Chester Coatesville Easton Erie** Germantown Harrisburg* Hazleton Hershey Johnstown Lancaster* McKeesport Meadville New Castle Norristown Philadelphia** Pittsburg* Pittsburg, East Liberty' Pottstown Reading* Scranton* Sunbury Warren Washington Wilkes-Barre* Williamsport* Wilmerding York* Rhode Island Pawtucket & Central Falli Providence** South Cabolina Charleston* Tennessee Chattanooga* Knoxville** Nashville* Texas Austin Beaumont Dallas El Paso Fort Worth Galveston Houston San Antonio Utah Salt Lake City ViBQINIA Lynchburg Norfolk** Richmond** Roanoke Washington Bellingham Everett North Yakima Seattle* Spokane* Tacoma* West Virginia Charleston Wheeling* LIST OF ASSOCIATIONS 361 Wisconsin La Crosse* Madison Milwaukee* Racine* COUNTY ASSOCIATIONS AND HEADQUARTERS Illinois Lake County Highland Park Lake Forest Woodford County Minonk Iowa Cherokee County Cherokee Page County Clarinda Shenandoah Kansas Montgomery County Independence Minnesota Goodhue County Red Wing Mower County Austin Nebraska Hall County Grand Island New Jebset Lakewood and Ocean County Lakewood New Yobk Chautauqua County Fredonia Greene County Tannersville Ohio Greene County Xenia Texas Coryell County Gatesville Wisconsin Dodge County Beaver Dam STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College Normal Alabama Central Female College Tuscaloosa Alabama Girls' Technical Institute Montevallo* Alabama Normal College for Girls Livingston* Alabama Synodical College for Women Talladega Athens College Athens* Downing Industrial School Brewton Eighth District Agricultural School Athens First District Agricultural College Jackson* Judson College Marion Lomax-Hannon High and Industrial School . . .Greenville Loulie Compton Seminary Birmingham* 362 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Marion Seminary Marion* Miles Memorial College Birmingham Ninth District Agricultural School Blountsville Seventh District Agricultural School Albertville State Normal School Florence State Normal School Jacksonville* State Normal School Montgomery State Normal College Troy Talladega College Talladega Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Inst Tuskegee University of Alabama Tuscaloosa* Women's College of Alabama Montgomery Abeansas Arkansas Baptist College Little Rock Arkansas Conference College Siloam Springs Central College Conway Crescent College and Conservatory for Women Eureka Springs Galloway College Searcy Henderson Brown College Arkadelphia* Philander Smith College Little Rock Second District Agricultural School Russellville State Agricultural College Monticello State Normal School Conway University of Arkansas Fayetteville* Caufobnia College of Pacific San Jos6 College of Physicians and Surgeons Los Angeles Leland Stanford Jr. University .... Stanford University* Mills College Mills College* Occidental College Eagle Rock* Pomona College Claremont Sherman Institute Riverside State Normal School Chico* State Normal School Los Angeles* State Normal School San Diego State Normal School San Jos6 University of California Berkeley* University of Redlands Redlands University of So. Cal Los Angeles* Whittier College Whittier* LIST OF ASSOCIATIONS 368 Colorado Boulder Preparatory School Boulder Colorado College Colorado Springs* Colorado Woman's College Montclair State Agricultural College Fort Collins* State Teachers' College Greeley* State High School Greeley University of Colorado Boulder'' University of Denver University Park* Delaware Woman's College Newark District of Columbia Gallaudet College Washington Howard University Washington Florida Baptist Academy Jacksonville Florida Agricultui*al and Mechanical College. .Tallahassee Florida State College for Women Tallahassee* John B. Stetson University Deland* Rollins College Winter Park* Georgia Agnes Scott College Decatur* Andrew College Cuthbert* Atlanta University Atlanta Brenau College Gainesville* Cox College College Park* Georgia Normal and Industrial College Milledgeville* Haines Institute Augusta La Grange College La Grange* Lucy Cobb Institute Athens* Martha Berry School Mt. Berry Paine College Augusta Piedmont College Demorest Second District Agricultural School Tifton Shorter College Rome* South Georgia College McRae South Georgia State Normal Valdosta Spelman Seminary Atlanta State Normal School Athens* Vashti Industrial School Thomasville Wftsleyan College Macon* S64 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Idaho Academy of Idaho Pocatello College of Idaho Caldwell Idaho Industrial Institute Weiser State Normal School Albion University of Idaho Moscow* Ilunois Bradley Polytechnic Institute Peoria* Carthage College Carthage* Eastern Illinois State Normal School Charleston Eureka College Eureka* Ferry Hall Lake Forest* Frances Shimer School for Girls Mt. Carroll Geneseo Collegiate Institute Geneseo Grand Prairie Seminary Onarga* Hedding College Abingdon* Illinois College Jacksonville* Illinois Women's College Jacksonville* Illinois Wesleyan University Bloomington* James Milliken University Decatur* Jennings Seminary Aurora* Knox College Galesburg* Lake Forest College Lake Forest* Lincoln College Lincoln* McKendree College Lebanon* Medical Women Students' Christian League Chicago Monmouth College Monmouth* Northwestern College Naperville* Northwestern University Evanston* ShurtleflF College Upper Alton* Southern Collegiate Institute Albion* Southern Illinois State Normal University . . Carbondale* State Normal School De Kalb State Normal University Normal* University of Chicago Chicago* School for Nurses of the Presbyterian Hospital . . Chicago University of Illinois Champaign* Western Illinois State Normal School Macomb* Wheaton College Wheaton* William and Vashti College Aledo LIST OF ASSOCIATIONS 365 Women Students' Christian League of the Physical Cul- ture School and College of Physcultopathy . . Chicago Indiana Butler College Irvington* Central Normal College Danville* De Pauw University Greencastle* Earlham College Richmond* Franklin College Franklin* Hanover College Hanover* Indiana Central University Indianapolis Indiana University Bloomington* Moorea Hill College Moores Hill* Oakland College Oakland City* Purdue University West Lafayette Spiceland Academy Spiceland State Normal School Terre Haute* Teachers' College Indianapolis Union Christian College Merom* Valparaiso University Valparaiso* Winona College Winona Lake Iowa Amity High School College Springs* Buena Vista College Storm Lake* Central College Pella* Coe College Cedar Rapids* Cornell College Mt. Vernon* Des Moines College Des Moines* Drake University . . . ; Des Moines* Ellsworth College Iowa Falls* Epworth Seminary Epworth* Grinnell College Grinnell* High School Grinnell High School Indianola* High School Iowa City High School Knoxville High School Nevada High School Toledo* Highland Park College Des Moines Iowa State College Ames* Iowa State Teachers' College Cedar Falls* 366 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Iowa Wesleyan University Mt. Pleasant* Leander Clark College Toledo* Lenox College Hopkinton* Morningside College Sioux City* Parsons College Fairfield* Penn College Oskaloosa* Simpson College Indianola* State University of Iowa Iowa City* Tabor College Tabor* Upper Iowa University Fayette* Western Union College Le Mars* EIansas Atchison County High School Efllngham Baker University Baldwin* Bethany Collie Lindsborg* Chase County High School Cottonwood Falls Cherokee County High School Columbus* Clay County High Sdiool Clay Centre* College of Emporia Emporia* Cooper College Sterling* Decatur County High School Oberlin Dickinson County High School Chapman* Enterprise Normal Academy Enterprise Fairmount College Wichita* Friends University Wichita* Haskell Institute Lawrence* High School Arkansas City High School Atchison High School Cheney High School El Dorado High School Lawrence High School Lyons High School Minneapolis High School Newton High School Salina High School Stafford Highland University Highland* Kansas City University Kansas City* Kansas State Agricultural College Manhattan* Kansas State University Lawrence* Kanias Wesleyan University Salina* LIST OF ASSOCIATIONS 367 Kingman County High School Kingman La Bette Coimty High School Altamont* MePherson College McPhcrson* Montgomery County High School Independence* Norton County High School Norton* Ottawa University Ottawa* Pratt County High School Pratt Reno County High School Nickerson* Southwestern College Winfield* State Manual Training Normal School Pittsburg State Normal School Emporia* Sumner County High School Wellington* Topeka Educational and Industrial Institute Topeka Washburn Academy Topeka Washburn College Topeka* Western University Kansas City Kentucky Berea College Berea* Georgetown College Georgetown Hamilton College Lexington Kentucky College for Women Danville* Kentucky Female Orphan School Midway* Kentucky State University Lexington* Lincoln Institute Simpsonville Logan College Russellville Millersburg Female College Miller sburg Science Hill School Shelbyville State Normal School Richmond State University Louisville Sue Bennett Memorial School London* Transylvania University Lexington* Louisiana H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College New Orleans* Louisiana Industrial Institute Ruston Louisiana State University Baton Rouge Mansfield Female College Mansfield Silliman Institute Clinton State Normal School Natchitoches Maine Bates College Lewiston* Coburn Classical Institute Waterville* 368 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Colby College WaterviUe* East Maine Conference Seminary Bucksport Eastern State Normal School Castine Gould's Academy Bethel Hebron Academy Hebron* Higgins Classical Institute Charleston Maine Central Institute Pittsfield Maine Wesleyan Seminary Kent's Hill* Oak Grove Seminary Vassalboro Parsonfield Seminary Kezar Falls Ricker Classical Institute Houlton* University of Maine Orono Mabyland Girls' Latin School Baltimore* Maryland College Lutherville* Goucher College Baltimore* Hood College Frederick* National Park Seminary Forest Glen Western Maryland College Westminster* Massachusetts Boston University, College of Liberal Arts Boston* Gushing Academy Ashburnham* Emerson College of Oratory Boston* Mt. Holyoke College South Hadley* Mount Ida School for Girls Newton Newton Hospital Training School . . . Newton Lower Falls Northfield Seminary East Northfield* Simmons College Boston Wellesley College (, Wellesley Weston School for Girls Weston Michigan Adrian College Adrian* Albion College . , Albion* Alma College Alma* Central State Normal School Mt. Pleasant Ferris Institute Big Rapids High School Ypsilanti Hillsdale College Hillsdale* Hope College Holland* Kalamazoo College Kalamazoo* Michigan Agricultural College East Lansing* LIST OF ASSOCIATIONS 869 Olivet College Olivet* State Normal College Ypsilanti* University of Michigan Ann Arbor* Western State Normal School Kalamazoo Minnesota Albert Lea College . : Albert Lea* Carleton College Northfield* College of Agriculture St. Paul Hamline University St. Paul* Macalester College St. Paul* Northwest School of Agriculture Crookston Pillsbury Academy Owatonna* St. Paul's College St. Paul Park* School of Agriculture St. Paul* State Normal School Mankato* State Normal School Moorhead State Normal School Winona University of Minnesota Minneapolis* West Central School of Agriculture Morris Windom Institute Montevideo* Mississippi Agricultural and Mechanical College Alcorn Agricultural High School Oakland Belhaven Collegiate Industrial Institute Jadcson Grenada College Grenada Industrial Institute and College Columbus* Jackson College Jackson Mississippi Normal College Hattiesburg Mississippi Synodical College Holly Springs* Pearl River County Agricultural High School . . Poplarville Rust College Holly Springs Southern Christian Institute Edwards Tougaloo University Tougaloo University of Mississippi University* Utica Institute Utica Whitworth College Brookhaven* Woman's College Meridian Missouri American School of Osteopathy Kirksville* Carleton College Farmington Central College Fayette 370 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Central College Lexington* Central Wesleyan College Warrenton* "^^ Christian College Columbia Cottey College Nevada* Drury College Springfield* Forest Park University St. Louis George R. Smith College Sedalia ''**» Hardin College Mexico* High School Kirksville* Howard Payne College Fayette* Iberia Academy Iberia* Kidder Institute Kidder* Lexington College Lexington* Lincoln Institute Jefferson City Lindenwood College St. Charles* Missouri Valley College Marshall* Missouri Wesleyan College Cameron* Northwest State Normal School Maryville* Park College Parkville* Scarritt Morrisville College Morrisville South West Baptist College Bolivar Southeastern State Normal School Cape Girardeau* State Normal School Kirksville* State Normal School Springfield* State Normal School Warrensburg* Stephens College Columbia* Synodical College Fulton* Tarkio College Tarkio* University of Missouri Columbia* Washington University St. Louis William Woods College Fulton* Montana. Montana Wesleyan University Helena* State Agricultural College Bozeman* State Normal School Dillon University of Montana Missoula* Nebraska Bellevue College Bellevue* Cotner University Lincoln* Doane College Crete* Franklin Academy Franklin* LIST OF ASSOCIATIONS 371 rremont Normal School Fremont* Grand Island College Grand Island* Hastings College Hastings* High School Franklin High School Seward Nebraska Central College Central City* Nebraska Wesleyan University University Place* Santee Normal Training School Santee School of Agriculture Lincoln State Normal School Chadron State Normal School Kearney* State Normal School Peru* State Normal School Wayne Teachers' College High School Lincoln University of Nebraska Lincoln* University of Omaha Omaha York College York* Nevada Carson Indian School Stewart State University Reno* New Hampshire Colby Academy New London New Hampshire College Durham Sanborn Seminary Kingston* State Normal School Plymouth Tilton Seminary Tilton* New Jersey Centenary Collegiate Institute Hackettstown* State Normal School Trenton* New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Art& . . State College Indian School Albuquerque University of New Mexico Albuquerque New York Adelphi Academy Brooklyn* Alfred University Alfred* Barnard College New York City* The Castle, Miss Mason's School Tarrytown Cazenovia Seminary Cazenovia* Cornell University Ithaca* Elmira College , , , , , Elmira* 372 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Genesee Wesleyan Seminary Lima* Horace Mann School New York City Hunter College New York City Keuka College and Institute Keuka Mechanics Institute Rochester Central Club for Nurses New York City Studio Club New York City St. Lawrence University Canton State College for Teachers Albany* State Normal School Fredonia* State Normal School New Paltz* State School of Agriculture Alfred Syracuse University Syracuse* Teachers* College, Columbia University . . .New York City University of Rochester Rochester* NoBTH Carolina Bennett College Greensboro Brevard Institute Brevard* Carolina College Maxton Davenport College Lenoir* East Carolina Teachers' Training School Greenville Elizabeth College Charlotte* Elon College Elon* Greensboro College for Women Greensboro* Guilford College Guilford* Joseph K. Bricks School Bricks Lincoln Academy King's Mountain Linwood College Gastonia* Littleton College Littleton Louisburg College for Women Louisburg* Meredith College Raleigh* Morrison Industrial School Franklin National Religious Training School Durham Normal and Collegiate Institute Asheville* Normal and Collegiate Institute Albemarle Oxford College Oxford* Peace Institute Raleigh* Queens College Charlotte* Salem College Winston-Salem Shaw University Raleigh Southern Presbyterian College Red Springs* LIST OF ASSOCIATIONS 373 State Normal College Greensboro* State School for the Blind Raleigh* Statesville Female College Statesville NoBTH Dakota Fargo College Fargo* Jamestown College Jamestown New Rockf ord Collegiate Institute New Rockf ord State Agricultural College Fargo* State Normal Industrial School Ellendale* State Normal School Mayville* State Normal School Minot State Normal School Valley City* University of North Dakota University* Ohio Ashland College Ashland* Baldwin-Wallace College Berea Bluffton College Bluflfton Bonebrake Theological Seminary Dayton Cedarville College Cedarville Cincinnati Conservatory of Music Cincinnati College of Wooster Wooster* Defiance College Defiance* Denison University Granville* Findlay College Findlay* Franklin College New Athens* Glendale College Glendale* Heidelberg University Tiffin* Hiram College Hiram* Lake Erie College Painesville* Lebanon University Lebanon* Marietta College Marietta* Miami University Oxford* Mount Union Scio College Alliance* Municipal University of Akron Akron Muskingum College New Concord* Oberlin College Oberlin* Ohio Northern University Ada* Ohio Soldiers and Sailors' Orphans' Home Xenia Ohio State University Columbus* Ohio University Athens* Ohio Wesleyan University Delaware* 374 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Otterbein University Westerville* Oxford College Oxford* Savannah Academy Savannah* State Normal School Kent University of Cincinnati Cincinnati* Western College Oxford* Western Reserve University Cleveland* Wilberforce University Wilberforce* Wilmington College Wilmington* Wittenberg College Springfield* Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College Stillwater* Agricultural and Normal University Langston Bacone College Bacone* Central State Normal College Edmond* East Central State Normal School Ada Euf aula Boarding School Euf aula Henry Kendall College Tulsa High School Tulsa Indian School Chilocco Kingfisher College Kingfisher Methodist University of Oklahoma Guthrie* Northwestern Normal School Alva* Oklahoma College for Women Chickasha Oklahoma Institute of Technology Tonkawa* Oklahoma Presbyterian College Durant Phillips University Enid Southwestern Normal School W>atherf ord* Tuskahoma Female Seminary Tuskahoma University of Oklahoma Norman* Wheelock Academy Millerton Obegon Albany College Albany* High School Dallas High School Eugene McMinnville College McMinnville Oregon Agricultural College Corvallis* Pacific College Newberg* Pacific University Forest Grove* Philomath College Philomath* Salem Indian Training School Chcmawa LIST OF ASSOCIATIONS 'S75 State Normal School Monmouth University of Oregon Eugene* Willamette University Salem* Pennsylvania Albright College Myerstown* Allegheny College Meadville* Beaver College Beaver* Beechwood College Jenkintown Birmingham School for Girls Birmingham* Bucknell University Lewisburg* Central State Normal School Lock Haven* Cumberland Valley State Normal Shippensburg* Darlington Seminary West Chester* Dickinson College Carlisle* Dilworth Hall Pittsburg Friends' School Germantown Geneva College Beaver Falls Grove City College Grove City* Indian School Carlisle Irving College Mechanicsburg* Juniata College Huntingdon Keystone State Normal School Kutztown* Lebanon Valley College Annville* Moravian Seminary and College for Women — .Bethlehem Penn Hall Chambersburg Pennsylvania College for Women Pittsburgh* Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art Philadelphia Perkiomen Seminary Pennsberg* Philadelphia College of Osteopathy Philadelphia Shippen School Lancaster Southwestern State Normal School California* State College State College State Normal ScJiool Bloomsburg* State Normal School Clarion* State Normal School East Stroudsburg State Normal School Edinboro* State Normal School Indiana* State Normal School Mansfield* State Normal School Millersville* State Normal School West Chester* S76 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Stevens School Germantown Susquehanna University Selins Grove Swarthmore College Swarthmore University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh Ursinus College Collegeville Walnut Lane School Germantowii Washington Seminary Washington Waynesburg College Waynesburg* Westminster College New Wilmington* Williamsport Dickinson Seminary Williamsport* Wilson College , Chambersburg* Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania . . Philadelphia* Wyoming Seminary Kingston* Rhode Island East Greenwich Academy East Greenwich South Carolina Allen University Columbia Anderson College Anderson Benedict College Columbia Chicora College Greenville Clallin University Orangeburg Clifford Seminary Union Coker College for Women Hartsville College for Women Columbia Columbia College Columbia* Confederate Home College Charleston* Converse College Spartanburg* Erskine College Due West* Greenville Female College Greenville* Lander College Greenwood* Limestone College Gaffney* Penn. Normal and Agricultural School . .St. Helena Island Sterling Industrial College Greenville Winthrop Normal and Industrial College Rock Hill* Woman's College Due West* South Dakota Dakota Wesleyan University Mitchell* High School Mitchell* Hope School Springfield Huron College Huron* Indian School Rapid City LIST OF ASSOCIATIONS 377 Northern Normal and Industrial School Aberdeen* Redfield College Redfield Riggs Institute Flandreau Sioux Falls College Sioux Falls State Agricultural College Brookings* State Normal School Spearfish State Normal School Springfield* University of South Dakota Vermillion* Yankton College Yankton* Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State Normal School . . . Nashville Buf ord College Nashville Carson and Newman College Jefferson City* Centenary College Cleveland Cumberland University Lebanon* East Tennessee Normal School Johnson City Fisk University Nashville Grandview Normal Institute Grandview Knoxville College Knoxville Lane College Jackson Lincoln County High School Fayetteville Lincoln Memorial University Hurrogate McFerrin School Martin Martin College Pulaski Maryville College Maryville* Middle Tennessee Normal Murf reesboro Morristown Normal College Morristown Radnor College Nashville Roger Williams University Nashville Tusculum College Tusculum* University of Chattanooga Chattanooga* University of Tennessee Knoxville* Ward-Belmont College Nashville* West Tennessee State Normal School Memphis Texas Baylor University Waco Bishop College Marshall Clarendon College Clarendon College of Industrial Arts Denton* Coronal Institute San Marcos* S7S FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Daniel Baker College Brownwood* Houston College Houston Howard Payne College Brownwood* North Texas College Sherman North Texas State Normal School Denton Phillips University Tyler Prairie View Normal and Industrial College . . Prairie View Rice Institute Houston Sam Houston Normal Institute Huntsville* Simmons College Abilene Southwest Texas State Normal School San Marcos* Southwestern University Georgetown State School for the Blind Austin* Texas Christian University Fort Worth* Texas Fairmont Seminary Weatherf ord Texas Presbyterian College Milford Texas Woman's College Fort Worth Tillotson College Austin Trinity University Waxahachie* University of Texas Austin* West Texas State Normal School Canyon Vermont Burr and Burton Seminary Manchester Middlebury Collie Middlebury* Montpelier Seminary Montpelier Troy Conference Academy Poultney* University of Vermont Burlington* Virginia Blackstone Female Institute Blackstone* Eastern College Manassas* Hollins College Hollins* Martha Washington College Abingdon Mary Baldwin Seminary Staunton* Miller Manual Labor School Miller School* Normal and Industrial Institute Ettricks Oak Park Institute Oak Park Randolph-Macon Institute Danville Randolph-Macon Woman's College Lynchburg* Roanoke Institute Danville Shenandoah Collegiate Institute Dayton Southern Seminary Buena Vista* LIST OF ASSOCIATIONS 379 State Normal School East Radford State Normal School , Farmville* State Normal School Fredericksburg State Normal and Industrial School Harrisonburg Stonewall Jackson Institute Abingdon* Sullins College Bristol* Sweet Briar College Sweet Briar Virginia College Roanoke* Virginia Interment College Bristol* Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind Staunton Westhampton College Richmond Williamsburg Institute Williamsburg Woman's College Richmond* Washington Cushman Indian School Tacoma State Normal School Bellingham* State Normal School Cheney* State Normal School Ellensburg University of Puget Sound .Tacoma* University of Washington Seattle* Washington State College Pullman* Whitman College Walla Walla* Whitworth College Spokane* West Vibginia Bethany College Bethany* Broaddus Institute Philippi Concord State Normal School Athens* High School Fairmont Keyser Preparatory School Keyser* Lewisburg Seminary Lewisburg* Marshall College Huntington* Morris Harvey College Barboursville Salem College Salem Shepherd College Shepherdstown* State Normal School Fairmont State Normal School Glenville State Normal School West Liberty West Virginia Collegiate Institute Institute West Virginia University Morgantown* West Virginia Wesleyan College Buckhannou* 380 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Wisconsin Beloit College Beloit* Carroll College Waukesha* Indian School Tomah Indian School Wittenberg Lawrence College Appleton* Milton College Milton Milwaukee-Downer College Milwaukee* Northland College Ashland Ripon College Ripon* State Normal School La Crosse State Normal School Milwaukee State Normal School Oshkosh State Normal School Platteville* State Normal School River Falls* State Normal School Stevens Point* State Normal School Superior State Normal School Whitewater* Stout Institute Menomonie University of Wisconsin Madison* Wayland Academy Beaver Dam* Wyoming University of Wyoming Laramie* PoBTo Rico Presbyterian Hospital San Juan NATIONAL BOARD Of the Young Women's Christian Associations of the United States of America * 600 Lexington Avenue New York City Telephone, 6000 Plaza Cable Address, Outpost, New York OFFICERS Mrs. Robert E. Speer, President Mrs. John French, Chairman Executive Committee Mrs. James S. Cushman, First Vice-President Mrs. William W. Rossiter, Second Vice-President Mrs. Thomas S. Gladding, Secretary Mrs. Samuel J. Broadwell. Treasurer NATIONAL BOARD AND STAFF 381 Miss Annie M. Reynolds, Chairman Department of Field Work *Miss Elizabeth W. Dodge, Chairman Department Conventions and Conferences Miss Annie M. Reynolds, Chairman Secretarial Depa/rtment Mrs. W. W. Rockwell, Chairman Publication Department Mrs. Dave Hennen Morris, Chairman Finance Department Mrs. G. K. Swinburne, Chairman Office Department Mrs. Charlton Wallace, Chairman Department of Method Mrs. James M. Speers, Chairman Town and Country Committee Mrs. Charles N. Judson, Chairman City Committee Miss Gertrude E. MacArthur, Vice-Chairman City Committee Miss Clara Stillman Reed, Chairman Student Com- mittee Mrs. Augustus B. Wadsworth, Chairman Foreign Department Mrs. Samuel Murtland, Chairman Buildings Committee *Mr8. Elizabeth P. Allan Mrs. R. C. Jenkinson *Mrs. E. B. Burwell Mrs. Seabury Cone Mastick Mrs. Edward S. Campbell Mrs. Frederick Mead Miss Maude Daeniker Mrs. John R. Mott Mrs. Henry P. Davison *Mr8. Warren Olney, Jr. Mrs. R. A. Dorman *Mr8. R. H. Passmore Miss Leila S. Frissell Mrs. Francis B. Sayre *Mrs. John M. Hanna Mrs. Finley J. Shepard *Mrs. J. H. Hoskins *Miss Helen M. A. Taylor Mrs. Clarence M. Hyde *Mrs. George Vaux, Jr. Mrs. Francis de Lacy Hyde *Mr8. William Shaw Ward AUXiUARY MEMBERS Mrs. Lemuel Bolton Bangs Miss Anna C. McClintock Mrs. F. S. Bennett Miss Florence M. Marshall Mrs. Robert L. Dickinson Miss Margaret Mead Mrs. William Francis Domi- Mrs. James Pedersen nick Mrs. Arthur G. Stone Mrs. Charles H. Ferry Mrs. Warren H. Wilson * Field representatives. S82 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK BOARD OF TBUSTEES Mr. Alfred E, Marling, Mrs. Dave Hennen Morris Chairman Mr. Stephen Baker Mr. Wm. D. Murray, Mrs. Finley J. Shepard Secretary Mrs. Clarence M. Hyd& Mr. Wm. M. Kingsley, Mr. Samuel Sloan, Jr. Treasurer FIELD COMMITTEES Mrs. C. C. Bullock, Chairman; Mrs. Irwin Rew, Treaswrer, Central Mrs. George Vaux, Jr., Chairman; Mrs. Wm. L. McLean, Treasurer^ Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania Mrs. Charles P. Noyes, Chairman; Mrs. W. O. Winston, Treasurer, North Central Miss Elizabeth Dodge, Chairman; Mrs. Stanley Rumbough, Treasurer, Northeastern Mrs. E. B. Burwell, Chairman; Mrs. Charles Denny, Treas- urer, Northwestern Miss Helen M. A. Taylor, Chairman; Mrs. F. D. Phinney, Treasurer, Ohio and West Virginia Mrs. Warren Olney, Jr., Chairman; Mrs. A. Crawford Greene, Treasurer, Pacific Coast Mrs. Elizabeth Preston Allan, Chairman; Mrs. Joseph C. Patton, Treasurer, South Atlantic Mrs. D. S. Brown, Chairman; Mrs. C. C. Rainwater, Treas- urer, South Central Mrs. John M, Hanna, Chairman; Mrs. W. D, Felder, Treas- urer, Southwestern Mrs. William Shaw Ward, Chairman; Mrs. C. A. Graham, Treasurer, West Central SECRETARIAL STAFF NATIONAL BOARD OF THE YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS Headquartebs Secretaries Mabel Cratty, General Secretary Isabel Norton, Secretary to the General Secretary Rebecca F. McKillip, Social Secretary NATIONAL BOARD AND STAFF 383 Henrietta Roelofs, Special Worker Helen A. Ballard, Publicity Secretary Mrs. Isabella H. Santee, Buildings Manager SECRETARIAL DEPARTMENT Elizabeth Wilson, Executive Edith N. Stanton, Director Bureau of Reference Nellie Starr Stevens, Office Caroline B. Dow, Dean of Training System Elizabeth L. Dean, Assistant to the Dean Mary Scott, Registrar Grace Quackenbush, Bursar FINANCE DEPARTMENT Harriet Taylor, Acting Execu- tive Ella Schooley, Finance Secre- tary Helen Sanger, Office Executive Jessie MacKinlay, Cashier and Bursar DEPARTMENT OF CONVENTIONS AND CONFERENCES Mabel Cratty, Acting Execu- tive Louise W. Brooks, Student Bertha W. Seely, Office PUBLICATION DEPARTMENT iMary Louise Allen, Executive Helen Thoburn, Editorial Sec- retary Rhoda E. McCuUoch, Edi- torial Secretary A. Estella Paddock, Editorial Secretary Margaret Cook, Business Manager OFFICE DEPARTMENT Margaret F. MacKinlay, Ex- ecutive (Office Secretaries listed under departments) FOREIGN DEPARTMENT Clarissa H. Spencer, Acting Executive Susan M. Clute, Office Execu- tive DEPARTMENT OF FIELD WORK Helen A. Davis, Executive Katharine Scott, Office Execu- tive DEPARTMENT OF METHOD Louise Holmquist, Executive Elizabeth Boies, Office Execu- tive Bertha Cond€, Senior Student Secretary Mabel T. Everett, Student Office Executive Mary S. Sims, City Office Ex- ecutive Leslie Blanchard, State Uni- versities Eva D. Bowles, Colored Work, Cities Mrs. Harry M. Bremer, Immi- gration Work Anna L Brown, Physical Education and Hygiene Oolooah Burner, Church Schools 384 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Margaret Burton, Missionary Gertrude E. Griffith, Girls* Interests Work Eliza R. Butler, Secondary Josephine V. Pinyon, Colored Schools Schools Ethel Cutler, Religious Work, Anna V. Rice, Religious Student and Country Work, City Edith M. Dabb, Indian Anna Seaburg, Large Towns Schools Florence Simms, Industrial Jessie Field, Toum and Coun- Work try Helen L. Thomas, Education Blanche Geary, Economic Work Field Secretabies PACIFIC COAST Caroline Foresman, County ... ^ ... . ^^ Marjorie M. Persons, OMce (Arizona, California, Ne- vada.) NORTH CENTRAL 319 Rubs Building, (lowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, San Francisco, Cal. North and South Dakota.) Lillian E. Janes, Executive 412 Flour Exchange, Alice Moore, Oirls' Work Minneapolis, Minn. Sarah Oddie, County Mrs. Emma F. Byers, Execu- Mary I. Bentley, Student tive Helen Topping, Special , City Worker Clara I. Taylor, Industrial — Kathleen I. Bartholomew, Extension Office Margaret O'Connell, County Adelia Dodge, Student Josephine Lynch, Student ««« ,XT.,, « .,,. Edith Hclmer, Student 630 Witherspoon Building, jj^^.j^^ j^ Cunningham, Office Philadelphia, Pa. Mary Johns Hopper, Execu- southwestern tive (New Mexico, Oklahoma, Lucy P. earner, Assistant Texas.) Executive 512 Sumpter Bldg., Caroline Jones, Special Dallas, Tex. Worker Mabel K. Stafford, Executive Anna Owers, Industrial — Ex- Mildred Corbett, City tension Marguerite Stuart, Student Anna G. Seesholtz, Student Helen S. Whiting, Office DELAWARE, MARYLAND AND PENNSYLVANIA NATIONAL BOARD AND STAFF 385 NORTHWESTEBN (Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington.) Fifth Ave. and Seneca St., Seattle, Wash. Jane Scott, Executive Grace Maxwell, City Eleanor Hopkins, Student Van S. Lindsley, Office WEST CENTBAL ( Colorado, Kansas, Utah, Wyoming. ) 321 McClintock Bldg., Denver, Colo. Marcia O. Dunham, Executive M. Frances Cross, City Lucy Y. Riggs, Student Katharine Halsey, Student Ethel Adams, Office SOUTH ATLANTIC (Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia.) 512 Commercial Bank Bldg., Charlotte, N. C. Amy Smith, Executive Ada Starkweather, City cmd Industrial Mabel E. Stone, Student Willie Young, Student Carrie McLean, Office CENTBAL (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin. ) 58 East Washington St., Chicago, 111. Ida V. Jontz, Executive Elva Sly, City Gertrude Gogin, Industrial — Extension Maud Tr^o, County Mary Corbett, Student Eleanor Richardson, Student Elcy McCausey, Office SOUTH CENTRAL ( Alabama, Arkansas, Ken- tucky, Louisiana, Missis- sippi, Missouri, Tennessee.) 1411 Locust St., St. Louis, Mo. Elizabeth MacFarland, Execu- tive Charlotte Davis, City Ina Scher rebeck, Student Frances Y. Smith, Student Sara Foster, Office OHIO AND WEST VIBGINIA 1211 First National Bank Building, Cincinnati, Ohio Elizabeth Hughes, Executive Harriet Harrison, City Constance MacCorkle, Indus- trial — Extension Mabel H. Ward, Student Margaret Brown Moore, Office NOBTHEASTEBN (New England, New Jersey, New York.) 600 Lexington Ave., New York City Pauline Sage, Executive Lena M. Farrar, City Mary A. Dingman, Industrial — Extension 386 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK Anna M. Pyott, Industrial — Helen Farquhar, Student Extension Lucy T. Bartlett, Office Ex- Anna, M. Clark, County ecutive Margaret Flenniken, Student Amebican Secbetaeies on Foreign Field INDIA Florence Bodley Lang, Myra Withers, 170 Hornby Road, Bombay Martha C. Whealdon, Wellington Linear Bombay Beatrice Cron, Mary E. Rutherford, IS^ Corporation Street, Calcutta Florence Denison, y. W. C. A., Lahore Lela Guitner (on leave of absence) Martha Downey, Margery Melcher, Poonamallee Road, Madras, N. C. Laura Radford, 8i/ngapore, Straits Settle- ment CHINA Abby Shaw Mayhew, Grace L. Coppock, Freeda Boss, Ruth Paxson, Box 713 American P. 0., Shanghai Harriet L. Boutelle, Jessie K. Angell, Jean Paxton, cr. Y. W. C. A., Canton Helen Bond Crane, Helen Harshaw, Ponasang, Foochow Theresa Severin, Lilly K. Haass, Harriet M. Smith, Catharine Vance, cr. Y. W. C. A., Peking Jane S. Ward, Henrietta Thomson, Edith Sawyer, 10 West End Lane, Sha/nghai Katharine King, Edith May Wells, cr. Y. W. C. A., Tientsin JAPAN Ruth Emerson, Ruth Ragan, 12 Tamachi Sanohome, Us- higome, Tokyo Margaret Matthew, Mary Page, 41 Sanbancho Koiimachi' Ku, Tokyo Mary C. Baker, 51 Main St., Yokohama SOUTH AMERICA Irene Sheppard, Persis M. Breed, Elisa Cortez, Calle San Martin 2^3 Buenos Aires, Argentina TURKEY Frances C. Gage, cr. Constantinople College, Constantinople INDEX Adam, Kev. John Douglas, 235 Adams, Annie L. (Baird), 72 Adams, Charlotte H., 73, 105, 250 Adolescent Girl, The, 298 Albion College, Michigan, 128, 132 Aleott, Louisa May, 5 Allen, Mrs. Dudley P., 227 Allen, Lou (Gregory), 96 Alliance Employment Bu- reau, 213 Altamont, 291 Althouse, Carrie, 122 Alumnae in state conventions, 131 in religious and social serv- ice, 273 American department of the World's Y. W. C. A., 188 American Committee, 183- 195 irica 103 Ames, Iowa, 95 Amity Place, N. Y. City, 25 Anderson, Esther L., 190, 311 Ann Arbor, Michigan, 123 Annual Members, 275 Appleton, Wisconsin, 122 Argentina, The, 303 Arkansas, 238 Armstrong, Mary, 152 387 Asbury Park, 78 Asheville, 246 Asilomar, 247, 321 Associated Charities, 56 Association House, 70 Association Idea, 8 /See also Purpose of Asso- ciation "Association Monthly, The," 234 Atlanta Conference, 272 Augusta, Georgia, Y. W. C. A., 283 Aurora Y. W. C. A., 70, 283 Australasia, 311 B Bacon, Mrs. N. B., 240 Bainbridge, Mrs. W. S., 192 Baker, Mrs. Stephen, 228 Balfour, Lady Frances, 102 Baltimore Y. W. C. A., 83, 87, 104, 217 Bangs, Dr. Nathan, 22 Barnes, Helen F., 157, 190, 294, 311 Barnes, Dr. Ida C, 240 Barnet, England, 9 Barrows, Anna, 46 Basis of Active Membership, 221-222 Bates, Eula (Lee), 72, 133 Batty, Emma Jean, 307 Bay View Assembly, 175 Bay View Cottage, 172 Beach, Rev. Harlan P., 180 388 INDEX Beech, M., 121 Benfey, Ida (Judd), 177 Bennett, Estelle, 152 Berlin, Germany, 260 Bernadotte, Prince, 147 jBerninger, Martha (Mrs. Thomas Kydd), 189, 306, 308 OBevier Bell (Isabel), 131 Bible Classes, 34, 46, 67-71, 141 Bible Reading, 69 Billings, Mary (Mrs. John French), 228 Birmingham, England, 20 Bishop, Isabella Bird, 314 Blodgett, Mary E., 44, 45 Bloomington, Illinois, 114, 128, 132, 173 Boarding Homes, 34, 76-78 Boarding Places, 32 Boies, Col. H. M., 240 Boies, Mrs. Henry M., 228, 240 Bonar, Mrs. Horatius, 10 Boston Y. W. C. A., 29-49, 65, 80, 90, 91, 95, 96, 100, 102, 159 BoBworth, Professor Edward I., 250 Boulton, Mrs. William B., 228 Boyd, Mrs. Lucretia, 29 Bradford, Mrs. L. P., 133 Bradley, James A., 78 Branches — not departments, 11 Bridges, Frances (Mrs. George H. Atkinson), 190 Brinton Hall, 151 Bristol, England, 20 British American Associa- tion, see Paris, France Broadus, Dr. John A., 123 Broadway Tabernacle, 22 Broadwell, Mrs. S. J., 227 Brockman, Fletcher S., 305 Brooklyn Y. W. C. A., 70, 98, 101, 282, 283 Brown, Dr. Anna L., 73, 203, 219, 263 Brown, Ida E. (Mrs. James Gary), 116 Brown, Lida (Mrs. William P. McMurry), 115, 116 Browne, Mrs. P. D., 163 Brownell, Eleanor, 235 Bryant, W. C, 85 Buckley, Dr. James M., 177 Buffalo W. C. A., 55, 159 Y. W. C. A., 101, 290 Buenos Aires, Argentine, 307 Buildings, 105-107, 151, 270, 281, 282, 308 "Bulletin, The," 205, 234 "Bundle of Letters to Busy Girls, A," 214 Burnham, Mary, 120 Business Women's Club, 283 Busy Girls' Half Hour, 104 Buxton, Mrs. W. S., 219 Cabot, Dr. Richard C, 321 Cafeteria, 84 Calcutta, India, 183, 304 California, 238 Calisthenics, see Physical Education Cambridge Band, 144 Cameron, Minnie (Mrs. J. V. Hartness), 120 Campbell, Mrs. E. M., 228 Campbell, Helen, 105 Camp Collie, 171, 172, 295 Camp Nepahwin, 291 Canada, 175, 183, 311 Canton ( English Branch ) , 305 Camp Fire Girls, 299 INDEX 3S9 Camps, see under Conference Department and Sum- mer Homes Capitola, 246 Carbondale, Illinois, Y. W. C. A. of the S. I. N. U., 121 Carleton College, Minnesota, 59, 156 Cascade, 246 Cassiday, Jennie, 79 Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 129, 132, 282 "Century Magazine," 105 Chappell, Neva A., 105 Charlotte, N. C, 238 Charter members, 225, 255 Chauncey Street, Boston, 33 Chautauqua, 96, 171, 202, 296 Chicago, 171-173, 196-199 Chicago Y. W. C. A., 102, 160, 197 China, 303, 306, 308 Chinese Indemnity Students, see Foreign Students in America Christian Endeavor Society, 59, 132, 155 Christian Improvement As- sociation, 17 Christian Women's Educa- tion Union of Scotland, 126 "Christian Worker, The," 204 Chun, Ying Mei, 308 Church, see Basis of Active Membership and Federal Council Church of the Puritans, 22 Cincinnati, 238 Cincinnati W. C. A., 53, 56, 95, 97, 159 City Associations (after 1906), 281-288 Civil War, 6, 91 Cleveland W. C. A., 53, 64, 56 Close Hall, 151 Club Organizations, 86, 87 Coe College, Iowa, 129 Coeducational Colleges, 108- 114, 124-133 Coldwater, Michigan, Y. W. C. A., 100 College Associations, see Stu- dent Y. W. C. A/s Colored Associations, 271, 239 City, 285 Conferences, 271 Student, 271 Commercial Studies, 91 Commissions Character Standards, 265 Domestic Service, 76 Restatement of Student Basis, 276-278 Social Morality, 265 Thrift and Efficiency, 265 Committee on Schools and Colleges, 126, 170 Communion of the Lord's Supper, 314 Cond6, Bertha, 190, 235, 270 Conference Department Before 1906, see Summer Conferences Camps, 291, 296 City, 288 County, 295 Student, 246 Conferences of the Interna- tional Board 1891—196-198, 216 1893—198-200 1903—200 1905—202, 223 Conferences of the W. C. A., 159-166 1871, 1873—125 1875—169 S90 INDEX Conferences of the W. C. A. — Continued. 1877—169, 197 1881—125, 167 1883—128, 167 1885—168-171, 216 1887—170 Confei*ences of the W. S. C. F. 1895, Vadstena Castle, 147 1897, Williamstown, 279 1905, Zeist, 148 1913, Lake Mohonk, 278, 279 Conferences of the World's Y. W. C. A. 1898, London, 311-314 1906, Paris, 307 1910, Berlin, 260-263 1914, Stockholm, 314 Constantinople College, 327 Constitution Boston, 32 City, 23, 32 International Conference, 162 Student, 115, 127 World's Y. W. C. A., 313 Y. W. C. A.'8 of U. S. of A., 254-259 See also Basis of Active Membership Conventions of National Association — later The American Committee 1886—171-173 1889—173 1891—175 1893—62 1899—183, 188 1901—188 1903—189, 194 1905—218 1906, special, 223 Conventions, State, 130-133, 242-244 Conventions, Y. M. C. A., 119, 128, 256, 257 Conventions of the Y. W. C. A.'s of the U. S. of A. 1906, New York City, 225- 227 1909, St. Paul, 237, 254- 259 1911, Indianapolis, 263 1913, Richmond, 264, 265, 276 1915, Los Angeles, 277 Cooke, Helen Temple, 235 Cooking Classes, see Domes- tic Science Cooper, Hon. Peter, 94 "Cooperative patience," 235, 251 Cornell College, Iowa, 128 Corson, Juliet, 96, 97, 165 Country Associations, 132, 153-158, 292-296 County Organization, 156- 158, 292-296 Cratty, Mabel, 193, 321 Crete, Nebraska, 121 Crimean War, 9 Crosby, Dr. Howard, 256 Cross, Frances, 193 Cunningham, Miss, 120 Cushman, Mrs. J. S., 227 Cutler, Ethel, 273 Daeniker, Maud, 228 Dash wood, G. L., 165 Davis, Mrs. John, 53, 159 Day Nursery and Kindergar- ten Society, 56 Day of Prayer for Colleges, 111 Dayton, Ohio, W. C. A., 55, 104 Decker, Debbie, 121 Delegation to Cincinnati, 168 INDEX 391 Delaware, 238 Delsarte, 99 Democracy, 86, 288 Denominational Colleges, 108- 114 Department of Method, 252 Depauw University, Indiana, 129 de Perrot, Mile. Anna, 163 Detroit Y. W. C. A., 70, 291 Dick, Jean, 72 Dick, Nellie (Adams), 72 District of Columbia, 218, 239 Doane College, Nebraska — Yoxmg Ladies' Society of Co-workers, 121 Dodge County, Minnesota, 157 Dodge, Grace H., 87, 149, 165, 192, 206-251, 262, 263; 284, 319, 326-328 Dodge, William Earl, Jr., 124 Doheny, Ella, 67 Domestic Art, 46, 93-95 Domestic Circle, 212 Domestic Economy, 46, 95 Domestic Science, 41, 46, 96- 98 Domestic Service, 41—44, 75— 76 Dorcas Societies, 5 Dorman, Mrs. R. A. (Mary Aitken), 219, 227, 229 Dow, Caroline B., 250 Downey, Anna, 168 Drinkwater, Charlotte V., 37-47 Drummond, Professor Henry, 147, 165 Dryer, Emma, 176 Duncan, Mrs. John C. (Fanny Cassiday), 204 Dunn, Helen (Mrs. L. M. Gates), 58 Dunn, Mary S., 100, 177, 190 Dunn, Nettie (Mrs. Walter J. Clark), 60, 174-176, 318 Durant, Mrs. Henry F., 32, 45, 50 Durkee, Mrs. F. L., 227 Dyer, Rev. Heman, 24 E "Earnest Worker, The," 204 Ecumenical Missionary Con- ference New York, 1900, 148 Edinburgh, 1910, 210 Educational Classes, 33, 36, 87-98 Eight Week Clubs, 294 Elliott, Arthur J., 235 Elliott, Harrison, 273 Elliott, J. H., 176 Ellis Island, 301 El Paso, Illinois, 293 Emergency Lectures, 43 Employed Officers, 318 Chaplain, 67 County secretary, 292 Extension secretary, 105, 194 Foreign secretary, 63, 146 Girls' secretary, 297 General secretary, 317 Lunchroom director, 323 Matron, 323 National secretary headquarters, 233 field, 237 Physical director, 100, 322 Religious work director, 72, 270 Secretary of colored branches, 272 State secretary, 133-137 Student secretary, 152 Superintendent, 16 892 INDEX Employed Officers — Continued. Traveling secretary, 133- 137 318 World's Secretary, 182, 193 Employed Officers' Confer- ence 1909—319 1911—320 1913—321 1915—321 See also Secretaries* Con- ferences, 1889, 292, 318 Employment Bureau, 41, 73- 76 Eureka, Illinois, 292 "Evangel, The," 135, 189, 234, 303 Evangelical Alliance, 112 Evangelical Basis See Basis of Active Mem- bership, Commission on Restatement of Student Basis, Constitutions, Federal Council of Churches Evangelical Churches, 222, 255-259, 273 Evangelistic Campaigns, 130, 141, 270, 287 Ewing, Mrs. Emma P., 46 Exeter Hall, 102, 312 Expositions in U. S. A. 1876—95 1893—189, 198, 199 1901—200 1904r— 200, 201, 203 1905—200 1915—266-268 abroad, 1851—92 abroad, 1900—200 "Faith and Works," 204 Farmington, 206 Farwell, Mrs. John V., Jr., 173 Federal Council of Churches, 257-259 Federation of Clubs, 291 Female Cent Societies, 6 Field, Frances, 224, 235, 236 Field Work Department, 236-241 Fifty-second Street, N. Y. City, 266 Fillmore Coimty, Minne- sota, 156, 157 Finance, 85, 242-245, 282 After 1906, see also Fi- nance Department Finance Department, 241- 246 Finland, 311 Finney, Rev. Charles G., 5, 7 First Aid to the Injured, 43, 284 Fisher, Martha S. (Mrs. E. E. Stacy), 57 Foochow (English Branch), 305 Methodist School and Seminary, 305 Ford, Mabelle, 263 Foreign Department, 252, 309 Foreign Students in Amer- ica, 279, 309, 310 Foreign Work, 183-189 After 1906, see Foreign Department Forman, John N., 145 Foster, Mary, 33, 317 France, 311 French, Daniel Chester, 278 French, Mrs. John (Mary Billings), 329 Fries, Dr. Karl, 148 INDEX 999 Gage, Frances C, 308 Galesburg, Illinois, 129 Gates, Mrs. L. M. (Helen Dunn), 58, 240 Germantown, Pa., W. C. A., 55, 95, 104 Girl's Department, 87, 297 Girls' Friendly Society, 19 Girls' Public School Athletic League, 210 Gladding, Mrs. Thomas S. (Effie K. Price), 219, 226 Glasgow, Scotland, 20 "Gleaner, The," 204 Gordon, Mrs. A. D., 191 Gospel Meeting, 68 Gould, Helen Miller (Mrs. Finley J. Shepard), 219, 227, 295 Grace, Mayor, 208 Grace Whitney Hoff League, 291 Gramercy Park, 250, 266, 324 Gray, Rev. James M., 46 Great Britain, 21, 182, 311 Green, Mrs. Henry, 227 Greencastle, Indiana, 129, 132 Greenville and Tusculum College, Tennessee, 129 Gregg, Lucinda, 47 Griffith, Mrs. J. S., 219 Grinnell, Iowa, 129 Guinness, Geraldine (Mrs. Howard Taylor), 304 Guinness, Lucy, 145 Gymnasium, see Physical Education Hall, Thirsa F., 174 Hammond, E. P., 115 Hang Chow, China, 303 Hanover College, Indiana, 124 "Harland, Marion," see Ter- hune Harlem Y. W. C. A., 70 "Harriet Judson, The," 283 Harrison, President Benja- min, 149 Hartford, Conn., 37, 50, 125, 159, 160 Haskell Institute, 273 Havergal, Frances Ridley, 11, 163 Hawaii, 239 Hays, Emma, 190, 219 Hearst, Mrs. Phoebe, 243-247 Hendrix, Bishop E. E., 258 Henrotin, Mrs. Charles, 198 Hermosa Club, 284 Hill, Agnes Gale, 62, 185^ 187, 304 Hill, Mary B., 186, 187 Hillsdale College, Michigan, 58, 128 Hitchcock & Rogers, 7, 8, 316 Hoflf, Mrs. John Jacob (Grace Whitney Evans), 310 Holland, J. G., 85 Holmes, O. W., 85 Hong Kong (English Branch), 305 Hooker, Mrs. Isabella Beecher, 51 Hoopskirt Factory, 24, 103 Hopkinton, Iowa, 121 Hospital, 34 Household Arts, see Domes- tic Economy Howard, General O. 0., 256 Hunt, Rosamund (Gordon), 120 Hunter, Ethel (Mrs. Charles dej. Luxmoore), 304 394< INDEX Himton, Mrs. W. A. (Addie Waite), 271 Hunting, Bernice, 72 Huntington, Emily, 46, 207 Hymn of the Lights, 264 Iowa A^icultural College, 95 Iowa College (later Grinnell College), 129 Iowa Wesleyan College, 128 Irene Club, 211-213 Illinois, 72, 132 Illinois Industrial Univer- sity — later University of Illinois, 96 Illinois State Normal Uni- versity, 114-119, also 8ee Normal Illinois Wesleyan Univer- sity, 128 Immigrants, 300-302 India, 183-188, 303, 304, 308 Indian Associations, 272 Indiana, 132 Indianapolis, 263 Industrial Education Associ- ation, 207 Industrial Extension, 24, 103- 105, 289-291 Institute, 17, 194, 195, 248 See also Secretarial Train- ing "Intercollegian, The," 276 Intercollegiate Y. M. C. A., 122-124 Intercollegiate Y. W. C. A., 119, 134, 147 International Board, 196- 205 International Committee of the Y. W. C. A.— later The American Commit- tee, 173-183 International Institute, 301 "International Messenger, The," 204, 234 Invitation Committee, 69 Iowa, 132, 154, 155 Japan, 303, 306, 308 Jenkinson, Mrs. R. C, 227 Johnson Coimty, Iowa, 153, 154 Joint Committee, The, 223- 227 Judson, Mrs. C. N., 219, 227 Kalamazoo, Michigan, Y. W. C. A., 58, 155, 105 Kalamazoo College, Michigan, 128 Kansas, 72, 133, 155, 244 Kansas Agricultural Col- lege, 95 Kansas City, Mo., 280 Kansas City Y. W. C. A., 62, 84, 102 Kawai, Michi, 262, 306, 322 Kingsmill, Agnes, 250 Kinnaird, The Hon. Arthur (later Lord K.), 15-17 Lord (son of founder), 165 The Hon. Emily, 15, 165, 183-184 The Hon. Gertrude, 165, 183 Mary Jane (Lady), 15-20 Kirkland School, 84 Kitchen Garden Association, 207 Knight, Naomi (Mrs. O. M. Easterday), 135, 188, 172 KjQOW Your City Week, 286 INDEX 395 Knowles, Mary (Mrs. Walter Lindsay), 80 Knox College, Illinois, 129 Knox, Nellie (Mrs. F. E. Miller), 133 Kyle Margaret (Mrs. E. E. Barber), 190 Ladies' Christian Association, see New York Ladies' Christian Union, see New York Ladies' Prayer Meeting, 22, 90, 66 Lake Geneva, 171, 178, 246 Lake Mohonk, 278, 279 Lamson, Mrs, Edwin, 30, 38, 126, 160 Lahore, India, 189 Lancaster, Mass., Industrial School, 38 Lancaster, Penn., Y. W. C. A., 283 Larcom, Lucy, 4, 5 Larkin Y. W. C. A., 290 Lasell Seminary, Mass., 96 Lawrence, Kas., Y. W. C. A., 58 Lawrence, Mass., Y. W. C. A., 301 Lawrence University, 122, 129 Lenox College, Iowa, 121 LeSeur, Pastor, 262 Lewis, Dr. Dio, 99 Lewis, Flora (Gallup), 120 Lexington Avenue, N. Y., 266 Library, 87-89 Lincoln, Mrs. D. A. (Mary J. Bailey), 46, 96 Lindsey, Walter, 80 Literary Societies, 113-114, 139 Little Girls' Christian Asso- ciation, 297 Liverpool, England, 20 London, 7-21, 30, 101, 160 Longfellow, Henry W., 34 Los Angeles, 238, 283, 301 Louise Cecile School, 204 Louisville, Ky., W. C. A., 79 Intercollegiate Y. M. C. A,, 124 Conference on Colored As- sociations, 239 Low, Hon. Seth, 214 Lowell, Maria White, 5 Lowell, Mass., 4, 159 Lowell, Mass., Y. W. C. A., 224 Lucknow College, 148 Lyon, Mary, 5 MAC MacDonald, A. Caroline, 306 Macbougal, Evelyn, 176 MC McAfee, Rev. Cleland B., 226 McAlpin, Mrs. D. H., 85 McCoUins, Mrs., 164 McConaughy, David, 181, 186, 187 McConaughy, Mrs. David, 187, 228 McCook, Janet (Mrs. Mal- colm D. Whitman), 227, 246, 328 McCormick, Mrs. Cyrus H., Sr., 195 McCrea, Mrs. F. F., 240 McDougal, Mrs. John, 125 McKenzie, Elizabeth, 292 M Madras, India, 184-186 Manchester, England, 20 396 INDEX Manhattan Conference, The, 219-223 Mansion House, London, 313 "Margaret Louisa, The," 82 Mary Clark Memorial Home, The, 283 Maryland, 238 Mayhew, Abby S., 61, 100, 309, 322 Members' Council, 283 Membership, 64, 138, 265 Merom Christian College, Indiana, 128 Messer, L. Wilbur, 71, 325 Messer, Mrs. L. Wilbur, 228, 229, 325 Metropolitan Organizations, 271, 282 Michigan, 72, 132, 155 Mildmay, 9 Miller, H. Thane, 64, 55, 125, 160 Miller, Mrs. H. Thane (Em- ma P. Smith), 119, 125- 129, 167 Mills College, 246 Mill Villages, 290 Milwaukee Y. W. C. A., 104, 105, 282 Minneapolis W. C. A., 58-60 Y. W. C. A., 58-61, 105, 282 Minnesota, 133, 157 Minonk, Illinois, 293 Mission Board Representa- tives, 276 Missionary Meetings, 71 Missionary Societies, 6 Missouri, 236, 238 Monaghan Mills Y. W. C. A., 290 Montclair, The, 234 Monteagle, 203 Montgomery, Ala., Y. W. C. A., 101 Montreal, Canada, 31, 126, 163 Moody, D. L., 51, 52, 143, 191 Moor, Lucy M., 12 Morning Watch, 140, 178, 305 Morrison, Theresa, 306 Morse, Rebecca F., 72, 87, 181, 188, 189 Morse, Richard C, 85, 225 Mosher, Dr. Eliza, 98 Mott, John R., 71, 143, 145, 147, 226, 272 Mott, Mrs. John R., 228 Mottoes Associates, 331 International Board, 332 National Committee of Y. W. C. A.'8, 331 Prayer Union, 330 World's, 331 Y. W. C. A. of U. S. A., 332 Mt. Auburn Institute, 125 Mt. Hermon, 142-145, 191 Mt. Holyoke Seminary, 5 Muller, daughter of George M., 11 Mullens, Priscilla, 300 N Nagasaki, Japan, 303 Naperville, Illinois, 120 Narey, Hope, 100 National Association, later The American Commit- tee, 142, 171-173 National Board, 226-259, 277 National Cash Register fac- tory, 104 National Headquarters, 266, 282 National Training School, 249, 250, 323-325 INDEX S97 National Vigilance Commit- tee, later American So- cial Hygiene Associa- tion, 215 Nebraska, 122, 133 Negro Student Conference, see Colored Associations Nevada, 238 Newark, N. J., W. C. A., 55, 224 Newburgh, N. Y., Y. W. C. A., 100, 107 Newell, Alice (Mrs. Lloyd Davis), 189 New England Pastors, 34 New England States, 236 New Haven Y. W. C. A., 90, 97 New Jersey, 236 New York City, 238 New York City Board of Ed- ucation, 208 New York City, Ladies' Christian Association, 23-25, 103 Ladies' Christian Union, 25, 50 Young Ladies' Branch (later Y. W. C. A.), 55, 67, 74, 85, 91, 92, 100, 105 New York Cooking School, 96 Nightingale, Florence, 14, 327 New York State, 236 Noon Rest, 83 Normal, Illinois, 114-119, 124 Normal Schools, 108 "North American Student, The," 276 North American Student Council, 276 North Carolina, 238 Normal University, see Illi- nois State Normal Uni- versity Northfield Conference, 191, 246 North London Home, 16, 65 Northwestern College, Illi- nois, Y. L. C. A., 120, 168 Norway, 21, 182, 311 Nurses' Central Club, 270 Oakland, California, Y. W. C. A., 297 Ober, C. K., 71 Oberlin Collegiate Institute, 5 Occupations, 35, 75, 91 Office Department, 234 Ogontz School, 84, 208 Ohio, 132, 155, 236, 238 Olivet College, Michigan, Y. W. C. A., 120 Omaha Y. W. C. A., 70 Onondaga Indian Club, 283 Orlebar, Maude, 304 Orrock, Rev. J. M., 47 Oskaloosa, Iowa, 129 Otis, Dr. Edward O., 43 Otterbein University, Ohio, 128, 151 Oxford Movement, 7 Pacific Grove, 247 Paddock, A. Estella, 193, 306 Pageant, Ministering of the Gift, 264 Palmer, Mrs. Potter, 198 Panama Pacific International Exposition, 266 Parker, Thomas F., 290 Parloa, Maria, 42, 96 898 INDEX Paris, France, British American Associa- tion, 310 Student Hostel, 308, 310 World's Conference, 307 Parsons College, Iowa, 128 Patriotic Fund, 9 Paxson, Ruth, 190 Pearl Street Church, Hart- ford, 60, 159 Penn College, Iowa, 129 Pennefather, Catherine (Mr&. William), 9-12, 20, 163 Pennefather, William, 9 Pennsylvania, 238, 244 Pentecost, Dr. George F., 183 Peoria, Illinois, Y. W. C. A., 292 Personal Evangelism, 136, 141 Personal Work, 136, 141 Philadelphia, 238 Philadelphian Society, Prince- ton, 124 Philadelphia, W. C. A., 55, 74, 78, 82, 91, 100, 159 Philistines, 239 Phillips, Ann Greene, 5 Phillips, Philip, 51 Phillips, T. W., 175 Physical Director, 44 Physical Education, 43, 98- 101, 308 Pitkin, Horace Tracy, 145 Pittsburgh, W. C. A., 52 Y. W. C. A., 105 Pleasant Valley, Johnson County, Iowa, 153, 154 Policies of National Board, 234-259 Portland Definition, 256, 257 Poughkeepsie Y. W. C. A., 83, 97, 100, 297 Prayer for Times of Retreat, 279 Prayer Meetings — see re- ligious meetings Prayer Union, 10, 19, 20 Preston, Minn., 156, 157 Price, Effie Kelly (Mrs. Thomas S. Gladding), 189, 191 Price, Prof. Ira M., 250 Princeton University, Phila- delphian Society, 124 Y. M. C. A., 124 "The Student Christian,'* 278 Protective Agents, 287 Providence, R. I., W. C. A., 51, 79, 159 Publication Department, 234 Purpose of Y. W. C. A.'s, 198, 255, 285 Quarterly— see Y. W. C. A. Quarterly R Rainwater, Mrs. C. C, 240 Rawson, Mrs. C. A., 240 Red Cross Society, 284 Reed, Clara S., 235 Reid, Katharine, 250 Religious Meetings, 34, 66- 70, 140, 286 Religious Work, 47 Residence, the Association, 283 Restaurant, 36, 80-84 Revival of 1857-58, 6, 22, 123 Rew, Mrs. Irwin (Katherine S. Jones), 194, 228 Reynolds, Annie M., 182, 188, 193, 228, 238, 246, 306 Reynolds, James Bronson, 147, 183, 214 INDEX 399 Rice, Anna V., 322 Richards, Belle (Bunker), 72 Richards, Mrs. Ellen H., 45 Richardson, Mrs. J. B., 227 Riverdale, 206, 278 Roanoke, Illinois, 293 Robarts, Emma, 9-12, 19, 330 Roberts, Mrs. Marshall O., 22-25, 50, 328 Rochester Y. W. C. A., 282, 286 Rome, Italy, 163, 164 Rooms for Student Associa- tions, 151 Roosevelt, Theodore, 249 Ross, Dr. A. Johnston, 315 Rossiter, Mrs. W. W., 227 Rouse, Ruth, 149, 188, 216 Russia, 311 Salt Lake City, 163 Sanders, Frank K., 180 Sanford, Rev. E. B., 225 Sanford, Mary F. (Mrs. William G. Morison), 235 San Francisco Y. W. C. A., 102 Sangster, Mrs. Margaret E., 177, 227 Saunders, Una, 321 Schell, Ida, 133, 168, 172 Schofield, Mrs. Levi T., 240 Schooley, Ella, 266 Scranton, Pa., Y. W. C. A., 58, 60, 100, 104 Seaside, 246 Secretarial Department, 248- 251 Secretarial Training, 47, 193- 195 After 1906 — see National Training School Secretarial Training — Contin- ued. Secretarial Department Summer School Training Centers Self Governing Clubs, 87, 210-214, 284 Self Government Conferences, 275 Residences, 283 Sewing Classes — see Domes- tic Art Sewing Machines, 6, 77, 93- 95 Shaftesbury, Seventh Earl of, 14, 18, 20, 101 Shanghai, China — Chinese Association, 188, 306, 308 English Branch, 305 Shepard, Mrs. Elliott F., 82 Shepard, Mrs. Finley J. (Helen Miller Gould), 296 Sheppard, Lizzie, 121 Sherman, Jennie, 72, 133 Silver Bay, 192, 246 Silver, Emma, 72 Simms, Florence, 190 Singh, Lilavati, 148 Slocum, Mrs. William F., 228 Smith, Alice, 227 Smith, Mrs. Charles B., 50 Smith, Mrs. Hannah Whitall, 161 Smith, Mary Isabel, 105 Social Features, 84-86, 139 Social Service, 150, 273 South Africa, 311 South America, 307, 308 South Bend, Indiana, Y. W. C. A., 282 South Carolina, 238 South Church, New York City, 225 400 INDEX Speer, Robert E., 145, 226, 235 Speer, Mrs. Robert E., 219, 227, 235, 329 Spencer, Clarissa H., 145, 193 Springer, Mrs. C. R., 196 Springfield, Mass., W. C. A., 65, 95 Starkweather, Ella, 120 State Associations, 130-133, 168, 170 State Executive Committees, 130-133, 236-241 State Student Conferences ( co-educational ) , 130- 133 State Universities, 108, also under separate names Statistics— 1909, 253 Alumnse social service, 274 Boston residents, 35 Eight Week Clubs, 295 Industrial, 289 St. Joseph, Missouri, 57 Student bodies, 269 Steiner, Edward A., 301 Stelzle, Rev. Charles, 226 Stenographers' Association, 283 Stewart, Emma V. (Mrs. I. E. Brown), 116 Stewart, Mary B., 240 Stewart, Mrs. William S., 202, 219 Stiles Hall, 151 St. Joseph, Mo., Y. W. C. A., 57 St. Louis, Mo., 125, 238 St. Louis W. C. A., 54, 56, 76, 85, 95, 97, 102 Stockholm, Sweden, 314 Stokes, James, 186-187 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 5 Strangford, Viscountess, 15 St. Paul, Minnesota, 133, 254 Studd, J. E. K., 145 Student Initiative, 274-276 "Student Volunteer, The," 146, 276 Student Volunteer Movement, 142-146, 185, 276, 280 Studio Club, 271, 299 Student Y. W. C. A.'s, 108- 152 Students' Christian Associa- tion, 122, 123 Students' Handbook, 140 Sullivan, Captain Thomas, 30 Summer Conferences, 147, 175-180, 190-193. After 1906 see Conference De- partment Summer Homes, 78-80, 283, 287 Summer School, 322-323 Sutcliffe, Charlotte, 250 Sweden, 21, 182, 311 Swift, John T., 181 Swimming, 101 Switzerland, 311 Syracuse, Y. W. C. A., 283 Taft, President, 284 Tarlton, J. H., 316 Tarr, Corabel (Mrs. William Boyd), 174, 181, 189 Taylor, Harriet, 190, 247 Teachers' College, 208 Terhune, Mrs. E. P. ("Mar- ion Harland"), 74, 164, 177 Territorial Committees — gee Field Work Department Terry, Prof. M. S., 176 "Three P. Circle," 212 Thurston, Mrs. Frank T., 219, 226 Tokyo, Japan, Y. W. C. A., 308 INDEX 401 Toledo, Ohio, Y. W. C. A., 62 Topeka, Kansas, 129 Y. W. C. A., 68 Topics, 116, 130, 159, 161, 220, 319 Tractarian pamphlets, 7 Trained Attendants, 98 Training School. See Na- tional Training School for Domestic Service, 44, 95 Training Centers, 249-251, 324 Travelers' Aid, 44, 101-103, 200-202, 215, 267 Trenton, N. J., Y. W. C. A., 301 Tritton, Mrs. J. Herbert, 21 Trumbull, H. Clay, 51 Tsuda, Um6, 306 Tufts, Mrs. J. J., 219 Tung Cho, China, 180, 303 Turkey, 303, 308 Twenty-seventh Street, New York City, 266 U Uhler, Mrs. M. C, 318 Union Internationale des Amies de la Jeune Fille, 163 Union of Previous National Bodies, 220-223 United Association, 18 United Central Council, 21 United States, 21, 182 University of California, 151, 247 Illinois, 129, 146, 186, 270, 293 Iowa, 151, 164 Kansas, 273, 293 Michigan S. C. A., 123 Y. W. C. A., 293 Minnesota, 152, 270 Universities — Continued. Nebraska, 129 Nevada, 247 Virginia Y. M. C. A., 123 Wisconsin, 129, 152 Urbana, Illinois, 96 Utica W. C. A., 65 Vacation Lodge-^«ec Sum- mer Homes Vadstena Castle, 147 Van Vliet, Bertha, 297 Vesper Tea, 70 Victoria, Queen, 312, 314 Vincent, Mrs. B. T., 227 Virginia, 238 Voluntary Christian Educa- tion, 273 Volunteer Workers, 318 W Washburn, Illinois, 293 Washburn College, Kansas, 129 Washington, D. C, W. C. A., 55, 159, 217, 222 Washington, D. C, Y. W. C. A., 217, 222, 283 Webb, Mrs., 42 Week of Prayer, 242, 313 Weidensall, Robert, 124, 156, 157 Welles, Anna (Mrs. J. Wylie Brown), 308 Wellesley College, 44, 46 Wells, Mrs. Shepard, 78 Western Secretarial Institute, 171, 178 Westerville, Ohio, 128, 132 West Point, 278 West Virginia, 238 Whirlwind Campaign, 282 White Slave Treaty, 215 402 INDEX Whitewater, Wisconsin, 132 Whitman, Mrs. Malcom D. (Janet McCook), 328 Whittelsey, Mrs. J. T., 219 Wilder, Grace, 143 Wilder, Robert P., 143 Williams, Sir George, 7, 8, 312, 316 Wilson, Mrs. A. McD., 228 Wilson, Annis, 122 Wilson, Elizabeth, 174, 189, 195, 219, 235 Wilson, Jessie Woodrow (Mrs. Francis B. Sayre), 294 Wilson Industrial School, 207 Wisconsin, 132 Wishard, Luther D., 119, 124- 129, 147, 180 Wishard, Mrs. L. D. (Eva Fancher), 180, 303 Witbeck, Ida (Mrs. Charles DeGarmo), 116 Wolflf, Maude, 105 Wood, Anna, 44 Woodford County, Illinois, 290 Wooster University, Ohio, 129 Woman's Medical College, 151 Woman's Municipal League, The, 214 Woman's Work, 3-6 Women's Christian Associa- tion, 125-126 Women's Colleges, 126, 138 Women's Exchange, 56 Women's Missionary Socie- ties, 6, 121 Worcester, Mass., 237 Worcester Y. W. C. A., 97, 100, 101 Workers' Training Class, 71, 141 World's Badge, 313 ''World's Nickel," 242 World's Student Christian Federation, 147-150, 277, 310 World's Y. W. C. A., 21, 181- 183, 277 X-Y Yokohama, Japan, 306 York, Pa., Y. W. C. A., 89 Young Ladies' Christian As- sociation, 9, 115, 125, 150 Young Men's Christian Asso- ciation, 8, 22, 30, 50, 52, 63, 58, 99, 101, 115, 121, 122, 123, 124, 134, 147, 153, 157, 173, 213, 221, 255, 273, 312, et passim Youngstown, Ohio, Y. W. C. A., 282 Young Women's Christian Association (use of name), 11, 16, 18 Y. W. C. A. Quarterly, 135, 189, 229 Ypsilanti, Michigan, Y. W. C. A., 58 Zirkus, Busch, 261 Zone Club House, 267 l^^^^ ^illCULATION DEPARTMENT TO—i» 2Q2 Main Uhrarv RETURN TO the circulation desk of any 4 University of California Library or to the NORTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY BIdg. 400, Richmond Field Station University of California — Richmond, CA 94804-4698 AU( ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS • 2-month loans may be renewed by calling __ (510)642-6753 • 1-year loans may be recharged by bringing — books to NRLF t • Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date _i DUE AS STAMPED BELOW FEB 6 2007 FOI DD20 12M 1-05 /Kfi^C U.C. 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