CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Handbook of the Young Womens Christian A olin 3 1924 029 336 991 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029336991 THE HANDBOOK YOUNG WOMENS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION MOVEMENT Prepared under the auspices of the Department of Method of the National Board National Board, Young Womens Christian Associations of the United States of America, 600 Lexington Avenue NEW YORK. 1914 Copyright, 1914, by National Board of the Young Womens Christian Associations of the United States of America TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE vii Foreword Introduction ix Organization of the Young Women's Christian Associations of the United States of America. PART I The Association and Present Day Conditions Chapter I. The Association in the Life of Women Today 1-9 Changed Conditions among Women — The Young Women's Christian Association as an In- strument. II. The Student Movement within the Young Wo- men's Christian Association 10-14 PART II Manifestations of the Young Women's Christian Association I. Religion 15-25 The Universal Need — Spiritual Emphasis of the Association — Religious Meetings — Bible Study — Mission Study — Community Service — Summer Conferences — Three National Commissions — The Christian Association. II. Education 26-39 General Education: The Association Educational Idea — Adapting Education to City Girls — A Com- munity Educational Bureau — The Association Girl as Home-Maker — With the Country Girl — With the Student. Physical Education: Exercise that Brings Rest — An Antidote to Dullness — Getting Hold of Herself — The Group Sense — The Swimming Pool — Ap- plied Hygiene — Making the Girl Win. IV CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE III. Shelter 40-52 The Girl Away from Home— The Association Residence — Newest Ideals in Brick and Stone The Big Family— The Girl Paying Her Way— The Transient— The Emergency Room— Outside Ac- commodations — Cooperative Boarding in the Small Town— The Eating Problem — The Cafe- teria — The Association and the Cafeteria. IV. Occupation 53-62 City Girls as Wage-Earners — Employment and Training — The Unskilled Worker — Finding her Own Place — Vocational Training — The Modern Employment Bureau — Earning Money in the Country — The Student Who Earns her Way. V. Protection 63-77 Prevention the Essential Association Idea. A Protective Department. Travelers' Aid: Beginnings — The City and the Stranger — Dangers of Travel — Expansion of Trav- elers' Aid — National Travelers' Aid. Protection for the Immigrant: Protection the First Need — Inadequacy of Regular Association Meth- ods — International Institutes — Friendly Visitors. VI. Recreation and Social Life 78-89 The Need of Play — What Recreation Includes — The Summer Conference — Pageantry and Festi- vals — Summer Camps — The Vacation Home — ■ The Play Problem of the City — ^Atmosphere of the Association Building — Good Times of College Girls — Play in the Country. PART III Organization I. Local Associations 90-100 Introduction. Points in Common in all Asso- ciations: Purpose; Basis; Administration — Con- stitutions Adapted to Different Communities: Student Constitutions; The City Organization; Branches and Centers; The Metropolitan System; The County Association. CONTENTS V CHAPTER PAGE II. Committee Work loi-iii The Place for Volunteer Service — Types of Volunteer Workers — The Committee System: City; Student; County — Committee Efficiency — Training for Committee Work — Relationships between Committees. PART IV Relationships I. The Local Association and the National Or- ganization I 12-127 The National Organization — National Con- ventions — National Board Meetings — Eight Departments of the National Board — Field Work Department — Field Committees — Field Staff — Headquarters Staff — Publication Department — Department of Conventions and Conferences — Finance Department — Secretarial Department — Training System — Department of Method — Office Department — Foreign Department — Membership in the World's Association. II. The National Organization and Other Organiza- tions 128-139 A. World's Young Women's Christian Asso- ciation — North American Student Movement — World's Student Christian Federation — Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions. B. Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America — Council of Women for Home Missions — • Religious Education Association. C. Interna- tional Committee of Young Men's Christian Asso- ciations — Church Boards of Foreign Missions — Other Organizations. Conclusion 140 Appendix I. Brief Chronology of Young Women's Christian Association Events 141 II. National Constitution 147 Index 151 FOREWORD To the gentle reader within or without the Association who looks to find compressed within one book the prin- ciples and practice of the Young Women's Christian Association, this book is commended. The Association reader will not expect to find here a strangely new theme, since a useful handbook is not a product of the imagina- tion. The one who lays it down with "our Association isn't at all like that," may call to mind that there are 907 Young Women's Christian Associations besides her own, and that this book to have truth as well as value must needs have been a composite view. A third who turns the page with eager fingers to "learn at last what my committee ought to do" will discover that this book is not technical in treatment. Eleven authors with eleven points of view and eleven obviously different ways of saying things, have told different parts of the Association story, each telling as she sees it today, the needs of girls that have evoked this manifestation and that, and the ways in which Associa- tion ideals are propagated in different communities and Associations are bound together for mutual strengthen- ing and for ministry to women the world around. As the first fruits of the Commission on the Training of Volunteer Workers, this book will fill a demand that has been earnestly and frequently made. It will find ready use in training classes and groups formed for the definite study of the Association movement. Indeed if we may quote the opinion of those who have reviewed the manuscript, this Handbook will be of use not only to every Association volunteer and secretary, but to all those interested in the welfare of women. vii INTRODUCTION Organization of The Young Women's Christian Associations of the United States OF America In the year 1906 there were in the United States two national organizations of Young Women's Christian Associations: the International Board of Women's and Young Women's Christian Associations, carrying on work in many of the larger cities, and The American Committee, having originally Associations only in col- leges and later in many cities, chiefly west of the Atlantic seaboard. The International Board allowed liberty of basis in the Associations affiliated with it, that is, there were different provisions for membership and management in different Associations. The American Committee, with headquarters in Chicago, employed a form of consti- tution in which voting membership was vested in mem- bers of Protestant Evangelical churches. In May, 1905, after preliminary negotiations, repre- sentatives from these two bodies met in New York City with Miss Grace H. Dodge as presiding officer. This Manhattan Conference appointed a commission to work for a united movement. At the International Board convention the following October, and The American Committee convention in January, 1906, each body voted to discontinue. The Associations belonging to either of the two existing organizations were privileged to enter the new organization as charter members until ix X THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK December, 1908, without change of constitution. This period was afterward prolonged to cover the time until the meeting of the second convention. It was agreed that Associations affiliated in the future should be on the Protestant Evangelical basis.* In December, 1906, at a convention held in New York City, the Young Women's Christian Associations of the United States of America was formed; and a National Board, consisting of thirty members, ten from each of the other boards, five from the foreign department of the American Committee, and five not connected with either Board, was elected to act as executive of the Young Women's Christian Associations between conventions. This number has since been increased to include one non-resident member from each of the eleven field com- mittees and fifteen auxiliary members. This convention instructed the National Board to establish headquarters in New York City, to employ a staff of secretaries, to organize field committees, to continue summer confer- ences, to provide for publications and for secretarial training, and to maintain affiliation with the World's Young Women's Christian Association. At the present time these instructions have been realized to the extent of having a headquarters building, at 600 Lexington Avenue, New York City; one hundred and two national secretaries (fifty-one on the headquarters staff, and fifty-one field secretaries) ; eleven field committees with offices, serving as sub-stations; eleven summer confer- ences; a publication department issuing literature for the use of all Associations; training centers in different fields and a graduate school for the training of secretaries, located at 135 East 52d Street, New York City. Affilia- *See page 93. INTRODUCTION XI tion with the World's Young Women's Christian Asso- ciation is maintained through representation on the World's Committee and the support of thirty-two foreign secretaries in Turkey, India, China, Japan, and South America. PARTI CHAPTER I— THE ASSOCIATION IN THE LIFE OF WOMEN TODAY Changed Conditions Among Women Things are changed for women. Some may not be in a position to reaHze this. Some would seem to shut their eyes to it. Some are awalce to what has happened. The evidence for this change is many-sided. A ruhng fact is that so much of the looking well to the ways of her household must be done outside of the home in the com- munity, whether a woman wish it or not. The teaching of her children is done in the school, the nursing of her sick is done in the hospital if she would have it well done ; her" cloth is spun, dyed, woven, and much of it cut and sewed in factories; even her baking and preserving are fast going the way of her other industries — out of the home into the community. It is only the very rich who can afford to have things hand-made and home-made in these days. Does the mother of a family desire to have her children well taught, or the school to which she sends them secure from disease, or the streets along which they walk clean and safe; does she expect the clothes they wear to be made and sold in sanitary surroundings, or the food they buy to be pure — then must the domain of her housekeeping responsibilities be extended beyond her own walls. It is true that women of strong person- ality in every generation have given time to exceptional tasks in community and national life, but this generation 2 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK makes a claim upon the ordinary woman for a share m the home-making cares of society. Nor may she refuse the claim. She must respond if she is to preserve her own home. Reduced to its lowest and most material terms, this is the situation as it affects the average woman who lives at home today. E^en the most casual thought about the causes which have led up to this condition makes us realize that it is not a passing change. The olden time cannot be eixpected to return. Machine-made things will not be superseded by hand-made, except as luxury for the few, now that there is machinery. The old "siege" method of protect- ing the health of the household is bound to seem futile now that we know there are microbes. A set of useful or elegant accomplishments, as the case may be, will not continue to be accepted as a substitute for an education now that there are so many women who are being given a real education. Grant the causes of change, certain effects follow as a matter of course. It is only to be expected that certain women should find themselves having more leisure time. Why should they not? So much of their old work is being done by others. That some of them should idly waste the time thus put at their disposal or fill it with a round of unproductive doings, perhaps ought not to be wondered at. It is to be expected also that the work, having been done in the home by women's hands, or directed by women's brains, should continue to be done — much of it — though outside of the home, by women. Hence the advent of the wage-earning woman in industry. That she has created by her presence these new situations, calling for new adjustments in working conditions, hours of labor, and wages, is not to be wondered at. Having THE ASSOCIATION IN THE LIFE OF WOMEN 3 become one of the wage-earners or the wage-earner of the household, she nevertheless remains the mother or daughter of the family, and as such is still called upon to fulfill her mother or daughter responsibilities. The common illustration of this double obligation is that most wage-earning women have to do housework before and after, the working day, the time in which the men members of the household rest from their labors. It is Dr. Simon Patten who estimates that a woman of forty years ago whose husband earned a salary of $i,ooo, prob- ably created more than a second $i,ooo worth of values in the clothes she made out of cloth, the bread and cake she made out of flour, the soap she made out of grease — things which now must be bought with the husband's $i,ooo. But she was not paid $i,ooo, nor was the value of what she produced at that time estimated in terms of money. It may have been inevitable that since no money value was attached to what she produced inside the house, her employers should think of the money they pay her less in terms of wages than as a lure to get hold of cheap labor; and that she should think \ less of her earning value than of the chance to have money at all. The increase of compulsory education, the growth of the common schools, created a demand for school teachers. It was to be expected, here too, that since the teaching of children was primarily the woman's business inside the home, she should have been hurried out from the home-doing of it into her present position in our modern school system. A school system imposes standards and competition for excellency of instruction which the would- be teacher must measure up to. Hence, women in num- bers began to go to normal school and college. One after 4 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK another the professions opened a door by which they could enter for work for which they were peculiarly adapted by nature, with the result that, instead of being a curiosity, queer and unaccountable, the college woman has become an unchallenged member of the population in good and regular standing. The college woman has raised the standard of education for all women. When it was conventionally assumed that she would pay for her college education by loss of health or womanly charm in addition to four perfectly good years of her youth, whether she should have an education or not was a prob- lem in profit and loss in which the loss seemed sure and the profit of very doubtful good. Now that it has be- come pretty clear that she does not lose any of these, and moreover, has a uniquely good time while she is in college, what the college training does for her is more generally viewed on its own merits. A college educa- tion is not the only means of training the minds of women, but it is a very good means, perhaps the most economical in money, in time and effort. Moreover, the number of women equipped by this means with a trained mind, in addition to the total sum of their other capacities and attractions, is increasing so rapidly as to create a liking for this attainment and a con- stantly increasing scope for its exercise. Very perplexing are the questions raised because of these changes. These questions concern woman and her responsibilities, old and new. Their solution awaits the application of her mind and spirit to them. The prob- lems involved are sufficiently difficult to demand all the brain and feeling available at any given time. Women have scarcely realized how far the conscience of the com- munity has had to be a man's conscience. THE ASSOCIATION IN THE LIFE OF WOMEN 5 The Young Women's Christian Association as an In- strument That new conditions make new demands upon woman's powers, call for development of new capacities, is inevi- table. Whether out in the open herself, or still living the sheltered life, she only hears the sound of many winds, she is in sore need of a sense of direction, some com- pass by which to show where things are tending, where she shall direct her steps. If she has been more or less an autocrat in her own home, or if a democrat, that only in the commonwealth of the family, she must with greater zeal develop ability to work with people and all that this leads toward, either of leadership or of subor- dination of her own desires. She must step out of the provincial circle of her own particular kind of women. If she does this, she sees things as with new eyes, and she finds that it requires a trained mind, or a skilful hand, and a chastened spirit if she is to grapple with them effectively. The causes mentioned, with others contributing, are such as to increase the tendency, always existing, to the forming of social cleavages — the separations which are made by wealth on the one hand and poverty on the other, between the highly educated and the ignorant, the woman of trained mind and the woman of untutored mind, the worker for salary or wages and the worker without pay and the woman who works not at all. Now the essential ideal of the Association is association. In proportion as it does associate, prevents cleavage, closes up social gaps, is it proof that the church has an answer to these conditions. For the Association is an agency of the Christian church. It may use institutions, as in the typical city Association. It may depend less upon 6 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK equipment, as it does in the rural community. Its work may be non-institutional, as in colleges. Since the college life of the student is only four years, the Association in the college assumes a special form, becoming a movement through the complex life of that college and a part of the great movement of Christian students through its inter-collegiate relationship to the colleges and universities of the world. But always the Association, whether in the changing college commu- nity as defined, in the more established city, or in the country, is primarily a manifestation of the church and auxiliary to it. The church is the most powerful in- stitution which provides a training ground for those graces of character which alone can make it possible for women to meet their new responsibilities and dis- charge their old ones in the Hght of the new. Furthermorey it is probably the church which best incorporates the ideal of living the social life. The church, moreover, kindles the inspiration and sounds the call to the larger life. Organizations are so many and seem to multiply so rapidly that it is not strange that people should often be bewildered as to which, if any, should have their active sympathy. Sometimes it comes about that confidence in some person who has espoused the cause of an organ- ization may inspire confidence in the idea or faith in its plan, and thus may enlist a certain amount of interest; yet belief in the idea itself is the only ground for perennial confidence and genuine interest in the organization that embodies the idea. And so the question may come, "Why cannot the church, as it is, do without the Asso- ciation?" There are three answers to that question. First, that sometimes it can. It is not assumed that the THE ASSOCIATION IN THE LIFE OF WOMEN ^ Association is everyw'here necessary. The second is that sometimes the church isn't there. The most obvious example of this is that of many colleges outside the range or reach of any church, or of many isolated country communities. Third, the Association unites the efforts of different denominations, making economical provision for institutions and equipment, where such are needed, which the church would have to provide with- out it. The Association can go out to meet women in their natural groupings, as those who work together in industry, or those who study together in school or col- lege. It is, as it were, an outpost for the church on the frontiers of life, whether in the city, the college, the farm or the factory. The Association, then, may be conceived of as a way the Christian church uses to bring young women together, to associate their efforts; it does this upon the basis that each is dependent upon every other for something. In this sense, then, it is not, strictly speaking, an institution of itself at all, but rather a mode of expression of the most considerable portion of the Christian church which is able to unite upon a religious program. The Association is a cooperative institution. It is not an organization of one group of women, well-to-do, educated, altruistically moved to do good to another group, but an associating together of individual women. Individual or class consciousness becomes social con- sciousness, life becomes more abundant to all. But cooperation cannot be secured by getting people together on the basis of a quiet community of tastes and interests. A solvent of an elemental kind must be found, if there is to be a unity that is a thing of spirit and not a mere matter of organization. This organization frankly ac- 8 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK cepts the religious motive as the most fundamental and the most powerful factor in making any group of indi- viduals coherent and unified. The Association is a voluntary organization. In a college, for instance, it is of the students, and its activi- ties are such as they institute. Or in a city community no wage-earning girl can say of it, "You gave me this good thing in order that I might not seek for myself something other that I would have." Very much welfare work falls short of the conventional expectation that it will make its beneficiaries thankful or contented or happy for the simple reason that it is done /or them andnot&3i them. The Association is also an organization which helps to build rather than to make over, to prevent rather than to cure. It is a training school rather than a life saving institution. However necessary and important it is that there be institutions to do rescue work and however ready the Association must be to come to the rescue on occasions, the Association is a school of life. Its zenith period is the school day period. This explains the fact of its being a yoimg women's organization, holding within it for that very reason the highest hope there is for its success. The ultimate objective of the Association is not the correction of untoward conditions, however necessary it may be that some institutions make that their ob- jective. It is its privilege to have somewhat to do with the improving of bad conditions either by cooperating with other organizations or as an element in some of its own activities, but its ultimate objective is the development of Christian character. It is dealing pri- marily with the consciences of women. It is not the THE ASSOCIATION IN THE LIFE OF WOMEN 9 development of mere character, but Christian character, which is to say that the Association is always simply a means to an end. It aims not so much to be something as to accomplish something, for Christian character is a force which works outward into home and school, store and factory. And finally, the Association is in some sense, however imperfect, a concrete expression of the love of Christ in any community. It aims to speak in terms intelligible to any woman, to talk her language, and to meet her on her own ground. CHAPTER II— THE STUDENT MOVEMENT WITH- IN THE YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION Whenever a group of people are gripped and mastered by an idea, the result is a spirit of kinship and conviction which is likely to be world wide in its influence. For just as the spring becomes a flowing stream, and the stream a mighty river, so this spirit of kinship and con- viction adds to itself other groups of mastered people, until lo, a mighty movement sweeps through the land! A hundred years ago a small group of college men met for prayer by a haystack. As they prayed, they were swayed by a conviction that the world must be evange- lized by educated men. And from the Haystack Band came those splendid institutions, the great Foreign Mis- sionary Boards of the American churches. But that was not all. The conviction of those students, apparently smouldering for years in the colleges, burst forth into flame in 1886 in the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, which has recruited thousands of edu- cated men and women for the foreign service of the church. A small group of college girls in 1872 at Normal, Illi- nois, met for prayer and as they prayed they, too, were dominated by a burning conviction that students needed comradeship in the cultivation of the Christian life and a common ground for practical service. And the con- viction spread among other students and yet others until the national Student Movement of the Young Women's 10 THE STUDENT MOVEMENT II Christian Association became a reality among the col- leges and universities of this country, reaching from the professional to the secondary school, including Indian and colored student Associations and work among Orien- tal women students in this country. During these years, its strength has helped to build up many useful organi- zations. The student Young Women's Christian Asso- ciation has been an increasingly important source of leadership, available for all kinds of service concerned with the welfare of women, and its upper springs are still fed by succeeding generations of students who -have found in the movement a means of bringing to college days their deepest and fullest significance. The inherent nature of the college environment de- mands some sort of common meeting ground for religious activity. Everything in the atmosphere tends to stim- ulate thought. The value of the mind as a trained instrument is contijiually emphasized. Originality is at a premium and unlimited research in matters of science, history, and religion is encouraged. Professors are primarily chosen, of necessity, because of their knowledge in a special field of learning, rather than because of their personal attitude toward religion. And even if, as is usually the case in this country, they are reverent in spirit, their approach to religion is likely to be from the angle of their specialty. To quote one college president: "If the professor is a student of social sciences, he sees only the social significance of religion. If he is a psychologist, he is apt not to see anything except a psychological basis for religious experience, which often leaves some very large matters out of account. The result is, that with one man leav- ing this out and another man leaving the other out, the 12 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK Student gets the impression that religious progress con- sists largely in leaving things out." Different experi- ences in college life reach different needs of the student. In the laboratory, the student works out scientific theory by practical application; principles of social responsi- bility and community living are worked out through participation in college politics and student government; literary opinions are worked out by themes and papers; and the principles and convictions of the religious life of many students are most naturally worked out through a student Christian Association. Thus the intellectual emphasis of college life is utilized, supplemented and rounded out by the Christian Association, which pro- vides opportunity for the expression of religious faith and service. It necessarily follows that the student Christian Association is of value to the degree that its activities are initiated and carried on by the voluntary service of the students. Members of the various classes and com- mittees who are engaged in such service develop a sense of moral responsibility not only for living the Christian life oneself but for exerting a positive moral influence in the college community. This responsibility demands self expression that almost inevitably leads the student to make moral decisions and to face the claims of Christ upon her life. Since the self expression of the student Association must be entirely natural to youth in its late teens and early twenties, the message will at times be incoherent and illogical, and the activities crude and unformed. But however imperfect, such expression is of untold value in its reflex influence upon the student her- self and in the courage it inspires in other students who also are struggling for self expression in the religious life. THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 1 3 Located in a changing college community, the success of the student Association will depend, not on its organi- zation, equipment, or institutionalism, but on the per- sonalities that lead it. And these leaders emerge from the ranks of those who have begun to show initiative in the exercise of a practical working faith. Where\er the activities are led and controlled by the students ihem- seh'es, Christian leaders grow rapidly. The student Associations derive their greatest inspi- ration from their intercollegiate relationships. Here the student movement is tangible and concrete to the ordinary member who is carried along by the great currents of college convictions. In week-end officers' conferences, in missionary conventions and the great summer conferences, each student Association draws strength from all other Associations, and important problems in college life are solved through mutual coun- sel. The local college interests which bounded the stu- dent's horizon give way to a larger horizon bounded by world-embracing interests. And these, too, become tang- ible through the comradeship with students of other lands united to the students of America through the World's Student Christian Federation. By providing a laboratory for voluntary religious activities, by the compelling example of influential Christian personalities, by the stimulus of intercollegiate relations and the discernment of a world horizon — in such ways as these, the student movement develops students into Christian leaders. Trained within college walls, they go forth to take their share of leadership in the church, at home and abroad, and to assume responsi- bilities in interdenominational church organizations, such as the city and town Association work and the various 14 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK Christian philanthropic institutions. Thus are raised up from year to year leaders who have wrought out their own Christian convictions and are translating those convictions into service. In increasing measure the Christian Association Student Movement is helping to answer the petition of our Lord, "Pray ye the Lord of the harvest that he send forth laborers into his harvest." PART II MANIFESTATIONS OF THE YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION CHAPTER I— RELIGION An organization is at liberty to choose whatever ob- ject it will. Nor could any organization long maintain its life without a definite purpose. The objective of the Association is the development of Christian character. In our day the church is reaffirming in new terms and with new emphasis the permanent necessity for exalting the standards of Christ if society is to attain its ultimate goal, and the Kingdom of God is to be realized upon earth. The Universal Need The present age is one of deep-rooted and persistent unrest. The women in industry are crying out against injustice, are demanding improved working conditions, shorter hours, a living wage. Through long travail of spirit they have been learning the significant truth that, no woman can avail alone, that all must work unitedly! for the common good. And back of all their endeavor is a deepening, if sometimes unconscious, sense of the futility of material prosperity unillumined by a spiritual ideal that transcends the world of things. Through the halls of the colleges and universities, there surges an increasing throng of eager young women bent 15 1 6 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK on securing the best from the wisdom of the centuries. "Truth at any cost" beckons them on; and "truth at any cost" they seek in science, which makes no pretense to proclaim the ultimate truth of life, and in philosophy which declares the three great facts of existence, God and freedom and immortal life, yet leaves one groping for the Way to each. Fed with the partial truths of science and philosophy, college women, their student days over, go into the active world restless, dissatisfied perhaps, but aflame with passionate desire to serve their day and age. They dare not be inactive. They must serve. Yet what? And why? Women who have never known the pinch of toil or poverty, women born to leadership — upon these too has come the pressure of the world's need as never before, they too would serve. Where there is no vision, they hurry with restless energy from one activity to another. They give lavishly of their resources. They exalt Social Serv- ice as if it were the highest good. They cry peace, peace! — and there is no peace. Their hearts are filled with un- satisfied longing. Not alone among women in the thick of industrial strife, nor among those at the other end, con- fronted by the obligations imposed by wealth or of higher learning, is the spirit of feverish unrest known. It stalks unhindered among women treading the more ordinary paths. With a hundred new interests clamor- ing for admission, hearing dimly or faintly the cry of human need, who shall teach them the way? Spiritual Emphasis of the Association The Association has not, then, chosen lightly in elect- ing to work with the church toward one fundamental object, Christian character. There is first, last and al- RELIGION 1 7 ways, but one way to accomplish this end. Character is a matter of contagion. No one ever attained to the ideal when dwelling alone. Even Robinson Crusoe on his island had his man Friday. Long ago a great traveler declared, "I am part of all whom I have met." So with the contagion of Christian character as a definite object, the very first ideal of the Association is that every person placed in a position of responsibility for any part of the work shall embody the spirit of Christ. Through every department throbs the spirit of the Risen Lord. This is the element which unifies all the work, which makes the cafeteria and the sewing class, the gymnasium and the dormitory, the travel class and the cross country club, the Hallowe'en party and the warm welcome of the Association building as essentially religious in purpose as the Bible circle or the vesper service. In the profound- j est sense of the word all work of the Association is relig- ! ious work. Such is the teaching of him who hallowed all of life's deeds, done as unto him. Perhaps there is no way in which the Association may more truly exemplify allegiance to the standards of Christ than by making every part of the work not formally but truly religious. Perhaps there is no way in which it has more signally failed at times than in the realization of this ideal. Religious Meetings We all recognize that the religious meeting is the cen- tral necessity for the maintenance of the spiritual vital- ities of our organization. We all recognize the absolute need of united worship in the presence of the eternal God. We all crave fellowship with others of like purpose and ideals; we all long for help and guidance and inspiration in the way of life. The need for worship, for fellowship. 1 8 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK for inspiration — all this and more, the church seeks to bring to the family, to men and women and little children who gather within its hallowed portals. This we can never do, nor would we try by any pretext to supply the need which the church only can supply. But we bear but triflingly the name of Christ if there is no opportunity for the young women united in service for a common ideal to share in worship and in fellowship. To the girl struggling amid the temptations peculiar to student life, to the girl harassed by the conflicting ideals of the modern city, to the girl in the country, to whom God appears a far off Being, remote from the narrow round of farm house duties, there comes a new impulse to press forward when she finds other girls with like perplexities, not yet made perfect, but striving for the prize of the J high calling of God in Christ Jesus. There are countless I girls who have grown indifferent to the church's claim or f have never even heard its call, with whom the Associa- tion comes into almost daily contact. All the days the seeds are sown, and where they take root the struggling plants are watered and nourished till the day comes when the harvest may be garnered for the church of Christ. So through regular services and special meetings, through the united prayer and consecrated effort of all who have part in the work, the Association seeks to deepen the sense of reverence, to arouse and direct passion for serv- ice, to infuse with fresh motive the daily way of life; and with this end always in view, it speaks to many girls in a more familiar language. On a Sunday afternoon, out of doors when the days are warm, or around the open fire if the air is chill, a group of girls gather informally while some one tells stories or reads aloud. Or in this time of good-fellowship they catch the impulse to better RELIGION 19 things through the spell of music and song. Such an afternoon has been in some instances arranged for in several sections of the city accessible to members of industrial clubs and their friends in the setting of a girl's home, the girls themselves acting as hostesses, helped always by the presence of a secretary or an experienced person. But whether on the hillside, or under the Asso ciation roof, or in the private home, there is always! place made for a vesper talk on the meaning of Life Abundant, not in its theological aspect, but brought down to the problems of real girls in real life. Bible Study Long ago a man of God imprisoned for his zeal for the Lord of hosts dreamed of the day when a man should no longer say to his neighbor, "Know Jehovah," for all should know him from the least unto the greatest. And all who long for that great day must help spread the knowledge of Christ through the study of the Bible in every place. The Association seeks cooperation with the church in training Bible school teachers in city and town, and in directing its members to Bible classes in the several churches planned especially for young women. In the college Associations the Bible study committee advertises church Bible classes together with those under its immediate auspices and canvasses for both among the students. But there are many girls among our 280,500 members, | "town and gown" alike, who have never been roused to| eager enthusiasm for Bible study. They are not yet' willing to go into church to study the Bible. They do not care enough about this black bound book to go any- where for it! But because the other girls in their soror- 20 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK ity, for instance, linger for a half hour after dinner once a week for Bible study, they linger too. "I've found that I can't let my Bible alone," exclaimed one such girl who had begun to learn how to find its meaning. Then there are the busy city girls who lunch in the Asso- ciation cafeteria as a convenience, and "drop in" to a Bible class in the adjacent room. And the girls in the gymnasium class in middy blouse and bloomers sit cross legged on the floor to hear the old, old stories that "sound just like life!" Many a young woman has gone from her first surprise at the possibilities of the Bible to an enthusiastic study of the graded course offered in city Associations, and with an equipment she had before thought reserved only for other people, has become a permanent help in her own church. Whether a girl is vexed by puzzling questions of con- duct, or eager for systematic stpdy of the whole Bible, or hungry for a deeper fellowship with God, she may find the answer to her quest as she studies alone or with others how men and women of the long ago entered into his presence and learned the secret of friendship with Christ. For Bible study is a futile thing if it serves only to stock one's mind with ancient facts. When one wakens to the reality that she never treads the toilsome way alone, that One who understands is always by he'r side, then has she found the way of life in truth. And one day in the Bible class she reads, "Ye shall be my wit- nesses even to the uttermost part of the earth," and the question is instant, "Have we been?" Mission Study The answer is the study of Christian missions. The RELIGION 2 1 answer is the work of the Association in many lands. No girl has realized all that the Bible means for her until she has watched the expansion of the Kingdom. In student and city and county Associations, girls gather in groups to study how God's kingdom is coming at home and abroad. And always with knowledge of the needs of the Kingdom there comes a fresh impulse to pray, an eager desire to help. Holding an interest all its own is the task laid espe- cially upon the women of this country — that of interpret- ing to the daughters of many nations from over the sea the meaning of the Christianity that makes for human love, for the sympathy that knows neither race prejudice nor religious bigotry. The immigrant work of the Asso- ciation is the outreach of its whole missionary spirit, extending protection and help to the bewildered stranger. Enriching the earth with its prayers and its gifts, the Association is yet accepting with greater faith and keener sympathy each year, the privilege and responsibility of teaching the immigrant woman the ideals of Christian womanhood. This, and ahundred other waysof helpingother^women, of one sharing with another the treasure that is different from hers — this is more than social service spelled with capitals. It is a giving and receiving, that in the very act is a confession that each needs every other. It may be the reciprocal help of school girls standing together for an honor system. It may be the industrial club girl bound to every other in loyal striving for the right where standards have been blurred. It may be any girl who has joined any branch of the church pledging herself to service that costs, in Sunday school, in a young people's society, or other church work. 22 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK Community Service The Eight Week Club is a beautiful example of rapid contagion of the spirit of service, caught in the college and extended from one girl in the country to another and then another and out into the community and church life. College girls who have shown leadership are chosen by the student cabinet and commissioned to gather the girls in their own home town or country village for vacation work and good fun, greater friendliness, higher thinking, and better living. In the small town where before the coming of the Eight Week Club "nothing was active except cliques," and in the open country where "all the girls were such strangers to each other," through the Club the girls "got such a happy feeling of com- radeship!" They learned to feel the presence of the Great Friend as they studied about him and his friends and learned to express their new-born love for him in such practical ways as planning a drinking fountain for the school-house, cleaning up lawns, volunteering for Sun- day school teaching, or cleaning the country church and decorating it with flowers for the Sunday service. Summer Conferences But the religious life of the Association is more than the work of any and all of the activities of local Associa- tions. It finds expression through direct channels of I national outreach. There are twelve summer conferences j held each year under the auspices of the National Board. These summer conferences, ranging in at- tendance from 150 to 700 delegates, give the essence of communal religious life at its best. Here we have the largest gathering of leaders and members who under- stand the Association ideal and are committed to its RELIGION 23 extension in college centers, in the fast growing cities, in the open country, or in crowded sections where peoples from every land are separated from each other by greater forces of isolation than mountains or miles. Each of the conferences is held in a place of unusual natural beauty, apart from the^disfractions of every -day life. One pur- pose controls every plan for these conferences, "to lead young women to a fuller knowledge and more faith- ful service of Jesus Christ, to help them in facing the difficulties and opportunities of life, and to bring before them their responsibilities for the furtherance of the Kingdom of God at home and abroad . " Men and women who are among the greatest leaders of religious thought in this and other countries are teachers and speakers at these conferences. The programs include Bible and mission study classes, councils regarding the work and ideals of the Association, addresses on Christian funda- mentals and various phases of Christian life and service, and group meetings for prayer and fellowship. The formal program covers the morning and evening hours. The afternoons furnish opportunity for quiet communion and for recreation, sports and tramps and general good times, varying in character with the different conference environment. In and through work and play alike there is normal, wholesome Christian living and joyous fellowship. The fact that four thousand and more del- egates come each year to these gatherings bespeaks their place in the life of young women today. Besides these larger conferences there are smaller .gatherings, such as industrial councils, conferences for colored students, volunteer workers' councils, etc., some primarily for inspiration, some primarily for training leaders, but always they represent the outgrowth of a 24 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK desire for deeper fellowship, more steadfast endeavor, and greater effectiveness in building ideas and ideals in the lives of all young women. At the present crisis in our national life, when personal ethics are dragged into the limelight of an awakening social conscience and we are seeking to formulate new expressions of mutual obligation, the National Board has sought to take up its responsibility by appointing three commissions to work for the next five years on specific problems connected with the life of American women. Three National Commissions The Commission on Social Morality from the Christian standpoint is designed to enlist the "resources of the Young Women's Christian Association as a national organization in the present crusade for a widespread knowledge of the laws of health and chastity and to offer and promote a constructive program based upon a sound and just standard." The Commission on Thrift and Efficiency has for its aim "to help in the creation and upbuilding of saner standards of living; to help women everywhere to make the best possible use of their time, ability and money; and to check the loss through unused power, physical, mental and spiritual." The Commission on Character Standards is working to the end that "every girl shall come into the experience of vital faith in Jesus Christ and a joyous allegiance to him, and shall catch his enthusiasm for a life spent in service for others not only along the broad lines of philanthropic effort, but even more in friendliness for those who need her sympathy and love." RELIGION 25 When the spirit and purpose of these three commis- sions is reaUzed throughout the entire Association mem- bership as a starting place, and spreads throughout the land, a great power will have been released for the bring- ing in of the Kingdom of God. The Christian Association Yet Association members might engage in manifold forms of helpful church and community service, busy commissions and inspiring conferences might serve as means to point the Road, the religious meetings might be never so well planned, the Bible and mission study classes might be organized in great numbers, and still the religious life of the Association would be positively insured by none of these. That must always depend upon the spiritual vitality of each single member. The human heart is the dwelling-place of the Risen Lord. Whether our Association of Young Women shall indeed rightly bear the name of Christian will be determined by the life of each member — "living epistles known and read of all." So press we forward to life ourselves that we may be heralds of life abundant to all young women the wide world around. CHAPTER II— EDUCATION General Education In this country of ours for several years a great agita- tion has been going on. The key word has been "effi- ciency," that is, getting things done faster and cheaper and better, all at the same time. With all modesty, our nation may claim to have attained a certain degree of efficiency. We have smooth running machinery, record breaking crops, tremendous transportation facilities, wonderful institutions. But there is a far bigger task ahead, a task barely yet begun — the development of the mental and moral capacity of the people. This indeed is efficiency of the finest type. There is a spirit abroad today that is calling every man, woman and child to be and to do the best of which he is capable. The healthful contagion of the idea breaks out in widely diverse fields. In parallel columns, the same daily newspaper pictures a staff of city officials sitting at the feet of a university professor eagerly study- ing how to run a city, and the chef of a leading hotel making the round of the hostelries of Paris in the search after greater perfection in the culinary art. System and mechanical devices have their place, but human igno- rance is the great ally of inefficiency. It is the person of trained intelligence, of informed mind, who is master of himself and of his work, of whatever sort it is. The Association Educational Idea A million girls will leave school this year, at or before 26 EDUCATION 27 the end of the sixth grade, with education "finished." Many a business woman who is expecting within a short time to set up housekeeping on an inelastic salary ac- knowledges herself to be a perfect stranger to the mys- teries of homecraft. Many a young woman, without any preparation for making her way alone, is suddenly thrown entirely upon her own resources. These are but a few types of the women, illiterate, partly educated, educated "in spots," or highly educated, who knock at the friendly door over which is written, "A chance for young women to learn what they need to know next." This is the Association Educational Department. Adapting Education to City Girls It is the girl herself that the Association takes account of in this woman's university. There is no stated course of study administered to all comers. The door of the elementary grade is held open, as long as she needs it, to the girl who missed getting her full quota in the regular schools. A youthful tutor may sit by her side and help her to wrestle successfully with pothooks or fractions, or with a group of other girls, piloted by a teacher wise in human ways, she forgets her weariness in the not unpleasant pursuit of the three R's brought out of the discarded and perhaps despised school books into the everyday walks of life, such as spelling and frac- tions on a real sales slip ; or gracious invitations to a real party written with careful pen. Whatever else appears on the educational menu there is always English! — English for office or parlor use, English as she is spoken and written. But often a girl is hungry for more than merely enough arithmetic and English to keep her place. Her chum or her brother went to high school or beyond, and she had 28 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK in turn to be the mainstay of the family. We saw her the other evening with a dozen others working with all her might. The lines of her mouth were serious, but her eyes were shining with unquenchable joy. "You see my brother wanted to go to the medical school so I had to stop at the eighth grade, but my chance has come now. I'm in three classes this winter; everything is coming my way at last." Literature, modern language, foreign travel at home — such subjects as these give to the ambitious girl that widening horizon, that opportu- nity for friendship and for culture which are among the most valuable things the more highly favored girl gets from her college. Even the college graduate may find the privileges of her college days extended in the educational scope of the Association. Not the least of her opportunities in the Association is that of natural contact with other young women who are battling with fierce odds in life, women whose courage and sheer heroism it is both a self-accu- sation and an inspiration to know. It is a graduate course for the college woman when she can share her treasure of picture lore, art lore and book lore, with the girl whose treasure is life lore. But other than this, the Association is a natural educational center where the well educated woman with her kind may keep abreast of current questions, economic, social and political, where she may acquire latest wrinkles in the home arts, parlia- mentary law or Esperanto — what she will. How different is the case of the girl who entered indus- trial life without even realizing that school held anything for her! Her need is not so much for one thing as it is an inclusive need for everything. Keenly eager for fun and excitement in reaction from the grind of working EDUCATION 29 hours, she is not to be won by tame attractions ready made for her pleasure but such means as are offered in the self-governing clubs meet her on her own ground. Industrial club night at the Association building is the most fascinating one of all. On that night loudest shrieks of joy issue from the swimming pool and the folk game in the gymnasium is most spirited. Above stairs as 3'ou go from room to room you see here a dozen girls serving a real or a mock meal in good form and criticis- ing the teacher's table manners made wrong for the pur- pose; there a group developing kodak films; or another beautifully manicuring nails or getting and giving a soapy shampoo. Over in this room a knot of girls is struggling valiantly with the "Art of Conversation," which being interpreted is usually the straightening out of trouble- some pronouns and the bringing of conflicting subject and predicate into amicable agreement. Here a circle of some of the most thoughtful ones, girls with strong, serious faces, are earnestly studying the civic and social problems of the modem city with special relation to women and industrial life. A Community Educational Bureau It is not without forethought that next to the welcome at the office the thing that claims attention at the very entraince of any modern city Association building is the inviting reading room, with racks full of the best papers and magazines and shelves of tempting books. Free to every woman and often the only reading room in the locality, it is a more important means of education than is always recognized. Hard by is the bulletin board proclaiming not only Association doings, but giving a forecast of the best local lectures, concerts and enter- 30 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK tainments. Tickets for some of these are perhaps on sale at the desk, for the Association is a wideawake center of interest and promotion for everything fine that is going on in the city. That chattering crowd of girls going down the front steps is from one of the department stores and this is their half holiday. The girl in the blue suit is convoying them over the picture gallery and the art museum. She knows something about the fine arts, and what is more knows how to share her knowledge without tedious- ness. The row of bird books on the reference shelves of the reading room is in constant use by the Indoor- Outdoor club that is specializing on birds this year. Last year they named every tree and every wild flower in the locality and kept the Association rooms supplied with all the flowers of the season. The Association Girl as Home-maker It is the exceptional girl nowadays who has the chance to be taught both the art and the arts of home-building by her mother. Neither is it to be assumed that a large proportion will have the chance in school. If most women sooner or later must know more or less of these matters, how are they to learn? From 75% to 90% of all women marry and most of the others take some hand in housekeeping, for it is said that fifteen out of sixteen families in our country have no servants. It is not to be expected that every girl should be able to do all the sewing for herself or a family, or to learn all there is to be known about cookery, but it is a serious handicap to a woman not to know at least the alphabet of these things. Many thousands of women have learned at the Association to be intelligent about food and clothes, EDUCATION 31 The older virtues of the housewife may indeed have lost some of their value in these days of ready-made puddings and preserves, bed blankets and clothes, but the need for the mastery by a woman of all that goes to make up her part in home building — this can never be out of date. If yesterday she had to be a good cook and a good seam- stress, today she must be a good buyer, and so the Young Women's Christian Association, quick to see and respond, adjusts courses, talks and demonstrations — all its edu- cational work, in fact, to help the women of today. With the Country Girl Like the girl of industry, the country girl is brought face to face with things rather than books, but unlike her the country girl has had little occasion to learn the ways of cooperation and much less of leadership unless she has been away to school. She is more ready to be led than to lead; she is immature, but splendid in re- sources. Educational plans in the county Association are related to country living, not copied from a city model. It is not taken for granted that the country girl knows birds, trees, flowers and the friendly stars better than her city sisters — the chances are that she doesn't. As one of a study group, she gets new eyes and new ears when she is awakened to the sights and sounds around her, and new interest in farming, too, when she is encouraged to have her own tomato or berry patch in which to compete with girls of her own age in raising and canning fruits and vegetables. Winter evenings are long in the country but they are all too short when the girl has a new story or a new biography from the Association book club to read to herself or aloud to the family. But what a world of opportunity 32 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK opens to her when through Association help the univer- sity is transported to the rural community, as is some- times the case in the shape of the lecture course and the movable school of domestic science. With the Student In the college, too, the Association helps the girl to learn what she needs most to know next. Sometimes the members of the school or college have brought before them through talks by experts in various occupations the kinds of work now open to trained women. This sort of information is most welcome, since the college graduate too often adopts teaching as her profession, not because she feels its call, but for the lame reason that she does not know what else to do. The college girl from mountain or prairie home has not always acquired the conventions of the world. The student Association must here support the work of the dean or faculty mem- bers in their efTorts to instil accepted standards in man- ners and customs, by opening the way for discussions and demonstrations of such matters, together with re- ceptions or other social affairs at which the girls may secure easy familiarity with certain necessary formali- ties. Physical Education Exercise that Brings Rest It was not strange that when the young head of a re- form school for girls was called a good many years ago to be the executive of a city Young Women's Christian Association, she should have made it her first duty to discover the social needs and dangers of young women. EDUCATION 33 She made her study among the girls in the Association boarding home where she resided. When evenings were spent at home, lassitude and ennui were apt to appear, followed by mornings of depression. This never hap- pened when invitations to parties or amusements of any kind had been received and accepted. The employed girl could add to her day's work ^nd evening's pli,w.5ure involving physical exertion and ■" ' ' ' "^ •"' 'eep without apparent increase of v 'fi- ciency. It was only when excu^ ep were carried to excess that she suffercu ery led her to apply a test to the girls who hau ,^r- tunities for sharing in social pleasures. There wab a gym- nasium for women in the city and there she made a special arrangement by which a class of Association girls re- ceived instruction twice a week. It seemed a paradox that these girls, unless tired to the point of exhaustion from the day's work, were revived and invigorated by the additional exertion of the gymnasium. In the light of present day knowledge this is no para- dox. The woman who spends her days in housework, at the factory loom, behind the counter or at the desk does not find full rest and recuperation in dull evenings of inaction. Every good thing which youth and health naturally crave and which the working day denies the busy girl must be made accessible to her in her leisure hours. Physical weariness does not necessarily bar her enjoyment of further activity, provided that it is of a kind and in a setting that appeals to her. Sometimes only relaxation will bring back the balance, but this does not always mean sending the girl to bed. The light, the comradeship, the friendly atmosphere of the Association, rest and inspire her with fresh courage. 34 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK The industrial girl, the business girl, the girl who stands behind the counter, each must have different activities to counteract the weariness peculiar to each task. An Antidote to Dullness Monotony due to innumerable repetitions of the same acts or movements is often pointed out as one of the main characteristics of woman's work. But monotony is not itself the sole cause of the distastes so often felt. The three main causes for discouragement in monoto- nous work are lack of appreciation in those for whom the task is borne, absence of variety, and isolation through the long work hours. Though peculiarly true of house- work this dreariness is even more true of those parts of housework done in mills. Many a girl would testify to the common experience that in the midst of crowds she feels most alone. The industrial worker must always submit to the handicap of making but a single part of a garment or a tool. If she is making a shoe, she sees only the heel. The part of the garment or mechanism which she turns out daily, yearly, is to the finished product as one thread to the dress she wears, as one part to a thousand. Counter interests and counter activities alone can save her and her future children from the stultifying effects of such work, or can at least render the effects less injurious in this period of industrial reor- ganization. Getting Hold of Herself The Association has flung wide open the door of oppor- tunity to this girl. Not only is the gymnasium of the city Association the way of least resistance, but it lures her on to self discovery and self forgetfulness. Here EDUCATION 35 she recovers the capacity and taste for play which she had supposed lost forever with her childhood. She learns that her body is her servant, although tradition and habit had led her to treat it as her master. Coupling her will with the will of her teacher she gains through much practice such control of mind and muscles that tension and relaxation, concentration and repose, are equally at her command. Joined with others in drill or game she becomes part of a company of which she feels herself the very soul and center. She thinks with them, they act with her. She feels herself strong with the strength of a legion. What she sees and does is but a symbol to her of what she may become. Tomorrow she must act alone, but the difficulty that had seemed in- superable no longer makes her afraid. She has gained strength for the fight through contact with others and new courage from the fact that her jolly partner has told her in girlhood's frank confiding of things faced and conquered harder than anything of which she had ever dreamed. The girl of the country who has romped through fields, waded brooks, climbed fences, trees and barn roofs, ridden horseback, milked cows and done a daughter's share of the house work, is astonished to find that to be an ex- pert in physical activities is to be the envy and admira- tion of the city bred. Her ambition is stimulated by the discovery that, wide though her range of achievement may be, she has hardly more than tapped the resource of her powers. If she enters college, she is apt to regard gymnasium practice as a rainy day makeshift until one day she is matched in an athletic contest with her peers. Then the true value of training and discipline is under- stood by her, as side by side, girls from city and country 36 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK play to win. Back to the farm she carries her enlarged repertoire and into the far too dull life of the rural com- munity she is able, if she will, to enfuse new enthusiasm for the things grown commonplace through absence of romance or the spirit of emulation. The Group Sense It constantly happens that the girl is withdrawn from active play at the age when she needs most to be kept from thinking of herself as alone and apart, as different from others. In giving her a chance to play, the gymnasium restores her birthright, corrects her perspective. At home, on the street, she may be unduly self conscious; in the gymnasium she is important as a part of a group but unimportant apart from it. On the floor she merges her identity in the class in order to make line and move- ment flawless; in the game the team is a unit. Our girl has thus become a social being, for the social sense is this very group sense. The girl through team work develops the spirit of sportsmanship, the ability to give and take without personal feeling. The absence of just such training for women has resulted not infre- quently in making persons loom larger than the cause at stake. With the gymnasium girl the cause is all. It is not the least of the assets to the Association's credit that it is fitting women through gymnasium and outdoor athletics to fill their place efficiently in the cha nging jocialjjrder. The Swimming Pool It is not so long ago that it was said with authority that girls in their early teens took to croquet while boys of the same age took to swimming and games of contest. EDUCATION 37 Today the swimming pool is as necessary as a gymnasium. "Swim to health," says an authority; "there is nothing to compare with an hour's swim as a refresher." On fete night girl swimmers in the city Association pool astonish spectators with their skill. A course in life saving ends with an exhibition of prowess. The swim- mers take prescribed tests in distant swimming, diving for weights, releasing and towing other swimmers and resuscitating the apparently drowned. Swimming is just beginning to claim its place among sports and girls are learning how much it adds to fun and health. The Association has adopted as a motto for its swimming 1. classes : Winter to learn, spring to practice and summer to enjoy. Applied Hygiene Hygiene is valued more by a girl for what it helps her to be than for what it helps her to know. She glories in the knowledge, too, that she may pass it on, endorsed with, "Look at me: I was thus, I am this. I couldn't walk a mile ; now I can walk as many as I can find time for. I did not know how to throw a ball straight; now I hardly ever miss the goal. I used to get tired of my job but now I do my work to gym music and it does itself." Such a girl makes health catching. Making the Girl Win The business of physical education is to increase a 1 girl's capacity for life. The fact that life is more than living does not need to be phrased for her, but there is a dawning consciousness of what life has in store for her as she takes her place in line for march or game. Correct posture means something entirely new when she is re- 4 38 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK quired to square herself with her neighbor's position. If the required preliminar}- physical examination has revealed a crooked spine, a high shoulder or a broken arch, she takes her corrective treatment in the gymnasium and practices her prescription exercises at home with a faithfulness that is a guarantee of cure. Seeing what others can do she sets for herself a goal and her efforts to reach it weave r aoral^ii.bre iiito„h£Lininost being. Even if it is a girl without a physical handicap she is surprised to find how many times she must do the same thing be- fore she is sure she can do it well. She discovers that grown-ups must learn to use the untrained parts of the body in the same way that a baby learns to walk, only • it is harder and takes longer. In the process of training, through, a great variety of exercises and team games, mental powers are awakened and the brain comes into control of the whole range of physical activities, those of the home, of the shop or office not less than those in the gymnasium. The trend of thought is changed by new interests and the physical director who has had the end in view from the beginning is able to make clear the mean- ing of the enduring truth upon which Christianity stands — the inseparableness of body and spirit, the incarnation of the spirit always in bodily form. Two thousand years ago this incarnation was lived and taught as plainly as might well be, but in all the long centuries since, it has been persistently misunderstood. Now and then one of God's interpreters has said it over again for us, as in Rabbi Ben Ezra. But still the world is dull to see the divine simplicity of this truth which would make us free; amazingly slow to see that flesh is not a "rose-mesh" in which the spirit is "pulled ever to the earth " and that we should not say EDUCATION 39 "Spite of this flesh to-day I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!" but rather "As the bird wings and sings, Let us cry 'All good things Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul ! ' " CHAPTER III— SHELTER The Girl Away from Home Times have changed indeed! Hundreds of thousands of girls and women, unable or unwilling to stay at home and having to earn a livelihood in one way or another, are daily facing the question of where to live and eat in town and city. In small towns, where the supply of boarding accommodation does not begin to meet the demand, door after door is closed by the housewife in the face of her own sex, for men boarders are her choice, in fact, she will have none other. In large cities, where homes are few and wage earners in general spend a lifetime in fiats of many kinds, this same exclusiveness does not prevail. It is the notoriously overcrowded conditions of our large cities which often- times refuses girls shelter, or forces them to take what they can get, regardless of the dangers of men boarders or windowless bedrooms. For young women recently come from other countries there is sometimes safe shelter to be found in immigrant homes, but these are for girls in transit, as a rule, and in no way meet the housing problem of the foreign born girl. Homes of the institutional type have long formed and still form a field for much needed experiment. It is true that homes and hotels for employed girls have made a variety of efforts, some very successfully, at the in- stance of philanthropists, to provide safety and well being for a limited number; but for the multitudes of young girls, as inexperienced in wage earning as they are 40 SHELTER 41 in the difficulties of life away from home, there is nothing but the bed and room to be shared with a chum or stranger, or the hall bedroom, the wretched loneliness and the danger of which they cannot forecast. Having in mind the dangers surrounding the girl who works and does not live at home, the Association has from its early beginning tried to meet a fractional part of the demand in more or less institutional fashion. The Association combination building in the city, part board- ing home, part class room, recreation and club room, embodying as it did the whole Association idea, pioneered the way for the two types of building now gaining in favor : one which is specially designed to house the various activities as they are being developed for all the girls of that city : and one which is intended to furnish a boarding home with a home atmosphere for a limited number of girls who need that special service. The first, or admin- istration building, makes room for the educational, social, and rehgious activities. Such a building, or its forerunner which may be a floor in a business block or a part of the boarding home, not only belongs to the girls J of that city, but forms, with scores of others, a chain of! safe places across the country — a resource to which any ' woman has a right to look for help. The Young Women's Christian Association sign flashing out in vivid letters by day or night is itself a pledge of sisterliness to the utmost. If sometimes the Association fails to meet ex- pectation, its very name is an earnest of a spirit of inex- haustible helpfulness. The Association Residence The Association residence is a separate building, entirely given over to the making of life home for a large 42 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK family of girls, on a self-supporting basis. Under such a roof, sevenly-five to two hundred and fifty girls may find the nearest approach to home life possible away from home or family. In the morning they have a sub- stantial breakfast and leave for work often carrying a good lunch contrasting notably at the noon hour with the cream-puff and pickle of the hall room contingent. At night after a stiff day's work in schoolroom, office or store, there is good cheer in the dining room and a good time afterward in the living room, perhaps around the log fire. When bedtime comes, each girl finds rest for body and mind in her warm, cozy bedroom or the com- fort of safe and low-priced lodging in the dormitories in company with eight or ten other girls. Newest Ideals in Brick and Stone A sunny, hospitable place is this Association residence in which, if she wishes, the girl may play hostess to her young man friend. Charming small rooms have been especially designed to meet this and other normal needs of girls. For the girl who finds it hard to make two ends meet, there is a miniature laundry in which she can do her washing whenever she feels strong enough to tackle it. Under the inspiration of the clever house mother or an enterprising fellow-boarder, many a girl finds her- self adding to the purchasing power of her wages by making some of her own clothing in the sewing room fitted up with cutting tables, sewing machine and pressing iron. If mind and body are both too weary for any such thrifty effort, comfort and rest can be had with maga- zines and other light reading in the small parlors on the bedroom floors. Shower baths and hot and cold tub baths go a long SHELTER ,- 43 way towards defrauding the hospital quarters of their usefulness. However, when necessary, cases of serious illness can be satisfactorily cared for in the specially designed isolation ward under the care of a trained nurse. The Big Family It is not easy to reproduce the essentials of the home life of a small household in a large family of various tastes and tempers, brought together partly at least for economic reasons. Where this has been most successfully done, its success may usually be traced to certain causes, as: the make-up of the residence committee; the choice of the house mother or secretary; and the organization of the self-governing committee. These set the tone for the household and make for peace — or otherwise. The Association residence committee calls for the devoted interest and service of women who know and understand the girl who earns her living and with whom to understand is to love and if need be to forgive. The house mother, too, must understand girls, their problems and moods, and find her great satisfaction in establishing bonds between herself and each one of her family which few strains can break. Hence, in time she becomes a stirring influence for good, in a wholesome, natural way, in each girl's life. Through her many a girl comes to her first understanding of her personal responsibility for the use of her life; and many a girl, with ambition hitherto dormant, finds herself nerved to push onward and to test herself for unsuspected ability, fed by the inspiration of some one who believes in her. When the head of the house is a good "mother" (and a good housewife) it follows that regulation, not "regu- 44 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK lations," will flourish. To forcfend the need of rules and regulations is the special function of the self-govern- ing committee, a conception taken over in the city Associations from the student government organization of college life. The girls themselves, through their elected representatives on the committee, establish stand- ards for the life of the family. No methods of discipline, no "musts" or "shall nots" imposed by a higher author- ity, are half so effective as the ideas spontaneously generated in the mind of this committee as to what ought or ought not to be, and put into operation by themselves. In time, a new world of privilege and power may be opened up to each girl, through recogni- tion by the family that she is ready for service on the self-governing committee, followed by election to that honorable place. In many ways this big cooperative home trains girls for community leadership. But even more, it prepares the girl for home life of her own. Even if she does not marry, as her income and ability to establish a home center increase, she will leave the Association boarding home to make room for the younger and less experienced girl. Having become familiar with all the elements that go to make a home, she will be ready to exercise her own untrammeled individuality in a home which is hers by right of private ownership. As the college Association rounding out the college life of the woman student pre- pares her for leadership, so the city Association supple- menting the business life of the self-supporting young woman away from home prepares her for the science and art of home building, not only through its regular home- making classes, but through the well-conducted boarding home. SHELTER 45 The Girl Paying Her Way All urgent responsibility whicli tlie up-to- date Associa- tion home shioulders without question is that of operating on a self-supporting basis. For the Association that has thought things through is awake to the wrong to the girl and to society of making it easy for her to accept less than a living wage, by supplementing her weekly pay envelope with living expenses obtained from mistaken charity. It is one thing to give a girl, unable to pay, the advantage of a class in English or gymnasium work as a membership privilege, or at a fee below cost to the Asso- ciation. That is a sound investment in the equipment of a girl starting out in the world that educational institu- tions recognize everywhere. The community is richer for investment in young life. But to offer food and shelter below cost, except in special emergency, is ethic- ally wrong. Every young woman established in indus- trial business or professional work expects to pav her living expenses, and could not consent to be a pensioner if she knew the facts. Associations today when erecting new quarters plan to house a large enough number to make the establishment self-supporting, charging such prices as will enable them to accommodate a few girls at a low minimum, on certain conditions to be explained below. The account is made to balance by charging for the regular rooms prices which compare with current rates in town, and which the better established girls can be expected to pay. The result is an average which should somewhat more than cover all expenses. The beginners in the wage-earning life, who can pay only a very modest sum — one which does not cover the cost of board and separate room, are sheltered in the residence dormitory for eight or ten girls with separate 46 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK beds, curtained from each other. The same food is given to all boarders no matter what they pa^", for the girls just starting out must be well fed in order to qualify for better wages. This dormitory accommoda- tion is available for the girl earning less than a living wage for a 3'ear or eighteen months, during which time all the power of Association influence and machinery is centered on accomplishing the important task of preparing the girl to earn self-supporting wages. That done, the dignity and the delight of a private room becomes possible for her and another beginner can be admitted- to the dormitory. The Transient To the more permanent boarder the Association residence means comfort and wellbeing otherwise beyond reach. But tens of thousands of women of moderate means every year turn to the Association for safe lodging or for reference to such, for a brief time, perhaps a night only. In the summer time the majority of the rooms may be open to transients, but whenever possible a few are always held for the chance comer. Girls travel- ing alone write to the secretary as to a personal friend asking her to engage lodging or for other needed assis- tance. To many an anxious parent the k;now'edge that the daughter is within the circle of the magic letters Y. W. C. A. is a guarantee of safety and practical friendship on which she may draw in countless ways. The Emergency Room No woman, no matter what her age, creed, or condition, should ever be refused shelter by the Association. The SHELTER 47 emergency room is the place intended for the use of the young woman under whose feet the solid ground has broken temporarily for any cause. She is sheltered in the emergency room of the ideal Association Residence until experienced persons who know the community resources and are strong in the conviction that she must be helped, can tell how best to get her on firm ground again. When most favorably located, this room is away from the other occupants, near the quarters of the resi- dent janitor or engineer and his wife, and accessible at all hours of the day or night. It should be known to all the uninformed officials of the city, to all the charitable, philanthropic and church organizations and to the com- munity at large, in order that it may serve its purpose to the fullest possible extent. Outside Accommodations But little thought given to the subject of housing women wage-earners brings the realization that it will be many years before any town can be equipped by the Association and other agencies with specially erected residences adequate to the demand. In many cities, therefore, the Association supplements these necessarily inadequate accommodations by keeping a frequently revised white list of boarding houses in which con- ditions meet the Association's requirements. In certain cities the Association makes a still more definite and organized effort to enlarge the accommoda- tion at its command by banding together in a club those owners of small houses who are able to meet the following conditions, among others: no men boarders, heated bed- room, separate beds where two or more occupy one bed- room, sanitary accommodation, including bath with hot 48 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK and cold water in the house, and a parlor for entertaining men friends. The Association on its part does its best to keep the rooms of club members fully rented. A leading girl is placed in charge of the number required to fill the club member's house and special effort is made to keep this group complete. This leader may well be one who has had the advantage of living in the atmosphere of the Association home. The club meets at the Association once a month for discussion and inspiration and the boarding groups through the leaders are kept in close touch with all the good things the Association has to offer. In this way hundreds of young women can be kept in active, helpful contact with Association influ- ences through the invitation of the Association Residence Committee in cooperation with the usual standing com- mittees. Cooperative Boarding in the Small Town In the town or country work where a special building is out of the question, a group of wide-awake women con- cerns itself chiefly with finding the right kind of private home for each girl as her need becomes known. But a new plan for cooperative boarding recently worked out in one county is sure to become popular in others. By this plan a number of girls from country districts attend- ing high school in the county seat live together in a rented house. A matron is placed in charge and one room is reserved for the county secretary. Each girl does her part of the housework and shares the expense equally. The home atmosphere has dispelled lonesomeness and homesickness. Before the coming of the cooperative housekeeping, not infrequently girls had deserted the SHELTER 49 high school without finishing the year, "too lonesome to stay," or because of failure in school work that could have been prevented in the surroundings of such a home with its reasonable restraints. In the same town, other country girls attending the high school have places in homes where they may earn enough to pay their way wholly or in part. Over all of these the county secretary exercises friendly guidance, watching their school grades, their daily exercise, their social life and their attendance on church and Sunday school. The Eating Problem Who will try to gauge the economic loss to ^he nation because of the unwise and insufficient feeding of the ever- growing army of young women workers — its future mothers — living and working away from home? It is not assumed that all those living at home during the working years are properly nourished, but that is a differ- ent aspect of the case which cannot be discussed here. It has been said that five to seven years is the average working life of our girls before they marry. If that is so, then it may be said truly that for the same number of years the physical condition of several hundred thousand of these future mothers is being undermined for lack of adequate and suitable food. A working day of eight to ten or twelve hours cannot but be fraught with serious physical consequences when begun on coffee and a roll, especially if it is continued on any kind of "a bite" at noon, and finished with a pick-up meal at night, when body and brain are more often than not worn out. There are still factories in which the workers have to eat what they bring with them at their machine or work table. There are others in which only soup and cocoa 50 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK can be had and there are many small work-shops where the question of lunch depends entirely on the services of the girl messenger and her paper bags. There are many cheap "restaurants" which do not "restore" and are notable chiefly for pies and coffee, flies and clatter, in which a tired-faced throng is fed with food that isn't worth the money, whatever the price may be. It is indisputable that a great many young women workers are receiving compensation which is inadequate to meet the necessary cost of living. That being so, it becomes a matter of vital importance that each girl should be taught how to insure the cleverest investment of the money she can spend on food, if she is even to hold her own, to say nothing of becoming a growing woman, a more useful citizen. The Cafeteria Obviously, large service is rendered to the community by the city Association which plans ample cafeteria service at the noon hour, at low prices, and for hundreds of girls and women. Within a stone's throw of the shop- ping district and places where many girls are employed, the Association cafeteria is, to all women who need it, a bright, sunny place of rest and refreshment for body and spirit. Having made her selection of nourishing, tasty food, hot or cold, according to her choice, for a few cents per dish, the girl finds a seat at a small table, perhaps with one or two friends, to lunch in comfort for a sum within her means, and yet covering all cost. With a chance afterward to arrange her hair in the dressing room, fifteen minutes with a new magazine in the reading room, or perhaps a few minutes of relaxation on the couch in the quiet rest room, she may set forth again with a sense of SHELTER 51 well-being unknown to the girl who does not leave her bench or her office. In a few large cities, Associations have begun to extend their helpfulness beyond present bounds by establishing lunch rooms for girls near their work, whether it be in department store, factor^' or elsewhere. And not alone is the Association cafeteria a daily source of physical renewing to the women engaged in business or industry. To the house-wife detained down town at the noon-hour, or the suburbanite brought to the city for all day shopping, to the chance comer for any reason, the expeditious cafeteria or the lunch with waitress service for a few cents extra, may mean un- told relief and comfort, at an expense she can well afford. The Association and the Cafeteria The Association cafeteria offers one of the most natural means of coming into contact with those who are not in the least likely to go to church or the Association of their own accord. It also brings the Association into contact with a larger number of women than any other Associa- tion activity and thus suggests almost unlimited oppor- tunities for reaching the unreached and for winning new friends. Through the cafeteria, the new-comer learns perhaps for the first time that recreation and social life as well as better equipment for her daily occupation and mental refreshing can be found under the Association roof. The cafeteria posters with their suggestive illus- trations bring to the new-comer a first graphic impression of the good time likely to be had on the gymnasium floor, at auditorium entertainments, or in the millinery, shirt- waist or current events class. On the walls of the cafe- teria, she learns for the first time that the latest books 52 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK and the -\-cry magazines she cra^'es are open to her in the Association reading room. She learns, too, of the twenty minute noon lecture, or the brief inspirational service. Through the cafeteria, indeed, when rightly managed, many and manj' a girl finds her way to a more abundant life, physical and spiritual. CHAPTER IV— OCCUPATION City Girls as Wage Earners It is a familiar fact that women in large numbers have followed the wake of the occupations pushed from the home, out into the world of industrial or professional pursuits. Taking the country as a whole there are many who do not work for pay, many who after a period of outside employment, will join the ranks of those who live at home without income of their own ; but the fact remains that women in cities do remunerative work for a shorter or longer period, most of them. A girl belongs to th'P favored minority if, living in the city, she does not work outside her home between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five. It is not because she is perverse, or mod- ern, or mannish that she fares forth into the work-a-day world. It is a plain question of food, shelter and clothes for herself and usually for somebody else. Gymnasiums and boarding homes and Bible classes are not to be thought of by the girl with the question staring her in the face and demanding immediate an- swer. How can I earn a living? If she is on the threshold of her wage-earning career, she may be in a state of help- less bewilderment, equally ignorant of her own powers and the dangers and demands of different forms of work. Or she may be an older woman with others dependent upon her earnings, out of work, by some mischance, and in desperate need of employment. The woman in search of paying work is in any case at a time of crisis. Her future happiness and usefulness hang in the balance. 53 54 THE ASSOCIATIOX HANDBOOK Country born, foreign born, or city dweller, timid begin- ner, or experienced breadwinner, whoever she be, the woman who looks to the Association when seeking means of self-support has a claim that must receive considera- tion. Employment and Training When the city Association first began work in a few rented rooms, even then it did what it could, in a small way, to help young women to find safe places in which to earn a living. It bro.ught together the person looking for work and the employer needing a worker. But no sooner did it try to find jobs for girls and girls for jobs, than experience showed that to want wages was by no means the same thing as being qualified to earn them; and at once industrial and sewing classes were opened for the training of the untrained, in two kinds of work that were legitimately feminine a generation and a half ago. But the Association did not rest content with the training of seamstresses and maids, for when a few years later the commercial world opened a wider door to women, classes in stenography and typewriting, bookkeeping and penmanship were inaugurated to keep pace with the new opportunity. As recently as twenty- five years ago, Associations were hampered in their efforts to give skilled instruction in cookery by the diffi- culty of finding teachers. One Association solved this difficulty and placed the profession of domestic science on a new basis, by opening a normal school for the train- ing of domestic science teachers. So obvious was the need for such a course that the idea was quickly adopted by schools and colleges and the necessity for creating its own supply of teachers was removed, lea^'ing the OCCUPATION 55 Association to search out other neglected work and to pioneer afresh. But has the Association, have other institutions, done all that could be done to prepare women to do the work for which they may be inclined by natural aptitude and choice? Is the employment bureau finding its task lightened? Ar6 the girls whom it assists better equipped and the positions open of a happier sort? The Unskilled Worker The problem of employment as it aiTects the average girl cannot be said to have been bettered in recent years. In the professions, in business and in skilled employ- ments, her opportunities have indeed been multiplied ; but this is not true to any extent for women workers elsewhere. Though the wages of the ordinary domestic worker have been disproportionately increased, other handicaps have not been removed nor has she been pro- moted to a higher plane. Although high demands are made upon the domestic worker for skill and intelligence in her service, there is little system or status to this occupation. With this chaotic condition, the proportion of available domestic helpers is relatively decreasing, even though, according to the census bureau reports, the highest number of women paid workers is still found in that occupation. The great majority of women bread- winners are either in unskilled occupations or doing unskilled work. To be sure, skill is not the only factor that determines wages nor does skilled work always bring commensurate pay, but unskilled work surely means low wages and low wages mean a low standard of living and a ghastly train of social ills. We must face the fact however that few workers actually employed in unskilled work will ever in the very nature of the case 56 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK become skilled. Though capable, many of them, of work requiring higher skill, they are victims of condi- tions, driven by poverty and inexperience into work that brings neither present reward nor hope for the future. The possibilities wrapped up in the lives of hundreds of thousands of young women working for inadequate wages in occupations over-taxing their physical strength, but making little demand upon their mental power, entail a loss upon the eommunity from unused ability, that is nothing short of appalling. To prevent this loss, to put the girl in the way of becoming all that she can be- come, the Association and every other social organization must take more account of the younger girl. Indeed a new social and industrial adjustment is being loudly demanded, one that shall place higher value on the welfare of multitudes of human beings than dividends to a few stockholders. The Association must have a real interest in this readjustment in which children shall be kept in school until prepared for a serviceable life, better condi- tions shall prolong the working years of men, and better wages shall make a margin of savings possible for all workers. Finding Her Own Place The girl in search of work, whether prepared or not, may rightfully look to the Association secretary as a friend who cares, who will do as she would like to be done by if the tables were turned. If the girl knows how to do anything whatever, her labor has a market value. If she does not know how to do any particular thing, but is equipped with a good elementary education, she can easily be helped, for she is ready for training for some work bearing market value. For such, the educational OCCUPATION 57 department was established. If she is young and has never been employed, it was a fortunate star that guided her to the Association, for she can be started right. Every educational, employment or girl's work secretary is a vocational counselor, and it is she who helps the girl to know herself, to discover that she perhaps has it in her to become a costume designer when she had only aspired to be a saleswoman, to decide that she is willing to go back to school and finish the course, if that is what you have to do before you can train to be a first-class stenographer. Vocational Training If our girls have been ambitious to follow a professional or a business career, there has been ample chance in many parts of this country of ours to find technical training if the family finances would permit, or her own determination could down the obstacles. But without such a taste or chance to gratify it, and compelled to become self-supporting as soon as possible, what has the less fortunate girl done? She is not prepared to take her place — how could she be? But she has dropped out of school and into — anything. Work and school had no connection. Her parents knew not how to advise. Her sister "spoke to the forelady" or the girl next door took her along and that was all there was about it. She was launched. She had no idea of her value. Perhaps she caused a loss to her employer at first. But aware or not, she took the pay envelope almost with tears of gladness the first time. Is it any wonder that the unskilled have been so many, the wages so small? To be self-respect- ing, to be in a position to command a living wage in a desirable occupation amid suitable conditions, girls 58 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK must be prepared for some work, work that shall thus take on the dignity of a chosen vocation. Trade schools for girls are as yet few, and the experimental stage has not passed. The Association here and there is pioneering, too. It has always helped girls to get general training, to increase their wage earning power. It has always had homemaking classes from which some of the girls have gone out to earn a fair living. But the trade school or the trade class to-day separates the girl who must earn her living at a particular form of work from the one who is studying with another object, thus working to the great advantage of both. The need of trade training for girls as well as boys is clearly stated by one of America's best informed women along this line : "If the difficulties are great confronting the education of boys, they are many times greater when we consider the education of girls. First, there is a very general confusion in the minds of many people regarding the trade training of girls. This confusion is due to the belief that the girl is a potential wife and mother only. The fact that she is a bread winner also is forgotten or ignored. Such confusion of thought is dangerous when it becomes the directing force in the training of many millions of young girls. "According to the Twelfth Census of 1900, three hundred and three separate occupations are listed, and in two hundred and ninety-five of these occupations, women are working. "With these facts before us, can there be but one 'answer to the question: what trade shall be taught I girls? And must not the answer be: every trade. We must see to it, work for it, in season and out of season, that just as every profession has been opened to women, OCCUPATION 59 honorably admitting them by the front door, so every trade must be open to women. This is imperative, for no denial of trade education will keep a girl out of a trade, and if she is denied entrance by the front door as a skilled, trained artisan, she will enter by the back door as an underbidder. " The Modern Employment Bureau It is a far cry from the blank-book list of places open to workers and the list of girls open to work, as it was kept in her desk by the secretary-of-all-work, forty or fifty years ago, to the up-to-date Association employment bureau of this day. Incidental service is not to be dis- counted; it had, and still has, its place, as many a grateful girl put on her feet by this means could testify. But as against this emergency treatment, the modern employ- ment bureau endeavors to guide the girl into the best possible permanent employment suited to her taste and capacity; to relate her to the opportunities for training for the work of her choice, if she is unprepared; and to bring her into contact with all the other resources for self development which she may be ready to use. In such ways the Association does more than tide over an emergency; it works toward reducing unemployment, and raising general standards of efficiency for all women workers. Such a bureau is preeminently constructive. Its carefully kept records of women workers and of occu- pations and establishments, give a basis for counsel to individuals, but, more important still, furnish significant facts to be drawn upon for industrial training, for legis- lative action and social understanding of needs. It has the interests of the girl at heart, but it recognizes the interests of the employer also. If the girl has a right to 60 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK fair wages and good working conditions, none the less has the employer a right to willing, efficient service. The modern Association finds frequent opportunity to promote better understanding between employer and employee; to awaken on his part a humane consideration of the girls and in them an ambition for honest work. The Association employment bureau has the range of its service vastly increased in that behind it are all the resources of the Association of which it is a part. When most effective it stands shoulder to shoulder with the educational department in a common effort to raise standards of work and workmanship. It also brings the girls it has first contact with, into line with the oppor- tunities of the physical work and religious life of the Association, and safeguards the social life of these by establishing clubs for congenial groups, by entertain- ments and merrymaking adapted to their taste and devel- jopment. The employment bureau is not then a means (for locating girls in positions, but rather a means to help them to find their place in life, to stimulate their ambition to do their best work, to mount as high as they may in their chosen work and to make the most of themselves as individuals and as members of society. Earning Money in the Country To the country-bred, the city often means gay shop windows, stylish clothes, plenty of companionship, a place of brilliant lights, a wonderful round of street sights — something always happening with a flavor of romance in the commonest events. But what really draws the girl from the farm home in most cases, is the earnest expectation of making her fortune, or at least earning wages that sound enormous according to her OCCUPATION 6l standards. However ill-advised her coming may be, there is a chance that she may, on her arrival, heed the notice posted in the station of the safe shelter awaiting the stranger or better still find in the Travelers' Aid a wise pilot to lodging and employment bureau. An hour or a night spent in the Association may change the whole current of the life lying unexplored before her. But to remain in the country and learn to make the most of her opportunities and surroundings there, is the thing to be desired for the great majority of these girls. The coun- try is a goodly place to hark back to, but it is a better place for the girl to live in when she is shown the way. The ways of money getting here are by no means beaten paths; but the tomato club, the canning club, the straw- berry patch have already begun to bring in pin-money. With proper guidance, hand embroidered garments com- mand good prices and a ready market. More enter- prising women each year, some of them city bred, are making a good living in the country, raising cattle, poultry, mushrooms, popcorn, small fruits, etc. With a small plot of ground for the asking, and sunshine and rain in plenty, with unlimited possibihties for growing things, what more can the country girl ask, except a Young Women's Christian Association secretary who "knows everything" to set ideas to working in her brain and give her a lift now and then? The Student Who Earns Her Way One of the few especially tangible pieces of work done by the student Association is its student aid bureau. Sometimes this is conducted only for the first few weeks of each year or term. At any rate this is the time when such work naturally counts most. The girl who comes 62 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK up to college knowing that she must earn, perhaps her pin-money, perhaps every cent of her college expenses, is guided at once to the Association office or rooms where she finds which professor's wife wants an afternoon a week from some undergraduate who will "look after the children," or which professor wants his syllabi mimeo- graphed. Again the Association has given her "the thing she needs most, next," but she will find a little later that its employment work is but the beginning of the Association's friendship that is going to deepen all her four years of college life. In a few cases, rare as yet, the Association has also approached the larger ques- tion of occupation in offering the sort of vocational talks by professional women that help to open up to the under- graduate the lines of life-work which are possible to her. CHAPTER V— PROTECTION When a city missionary was asked to name the greatest need of women in her city she said it was protection from the dangers of the cheap lodging house, the mercenary employment bureau, friendlessness and industrial exploi- tation. To these must be added the dangers of travel. The Young Women's Christian Association has met this challenge with a flank movement in each case. Every Travelers' Aid agent, every boarding home, the social and recreative service, the Association employment bureau and every educational class, is in a greater or less degree a response to the need for protection. The Association recognized in the beginning the im- practicability of coping single handed, as at that time it had to, with all the gigantic forces that had their strong- hold in the unpreparedness of women on the one hand and the shortsighted greed of exploiters on the other. It assumed that it must choose between dealing with conditions as such and helping women to qualify for their place in a new order which must in time evolve from the chaos of confused ideas and motives. It chose the latter. Prevention the Essential Association Idea It adopted the axiomatic principle that prevention is better than cure and in this position it would seem to have been justified. " I would be glad to work farther up stream," said an eminently successful worker in a charities organization society, as her reason for taking up Association work. " I am discouraged by the prob- 63 64 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK lem of rescuing and restoring an unending multitude of people who would never have gone wrong if there had been more of us working at the source. " Protection involves prevention. It never means to "set right" something already gone wrong. The Asso- elation aims to even up opportunities for the girls most handicapped. The social safeguards that protect girls in some ranks of life need to be made stronger for those in other ranks. The greatest responsibihty is for the latter. There are many menaces to safety and success. The Association must be known in a community as a place where any girl can go for advice ; for help of all kinds — against people who defraud her of wages, who insult, abuse or cheat her or attempt to decoy her into unsafe positions. Its great spirit of friendliness cannot be quenched, even though it be misinterpreted and mis- applied. The Association stands for the defense of the person who needs its ministry, no matter what her place or rank. Just as Travelers' Aid undertakes to garrison the points along the road traversed by the young woman who sets forth from her home unprotected, so the social, extension or membership secretary stands guard over the girl out of work, lonely or seeking shelter. So, too, in the employment bureau the trained eye of the secretary takes note of the girls who stand in peculiar need of protection whether or not they give outward sign of this need. Not infrequently she follows them up by letter and visits to make sure that they shall not be defeated in their struggle with temptation, intensified by want or loneliness. Protective Department So urgent and numerous are the demands for protect- ive work that at least a few Associations have organized PROTECTION 65 an equipped protective department. To this comes the request of the employment secretary to look after the girl for whom she is concerned. Here the school princi- pal comes for help in hunting down the insidious evil that seems to be undermining the morals of a whole grade. The church or society asks to have the unknown person who claims to be an investigator verified. The Travelers' Aid seeks help in tracing a lost girl, or a girl who bafifles her family or friends is placed under observation that the hidden weakness may be revealed and poise established. Whatever the case, it is treated here. Quietly, unosten- tatiously the protective service goes on, piecing evidence, connecting agencies, correlating forces in order that these may be built around the fence edge of every precipice, making unnecessary the ambulance at the bottom. Travelers' Aid Beginnings Over twenty-five years ago a young Mt. Holyoke Col- lege woman in Boston was asked to make the experiment of meeting incoming boats and trains for the purpose of giving assistance to strangers and keeping a lookout for young women arriving unattended or in the company of persons of suspicious actions or appearance. Many letters had been received by the Association managers, asking them to look up relatives or friends who had broken off all communications without explanation or who had never been heard from after leaving their homes for that city. This experiment was the beginning of Travelers' Aid work in America. It did not take long for this gifted pioneer to discover that young travelers were regarded as legitimate prey 66 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK by men and women who were plying their trade m vice as assiduously then as now, if on a less extensive scale. Long before Travelers' Aid was thought of by any organization, agents and runners for disreputable houses had been posted at stations and docks to proffer what seemed like timely assistance to trusting strangers who were glad to be guided through the always terrifying experience of arrival in a strange city. One of the results of the new work was the withdrawal of these runners from the fore- ground, greater caution and cunning exercised by them in intercepting strangers, and finally their almost com- plete disappearance from stations and docks which were constantly under Travelers' Aid supervision. This effect has been produced in proportion to the thoroughness with which the Travelers' Aid work has been done. The City and the Stranger It is not new conditions alone that demand Travelers' Aid. To the unsophisticated, the city spells only oppor- tunity. Its dangers seem negative or negligible because the methods of the underworld are unknown. To the vicious it is a safe retreat in which a deed is hidden, a victim lost, with a completeness that makes an occasional revelation of the activities of vice startling and unreal to honest folk. As a means of livelihood, the debauchery of youth is a practice as old as time; but methods have changed with changing conditions until a great under- world system for ensnaring the unwary has grown to such proportions that adventure on the part of the in- experienced and uninformed is fraught with danger at every step. Dangers of Travel It is easy to recognize a girl who is unfamiliar with PROTECTION 67 travel and unacquainted with city ways, as she enters a station in need of assistance. Travelers' Aid meets this situation. When the girl is seen arriving or departing in the company of a man with whom she is not wholly at ease, the quick eye of the trained agent sees cause for interference. Such a situation requires as much skill, judgment and courage on her part as the wrongdoer employs. But experience has taught the Travelers' Aid worker how to rescue the girl from the pitfall caused by her ignorance or her disregard of the proprieties. In spite of warnings, girls are easily lured to the city by strangers who make plausible promises that friends are waiting to welcome them there and push their fortunes. To bring them into the city without detection is the prob- lem of the despoiler. Since the establishment of Trav- elers' Aid work at stations and docks the runners have been driven afield. They travel on trains, trolleys and steamboats, visit hotels and summer resorts, haunt restaurants, waiting rooms and places of employment and amusement. Practically every city or town has many lines of communication and intercommunication with outlying towns and country districts. Young women have disappeared on short journeys between cities and school girls between home and school. Travelers are often tricked into getting off at wrong stations, going to wrong addresses, paying double for everything and letting themselves into the greedy clutches of counterfeit friends. Expansion of Travelers' Aid The Association working alone could have gone but little beyond its earliest methods in Travelers' Aid. This has meant to have agents posted at stations and docks 68 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK to send girls and women arri\'ing alone on to their friends or other destination or place them in the care of a proper institution ; to send some girls back to the homes which they should not have left; and tide others over the pre- carious first days in a city. Moreover, had the Association kept the field of. Trav- elers' Aid alone, both the scope and efficiency of the work would have been limited, as in the stress of present day conditions it must include work for men and boys, as well as the more critical work for girls. Good as far as it went, the Association could not make this service complete without laying all the rest of its work under heavy tribute. For Travelers' Aid cannot stop with the surveillance of stations and docks. Every place, no matter how remote, if liable to be a hunting ground for agents of vice, is a danger point to be guarded. The interests of city and country are inextricably inter- linked. It is safe to assume that in every town and coun- try family in which there are young daughters, at least one girl is dreaming of the city as the goal of her desires. If family means are cramped, her dream may shape itself into purpose to carve out her fortune unaided. Under other circumstances she may go from home to attend school or college or to visit city friends. No matter what her position in life may be, she needs protection. And many girls need much else which the Association or some other agency can provide. The Travelers' Aid worker is often the natural and perhaps the only means of es- tablishing this all important connection. To provide the proper care, to devise ways to defeat the schemes of the evil doer, to enlist large numbers of people in the work of protection, to federate existing protective agencies, to spread broadcast information PROTECTION 69 printed in many languages about means of safety until the remotest point is reached, to see that every point of departure and arrival and, ultimately, all the ways be- tween, are manned by trained agents and to connect the girl upon arrival as outlined above — all this is the scope of Travelers' Aid in the present day. What the American Red Cross signifies in the domain of health. Travelers' Aid stands for in protection, safety, prevention, instant response, immediate aid. All this and more is needed to make protection protect. Not alone conveying a girl safely through the perils of travel but making travel safe is the aim. Not merely to protect the girl but to pursue the pursuer; not only to cheat the prowler of his prey but to hunt him down and destroy his business — this is Travelers' Aid. Men and women, organizations and individuals, governments and trans- portation companies, all united for the destruction of vice — this is protection. Travelers' Aid work in this country originated and has been developed more exten- sively by the Young Women's Christian Association than by any other organization. National Travelers' Aid But to insure such a complete system of protection as outlined above, the Young Women's Christian Asso- ciations in national convention adopted resolutions by which their own isolated work shall be merged in the course of time into a comprehensive national Travelers' Aid. To bring this about, the Association in each city, or whatever organization has conducted Travelers' Aid work, will invite other organizations that are willing to take an active part to share with them responsibility for creating new local Travelers' Aid societies. The next 6 JO THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK step after such instances of local cooperation will natu- rally be the formation of a national Travelers' Aid Society. It will be the business of the National Travelers' Aid to organize new work, initiate new methods, make all the work uniform and assist local societies in investigat- ing places of employment, amusement and all agencies through which women may be decoyed and lost. Not only this, but also it will awaken and educate the people in regard to real facts, and with the support of public opinion seek the help of transportation companies and the government itself in protecting all who need protec- tion. It will push the work in every direction until it shall be safe for any one to travel from city to city, to go about in any community, or venture into any place how- ever remote without running the risk of exploitation or attack. Protection for the Immigrant A new and highly significant phase of protective work has been undertaken by the Association within a few years, bringing the Association to a class of young women only recently to be reckoned with. When the first Inter- national Institute for Young Women was organized by the Young Women's Christian Association and the narrow, dingy streets of lower New York, where throng people of every country in the world, began to see kind- faced women, speaking the language of the people, enter- ing houses here and there, asking for "Mary Polotski," or "Maria Capolli," or " Elsbita Egsnicx," or " Nesbia Assid," these visitors were welcomed with wonder, admiration and gratitude. But in one kitchen, where the people sat around and listened to what the visitor had to tell of the great national society of earnest women who PROTECTtON 71 wished to reach out an arm of protection to the foreign women coming among them, one youth broke in with a bitter, " Why have you not come before? Two years ago you might ha^ e saved my sister!" And as the work progressed, the ^'isitors were met again and again with the same stern question, "Why have ^'ou not come be- fore?" And letters began to come from anxious mothers across the sea. "Kind ladies," one mother besought, "five months ago my Paulina came to your country" — and she went on to tell that her Paulina had ceased to write and the neighbors had written that she had gone off with a man to be married, so he had said. But the neighbors doubted. And with "tears from her heart," Paulina's mother begged the kind ladies "to hunt and find Paulina and see that she be safely married so that her life be not ruined, and her mother go not broken- hearted to her grave." Protection the First Need The outstanding, overwhelming need felt by foreign people for their girls and by the girls themselves, is for protection. The striking feature of life in America to all foreign born folk as they run the gauntlet of their first experiences is that America is a country against which one must be protected. The friend who responds to this call enters a wide open door straight into the confidence of the people helped. The "Societee" that cares enough about the welfare of foreign people to see to it that their girls arrive safely in a city, to search the girls out with a friendly visit, to make sure they are happily placed and not suffering sickness from anxieties and hardships from the journey, to advise them about getting work and 72 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK; buying clothes, to tell them of American money, and street cars, and water-pipes, and gaslight, and, m short, to promise to be a friend, and be it — that "wonderful society of American ladies" will find itself written deep in the heart of e\'ery lonely, homesick immigrant. The Association has a wealth of things to give and for years has longed to share them with immigrant girls. The girls, meanwhile, never dreaming of such a thing as an Association, still hunger and vaguely grope to possess these things. But first of all, they need protection. Therefore the Association must begin its acquaintance with them by meeting this great want. To provide such a protection for them that their lives shall not be broken by trust misplaced, their hearts become embittered by robbery and cheat, their health wrecked by their own ignorant mistakes, — this is the beginning and foundation of all the help and care and guidance that the Christian women, who are to them the Association, can throw about our immigrant girls. If protection is accomplished, then other things that cheer and develop and help along in times of peace and safety can be added because confidence is won. Our great opportunity springs from the performance of that obligation. Does it take much imagination to under- stand that an organization like this Association is not understood by foreign people? Even to their men folks — those leaders of destiny for foreign women — the thing looms dark and uncertain, something unimagined, never heard of before, a thing that nothing ever heard or read or met with in the old world can explain. What! — an organization of women, run by women, and for women, not directed by men, and not working for men? Mys- tery, trickery, not to be trusted! Surely it takes no PROTECTION 73 imagination at all to know that an explanation must be given which will paint in pictures of their own experience what such an organization means to do. Anyone who has ever tried it knows that the usual description does not describe. Inadequacy of Regular Association Methods Education! What is that? he might continue, and your explanation would not seem to him to explain. He does not understand cultivation of mental powers apart from an end easily discerned from the start, — education in the abstract means nothing to him. Learning the English language as spoken by Americans would not appeal as an education. That is either not at all nec- essary for a girl because she will marry soon and "her man" can talk all the languages required, or she has plenty of friends about who can speak English — ^why trouble her? Or if it be thought one is not safe in this wicked country without it, it is not education, it is merely a grim necessity. Education for a "vocation" — be it never so lowly a one — ^what is the use of that? She did not come to America to learn dressmaking or to become expert in rolling cigars, or pasting paper boxes, or pitting fruit, or any of the other monotonous labor a foreign girl is put to. She comes for happiness and prosperity and for better chances for a lucky and creditable mar- riage. "Social," as we use it, that fine luxury of self-expres- sion, the art of calling forth from every person the possibilities of friendship, as such, could not even be discussed because it is not translatable. You would fumble for a word and would have to fall back on "entertainments" or "making friends." "Oh, yes," 74 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK that would be understood, but we would be suspicious of a society that existed for that. Somebody must have to pay, sometime. Besides, the wonderful pictures that move and run with the music are far superior to an entertainment a society could give and my girl can go to them with her friends. And as for physical education — when a girl has known the genuine exercise of pitching hay or bending double to gather grain in the fields, indoor exercise, mere motion without the work, would hold equal place with pan- tomime in her horizon of desires. Waving arms and legs, wearing peculiar costumes, strikes only fear and horror into old-world modesty. She would blush in shame to think of neighbors at home learning that she had even thought of doing such things. Where, then, does the Association stand, when the various things we bend every effort to promote, these outward evidences of our inner purpose, from every angle come up against the blank wall of the immigrant's non- experience. When nothing that we have tried has any result but to push ourselves farther from the girls, ob- viously we have to try something else. Our foreign people need intelligent befriending as they need nothing else. Your powers of befriending a Polish girl are limited when you speak nothing but English. And you cannot really protect her when you cannot first befriend. So also when the approach is made by at- tempting to teach girls to re-live their experience in the English language, there can be little real friendship be- tween teacher and pupils when teacher cannot converse with pupils and the girls are dumb before her ignorance of their language. The best thing you can do is to trans- late your eagerness and help into the shape of a Polish PROTECTION 75 worker to act your proxy, to say what you would say and do if only the Polish girl's mind and yours could build a bridge between. Now see how simply it all is working out. Although the vast majority of immigrants have lived and worked in the real country, for reasons simple enough, they are forced in America to plunge into the cities. Only in city life as yet are to be found the means by which they can safely serve their apprenticeship. Certain it is that the American conscience has first become aware of the immi- grant problem in our cities. International Institutes Four city Associations have thus far turned the com- bined force of the entire Association toward befriending, protecting and teaching their immigrant girls. Each Institute is built upon the same principle and all the effort is to meet the girls on their own ground and help them where they are. A branch headquarters located strategically invites acquaintance from all its foreign people in the city. Its name. International Institute for Young Women of the Young Women's Christian Asso- ciation, suggests to foreign minds things quickly un- derstood — not a society that calls us "Immigrants," " Greenies, " but one which respects our nationality. An American immigration secretary of broad understanding of each and all different nationalities maintains impartial effort for all and so wins equal respect of all, representing as she does an organization of American women working for foreign women with no distinctions of race or creed. The foreign "visitors" who speak their home tongue work under her direction. 76 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK Friendly Visitors The foreign visitors are tlie pioneers in winning the acquaintance of every girl. The next step is the coming of American friends. To quote from printed reports of these Institutes: "Every girl who comes alone to this city is visited within a short time of her arrival. . . . The knowledge that the Institute is conducted by an organization of influential American women who are in- terested in the welfare of all girls who live in this city makes a deep impression, not only upon the girls we visit, but upon their relatives, neighbors and friends, and les- sens the dangers to which immigrant girls are exposed." Let quotations taken here and there from reports of the Institutes already started, further tell the story of how on the basis of the confidence inspired by the friendly visitors, other resources of the Association are unlocked. "Our visitors make their friendly calls on newly ar- rived girls and invite them (never urging) to join English classes." Five months after this Association called an immigration secretary and opened the International In- stitute, their report runs: "We have at present nine English classes, six meeting at the Institute, three in foreign classes in other parts of the city — also six classes in practical cooking, six in simple dressmaking and an 'out-of-work' class which meets five mornings in the week." Another says, "We make much of singing, the girls learning American and national songs. " From an- other, "There is no more effective way of helping the young immigrant woman to a position of security than by teaching her practical use of the English language, care of health, saving, how to open a bank account, send a money order, etc. — economy in spending income, Amer- ican laws in regard to marriage, naturalization, working PROTECTION 77 hours, factory regulations, etc. — American history, sim- ple domestic science." With regard to recreation one report says, "No class of girls need wholesome recreation more than our immi- grant girls, etc., etc. " Another — "A beginning has been made in holding neighborhood entertainments; concerts have been given, well attended by a cosmopolitan gath- ering of mothers, fathers, aunts, and cousins and young people." Still again — "We endeavor first of all to inspire girls with ideals of truth, honesty and purity, because we believe that the development of character is of para- mount importance." The secret of the love the girls have for their "Inter- nashion-al In-sti-tute" is the spirit that is suggested by the symbol that is most dear to them, the symbol of many flags bound together and two hands clasped in love. CHAPTER VI— RECREATION AND SOCIAL LIFE The Need of Play We are all at our best when we play. Never more than now has the world needed play magic. The right of the child to play has never been denied, although under some conditions it has been ignored. That \'outh was dependent upon play was lost sight of long before the days of Ponce de Leon. "Children are young because they play and not vice versa: men grow old because they stop playing and not conversely." The Playground Movement in restoring to the child his inalienable right has come upon the long sought elixir. Granted space and freedom, boys have managed to play on through their teens and beyond, changing the forms of play to fit their age. The "gang" has developed the social sense; team play has made for fair play; the gi^■e and take which is at the bottom of true sportsman- ship has grown out of tests, contests and competition. All this has been denied to girls. Arrest of play for the girl in her early teens has been due in part to a miscon- ception of physiology and growth. The sentimentalism of mediaeval chivalry, placing woman on a pedestal apart, has had its influence and in these later days eco- nomic conditions have laid a stifling hand upon her, shutting off the chance for play at the very moment when she has needed it most. What Recreation Includes "Soft recreations fit the female-kind," sang the RECREATION AND SOCIAL LIFE 79 ancients, and their teaching on the Hmitations of women can still be traced in the lines laid down for girls' play. But twentieth century girls are asking for recreation that will put the body at its best,' develop endurance and skill, sharpen mental faculties and furnish a social me- dium. Recreation includes a wide sweep of interests. In addition to active plays such as games, athletics and sports, it takes account of amusements, social events, entertainments, festivals, music and dramatic expres- sion. The play role in which we are the actors creates new zest for work and joy in living. Play is not training for work. We know on high authority that even in its quieter forms, play is but a rehearsal of the early activi- ties of mankind. When we run, pitch, bat or tag, we are doing over again the things by which primitive man won his spurs in his struggle for the right to live. Hence our joy in them, our development through them, our re-creation by means of them. Passive play furnishes recreation indirectly. As onlookers we are forced to imagine ourselves in the role of the players. Imper- sonating each in turn we run to escape, or we run in pur- suit. We hold our breath ; we groan in anguish or shout for joy. Laughter, the gladdest thing on earth and one of the best forms of exercise, gives the pulse-bound of real action. Play, which was for many years admitted into the gymnasium classes in the Young Women's Christian Association merely as a feature of exercise, is being ex- tended to all girls whether connected with gymna- sium or not, as a necessity for the development of mind and spirit as well as body. The splendid work of the Playground Association has done much to stimulate the Young Women's Christian Association to do its part to 80 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK^ bring about a new attitude toward play as the natural right of all girls. The Summer Conference At the summer conference, recreation takes on its most spontaneous forms. Here student delegations bring the best types of play for which their respective colleges stand. The recreation committee weaves these together and the result gives form and content to the conference life. Out of combined work and play is born the con- ference spirit. The city girls in turn find the conference an answer to all sorts of longings which they scarce knew existed; up from business ofifices, sales counters, facto- ries and homes, they come to find life interpreted for them in Bible, books, teachers, friends, comrades, and the great out of doors. The summer conference is not a vacation center only, but each afternoon of the eight or nine week days spent there has its program of fun, sight seeing and rest care- fully planned. "The girl who learns in the morning of one who 'fought a good fight' goes out in the afternoon to play a better game of tennis or basket ball, or to try a little harder in an aquatic contest; the spirit of the Great Friend permeates little groups that gather in friendly tents, go ofT for gipsy suppers, or indulge in impromptu spreads; while the newly discovered love of the Galilean Man for the big outdoors puts new meaning into wild canyon tramps, boating trips, the wonderful panorama from a precarious seat on a tally-ho-ride, an evening song service at the edge of a fairy tinted lake, or vespers at dusk on the side of the mountain look- ing out across the silent waiting world." At a summer conference, Association Day is a day set apart when Recreation and social life 8i each delegation impersonates Association ideals or cari- catures its own foibles. It is girls' day in every sense of the word. Pageantry and Festivals Indeed, College Day, or Association Day, as it is called at general or city conferences, is probably the cradle of the pageantry which has lately become so popular through- out the Association. Ten years ago, a comb band, some scraps of bunting and a few Japanese lanterns were per- haps the only properties upon which the fun of this day was built. Nowadays, however, many a conference is satisfied with no less than a legitimate pageant, — pro- cessional, episodes, recessional and all, perhaps present- ing the scope and promise of the whole Association move- ment — or again, following the custom of the old morality play, portraying in symbolic fashion some phase of girl life. Nor is pageantry confined to conference use alone. A national Association pageant has been given by both city and student Associations, once with as many as 1650 girls taking part. This form of expression serves many purposes, from the opening of a great finance campaign to a mere attempt at general education of the public. A pageant showing the Association at work in China, India, Japan and South America has been used thus far by some hundred Associations during the World's Week of Prayer. Often, instead of holding the regulation form of a fall rally, or issuing an annual report in uninteresting pamphlet form, a clever committee concocts some sort of picturesque dramatic presentation of all that "Every- girl," for instance, may take and in turn give, through Association classes, clubs, or other good things. 82 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK The Association is in the first ranks of those who have availed themselves of this newest form of artistic expres- sion which has of late taken the American people by storm. The definition of a pageant which Association people like best of all, shows in itself why pageantry in its highest interpretation is so peculiarly suitable to our needs: "A pageant is a festival of thanksgiving to Al- mighty God for the benefits of the past, the opportuni- ties of the present, and the hopes of the future." Summer Camps Out of the ten days' summer conference, came the de- mand for the all season summer camp. The conference has shown the way to combine work and play in satis- fying proportions. Also it has made clear how entirely at one are the play instincts of the college and the city girl. Here the college girl brings her wealth of experi- ence and resource to share with the girl from the city, only to discover that what she has to give is often more than balanced by the spontaneity and versatility of the girl from the business world. Ample sleeping space, made possible by tents when rooms overflow; trees, flowers, woods; river, brook or sea; walks, drives, boating, swimming or mountain climbing; some special interest for special hours and time enough left over for nothing to do; this is but a hint of a summer camp. "I never was far enough away from home before to send back a picture post card," said a girl in an ecstasy of joy over the novel experience. And as the days go on her desire grows to have her friends share the gladness and beauty that are all about her. How can she make those girls back in the city see the distant haze on the hills, the mist on the water? Why RECREATION AND SOCIAL LIFE 83 did God make the world so beautiful unless he wanted human beings to be beautiful too? What is beauty? How can she become like the beauty around her that fills heart and mind and spirit with an intense longing to be good — just good, because to be good seems to be on the inside what beauty is on the outside? Only ten days, a fortnight, and then play must cease and the old work-a- day habits be resumed. But are they resumed? Only in part. She returns to the same work, but the windows have been opened upon a new world. This is what the summer camp means to hundreds of girls. The Vacation Home The earliest attempt at summer recreation was fur- nished by the city Association in the vacation home. This of necessity has had to be near the city. Fares must be low and expenses small. The capacity of the home is usually limited even when stretched to its ut- most. The daily life is apt to be a little more conven- tional than in camp but here also the Association has developed the idea of play and rest interspersed with enough work to give zest to the days and make sleep refreshing. A trained leader of recreation is in charge of activities for the entire season. With her ever chang- ing committee of girls she works out a program. All share in the fun without the exertion of getting adjusted. Girls arriving find things in progress. Places vacated by others are waiting for them to fill, and they feel the keen joy of being expected, waited for. The simple courtesies and festivities fo a country house party go on all summer long. For the fun loving, new games, sports and daring stunts challenge courage and enterprise. Well is it for them to find the gymnasium, club rooms or 84 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK roof garden of the Association open when they get back to the city, where practice can be kept up in the new games or music learned in their- holiday. The Play Problem of the City So much for the thousands, but what of the millions whose only week day leisure comes after six in the even- ing and on Saturday afternoons? And what of the for- eign speaking girls who have come from open country with plenty of space or from those villages in the "old country" where there was never an evening but the young folk danced while the old folk nodded around the fountain circle on the village green? All these must play or their spirits weary and the spring is gone out of their youth. Since it is obviously impossible for the Associa- tion building to be the scene of the multifarious play forms for the multitudes, Recreation Centers are opened right in their midst. Such centers are in charge of the Association physical director. Since she cannot super- intend as many groups as she can organize, she multiplies herself many times by training assistant leaders to take charge of new clubs and centers. Much of the work is done without equipment and the resourceful leader meets each difficulty as it arises. No uniformed gymnasium classes here — any kind of bloomers, any kind of waist, silk or cotton, tailored or middy, makes the scene strik- ing and sometimes picturesque. Some stiff gymnasium work to their liking, a little dancing, some singing, free play, a chance to sit and talk, a lecture on lecture night, games suited to all — such is the varied program of a Recreation Center. Varied, however, as the play program must be, recrea- tion may and does come to many through quieter ways. RECREATION AND SOCIAL LIFE 85 There are teachers who know liow to infuse real recrea- tion into an hour of Bible study, a lecture or an informal talk. A mission study class cleverly turned into a travel talk or a lively discussion on some point of ethics may prove as exhilarating as the swimming match or basket ball game of the day before. Atmosphere of the Association Building Like light raying out from a central hidden source are these outward manifestations, the summer conference, the vacation home or camp, the recreation center, the outdoor festival of the Association — all these visible things which carry play and rest into the open. Many a girl who has been in camp, for instance, conceives of the Association as a summer camp. If she follows it back to its all-the-year-round form, however, she will see that at the heart of all these activities is the steady flame of a great spirit of friendliness, which must be sought at its source, the permanent abiding place of the Association. For the Association building holds within its four walls, figuratively speaking, the power-house which must gen- erate a force of which actual activities, here and there, are but the natural expression — it must furnish a current of spiritual power on which the community should be able to draw to the utmost. An Association's headquarters, indeed, may be only in a partitioned loft above a store; it may be an adapted residence; or when these are outgrown an Association building proper, built ideally to house the particular forms of work which the given Association has devel- oped. Here in its essence is the friendly, fusing, re- creating spirit of hospitality which may, or may not, make this building a home and sanctuary for the spirits 86 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK; of all young women who can, and ought to, look to it as such. At the main desk in a certain large city Associa- tion one typical day brought 294 miscellaneous questions. But back of most of them was a very real need. A young stranger in the city asks the name of a reliable physician, a woman seeks advice regarding the best local school to which to send her daughter; a bewildered young foreign girl has failed to find the fiance whom she has come to marry, and is directed to that friendly desk for advice. Sometimes it may even end in her being married, when the time comes, in the building itself, for no one loves to turn from office matters and prepare for a wedding ceremony better than the secretary who knows that this, above all other ways, is making the building serve as home for the girl who is without one. "We must engender a community here, the like of which does not exist," said a secretary of a new building, "for it must furnish family life, but to all kinds of people." "Whom do I consider the most important person in our building?" said another. "That young woman over there behind the desk, who's turning to answer the telephone just now. On the tone of her voice, on the genuineness of her welcome, or her willingness to give time — depends what all the people streaming through this building, day after day, think, not only of this par- ticular place, but of the Young Women's Christian Association as a whole. Right here in this hall and back of that desk is furnished the spirit without which all our activities — are mere activities!" For the social atmosphere and standards of the Association building may perhaps be its best everyday, continuing expression of the spirit of Christ whose name is written in its cornerstone. RECREATION AND SOCIAL LIFE 87 Good Times of College Girls "Never do what another organization can and ought to do better," must needs be one of the watchwords to conserve so flexible and many-sided a body as the Young Women's Christian Association. So on a college campus where the Association is in a sense a guest of the institu- tion, it is neither necessary nor fitting that it should undertake many of the organized activities which are its most characteristic marks in a city community. For instance, the student Association does not equip a gym- nasium or plan tennis tournaments, for this is, or should be, the responsibility of the college itself. Neither does it often conduct classes for training in social observances, as it may for the industrial girls of a city who, deprived of college or even home advantages, need exactly this thing. But the student Association, wisely limiting its influence rather to the quickening of the spirit, can and does help to create by the moral force of opinion, an attitude of Christian sportsmanship in athletics, or sane and democratic standards in the conduct of the social functions of the campus, as, for example, in the case where the members of the Association cabinet were the first to start the precedent, among the women students, of refusing to allow escorts to go to the unsuitable extrav- agance of sending carriages and flowers for the Junior Prom. There is one opportunity, however, which the Associa- tion does have for offering its student members recreation pure and simple, and this is at the summer conferences, although even here it is not unmixed with the spirit, for more than one devoted and successful Association secretary^ has confessed that she went up to such and such a conference to play basket ball, and came back with 88 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK mind and heart filled with far deeper purposes! College Day at the student summer conference is often the one chance afforded in a whole year for two rival colleges, wisely forbidden intercollegiate athletics during the more strenuous term times, to contest for team and personal honor. Nor is it this day alone which gives such color and zest to the whole conference, for a generous share of time in each day's program is set aside for the play, organized or spontaneous, which the Association con- ' siders so inseparable from real religion. Play in the Country The country does not suffer from lack of space. Fa- cilities for play abound, but organized play has been for- gotten by the oldest inhabitant. The work-a-day life of the farm from sunrup to sun-down has left but little spirit for any fun-making except, perhaps, mere pranks. It is not strange that the city with its lights and crowds is very alluring to the imagination of the country girl who looks out of her window into the dark night as she retires in mid evening. Not less country but more play, more companionship, more community interest, is the great need. How is it coming? Again, through leader- ship. The Young Women's Christian Association is taking hold of this world problem. It is only at the beginning of the task, but it bids fair to make the country outrival city and town. Golf links, tennis courts and ball grounds can be had for the taking, and the organized play of the Association leads to their more effective use. Horseback riding, driving or motoring are coming into the lists with a challenge for skill that shall insure safety.. Skating, skiing and tobogganing are the winter rivals of summer tennis, swimming and bowling. Many sorts RECREATION AND SOCIAL LIFE 89 of games developing skill and courage are fostered by the Association. Among ball games, volley ball is the best loved of all. The revival of the pageant has brought May Pole festivities to life again. Folk songs and the folk dances of many lands share the field with the time honored merry making of older days, so dear to the memory of the countrybred. In a far west country Association a basket ball contest was in progress. The High School team was losing and losing badly. The secretary, interested in this side, watched with fast beating pulses. "What is the mat- ter?" asked a friend. "I am afraid for our girls," she said. "I want them to be fair and noble-hearted in defeat." And she added, "You need more than the Christian spirit in athletics; you need the very presence of Christ." When recreation has come fully into its own, it will mean infinitely more than recreation only, for its deepest value will be character building. PART III ORGANIZATION CHAPTER I— LOCAL ASSOCIATIONS Introduction When people who are interested in girls and young women begin to discuss ways of working among them, they usually find that, to do the things they hope to do, it is necessary to have some sort of a written constitution. T-he National Board has prepared constitutions that fit all kinds of situations, based on the experience of fifty years in which Young Women's Christian Associations have been carrying on work in large and small cities and in many sorts of educational centers. In these con- stitutions, new organizations are able to learn a good many details as well as the general plan of work and of committee business that have proved successful by stand- ing the test of experience in Young Women's Christian Associations. People will study and discuss a constitution while it is in the interesting stage of being adopted; but others joining the Association later are sometimes surprised to find what they have virtually subscribed to, as expressed in the constitution. Perhaps they think of themselves as joining the Association to get a position, to attend a Bible class, to study painting, or to take gymnasium exercises, or they simply go along with some pleasant girls who ask them to attend a meeting. "Each is but 90 LOCAL ASSOCIATIONS 9 1 part of a tremendous whole." It is bad logic but good Association sense to say that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The student Associations are more careful than other Associations to make this plain, as they hold a recognition service for new members at which they repeat together: "The purpose of the Association shall be to unite the women of the institution in loyalty to Jesus Christ, to lead them to accept him as their personal Saviour, to build them up in the knowledge of Christ, especially through Bible study and Christian service, that their character and conduct may be consonant with their belief. It shall thus associate them with the students of the world for the advancement of the Kingdom of God. It shall further seek to enlist their devotion to the Christian church and to the religious work of the insti- tution." Every girl who wants to join an Association ought certainly to have the purpose explained to her, as is happily becoming the practice. It would be a good thing if, before she joins a city Association, she could be taken over the main building on its busiest night before she fills out the application blank. Every applicant ought to know that her class or club is only one thing done in a certain department of one Association, that beyond are other kinds of Associations under a field committee of the National Board for that part of the country, and that the Association movement is stretching still further beyond to include girls all over the world, in schools and homes and places where they earn their living, just as in America. The member who under- stands these things will see that the finest membership privilege is the privilege of serving other girls, 92 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK Points in Common in all Associations Young Women's Christian Associations are able to work together in one movement because all are striving toward the same end. This end is the Association pur- pose. Purpose When the members representing the Young Women's Christian Associations of the United States of America met in Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1909, they defined the purpose as follows: "The immediate purpose of this organization shall be to unite in one body the Young Women's Christian Associations of the United States; to establish, develop and unify such Associations; to participate in the work of the World's Young Women's Christian Association; to advance the physical, social, intellectual, moral and spiritual interests of young women. The ultimate purpose of all its efforts shall be to seek to bring young women to such knowledge of Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord as shall mean for the individual young woman fullness of life and development of character, and shall make the organization as a whole an effective agency in the bringing in of the Kingdom of God among young women." An organization of women which does not choose to do the work described in this statement of purpose, would probably not want to become a part of this national organization and would therefore prefer some other name than Young Women's Christian Association. In order that an organization may do anything worth while, it is absolutely necessary that it choose a definite object. To carry out the object, the control must be LOCAL ASSOCIATIONS 93 in the hands of those who believe in it. For this reason the Young Women's Christian Association has adopted the following method as a basis of membership: Basis The basis of membership is the same in all Associa- tions received into this national movement. Those people who have already committed themselves to the stated purpose, by uniting with the evangelical churches that are avowedly working for the same end, are natu- rally the ones to vote and hold office on boards and cab- inets, and act as chairmen of standing committees, as trustees, as employed officers, etc. Since church mem- bership is the standard for electors or voting members, there need be no challenging of a person's Christianity by the membership committee, nor framing of a creed by the Association, which is an auxiliary, not a rival, of the church. The year before the Young Women's Christian Associations of the United States of America were organized in one body, the Protestant Evangelical churches of the whole country united in a federation so thoroughly representative that the Young Women's Christian Associations in convention, instead of giving their own definition of evangelical churches, accepted the federation definition. In this sense, Protestant Evan- gelical applies to those churches which, because of their essential oneness in Jesus Christ as their Divine Lord and Saviour, are entitled to representation in the Fed- eral Council of the Churches of Christ in America, as expressed in their convention in New York City in 1905. In brief, then, the Association is in a position to render the deepest and most fundamental service to young women in that it is directed by those who are personally 94 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK pledged to the fulfillment of its purpose and voting power is vested in those who are members of the churches listed in the Federal council of Churches or ineligible to be so listed. Yet general membership is open to those of all classes and conditions and creeds and in its field of service the Young Women's Christian Association is as broad as the needs of girls and young women. Administration Since this Association is an interdenominational move- ment, every Association includes on its board or cabinet members from many churches. Every Association recog- nizes the essential difference between what the volunteer worker and the employed secretary can do, and the absolute need of both. Every Association knows how dependent one committee is upon all others, for a gen- uine Association is a live organism, not a bundle of com- mittees. Some Associations have a great fear of parliamentary law and seem to think it complicates business meetings. Others know that it simplifies rather than complicates matters to conduct a meeting with some regard to parlia- mentary method. For instance, it is easier for every- body to speak to the point when the motion has been clearly stated and everybody understands the question alike. Parliamentary phrases are sometimes quoted as authority for doing unparliamentary things. When a number of general members were present at an annual meeting, one Association thought it would seem impolite not to pass them ballots. "We just suspended the rules for that e\-ening and let them vote," one of the officers afterwards said with a satisfied air. The real fact is that few Associations have any "rules" of their own. LOCAL ASSOCIATIONS 95 Most of them follow the rules laid down in Cushing's or Robert's Manual for making motions, adjourning, etc., at any meeting. But the presiding officer should have recognized that the constitution and by-laws which each Association has adopted, state very definitely what business is to be done by the Association as a whole and what by board or cabinet. It also states who is eligible to transact this business. To change any part of the constitution is an important matter that always requires notice in advance. When an Association is incorporated, which must be done in order that it may hold property and keep the Association obligation from falling on the officers personally, the main points of its constitution are put into a "charter" which must be approved by the State, either by an act of the legislature or by the Secre- tary of State. The object of the Association and the membership which undertakes the object are the \ery heart of both constitution and charter. Consequently the friendly but ignorant act of having general members vote at annual meeting, was not a suspension of the rules at all, but a violation of the constitution by which national and world affiliation is maintained and of its charter by which property rights are secured. Constitutions Adapted to Different Communities While the object and basis of membership of all Asso- ciations belonging to the Young Women's Christian Associations of the United States of America are essen- tially the same, the ways by which the members reach the object would be a little different under different cir- cumstances. It the members in a given community, as a college, are of the same age, occupied in the same way and come into the Association for about the same pur- 96 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK pose, the constitution and by-laws are not so elaborate as in a city with a complex population. Student Constitutions The simplest form of constitution is that suggested for colleges, seminaries and academies. No by-laws are necessary here. The officers are president, vice-president, secretary and treasurer, with one faculty member called an advisory officer. The president appoints the stand- ing committees, and these chairmen with the officers and a representative of the Student Volunteer band, where there is one, make up the cabinet which holds regular meetings more often than the Association as a whole. The committees usually found are: membership commit- tee, religious meetings committee, Bible study committee, missionary committee, finance committee, social com- mittee. Association news committee and social service committee. These all work together to attain in that institution, and wherever its influence may reach, the object of the Association as stated in the constitution. To run a successful Association in a university or a large college needs more time than the students them- selves can give, and advice from people who have lived on the campus longer than the undergraduates who must fill important cabinet places. To fit this case of these larger institutions there is a form of constitution which includes a plan of work with an employed general secre- tary, and an advisory committee through which faculty members, both men and women, alumnae of the insti- tution, or other interested people can lend a hand, provide continuity of action and conserve results. Sometimes in a school where the students are young and may not as yet have joined a church, a secondary LOCAL ASSOCL\TIONS 97 school constitution is used which puts in charge of the work older people and one or two girls who have professed their faith by uniting with a church. These constitute the permanent membership. There is also an annual membership open to all the girls which works through its own committees, with the help of the permanent members. The City Organization Any woman who accepts a place upon the board of directors of the Association with eyes open to all that this will demand of mind and heart and strength, cannot but come to this post with a sense of its high calling. It is a like honor to be a member. The very fact that a young woman wishes to join implies that she believes in those things that are true, honest, just, pure, lovely and of good report, and cares for their extension. The members look to the board which they have elected to plan and bring to pass what girls need in that particular city. Sometimes one finds a board assembling to go through an order of business, and after devotions, min- utes and reports are over, the presiding officer will say in an unconcerned way, "What business have we before us?" One thinks of Miss Barker at the Cranford party, when she saw the supper tray brought in: — "What have you for us now, Nancy?" But the board that really brings things to pass understands that the business of each month must be thought out well in advance if the Association is to fulfil its high mission: "to develop the highest conception by bringing to them opportunities for all-round development, by utilizing every available resource of the community for their interests, and by offering itself to be used by the community in cooperative 98 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK service for women." It is seldom that there will be pres- ent at a board meeting any one aside from the regular members and the general secretary who is ex officio mem- ber. Department secretaries occasionally attend, partic- ularly when their work is to be given special emphasis or when they have been asked to give some specific infor- mation. Representatives of the National Board and its field committees, who happen to be available, would naturally be invited. The reason for the general sec- retary's meeting with the board is plain. She is the trained professional advisor and executive whom the board engages for help in forming policies and administer- ing them, and she must be present in order to answer questions as they arise and to carry out intelligently the decisions made by the board. As an employed officer, she does not vote; and for the same reason the board or committee member who takes a salaried position in the Association, no longer serves on the board or committees. One cannot rightfully be an employing board member and employed by the board at the same time. But any em- ployed officer has the right to vote in the National Con- vention when sent as a regular delegate. The complex life of a modern city furnishes many dif- ferent situations to which the Association in its aim to reach all girls tries to adapt itself. In the factory or department store thousands of girls are found together most of whom cannot be touched at all through the ordinary channels. The Federation of Industrial Clubs promoted by the Association is a new and auspicious way of interesting these girls. The factory club is the unit from which is formed the Federation, an industrial move- ment, which belongs to the girls by the principal of self- government and belongs to the Association by virtue of LOCAL ASSOCL^TIONS 99 membership. The idea of self-government is popular with the girls. Club membership is expected to include the privilege of Association membership. As an essential element in self-government, the board of directors grants to each club the right to decide by its own vote what share of the membership fee is to go toward Association expense, and what for other club purposes. Branches and Centers The area which one building can serve is necessarily limited. In order to minister to girls in all sections of the city, the Association may establish different forms of work in different parts of the city, as boarding residence, lunch room, educational or physical work in rented quarters. Where the work of any particular center be- comes so far developed as to include several kinds of work parallel to those of the central Association, it may be organized as a branch with a committee of management and its own sub-committees. The branch committee is represented on the central board, and makes reports to that board. The Metropolitan System In a few large cities where all-round Association work can be advantageously administered from each of several branches, as those for different sections, branches for colored women or foreign-speaking women and where there may be also certain distinct units such as residences for professional groups of students or nurses, it may Jje more satisfactory to have a metropolitan plan of organi- zation. In this plan a metropolitan board of directors is formed which maintains the same relation to all the branches and gives to each impartial consideration. 100 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK Each branch bears a name indicating its character and location and has its own committee of management. The metropolitan board views the city as a whole, initi- ates new work, and presents a united front to the public, particularly in finance appeals. The County Association The county Associations are organized in a way similar to the average city Association. The Association takes county instead of city boundaries as a unit, and its board of directors is responsible for the general development of work for young women in the entire county. Its com- mittees for example are on membership, finance and extension work. Each town or rural branch has its own chairman, cabinet and committees, for religious, social, educational and other activities. Any county-wide enterprise such as the county camp would, of course, be planned by the board of directors and enjoyed by the members of all the branches. An Association build- ing is not essential to Association work in the county. In a few instances, equipment is provided at a central branch, but work in other branches is always carried on in such places as churches, school houses or private homes. CHAPTER II— COMMITTEE WORK The Place for Volunteer Service A unique opportunity for serving young women is afforded by the Young Women's Christian Association, the only international, interdenominational, "interclass" (if one may use so un-American a term) organization which centers its work in young women merely as young women. While the sympathies of all women should be enlisted in work for dependent, delinquent, abnormal and afflicted girls, their hopes for a more complete woman- hood must be attached to girls of more normal develop- ment. The Young Women's Christian Association, calling for work along preventive and constructive lines, would seem to be the most hopeful effort of our times among young women. It is no argument against the need of volunteer workers that the number of the professionally trained is increasing rapidly. Each has her distinct work. The trained secretary has indeed a firmer grasp on Association tech- nique and closer every-day contact with all sorts of girls. But on the other hand, the volunteer may have a peculiar gift of leadership, a large social influence, supervisory contact with great religious and social enterprises, or the power, wealth and ability often inherited from former generations. Types of Volunteer Workers The type of worker giving her time voluntarily is as varied as the types of Association activities. In the lOI COMMITTEE WORK i03 initiate far reaching plans; others helpless to initiate are thoroughly at home in carrying the plans of other minds to successful issue. The Committee System City The service of volunteer workers in the city Associa- tion is utilized chiefly through committees. It is obvious that the board of directors as a body can do no more than exercise a general supervision and develop the various types of work needed throughout the community. From the recommendations of various committees, it frames a general program, in the light of needs of the young of the entire city, the working out of which must be entrusted to these committees. Standing committees are required for general administration, for carrying on each of the regular activities and for interpreting to the board the needs of special classes of girls. They are appointed by the president of the Association for one year and their chairmen should be members of the board of directors. The work of each committee is vitally related to the board through its chairman who presents its report to the board. When the work of an Association becomes so large as to require a large number of committees, the departmental system is usually adopted. Certain committees for general administration, such as membership or finance, cannot well be grouped with others, but committees whose work is closely allied may be grouped advan- tageously under a department such as the educational department. In this case each committee has its chair- man, the group of chairmen forming the department committee which reports to the board of directors 104 THE ASSOCIATION' HANDBOOK through the department chairman, who is a member of the board. The organization of the committee should be both simple and flexible. The chairman appointed by the president of the Association with the sanction of the board of directors and the secretary elected by the com- mittee, both to serve one year, are the only officers re- quired. A treasurer is never needed, as no committee has power to hold any moneys, but pays over any funds into the general treasury. The board has full financial responsibility for the entire Association and it alone has power to sign a lease for any properties or a contract with any individual. The committee year usually begins early in the calendar year. Thus the newly appointed members may prepare themselves for their duties, which are apt to be most pressing in the autumn at the beginning of the season's work. It is the custom for committees to hold monthly meetings and to present to the board of directors a monthly report and definite recommendations covering advance work. The general plan of work and the com- mittee budget have been already authorized by the board at its annual meeting. Special committees are appointed by the president as may be required for special study or the execution of brief tasks. Much valuable occasional service may be commanded which would not be available for standing committees. Student The committee system of the Young Women's Chris- tain Associations in universities and large colleges has its own individual character. The cabinet made up of the COMMITTEE WORK 105 officers of the Association and the chairmen of standing committees is the central authority, corresponding to the board of directors in the city Association. In the smaller schools the organization is simplified and here it is com- paratively easy to reach the ideal of an entire working membership, since every member at some time in her college life may have the privilege of serving on a commit- tee. Volunteer leaders are essential in the city Associa- tion where a staff of trained workers is employed, but practically all the work in a college Association is done under volunteer leadership since there is never more than one employed secretary and that only in the larger institutions. County In country work the county is the unit. Here a county board of directors represents the various branches in villages and country districts. Each branch has its cabinet of girls with working committees, or in the case of large branches there are committees of management made up of older women with the usual sub-committees. In the county Association as in the large student Associa- tion there is one employed secretary for the entire county. It is her part, therefore, to organize the volunteer leader- ship which must carry the active work of the Association in each branch and throughout the county. However the forms of work may vary, the purpose of the Association for the building of Christian character is invariable; hence the control is always in the hands of those in sympathy with its Christian purpose. It is the volunteer leader upon whom the responsibility for Asso- ciation progress and permanance rests, legally as well as in popular opinion. I06 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK Committee Efficiency To secure efficiency in committee work, it is important to study the circumstances and personality of available workers. These women and girls have had their training in certain well defined regions of experience. They have brought their mental background with them into the Association whether as church or club workers, society or college leaders. This must first be taken into account. The temperament of the workers must also be considered, so that in the final assignment they may be placed where their powers will develop and be of the greatest use. It takes a somewhat different type of mind for the va- rious groups of Association committees. The judicial mind is above all needed for the leading group. Women with a comprehensive knowledge of community con- ditions, clear judgment and executive ability are especially needed for the work of the executive committee, which must act for the board in emergencies between meetings and decide certain matters of detail in conformity with the program already adopted by the board ; the finance committee which must consider ways and means of financing the Association; the membership committee which has the whole city for its field and the whole membership for its instrument of service and the whole Association equipment to draw upon. The second group of committees, those used to promote special activities, need women of special gifts and power of action, that their enthusiastic cooperation may be counted upon to further the many fines of economic, physical, social, educational and rehgious work. They must be progressive women, awake to the latest ideas in their particular interest, and they must believe in the Association as one of the greatest channels for further- COMMITTEE WORK IO7 Ing that interest and count no labor too great to ad- vance it. There are women to whom the planning of a building is a diversion; they prefer it to bridge. A set of blue prints makes them perfectly happy. There are others to whom an athletic life is a passion. A well equipped domestic science kitchen thrills some women to whom physical apparatus, even an instrument for anthropomet- rical measurements, would be meaningless. Others apparently without enthusiasm suddenly bloom into animation when there is a table to be arranged and tea to be poured, while to certain women it is the highest joy to teach a Bible class. The hopeful fact is that all these women live in every community. It remains for the Association to find them and give them their congenial work. There is another group of committees that require other types of women. These are the committees dealing not with special activities among all girls, but with special groups of girls, as the girl in her teens, the girl in industry and the immigrant girl. Here are needed women of broad sympathy and keen imagination, to put themselves in the place of girls of a different age or race or living in an unfamiliar environment. The hinge upon which effective committee work turns is the chairman. The responsibility of serving as chair- man involves a different and more important obligation than that of the other members of the committee. To ensure a strong committee, the chairman will have a voice in choosing the members who must work with her. The objective of all committee work is to enable the Association to serve the community efficiently, and this ideal is the more nearly approached when the personnel I08 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK of the committees fairly represents the whole member- ship. Efficiency is impossible without enlisting the girl herself in committee work. We have seen that the stu- dent and country work are carried almost entirely by girls and the progressiveness of the city Association is pretty accurately determined by the extent to which it uses the services of the younger members. Much com- mittee work, both regular and occasional, may well be entrusted to them and club work must be almost entirely in their hands. The extension committee, for example, realizes that its part of the work is to encourage the girls to do for themselves, not to be done for by the committee. It investigates the city, especially the factories and tene- ment districts, decides where to center its work, and furnishes leadership and supervision, but the club move- ment to be successful must belong to the girls themselves by virtue of self-government. Committee work is efficient when a careful study is made of the conditions involved, when the budget is based not on financial revenue, but upon the human needs of actual girls, when responsibiHty for a worth- while program is definitely apportioned to each mem- ber of the committee and when the plans are followed out with persistent faithfulness buoyed by Christian optimism. Training for Committee Work Any thinking woman invited to give her service to Association work with its tremendous scope and possi- bilities would naturally ask how she might fit herself for assuming such responsibility-. This is a question of vital interest with many organizations at the present time. In answer, a commission made up largely of COMMITTEE WORK IO9 Association volunteer workers has outlined a general plan for training which was approved by the National Convention held at Richmond. Fundamentally, preparation for Christian service can come only through constant fellowship with the Master, and studies of his teaching. To the true spirit of service, knowledge must be added. As a background for intelli- gent work in city, town and country Association, adapted courses of study are planned. Such courses include the study of the Association itself, its history and principles of work, and the study of the community, its population, resources, outstanding characteristics, city administra- tion, local conditions of employment, housing, health, recreation, education and religion as they affect women and girls. As one of the many girl-helping agencies, the • Association realizes also the necessity of a careful study of all betterment agencies in the community and ways of effective cooperation with them. In the student Association such a course adapted to student needs has been followed with earnestness and enthusiasm. In the college community the course in- cludes the underlying principles of the organization, its way of working and its relationships to the National and World's Young Women's Christian Associations, to the World's Student Christian Federation, the Student Volunteer Movement and to church and missionary interests. There is great flexibility in the method of training. It may be given through a series of lectures, club study, reading courses, seminar discussions, board, cabinet and committee meetings and actual investigations. Associa- tion institutes, summer conferences and national and world conventions give an ever broadening viewpoint, no THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK especially to those who have been prepared by the study of the local group to get the most from these gatherings. Relationships Between Committees Each committee acts for the whole Association in one particular field. It investigates conditions, discusses projects and executes the plans approved by the higher authority of the board or cabinet. One of the vital questions to-day in Association work is how to relate the work of the various committees or departments in order to prevent duplication of effort and waste of money and to secure compensatory results. One of the great dangers is the tendency to develop departments at the expense of the Association. This becomes grotesque when ex- aggerated and in the end defeats its purpose. Making the whole Association count as a real community force can only be accomplished when every worker is sincerely committed to the supreme aim of the Association, "to associate young women in personal loyalty to Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord, to promote growth in Chris- tian character and service and to become a social force for the extension of the Kingdom of God." When this purpose animates every department, competition gives way to cooperation. No form of organization can secure such unity; it must come from oneness of purpose. The annual meeting gives a natural opportunity for rallying the entire membership, and awakening enthusiasm for achievement to be won only through united effort. At the present time there is greater effort than ever before so to relate the Association to all other lines of religious and social betterment that through mutual understanding each may reap the benefit of the study and experience of all others. This involves the necessity COMMITTEE WORK 1 1 I for a thorough knowledge of each other's work, aims and limitations. Reading and attendance upon significant public gatherings are invaluable, but it is in the small conference and selected groups from various organizations that closest contact is secured, and the most practical methods of cooperation planned. The Association worker who keeps a firm grasp on the spiritual mission of the Association will not be confounded by the increas- ing complexity of her relations to other organized effort, but will find her distinct place and service amid all the things that are being done to secure to girls their right to a useful, joyous and complete womanhood. PART IV RELATIONSHIPS CHAPTER I— THE LOCAL ASSOCIATION AND THE NATIONAL ORGANIZATION The National Organization There are 908 local Young Women's Christian Associa- tions — city, town, student and county, which compose the national organization of the Young Women's Chris- tian Associations of the United States of America.* Six hundred and sixteen united as charter members in 1906. The members of every Association are sharers in the power and privilege of the national organization. It is true, however, that they become more aware of what is involved in membership upon special occasions, such as when called to vote in their own annual election of officers or to elect delegates to represent them at the national convention. National Conventions These conventions have in the past been held every other year, hence the title, "Biennial Convention." In December 1906 the first convention met in New York. Others have met as follows; in April 1909 in St. Paul, Minnesota; in April 191 1 in Indianapolis, Indiana; in April 1913 in Richmond, Virginia. In 1915 the place of meeting will be in Los Angeles, California. Thus * See introduction, page vi, for basis of membership. Complete list of Associations may be found in the Year Book. 112 THE NATIONAL ORGANIZATION II3 each section of the country in turn has the opportunity to come into direct touch with the organization as a whole. According to action taken at the Richmond Convention the period between conventions is to be extended so that after 1915 the national convention will meet but once in three years. Every Association, no matter how small its member- ship, is entitled to one voting delegate in the national convention. The constitution provides that represen- tation at the convention shall be one voting delegate from the first one hundred or less electors,* with an addi- tional voting delegate for each additional one hundred electors. As an illustration, an Association having 879 electors is entitled to eight voting delegates in the national convention. Other Association members are welcomed as visiting delegates and are assigned to seats especially provided for them, but have no vote. What does the convention do? Its first item of busi- ness is the election of officers of the convention. Miss Grace H. Dodge of New York City in 1906, Mrs. William S. Slocum of Colorado in 1909, Mrs. Warren Olney of California in 191 1, and Mrs. Stephen B. L. Penrose of the State of Washington in 1913, have in turn received the honor of being elected president. The officers elected at one convention preside at that convention and issue the call for the following convention. An executive committee is also elected to act during the time between national gatherings in accordance with the wishes and acts of the convention. This committee, called the National Board, has its headquarters in New York City. * In many Associations electors are still called active members. ii4 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK The National Board is composed of thirty resident mem- bers (those hving in or near enough to New \ork to attend committee meetings regularly) and an additional member from each of the eleven field committees elected by the field committee to serve two years. Resident members serve for six years. Non-resident members attend meetings when possible and are kept regularly informed of all business transacted at the Board meetings. Access to information concerning these meetings is available also through the summary of the reports of the National Board meetings published regularly in the Association Monthly. At the Richmond Convention, the National Board was empowered to add fifteen auxil- iary members to its number. These members have no \-ote on the Board, but are voting members on com- mittees of the several departments. Thus the committee work is reinforced by a large number of women whose specific interests bring a valuable contribution. The National Convention reports and recommenda- tions are brought from the National Board. These include accounts of work already begun and bring ques- tions involving new courses of action before the conven- tion for its discussion, approval or rejection. Thus the responsibility of approving work done and of formulating principles of action rests upon the delegates assembled in convention. Indeed, the only law making or authori- tative body in the Young Women's Christian Associa- tion of the United States of America is the National Convention. An instance will illustrate the method of working. The National Board brought to the Indian- apoHs Convention a recommendation with regard to a national headquarters building. The convention recog- nized the need for such a building and voted that the THE NATIONAL ORGANIZATION II5 erection should at once be undertaken. At Richmond the National Board reported that the building had been erected and that it was already occupied and paid for, having been dedicated in December 1912. Again the convention has power to appoint special commissions. To illustrate, the convention at St. Paul appointed a commission to investigate the basis of support of the national work and to report to the next convention. In Indianapolis this commission reported and the con- vention voted to accept its recommendations, one of which was that as their share in the support of supervisory work, city and county Associations should contribute four per cent, of their annual budget, and student Asso- ciations forty per cent, of annual membership dues. National Board Meetings In October, December, February, April and June of each year, the National Board meets to transact what- ever business may come before it, such as the adoption of the budget, employment of secretaries, admission of new Associations, hearing reports of committees, endorse- ment or rejection of projects proposed by the several committees. At the annual meeting in February the Board elects officers from its own number. Miss Grace H. Dodge has served as president of the National Board ever since its formation in 1906, and much of the success of the movement is due to her faith, devotion and generous leadership. Origin of the Eight Departments of the National Board At the time of the formation of the national organiza- tion the National Board was instructed by the New York convention in 1 906 to arrange for the training of Il6 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK secretaries, for publication, conferences, finances and headquarters office work. Tliey were to aid Associa- tions in tliis country in their development and devise means for unifying and strengthening the whole move- ment. Moreover, all possible help from these means was to be contributed to the work in foreign fields. To the carrying out of these instructions the National Board has devoted its best efforts, and has gradually developed eight departments through which to accomplish this work. (See chart, opposite p. ii6.) Field Work Department In order to help the local Associations more economic- ally and efficiently, the Field Work Department has been evolved and through it the National Board has effected the organization of sub-committees to act for it, each sub-committee becoming responsible for the promotion and supervision of Association work in a particular group of States. The development of the plan for field work has been a matter of time and represents the united effort and unselfish devotion of many leaders. January 1914 saw the last field organized, thus completing a supervisory system for the entire country, eleven fields in all. (See map, opposite p. 127.) Field Committees The Northeastern Field includes the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Is- land, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey; with headquarters in New York City. Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, with head- quarters in Philadelphia. HOW THE YOUNG WOMEN'S CHEaSTIAN ASSOCIATIONS UNITE FOR PROGHBSS The The Bsitioaal N&tional Organization elects Board to do its vork hetween Conventions. The National Board doea this work Consisting Of Through THE NATIONAL ORGANIZATION" II7 *The South Atlantic Field includes Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, with headquarters at Charlotte, N. C. Ohio and West Virginia with headquarters at Cin- cinnati, Ohio. The Central Field includes Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan, with headquarters in Chicago, 111. The North Central Field includes Minnesota, Iowa, North and South Dakota ahd Nebraska, with head- quarters in St. Paul, Minn. The South Central Field includes Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Ken- tucky, with headquarters in St. Louis, Mo. The West Central Field includes Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Kansas, with headquarters in Denver, Colorado. * The Southwestern Field includes Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, with headquarters at Dallas, Texas. The Northwestern Field includes Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon, with headquarters in Seattle, Washington. The Pacific Coast Field includes California, Arizona and Nevada, with headquarters in San Francisco, Calif. As already stated, one member from each Field Com- mittee is a member of the National Board. New mem- bers to serve on these committees are nominated by the Field Committee and appointed by the National Board. Undergraduate members from student Associations known as annual members are appointed annually by student Associations to serve on the student committee of the Field Committee. Women of strong faith, clear vision and sound judgment, possessed of constructive imagination, and capable of persistent effort lead in * Provisional. 9 Il8 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK this important committee work. They are, so to speak, the National Board operating in these fields, studying needs, advising approved methods, strengthening all the Associations, city, student, town and country, that already exist in their field, organizing and developing new centers, promoting new types of work, and obtain- ing financial support for their supervisory work. Field Staff The several Field Committees accomplish this large work by grouping their members into sub-committees according to the type of work to be done, such as finance, student or city work and by calhng to their assistance a paid staiT of trained women who devote their entire time to the work. These secretaries are recommended by the Field Work Department of the National Board, but are called by the Field Committees. They travel constantly among the local Associations in the geo- graphical boundaries of the field to which they are called, helping and advising wisely from intimate knowledge gained from immediate contact. They report regularly to the Field Committee under whose direction they are. The staff usually consists of an executive secretary in charge of the whole, an office secretary who remains at the field headquarters office, and city, student, industrial and county secretaries according to the demands of the field and the committee's financial ability. As these field secretaries are all national secretaries, all the re- sources of the national organization are thus constantly available to every Association. Headquarters Staff I The National Board does other parts of its work THE NATIONAL ORGANIZATION II9 through committees at headquarters, especially detailed to fulfil the responsibility placed upon each depart- ment, and employs a paid staff of workers known as national headquarters secretaries. Miss Mabel Cratty has been the general secretary of this staff since its organization. The Field Work Department through its committee at headquarters and the various Field Committees is the chief channel to and from the local Associations and the National Board. The reason for this is clear, since if all the eight departments should communicate sepa- rately with local Associations, confusion and dupHcation would result. Publication Department A seeming exception to this is the Publication Depart- ment, in that it makes its sales directly to the Associa- tion or individual. The Association Monthly, The North American Student, The Student World and The World's Quarterly, leaflets on many phases of Associa- tion activity, specially prepared Bible and social study texts and devotional literature, may all be secured directly from the publication office in the headquarters building. This department is one of the most important for creating and maintaining the unity of the national organization, inasmuch as information is the basis for real oneness of spirit. Department of Conventions and Conferences The Department of Conventions and Conferences has the responsibility for the programs and business adminis- tration of all national conventions and summer con- ferences. In 1913, five student, three city and three 120 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK general conferences were held at points as widely sepa- rated as Silver Bay, N. Y., Eagles Mere, Pa., Black Mountain, N. C, Lake Geneva, Wis., Estes Park, Colo., Gearhart Park, Ore., and Asilomar, Pacific Grove, Calif. The last named conference ground is property held in trust by the National Board for our own conferences and those of kindred organizations. These conferences in 1913 were attended by over four thousand Association members, workers and speakers. A $5 program fee is paid by each delegate. The returns from this source about cover the actual cost of the conduct of the con- ference, but do not maintain the conference department. The conference is not only a place of inspiration, but also a place where women who are members of city boards and committees through fellowship with other Associa- tion leaders may gain a wider sense of the Association movement and power, and may become acquainted with the newest Association methods and thus be prepared for that leadership which naturally rests upon them. Here too, the college students who are shortly to lead in the various activities of life receive religious impetus and motive for efficient service. Not only will the desire for leadership in the church and the Association be kindled here, but a girl studying medicine may become a better physician, a normal school student, a better teacher, because of the new conception of the possibilities of her life gained from her experience here. Moreover, the conference provides opportunity for the expression of the life of the membership as a whole. Through committee work and councils the members make their contribution, and the ability of the volunteer and the employed worker finds its united expression. THE NATIONAL ORGANIZATION 121 Field Camps For the busy girls who have short vacations the summer camps which are now being maintained by some of the field committees provide wholesome rest and recreation. Special days are set apart for club coun- cils and other events offering excellent opportunity for individual initiative on the part of the girls who help plan the program. Through both conferences and camps the complete Association ideal with all its attrac- tiveness is held out to the girls who compose the Associa- tion. Here for the first time, perhaps, they catch the vision of their own part in the extension of the King- dom of God to all girls. Finance Department The Finance Department, the hope of the Associa- tion, is the burden bearer as well, and what an illustra- tion of the ideals of thrift and efficiency it is! One part of its work consists in preparing, annually, an itemized statement of anticipated income and expenditure for all departments of the National Board. The publica- tion and secretarial departments, as well as the depart- ment of conventions and conferences, produce an income. When the plan recommended by the national conven- tion comes into full operation, the contributions from the local Associations are expected to constitute about fifty per cent, of the remaining amount of money needed annually for national administration. The other fifty per cent, needed must be secured from individual gifts so that many new subscribers must be found each year to meet the financial demands of an expanding work. The total amount needed in 1914 was $434,000. This amount includes the budgets of the Field Committees, which 122 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK cooperate with the National Board in securing these funds, and the maintenance of work in five foreign countries. Besides raising the national expenses the Finance Department has given trained assistance in finance cam- paigns for local Associations and has made demonstra- tion of business methods for raising money. Secretarial Department One of the great tasks which local Associations through the national conventions have placed upon the National Board, is that of finding and training women to serve as Association secretaries in positions of responsibility. To meet the urgent demand for professionally trained workers the national training system for secretaries has been developed so that it has come to pass that each year in increasing numbers, women of charm, power, strong Christian faith, education and refinement are as eagerly being sought after as they are beginning to look to the Association as a field furnishing full scope for their ability and high ideals for Christian service. Training System Training Centers Experience in working with people and some knowl- edge of the world outside college walls is necessary to the woman who would undertake the duties of a Young Women's Christian Association secretary. Qualified young women with such background may enter a so- called training center. This means that several of the field committees have undertaken with the help and guid- ance of the Secretarial Department to provide for these probationers practical experience in local Associations THE NATIONAL ORGANIZATION 1 23 chosen for the purpose, while at the same tiir.e the Secretarial Department provides lectures on the most necessary subjects for study. After three months of such training, approved students are recommended to the second stage in training, the holding of paid, but minor positions in the Association. National Training School After a year or more of successful work, these secre- taries become eligible to admission to the one year course of study at the National Training School at headquarters. Thus the Training School is made a post-graduate school for special training, through which its graduates are equipped for important positions as secretaries in home or foreign Associations. The well rounded course covers work in the history, polity and administration of the Association, Bible study, religious pedagogy, economics and sociology, public speaking, hymnology, executive and financial management, cur- rent movements, and other allied subjects. The resident character of the school gives opportunity for contact with the leaders of the Association and kindred organizations, for the use of New York City as a sociological labora- tory, and for the development of the kind of home life which each of the students would fain duplicate in the Association which she goes forth to help to administer. So valuable has the training system proved that volun- teer workers are also beginning to avail themselves of its opportunities. The National Training School occu- pies one-half of the new national headquarters building, and has its own entrance at 135 East 52nd Street. For the school-year 19 12-13 forty-five certificates of gradua- tion were granted to young women who had come for 124 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK this training from all sections of this country and from several foreign countries, for as yet the United States stands alone among the forty-one countries affiliated with the World's Association, in offering a thorough professional training for the Association secretaryship. Summer Courses Besides the three months' training center course and the year's course in the National Training School, the Secretarial Department conducts short summer courses for graduate physical directors, a course for lunch room and house secretaries and a student preparatory training center. It also maintains a Bureau of Reference with the double purpose of serving Associations seeking posi- tions and women looking for Association positions. Department of Method In order to enable the local Association to meet the complex demands forced upon it in its effort to supply the needs of girls the country over, a department of study and research has been established by the National Board called the Department of Method. Its objective is to accomplish by laboratory methods for each Asso- ciation what no single Association has either time or means at hand to accomplish for itself. A staff of nine- teen specialists (February 1914) is constantly at work centering attention on problems physical, educational, economic and religious, and upon work for girls both American and foreign born in cities, towns, industrial centers, country districts, colleges and schools. By visiting local Associations, sharing in their work, adapting and adjusting methods, and studying the means and methods used in all other forms of organized work for THE NATIONAL ORGANIZATION I25 women, a great body of valuable information is gathered and applied and a comparative study of problems is made. When valid conclusions are reached, they are passed out through every other department, to those who desire the information gained. As a department of research in medicine devotes itself to the discovery of possible disease, its correct diagnosis, and a recommended treatment, leaving the administration of the treatment to the local general practitioner who is personally familiar with the constitutional peculiarities of his patient, so this department conducts a laboratory study of the life of American girls and women, making the results locally available through the field committees. In this kind of scientific administration, the National Board of the Young Women's Christian Association stands alone among national organizations. Office Department Since the national headquarters is the active center of all Association interests, a large office force is required to enable the various departments to fulfil their duties. Uniting all departments for mutual efficiency the Office Department becomes the great means of communication with all Associations. All correspondence, reports and records, are within its keeping. These are carefully classified and so tabulated as to be ready on call for the use of the whole Association movement. The depart- ment itself aims to be a model of business efficiency worthy to be followed by all local Association and field offices. Foreign Department The work of the local Associations would be nar- 126 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK row indeed if through their union they were not able to serve others as well as themselves. All Christian work to be true to itself must be missionary. Not alone are the home Associations benefited by the unified move- ment — every line of Association work contributes its own peculiar gifts as well as some of its most efficient workers to the Foreign Department. At present thirty- two American Association secretaries (February 1914) are being supported from the home base in Japan, China, India, South America and Turkey. Through its Foreign Department the National Board sends out secretaries for Association work that is not yet self- supporting. In foreign lands some of these are wholly supported by individual Associations, others by groups of Associations. These secretaries have gone out after having wide experience in the United States in order to share with the new organization the elements which have characterized the success of the American move- ment. Their great work is to find, enlist and train women in each country so that the Young Women's Christian Association in every land may be indigenous and naturalized. Thus our national organization takes active part in a world-encircling crusade for righteous- ness. Membership in the World's Association Besides the help rendered through the Foreign Depart- ment the national body participates in the work of the World's Young Women's Christian Association by hav- ing in common with other national Young Women's Christian Associations members serving on the World's Committee. Thus it is that the representatives of the component 126 row indeed if serve others to be true to the home As ment — every own peculiar workers to th two America are being si China, India, Foreign Dep secretaries fc supporting, supported by of Associatio having wide i share with t have charact ment. Their women in ea Christian Ass and naturaliz active part ii ness. Membership Besides the ment the nat World's Youi ing in comrr Christian Ass Committee. Thus it is THE NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS 127 Associations throughout the United States met in na- tional convention have called into being a great move- ment, primarily for their own benefit, but which from the nature of its work and the fundamental character of its purpose has linked itself inevitably with all national and international effort for the well being of the nations. CHAPTER II— THE NATIONAL -ORGANIZATION AND OTHER ORGANIZATIONS One of the great advantages gained by the national organization of local Young Women's Christian Asso- ciations through maintaining a National Board and na- tional staff is the ability to keep in constant touch with other national movements and organizations, at their sources of power and administrative headquarters. Men and women of the present day are thinking in terms of cooperation, economy and efficiency. When one responsible organization is well equipped for specific work, another organization is under obligation not to duplicate the work and at the same time divert its energy from its own peculiar field of responsibility. The over- lapping of organized work can be prevented only when the leaders get close enough together to understand the distinct province of each and to be willing to trust the accomplishment of some long cherished plan to another instrument. It is only by such cooperation of varying interests and agencies that we can hope for the rapid solution of the difficult problems which face us as a nation. It may be argued that this kind of cooperation con- sumes valuable time. But leaders of great movements could hardly make better investment of time than in conferences which save confusion and misunderstanding and add enormously to the effectiveness, not alone of the organization as a whole, but even of its weakest part. Every component local organization, whether con- scious of it or not, is benefited by the cooperation of these national leaders. 128 RELATION TO OTHER ORGANIZATIONS 1 29 It would be difficult, as well as unnecessary, to name all the organizations with which the National Board is in touch, so numerous and varied are they. Neither will it be possible in any adequate way to deal with the work of the various organizations mentioned. All that is attempted is to specify the organizations which the National Board touches most closely and the nature of the relationship sustained. These fall into three natural groups. Group A Group A consists of those with which the National Board has formal relationship, as where one organiza- tion is a part of another. The World's Young Women's Christian Association This is a federation of similar national movements for which the World's Committee acts as executive. Its headquarters are located at 26 George Street, Hanover Square, London, England. The official organ is The World's Quarterly. Membership on this committee is of a representative character and in proportion to the mem- bership in each national movement. One representative for each 15,000 members is allowed until a national com- mittee reaches the maximum of twelve members. The United States has its full representation. The work carried on by the committee is supervisory and promotive in character, fostering the work in countries where it is not self-supporting and developing indigenous national committees. It calls, locates. and supervises secretaries working in these foreign fields. Through the World's Committee, the strong national or- ganizations initiate work and strengthen weaker move- ments, uphold Association standards and unify the work 130 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK of the Young Women's Christian Association throughout the whole world. Expression is given to this spirit of unity and mutual responsibility through the annual ob- servance of the World's Week of Prayer, during the second week of November, for which the World's Com- mittee prepares a program. The World's Committee is supported by annual contributions from the constituent movements, given in proportion to their membership. Mrs. J. H. Tritton is chairman of the World's Com- mittee and Miss Clarissa Spencer of the United States has been executive secretary since 1904. The countries in which active work is now being carried on are: North, South, West and British East Africa, Canada, United States, West India Islands, Argentine, Brazil, Chile, Brit- ish Guiana, China, India, Burma, Ceylon, Straits Set- tlements, Japan, Turkey in Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Great Britain, and Ireland, Greece, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Norway and Sweden, Portugal, Russia, Switzerland, Turkey, Belgium and Bulgaria. Forty-seven secretaries have gone out from the United States to participate in foreign Young Women's Chris- tian Association work. The North American Student Movement This is composed of (a) the student Young Men's Christian Associations of the United States and Canada; (b) the student Young Women's Christian Associations of Canada; (c) the Student Young Women's Christian Associations of the United States of America; and (d) the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions. Inasmuch as these organizations are in many cases fo- cused upon the same college communities, there are many RELATION TO OTHER ORGANIZATIONS 13I questions of mutual policy which would naturally come before a consulting council delegated by the several national bodies. Such a Council of North American Student Movements was established in 1912. It is com- posed of representatives from each of the organizations as follows : five from the International Committee of the Young Men's Christian Associations of the United States and Canada; three from the National Board of the Young Women's Christian Associations of the United States; two from the Dominion Council of the Young Women's Christian Associations; and two from the Stu- dent Volunteer Movement. The endorsement of any measure or plan by the Council carries great weight throughout all the organizations included in the move- ment and the better understanding of each organization by all the others increases mutual respect. One respon- sibility which the Council bears is the publication of The North American Student, a magazine devoted to student interests and published monthly during the academic year. The World's Student Christian Federation This is further unified by being one of the natural groups composing the World's Student Christian Federa- tion. This federation was formally organized in Vadstena , Castle, Sweden, in 1895, and now comprises twenty-four so-called national movements, which include students of forty different nations. The object of this international Federation is threefold : — I. To unite student Christian movements or organ- izations throughout the world and promote mutual rela- tions among them. 132 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK 2. To collect information regarding the religious con- ditions of students in all lands. 3. To promote the following lines of activity: (a) To lead students to accept the Christian faith in God — Father, Son and Holy Spirit, according to the Scriptures, and to live as true disciples of Jesus Christ, (b) To deepen the spiritual life of students and to promote earnest study of the Scriptures among them, (c) To in- fluence students to devote themselves to the extension of the Kingdom of God in their own nation and throughout the world. The direction of the Federation is entrusted to a gen- eral executive committee made up of two or three repre- sentatives from each national movement affiliated with the Federation. In Tokio, in 1907, women members were admitted for the first time to the general executive committee from such countries as have at least six hun- dred student Associations with a total membership of at least 150 students. Federation conferences have taken place since 1895 in widely separated places. The con- ference in 191 3 was entertained by the North American Student Movement at Lake Mohonk, N. Y., for "'only six days! — when over three hundred men and women, from more than forty different nations, knelt side by side in worship before the one living God, in prayer for one another." What a potent influence making for the world's peace, when people of all races and creeds can thus unite. Dr. Karl Fj-ies of Sweden is chairman of the Federa- tion, Mr. John R. Mott of the United States, general secretary, and Miss Ruth Rouse of Great Britain, travel- ing secretary among women students. RELATION TO OTHER ORGANIZATIONS 1 33 The Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions With present headquarters at 600 Lexington Avenue' New York City, this was organized in 1888 a,s a result of the first International Conference of Christian College Students held at Mt. Hermon, Mass., in 1886. This movement is composed of students who have recorded their "purpose, if God permit, to become foreign mission- aries" by signing what is known as the Student Volunteer declaration card. There is an executive committee, a board of trustees, and an advisory committee. Leaders of the student Young Men's and student Young Women's Christian Association serve on the Executive Committee 60 that its plans are made and carried out in full coopera- tion with these two organizations. The Student Volunteer Movement never has sent and never will send out a missionary. It is simply a recruit- ing agency for the various missionary boards in the stu- dent field of the United States arid Canada, and for the cultivation of missionary interest. Those who become student volunteers are expected to go out as mission- aries under regular missionary organizations. The four-fold purpose of the Movement is as follows: "i. To awaken and maintain among all Christian students of the United States and Canada intelligent and active interest in foreign missions. "2. To enroll a sufficient number of properly qualified student volunteers to meet the successive demands of the various missionary boards of North America. "3. To help all such intending missionaries to pre- pare for their life-work and to enlist their cooperation in developing the missionary life of home churches. "4. To lay an equal burden of responsibility upon all students who are to remain as ministers and lay workers 134 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK at home, that they may actively promote the missionary enterprise by their intelligent advocacy, by their gifts and by their prayers." This purpose is realized through visits to college by secretaries who advise with students regarding the mis- sionary enterprise; through annual State or district con- ferences and a quadrennial international convention; as well as through cooperation with the Young Women's and Young Men's Christian Associations at summer conferences where mission study is promoted and the claims of the world wide extension of Christ's kingdom are pressed upon educated young people. Group B Group B consists of those organizations with which some member of the National Board or its staff is wanted to sit in council. The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America At the time of the formation of the national organiza- tion of the Young Women's Christian Associations (1906) the Federal Council of Churches had but lately been created. The purpose of the Federal Council as indi- cated in their constitution was to "manifest the essential oneness of the Christian Churches of America in Jesus Christ as their Divine Lord and Saviour and to promote the spirit of fellowship, service and cooperation among them." The national organization chose to intrust the voting power in its Association to those members who hold membership in one of the churches included in, or eligible to be included in, the Federal Council, thus leav- ing the formation of statements of faith and the matter of the personal acceptance of that faith to church au- thoritiefe. RELATION TO OTHER ORGANIZATIONS 135 The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America in its national organization is a federation of denominations, not of individual churches, as is the case in local church federations. The relation of local fed- erations to the national federation is in no way parallel to the Young Women's Christian Association organization. The Federal Council works through commissions as well as a central executive committee. The National Board ha'S at present representatives on its committee of Direction of the Social Service Commission, and the Commissions for Social Service, Religious Education, Missions and Evangelism. Council of Women for Home Missions The National Board is linked up with the Council of Women for Home Missions, which includes nine of the leading denominational boards having a large home mis- sionary program and object. The National Board has representatives on the following committees: (a) com- mittee on schools and colleges; (b) committee on Indian work; (c) committee on work among Negroes; (d) com- mittee on work for juniors; and (e) committee on work for immigrants. In this way it is possible to correlate the various church and Association interests and to help one another in friendliest cooperation. The Religious Education Association The Religious Education Association was founded in 1903. " It acts as a center, a forum, a clearing house, a bureau of information and promotion in moral and re- ligious education. It unites in one comprehensive organization all educational leaders and workers who 136 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK desire fellowship, exchange of thought, information and experience, and cooperation in religious education." At the general conventions which have occurred annu- ally since 1903, the discussions upon a general theme have been carried on by departments meeting separately. The theme in 1913 was Religious Education and Civic Progress. The departments of universities and colleges, of theological seminaries, Sunday schools, public schools. Christian Associations, social service, and many others are all attended by men and women of national reputa- tion, educators, ministers, Sunday school workers and others interested in religious education. A representa- tive of the National Board is a member of the Executive Council of the Religious Education Association. She also serves at the present time as chairman of the de- partment of Christian Associations. Group C Group C is a large group consisting of organizations whose interests are closely allied to the work of the Young Women's Christian Association. Between these organ- izations and the National Board courtesies are constantly exchanged. The International Committee of the Young Men's Christian Associations The general public is apt to think of the Young Men's and the Young Women's Associations as one organiza- tion, or of the Young Women's Association as a branch of the men's work. It is by no means always recognized, that, in spite of similarity in name and general purpose, they are two distinct organizations, differing not only in details Of organization but also in methods and policies. RELATION TO OTHER ORGANIZATIONS 1 37 On the other hand the cordial relationship which exists between the two bodies is manifested in many ways through the frequent exchange of courtesies, consultation on matters where mutual interest are involved and the correlation of plans in specific instances. The student work has long been closely associated, particularly in coeducational institutions, where the two organizations stand side by side. For example a joint committee of the student departments of both organizations is cor- relating plans for Bible and mission study courses. In the country, where the family is the natural group in contrast to the grouping in the city by sex, occupation or other cleavage, the interdependence long felt is being here and there practically worked out to mutual advan- tage. The experience of the older organization along all lines is always generously placed at the service of the National Board. Locally there have been many instances of helpful cooperation. Church Boards of Foreign Missions The Student Committee of the National Board recog- nizes its obligation to relate students to the regular work of the church as it is carried on through the various mis- sion boards. This is achieved in part by the following means: (a) Mission board representatives are invited annually to attend the student summer conferences and to take charge of the denominational meetings of dele- gates at which the work of the boards is presented, (b) By a plan approved by both the mission boards and the National Board a student may be appointed on the mis- sionary committee of each student Association to dis- tribute literature and give information on missionary work. So far as possible, a woman interested in stu- 138 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK dents is appointed in each church in the community to serve as hostess and friend to the students, (c) The National Board for the last few years has been recruiting student graduates to serve in some capacity upon their return home, endeavoring to help these young women in the different period of readjustment to life in city or coun- try. The Alumnae Record, taken in selected colleges, secures information from young women in successive senior classes, stating their preference in future social and religious service. The names are forwarded to the appropriate leaders in the work chosen. As the majority of girls choose some form of church, Sunday school, or missionary work, and the object in securing their names is to bring them into contact with the work of their choice, this "alumnae record" becomes a very practical means of communication for service between the Asso- ciation and the mission boards. Other Organizations Many other organizations might be mentioned with which the National Board has some natural relationship. The Association movement through its industrial depart- ment is made to face the same problems, economic and social, which confront organizations embodying the work- ing woman's own expression of her own need, such as the Women's Trade Union League. The complexity of these problems requires mutual understanding among industrial workers, secretaries and committee members, based upon an intelligent knowledge of all the agencies which are concerned in the better adjustment of American life. In seeking out social workers, the Associated Charities have appreciated the use of the alumnae records referred to before. The Intercollegiate Bureau is in con- RELATION TO OTHER ORGANIZATIONS 1 39 stant correspondence with the secretarial department of the National Board. The Camp Fire Girls has proved a useful method in the girls' department of many city Associations. With the work of the Playground and Recreation Association, the Missionary Education Move- ment, the Sunday School Council, the Consumers' League and a long list of organizations, the Association has sig- nificant contact. In fact, so numerous are these interre- lated social movements that the National Board has appointed a committee on relationships to consider the many requests which are constantly arising, for some form of cooperation with other organizations. CONCLUSION The foregoing pages present in large outline The Young Women's Christian Association in the United States as it exists today, seven years after the formation of one national organization. These have been years of plant- ing rather than harvesting, of staking out new fields of service rather than complete cultivation, of promise rather than full fruition. It does not require a prophet's tongue to foretell that while in these coming years there will be natural growth, the great work of the Associa- tion of the future must needs be intensive development within fields already occupied. When the Young Women's Christian Association shall indeed learn to know women as they are, high born or lowly, native or foreign, women irrespective of class or condition; when it shall learn how to make a delicate adjustment of its un- stinted resources to essential human needs ; when it shall learn how to use the power latent in tens of thousands of members in simple human service, then indeed will the words of the national motto be more completely ful- filled— " I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly." 140 APPENDIX BRIEF CHRONOLOGY OF YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION EVENTS 1855 Miss Emma Robarts of Barnet, England, banded together a number of Christian women to pray for young women. Among the members of this early prayer circle were Mrs. Horatio Bonar and Miss Frances Ridley Havergal. 1855 The Honorable Mrs. Arthur Kinnaird took over the "Nurses' Home" which she had established with the cooperation of Viscountess Strangford and Miss Florence Nightingale for Crimean Nurses, and opened it to "young women above the rank of domestic servant who could afford to pay half a guinea a week for board and lodging." This was the first of the kind in London and bore the name "North London Home or General Female Hom.e and Training Institution." Other fea- tures were a circulating library, Sunday after- noon Bible class and tea, missionary association and employment bureau. 1866 The Young Women's Christian Association of Bos- ton was organized on March 3 and opened in May, rooms in the Congregational Building, 23 Chauncey Street. Employment and boarding directories, religious, educational and social fea- tures were maintained the first year. 141 142 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK 1868 The Boston Young Women's Christian Association opened houses at 25 and 27 Beach Street as a boarding home, with accommodations for eighty young women. 1 87 1 The International Conference was formed by dele- gates from nine Women's Christian Associations meeting at Hartford, Connecticut, October 9 and ID. In 1877, a constitution was adopted bear- ing the name, The International Conference of Women's Christian Associations. 1873 The first student Association organized January 19 at Normal University, Normal, Illinois, under the name Young Ladies' Christian Association, later Young Women's Christian Association. 1874 The first summer rest home established by the Philadelphia Women's Christian Association at Asbury Park, New Jersey. 1884 The first State Associations formed in Michigan, Ohio and Iowa. 1884 The first country Young Women's Christian Asso- ciation, organized in Pleasant Valley, Johnson County, Iowa. 1885 The first systematic Travelers' Aid work in the United States inaugurated by the Boston Asso- ciation. 1886 The National Association of the Young Women's Christian Associations of the United States (later The American Committee) organized by repre- sentatives of nine State Associations at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin; headquarters established in Chicago. CHRONOLOGY 1 43 1886 The first traveling Association secretary, Miss Net- tie Dunn of Hillsdale College, Michigan, began werk as general secretary of the National Com- mittee. 1888 The first student Association building, Brinton Hall, occupied by the Association of the Woman's Medical College, Philadelphia. 1891 The first Young Women's Christian Association summer conference at Bay View, Michigan, at- tended by sixty-one delegates. 1891 The International Conference reorganized as the 1893 International Board of Women's and Young Women's Christian Associations. Provision for the formation of State Associations. 1894 The first foreign secretary, Agnes Gale Hill, sent to Madras, India. 1895 The World's Student Christian Federation formed at Castle Vadstena, Sweden. The Student Young Women's Christian Associations affiliated with The American Committee came into charter membership through the Intercollegiate Young Men's Christian Associations of North America. 1898 The first World's Young Women's Christian Association Conference held in London. 1903 The first mill village industrial Association organ- ized in Monaghan Mills, Greenville, South Caro- lina. 1904 The Secretaries' Training Institute opened in Chicago. 1905 Representatives of the International Board and The American Committee meeting with Miss Grace H. Dodge at the Hotel Manhattan, New 144 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK York City, in May, began negotiations for the formation of one National Association. 1906 The first Convention of the Young Women's Chris- tian Associations of the United States of America held in New York City, December 5 and 6. Three hundred ninety-eight delegates from 132 city and student Associations elected a National Board with headquarters in New York. On December 7 the National Board elected Miss Grace H. Dodge president, and other officers. 1907 The Association Monthly, the official organ of the new national organization, began publication with the February number. 1907 Six territorial (later field) committees of the Na- tional Board organized. 1908 The National Training School opened at 3 Gram- ercy Park, New York City. Training Centers held under several State and territorial com- mittees. 1908 The first county Association organized in Wood- ford County, Illinois, with several branches. 1909 The second Biennial Convention, at St. Paul, Minn. Constitution of The Young Women's Christian Associations of the United States of America adopted. 1910 The first International Institute for immigrant girls opened in New York City. 1911 The third Biennial Convention at Indianapolis. The basis of support for territorial headquarters and a proportionate share for world's work adopted. CHRONOLOGY 1 45 1912 The Council of North American Student Move- ments formed by representatives of the Student Young Men's Christian Associations of North America, the Student Young Women's Chris- tian Associations of the United States, the Stu- dent Young Women's Christian Associations of Canada, the National Council of Young Men's Christian Associations of Canada, and the Stu- dent Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions. 1912 New headquarters building, containing offices and National Training School, at 52nd Street and Lexington Avenue, New York City, occupied in September. 1912 The first Metropolitan organization formed in New York City with ten branches. 1913 The fourth Biennial Convention held at Richmond, Virginia. 1913 The first summer conference grounds purchased and developed for Young Women's Christian Association purposes, opened near Pacific Grove, California, and named Asilomar. ffy ckj^ teat ' Jul -y-krya&rS^ CONSTITUTION 1 49 shall be elected at the first meeting of the biennial con- vention and shall hold office until the next convention, or until their successors are elected. Article V — Management Section i. In the interim between conventions the work of the Young Women's Christian Associations of the United States of America shall be entrusted to a National Board. Said Board shall consist of not more than thirty resident members and a member or repre- sentative from each territorial or State committee. These members or representatives shall be elected by their several committees to serve for a term of two years and shall be their official representatives on the National Board. Sect. 2. At each biennial convention one third of the full number of resident members of the National Board shall be elected for a term of six years, or until their suc- cessors have been elected. Vacancies may be filled by the National Board until the next biennial convention. Sect. 3. Members of the National Board shall be members of the Protestant Evangelical churches. Sect. 4. The National Board shall elect its own offi- cers at its first regular meeting after the biennial conven- tion, and shall adopt by-laws for the regulation of its business. Article VI — Trust Funds and Property Section i. All real property which shall be given to or acquired by the Corporation, and all gifts and be- quests of money to be held in trust, shall be held and managed by a board of nine trustees, at least five of whom shall be men; the first trustees shall be appointed 150 THE ASSOCIATION HANDBOOK by the National Board and thereafter vacancies shall be filled by vote of the trustees upon nomination of the National Board. Sect. 2. The first trustees shall be appointed in classes of three each, for terms of two, four and six years. After the first two years the election shall be for six years. Article VII — Amendments Section i. This constitution, except Article II. and Section 2 of Article VIII., may be amended by a two- thirds vote of the members present at the biennial con- vention, notice of such amendment having been given either at a previous convention or through written sug- gestion to the National Board, and approved by it at least six months in advance of a convention. Sect. 2. Article II. and Section 2 of Article VII. may be amended only by a two-thirds vote of two succeeding biennial conventions. INDEX A PAGE Alumnae record 138 American Committee V Annual Members of Field Committees 117 Associated Charities , 138 "Association Monthly" 115 Association Residence 41 Emergency room, 46; Hospitality of, 42; House- mother, 43; Rates, 45; Self-government, 44; Self- support of, 45; Transient accommodation, 46. Auxiliary members of National Board. . ^ 114 B Basis of Membership VI 93, 134 Basis of Support (national) 115 Bible Study 19 Board of Directors 97, 103 Boarding Home. See Association Residence. Branches and Centers 99 Buildings — Hospitality of, 85; Types of, 41; See Association Residence. • C Cabinet 96, 104 Cafeteria 50 Camp Fire Girls 139 Camps — Field, 121; Summer, 82. Chronology of Association Events 141 Church — Association and Church Bible study, 19; Federal Council of Churches of Christ, 93; Relation to Association, vi, 5, 93. City- Dangers of, 66; Play problem of, 84; Wage earning in, 53- 152 INDEX PACE City Association — Administration, 97, 103; Board of Directors, 97, 103; Branches and centers, 99; Committee system, 103. Clubs. See Federation. College Life — Earning college expenses, 61; Recreation, 87; Relig- ious life, 1 1 ; Social life, 87. Colored Association Work 99 Commissions — On Character Standards, 24; On Social Morality, 4 24; On Thrift and Efificiency, 24; On Training of Volunteer Workers, III, 108. Committee Work — Committee efficiency, 106; Committee relation- ships, no; In city Association, 103; In county Association, 105; In student Association, 104; Training for, 108. Conferences 22, 80, 120 Association Day, 80; College Day, 81; Locations, 120; Recreation at, 80, 87. Constitutions 90, 95, 96 National Constitution, 147. Consumer's League 139 Conventions (National) Business of, 113; Indianapolis, 112; Los Angeles, 112; New York, 112; Officers of, 113; Richmond, 112, 114; St. Paul, 112; Voting Delegates, 113. Conventions and Conferences Department of National Board 1 19 Cooperative boarding 48 Council of North American Student Movement 131 Council of Women for Home Missions 135 Country — Community Service, 22; Earning money, 60; Edu- cation, 31; Recreation, 88. County Association — Administration, 100, 105;' Cooperative boarding plan, 48. Cratty, Mabel 119 INDEX 153 PAGE D Department of Method of National Board — Purpose, 124; Staff, 124. Dodge, Grace H V, 113, 115 Dominion Council of Canada 131 E Education — Home-making, 30; In the city Association, 27; In the college Association, 32 ; In the county Associa- tion, 31; Relation to employment, 56; Vocational training, 57. See Physical Education. Eight Week Clubs 22 Electors nj Employment — Employment bureau, 59; Student aid bureau, 61; Vocational guidance, 62; Vocational training, 54. Employment Bureau 50 F Federal Council of Churches 93, 134 Federation of Industrial Clubs 98 Field Committees 116 Annual members, 117; Staff, 118; Summer campg, 121. Field Work Department of National Board 116 Finance Department of National Board 121 Basis of support, 115; Budget, 121; Foreign sup- port, 122. Foreign Department of National Board 125 Foreign Missions. See Missions Friendly Visitors 76 Fries, Karl 132 G General Secretary 98 Gymnasium 33 154 INDEX PAGE H Home Missions. See Missions. Home-making 30 I Immigration Work 21 Association and immigrant women, 72; Friendly visitors, 75; International Institutes, 75; Protec- tion of immigrant women, 70. Indian Work 1 1 Industrial Work — Federation of clubs, 98. Intercollegiate Bureau of Occupations 138 International Board V International Committee. See Young Men's Christain Association. International Institutes 70, 75 M Manhattan Conference V Membership 91, 93, 97 Metropolitan System 99 Missionary Education Movement 139 Missions — Church Boards, 10, 135, 137; Study of, 20. Mott, John R 132 N National Board — - Auxiliary members, 114; Departments, 115; Gen- eral secretary, 119; Headquarters, VI, 113; Basis of support, 115; Meetings, 115; Members, 114; Ori- gin, VI; President, 115; Relation with other organ- izations, 128; Stafif, VI, 118. National Conventions. See Conventions. National Motto 140 National Training School VI; 123 National Young Women's Christian Association — Basis of membership, 93; Constitution of, 147; Conventions, 112; Membership in, 112; Origin, VI, Relationships, 128. INDEX 155 PAGE Normal, Illinois 10 "North American Student" 131 North American Student Movement 130 Nurses' Work gg O Office Department of National Board 125 Olney, Mrs. Warren 113 P Pageantry and Festivals 81 Parliamentary Law g4 Patten, Simon 3 Penrose, Mrs. Stephen 113 Physical Education — Corrective, 38; Group sense, 36; Gymnastics, 33; Hygiene, 37; Swimming, 36. Playground and Recreation Association 78, 79, 139 Protection — Of immigrant women, 70; Involving prevention, 63; Protective department, 64. Publication Department of National Board 119 Purpose — Of city Association, 91; Of, Federal Council of Churches, 134; Of Student Association, 91. R Recognition Service 91 Recreation — At summer camps, 82; At summer conferences, 80, 87; At vacation homes, 83; In cities, 84; In col- leges, 87; Pageantry, 81 ; What recreation includes, 78. Recreation Centers 84 Religion. Universal need of 15 Religious Education Association 135 Religious meetings 17 Rouse, Ruth 132 156 INDEX PAGE S Secretarial Department of National Board 122 National Training School, 123; Summer Courses, 124; Training Centers, 122. Secretary — Field, VI, 118; Foreign, 126; General, 98; Head- quarters, VI, 118; Training, 122. Self Government — In Association Residence 43 Shelter- Cafeteria, 50; Cooperative boarding, 48; Need of, 40. See Association Residence and White List Boarding Places. Slocum, Mrs. William F 113 Social Life — ■ Atmosphere of Association building, 85; In col- lege, 87. Spencer, Clarissa 130 Student Aid Bureau 61 Student Association 11 Administration, 96, 104; Annual members of field committees, 117; Purpose, 91; Recreation, 87; Training for, 109. Student Movement 130 Council of, 131; Development of leadership, 13; Origin of, 10; Place in student life, 11. Student Volunteer Movement 10, 130, 131, 133 Summer Camps 82 Summer Courses 124 Sunday School Council 139 T Training Centers 122 Training System 122, 123, 124 Tritton, Mrs. G. H ' 130 Travelers' Aid 61 ' Beginnings, 65; Dangers of city life, 66; Dangers of travel, 66; Expansion of Travelers' Aid, 67; Na- tional Travelers' Aid, 69. INDEX 157 PAGE V Vacation Homes 83 Vocational Guidance 62 Vocational Training 54, 57 Volunteer Workers — Place of, loi; Qualifications, 102; Training, 108; Types, loi, 106. W White List Boarding Places 47 Women — ■ As wage-earners, 2, 53; Changed conditions among, I; Education of, 3; Living away from home, 40; Need of play, 78; Unskilled in work, 53, 55. Women's Trade Union League 138 "World's Quarterly" 129 World's Student Christian Federation 13, 131 Mohonk Conference, 132; Ofiicers, 132; Purpose, 131- World's Week of Prayer 81, 130 World's Young Women's Christian Association — Affiliated countries, 130; Headquarters, 129; Mem- bership, 129; "National Association's relation to, Vn, 126; World's Committee, 129; "World's Quar- terly, " 129; World's Week of Prayer, 130. Y Young Men's Christian Association 130, 131, 133, 136 Young Women's Christian Association. See National Association and World's Association. NOTE The following pages present such of the National Board publications as are especially pertinent to a de- tailed study of the Handbook. For detailed bibliographies, suggesting extensive out- side reading as well as Association material, apply to the Department of Method of the National Board. SOME OF THE PUBLICATIONS OF THE NATIONAL BOARD GENERAL YEARBOOK OF YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIA- TIONS, 1912-1913 Directory of all Association names and addresses in the United States. Statistics and summaries. 50 cents. THE EXHIBIT Reproducing the screens in the National Headquarters Exhibit by charts and photographs on all phases of Association work. 15 cents; $1.50 per dozen. THE MINISTERING OF THE GIFT Libretto of the National Association Pageant. [For presentation rather than study.] Suggests in symbolic form the scope of Association activities. Illustrated. 15 cents. THE ASSOCIATION MONTHLY The official magazine of the Young Women's Christian Asso- ciations. No one can be informed to date about this rapidly developing organization who does not see The Association Monthly's articles on all phases of the subjects presented in the Handbook. Send for a sample copy. Subscription $1.00 per year. COMMISSION REPORTS Commission on Character Standards. 5 cents; 30 cents per dozen. Commission on Social Morality from the Christian Standpoint. 5 cents; 30 cents per dozen. Commission on Thrift and Efficiency. 5 cents; 30 cents per dozen. Commission on Training Volunteer Workers. 10 cents; $1.00 per dozen. THE STUDENT MOVEMENT STUDENT LEAFLETS On the Cabinet, The Advisory Committee, Membership, Fi- nance, Bible Study, Religious Meetings, Missionary, Social, So- cial Service, Association News, and Conferences and Conven- tions Committees. 5 cents each; 50 cents per dozen. l60 PUBLICATIONS THE NORTH AMERICAN STUDENT Official organ of the Council of North American Student Move- ments, representing the Young Women's and Young Men's Christian Associations of Canada and the United States, and the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions. Sub- scription, for the nine issues published during the academic year, $i.oo. With the Association Monthly, $1.70. REPORT OF WORLD'S STUDENT CHRISTUN FEDERATION CONFERENCE Held at Lake Mohonk, June, 1913. Contains all addresses and proceedings. 40 cents. RELIGION RELIGIOUS MEETINGS IN THE CITY ASSOCIATION. i» cents. VOLUNTARY STUDY GROUPS Explains the plan of the Council of North American Student Movements for the promotion of graded Bible, mission and social service study among the colleges. 10 cents. BIBLE TEXTS The series of Bible study texts prepared for use in the Young Women's Christian Association is one of its most tangible evidences of this most permeating element of its work. [Send for price list giving detailed descriptions; and for folder out- lining Systematic Bible Study in City Associations. Free of charge.] EDUCATION THE EDUCATIONAL COMMITTEE. 5 cents. SUGGESTED POLICY FOR A DEPARTMENT OF HYGIENE AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 5 cents. SHELTER THE ASSOCIATION RESIDENCE PROBLEM. 5 cents. THE LUNCH ROOM OF THE CITY ASSOCIATION. 5 cents. OCCUPATION YOUNG WORKING GHILS Compiled by Robert A. Woods, secretary of the National Federation of Settlements, from the experience of 2,000 settle- ment workers. Introduction by Jane Addams. A study of PUBLICATIONS l6l the environment of the adolescent girl in industry. Paper, 60 cents; cloth, fi.oo. An Outline Course of Study to accompany the above, included with each order. If ordered separately, 5 cents. THE EMPLOYMENT BUREAU COMMITTEE. 10 cents. PROTECTION TRAVELERS' AID. 5 cents. ORGANIZATION ORGANIZATION OF A CITY ASSOCIATION. 15 cents. SUGGESTED CONSTITUTION FOR CITY ASSOCIATIONS. 5 cents. ADMINISTRATION OF A CITY ASSOCIATION. 5 cents. THE DIRECTORSHIP AS A PLACE OF SERVICE. 5 cents. RELATIONSHIPS THE FOREIGN ANNUAL FOR 1913 Compiled from reports and letters of the American secretaries for the Association in China, India, Japan and South America. Foreign directory and statistics included. Illustrated. 25 cents. THE WORLD'S YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION. 5 cents. GIRLS OF YESTERDAY AND TODAY A readable, almost narrative account of the growth of the World's Association from its British beginnings to its present status. Cloth, $1.00. THE WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL QUARTERLY The official organ of the World's Young Women's Christian Association. Subscription, 50 cents per year. SEND FOR PRICE LIST of all publications of Publication Department National Board Young Womens Christian Associations 600 Lexington Avenue, New York.