SE29 September) i9iO THE HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN Department of Surveys and Exhibits Russell Sage Foundation New York Price, 30 Cents SE29 September, 1920 THE HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN THE STORY OF A CAMPAIGN OF HEALTH EDUCATION WHICH INCLUDED THE PLATFORM USE OF MECHAN- ICAL DEVICES AND DRAMATIC ACTION BY EVART G. ROUTZAHN ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR. DEPARTMENT OF SURVEYS AND EXHIBITS RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION Department or Surveys and Exhibits Russell Sage Foundation New York Modern health ideas have to be spread under conditions as they exist. Most of the traveling be- tween cities in China is done by boat, but local transfer is by man-power. The 38 boxes containing the health exhibit and lecturing apparatus, set on poles attached to one-wheel vehicles, are in charge of a dozen to 15 coolies. The 38 boxes weigh two and a half tons. THE HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN I BRIDGING THE GAP When anyone succeeds in bridging the gap between a fund of information and the minds and hearts of people whose interest in it is sought, we sometimes say that he “gets it across.” We recognize that he has accomplished a difficult feat and should like to understand how he does it. Those who have heard Dr. W. W. Peter describe his health education campaigns in China are enthusiastic in stating their belief that he succeeds in getting his information about health questions all the way across to his audiences, which is to say that he gets attention for it; makes it intelligible and interesting to persons unfamiliar with the subject; puts it up in packages that are conveniently carried in the memory and, most important of all, gets it into use. For the benefit of the many social workers who have a similar problem of making social information interesting, we have asked him to tell how he does it. The account of the traveling health campaigns contained in the following pages is made up from stenographic notes taken as Dr. Peter talked, with his characteristic picturesqueness of expression, to small audi- ences, or as he answered our questions during informal conver- sations. Dr. Peter is engaged in promoting public health in China through a campaign of education. The work was started in 1912 through the organization of a health division in the Lecture De- partment of the National Committee of the Young Men’s Chris- tian Association of China. In 1915, when the China Medical Missionary Association created the Council of Public Health, the work was enlarged. A year later, on the appointment of a Public Health Committee by the National Medical Association, the three 3 HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN organizations united in forming a Joint Council on Public Health Education, under whose auspices the health campaigns were di- rected by Dr. Peter. In 1919 the China Christian Education Association joined the council. The feature of Dr. Peter’s work that has aroused the most interest on the part of many American audiences that heard him during his leave of absence in this country was the use of dramatic action and mechanical and electrical devices to illustrate his talks. A number of these “object lessons,” as he called them, are described in considerable detail in the following pages. His illustrated talk, supplemented by an exhibit, forms the central feature, the “big show” around which an intensive campaign to get a public health movement started in a given city is built up. In organizing the campaign in each city. Dr. Peter has developed many other features which, though more familiar to us than the object lesson talk, are equally significant as illustrations of good campaign methods. For example, the intensive training of a “health faculty,” a happy title for the group of exhibit explainers, has been developed with a full recognition of the value of such a trained body of local helpers both to the campaign itself and to the future of the health movement in the community. The advertising value of an unusual incident or circumstance, such as the unique method of transporting the exhibit employed or the accident of a lecture hall with a mysterious exit, is quickly per- ceived and turned to account. These and many other features of his campaigns, as Dr. Peter describes them, tell how but they do not tell why he gets his mes- sage across. Those who have met him and heard him speak will probably say that the reason why is personality, ingenuity, a keen sense of humor, a thorough knowledge of his subject, and enthu- siasm. Personality certainly plays an important part, but as we listened to Dr. Peter, as he talked about his problem and his needs, we felt that there were still more important explanations for the unusually good work that he does. Perhaps Dr. Peter is merely lucky in having a task so overwhelmingly large that he feels that he and his associates with all their resources are, as he expressed 4 HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN it, “like an ant grabbing the leg of a beetle and trying to move it.” At any rate, this conception of the size of his task has led him to feel the need at each step of having some immediate achievable objective to cling to, and of measuring each thing that he does by its relation to that objective. Then, again, for many of us who have information to give, our audiences are so familiar to us — just fellow-citizens and perhaps even neighbors — that we assume, somewhat rashly perhaps, that we know all we need to know about their point of view and in- terests. But when one undertakes, as Dr. Peter is doing, to influence people of another race and language to make radical changes in their habits, the matter of understanding the audience becomes obviously of great importance. And so Dr. Peter has devoted much time and attention to learning all he could about the Chinese; their interests, habits, needs, desires and prejudices. A third advantage possessed by Dr. Peter was that he did not know a lot about educational and publicity methods, but under- standing very well what he wished to accomplish, he was from the beginning extremely critical of his own methods. The campaign plan had reached the form described here be- fore Dr. Peter left China for war work in France. It reached this stage, so he tells us, only after a great many failures, and after much scrapping of pet ideas and projects which experimenting had proved unsuccessful. Dr. Peter is now again in China, where he is studying and plan- ning, testing and discarding, ever bettering his approach to the minds and lives of his audiences. In a letter which he wrote on the way back he says: “ In divers ways we have been too compli- cated in times past. Unconsciously, I fear we gloried in ‘showin ’ them how much they didn’t know. I shall go in for simplicity more and more, fewer subjects, and more work on our part to prepare the appeal these subjects hold for the gropers for light.” 5 HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN II DR. PETER’S OWN STORY If it is decided to hold a campaign in a city, says Dr. Peter, the local people must be responsible for organizing it and for meeting all expenses. We have a handbook or manual called “How to Hold a Success- ful Health Campaign,’’ and when an invitation to conduct a cam- paign comes from a city and we feel they are ready for it, we send them a copy of this book. It is written in Chinese and is accom- panied by a typewritten copy in English. In this book we name a few cardinal points. One is that a campaign is possible only when the influential people of the city back it. If the city is a provincial capital, the campaign must have the support of the key men in government, business, educa- tion, etc. These key men decide the time and place for the ex- hibit, raise the money, and assume full responsibility for it. Securing Attention Through a Local Committee With the handbook we send a collection of pictures, which gives a better idea than would all our letters on how things have been done in other cities. We also send a box of 50 lantern slides so that the local committee can hold a meeting and explain the plan to a larger group. The first crack out of the box is sub rosa. Nobody on the out- side knows anything about what is going on. The committee of the king pins is organized quietly, and when they are ready, any announcement they make is listened to all over the city, since they are a very representative group. This pinnacle group is often composed of men who meet for the first time in their lives to discuss a common problem. In China the people are divided into classes as separate and distinct as though they lived in separate, metal compartments. There is no social consciousness, no definite attempt to mold public opinion as there is in America. We have not reached that stage yet. We have settled in the lowlands 6 HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN and in the highlands of social life. Things are as they are because they are. Who is he that will make out of a valley a mountain? But we are finding out that there are plenty of men willing to get together on the things on which they can agree. They can- not agree on religion; they won’t agree on business. But here Some Facts “On Their Way” General Wang and his staff of officers control the police matters, includ- ing health regulations of over 30 million people in Kwangtung Province, China. The General's pockets may be seen bulging with health pamphlets given him when his party spent three hours examining the health exhibit and sitting through the ninety-minute demonstrated health lecture in Canton during the public health campaign. In one week 21,129 people attended 34 meetings. is something that concerns all of us — national health. This is a striking thing — men who never worked together before now are team-working enthusiastically. What’s more, it is good adver- tising. This group issues invitations which are distributed like Liberty Bonds: through the police, the ministers, the educators, 7 HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN the military commander. I can tell how successful a campaign will be by the market price of the free tickets! They are given free but it is very hard to get one. You have to do something or be somebody, at least potentially, to get one. This invitation has behind it the best and biggest men of the city. So you are not likely to refuse one. Everybody who is anybody will be there and you will kick yourself if you don’t go. First we want the officials; the men who will probably be the succeeding officials are the ones we want next. I was satisfied at one time to get only the office holders together, but in later campaigns I found the fellows who were then in the limelight had never heard of me. The commissioner of education is on the committee and he invites the principals of the public schools. Missionaries also come and all teachers and all students. We do not send invitations to individual students. The commissioner of education sends word to the principal that “on Tuesday after- noon your school will be there.’’ On the first day the principal comes by invitation and on a later day he comes by order. The chief military men come, particularly the officers in training. Sometimes the committee gets away from us. The commissioner of education brings so many schools, the police commissioner brings his whole force, and the military commander 'so many soldiers that it is impossible to accommodate them all. Advertising the Campaign: Sandwich Men Although the audience is always a picked one, the opportunity to spread the message to many others who should but cannot hear the lectures or see the exhibits is not overlooked. We want our health campaign to be the topic of conversation on the streets and in the tea shops. We want even the people who cannot come to the exhibit to see our procession, to know that we are in town, and to wonder what we are going to do. Then, when the folks who have seen the exhibit tell these others what they have learned, they will be in a receptive frame of mind. Our advertis- ing has prepared their minds and when they meet the fellow who has seen the whole program they readily swallow his talk. 8 HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN In one city the sandwich men who carried placards telling about the campaign were first lined up every morning as you see them The Health Show is Here Sandwich men lined up ready to form a procession through the main street to advertise the campaign. in the pictures above, and then split up into squads and sent through the city. It was a brand new stunt in China. The 9 HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN people had never seen men carrying sandwich boards or wearing funeral-like uniforms bearing printed matter about health and life. These announcements read somewhat as follows: Health Exhibit Health Meeting A great public health meeting will be held in the Temples of Earth and Agriculture Come to the For- under the auspices of bidden City — if you the Ministry of the can get a ticket. Interior. See the Newspapers. Health? Have You Got It? Has China Got It? Come to the Meet- ings — with a proper ticket. In addition to carrying the signs, the men occasionally livened things up by shouting out the news. I always favor that be- cause the percentage of illiteracy is so high. Getting the Campaign Talked about in Advance Our method of transporting the exhibit from the boat or the train that brings it to town to the hall is another form of adver- tising. We have 38 boxes all painted black. The red triangle inside a circle is on the sides of each. The name of the organ- ization in Chinese and in English is there also. We pack one large box and two small boxes on a cart. It takes 82 coolies to 10 HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN carry this consignment through the streets. We have no signs explaining what we are going to do, nor do we advertise where we are going. My two Chinese assistants spend perhaps half an hour telling the coolies all about the big show. The coolies have a habit of making up verses and chanting them in a chorus that they keep time to in their dog-trot through the streets with their burdens. When the procession goes through the streets carrying our exhibit material in carts, the coolies, who seldom stop chant- ing, shout out their chorus about our show. This gives the crowds that gather plenty to talk about. We couldn’t have better advertising than that. Thousands of people learn about us and in a manner they do not quickly forget. We take advantage of any circumstance that can be turned to account in attracting attention to the campaign. The picture on page 12 shows a building where the exhibition was held in one city. The entrance was on one street but the exit was at the rear of the building on to another street. So we put up a sign over the structure calling it “The door where you go in but do not come out.” This was a deep mystery to the people who gathered in great crowds to watch the visitors disappear into this dangerous place, and while they -watched they asked each other what was going on there and learned a little about the health idea. An amusing incident in this connection was our experience in attempting to get a picture of the crowd in front of this building. The photographer waited from early morning until late afternoon hoping for a chance to get a good picture of the front of the building, which he thought his instructions required. Finally in desperation he called a policeman to drive the people away! In his efforts to get the crowd out of his way he was chased off the street, his camera upset, and he was nearly mobbed. The Campaign Program During a week’s campaign five of the six days are devoted to talks to men on national health as a means of securing national strength. On the sixth day a woman talks to the women on the care of their babies. She uses a real baby to demonstrate bathing II 12 Here over nineteen thousand people saw the exhibit during three days in the International section of Shanghai. This happened just before the annual rate-payers’ meeting (mostly foreigners). The year before they had voted down an appropriation for a tuberculosis sanatorium extension to the municipal hospital. After this and other educational work was done, these same rate payers voted about $75,000. See page 11. HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN the baby. A health faculty of women assists her in explaining the exhibit. There are three stages to our program: first, the exhibits; second, the meeting and lecture; and third, the stereopticon illustrations. We often have three halls: one with plenty of light where we may have the right of way to build shelves, set up booths and fixtures, etc. ; a second building where we can accom- modate a large audience and can build a special platform ; a third, where we can show lantern slides which we generally use in the evening. We need a wellknown place with a good reputation ; centrally located with reference to Shank’s mares; accessible from a court- yard; simple, with not too many twists and turns; with plenty of light and air; heat, no matter. In Hangchow we were in a compound where so many buildings had been put up through the years without plan, that a visitor going through the narrow, tortuous passageways of the compound asked, “Did anyone ever get lost here and starve before he was found?” The exhibit and meeting are held in the morning and afternoon, and now and then in the evening. Usually the lecture and lantern slides are given in the same building. We have had as many as six meetings during a forenoon and afternoon. The same lecture is repeated for each audience. There is more than one advantage in standardizing the lecture. Once my voice gave out and I went to the chairman in great distress to explain that the lecture would have to be called off. “Oh, that’s all right,” he said cheer- fully. “Dr. Chuan will give it — he has heard you several times.” To my astonishment Dr. Chuan reproduced not only my words and my use of apparatus, but he even used many of my gestures. The exhibit takes an hour and a half to see and then the people listen to the lecture, which takes another hour and a half. While the lecture is going on, a second group is going through the ex- hibit. This program can be continued until the staff grows tired. Three hours is a weakness, but I have found it exceedingly difficult to make the time any shorter. There are, however, redeeming features. One is variety. Another is physical en- 13 HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN vironment — the people walk around. A third is that they pass through the hands of many different men. No man holds them longer than a few minutes. After they have spent an hour and a half walking about, seeing the whole exhibit, they are generally tired, and when they enter the lecture room are glad of the opportunity to rest a few minutes while the stragglers find seats. Then I come along and talk, but more than half of my talk is illustrated by means of apparatus. Thus people do not lose in- terest, for they have opportunity to use not one but all their senses, sight, hearing, smell (the acetylene I use in some of my apparatus satisfies that) , and taste, as I give them tea. The lecture demonstration is staged in a way that will corral the attention of the audience. They come to see and hear that foreigner on the platform. But he may tire them with his poor Chinese, or for one of a dozen reasons they may begin to lose in- terest. Their eyes would then stray off to the sides and rear of the platform. Chinese buildings have a lot of fascinating archi- tectural gimcracks, scroll work, pictures, writing and whatnot to compete with a lecturer. Hence the blue and gray curtains all thfe way across the zone of horizontal sight in front of the would-be wanderers. They have to be plumb discouraged over a lecture to hang their gaze for long on a blue curtain. In the meantime, for the performance is all a moving stream, more than an hour long, something is liable to happen there in the center to bring them back. “Those curtains? What’s behind them? They cover something. We cannot see. We will wait. By and by the foreigner will come to it.’’ The Message During my last two years in China I traveled 22,600 miles in the interest of public health. I visited 13 of the 18 provinces. I came into contact with the coolie on the street, the merchant in the shop, the teacher in the school, the officers of the army, the governors of provinces, and twice with the President of the nation. I drank tea with them all, and, being a man at least of linguistic bravery, I talked with them all. I found them primarily inter- 14 ^ cS O bjO c 3 C ^ XI u . e <= S c nj ? g 4) 1- nj w (U t; a 2 ox ^ o2 •S 3 a ^•£ 2 .. S til X .2 m " s ^ tu X ni -a . , P y.^ X *-* V- O 3 <3 b/) c/5 C_J ^ c; -O 0) 2 ^ S2 - "rt S ^ ^ ^ G i_. o3 o _ a A, ^ CJ cd ^ u. ^ 3 1:3 (u »— ’ •-. . QJ rt Ic H . bn ■‘^ bfl e oj . G *r G .> o G‘> O .G biO u sz: ^ o G t>H o 3: G ^ tn bjO . bxi ^ 15 o c G g G ? o ^ *^3 "£ 5 03 >^JZ ‘"S ^ 2 c: -sll > ^ *5 XI ^ ^ I _ o ^ E -a O O O) cd "O X cn c/5 H S’S Q .2 'S. D aj - — X X S " « " 1-. X y_> ■S S ed cd S Q, U ^ X ^ c ^xg 15 HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN ested in one subject — national strength. What a man did for his living determined what lay in the outer field of his consciousness, but that constituted merely a starting point leading to the thing in the inner field of his mind — national strength. It was this discovery that led me to exclude all other subjects in my public work and to speak only on “The Relation of National Health to National Strength.’’ The demonstrated lecture consists in making out a case for this proposition, and every step in the argument takes into account some widely held prejudice or belief or trait which needs to be reckoned with. The Demonstrated Lecture: First the Death Rate The first proposition is: “Every Strong Nation Has a Small Death Rate and Every Weak Nation a Large Death Rate.’’ I tell my audience that weak nations have a large death rate. Sus- piended from the ceiling is a rack. A curtain opens and a box, which is high up near the rack, drops down. As it falls pictured skulls appear one under the other. The first skull has its profile toward the audience, the second one is turned a little more for- ward, the third one still more forward, and so on until the last one faces the audience. On the reverse side of each skull is the Chinese character “Death,’’ and instead of the whole strip of skulls turning, by an ingenious Chinese device each skull flops over in turn. This string of skulls represents the number of deaths per thousand in a weak nation. “Let me demonstrate that strong nations have a small death rate.’’ A curtain parts and only a few skulls drop. This is America with a death rate of 15 per 1,000, then comes England with 16 per 1,000, Germany 18, India 33 per 1,000, and disturbed Mexico with 35 per 1,000. I bring out the point that a strong nation spends a great deal of money learning what causes the deaths in its country and how to prevent at least some of them and lessen the death rate. Weak nations do not know why their people die. They accept the deaths as God’s will and think no more about the matter. In my talk I say, “Does anyone here know what the death rate is in China?’’ i6 HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN Nobody knows, and after an impressive pause I tell my audience that according to the average of all the different rates which I have been given during the last two years by both foreign and Chinese authorities, it is 40 per 1,000. And 40 skulls are dropped. The skull device is a sort of Jacob’s ladder, made up of a number of small wooden boards, of about letterhead size, held together by bands of steel tape, similar to a toy not uncommon in America. When the top board is given a half turn along its horizontal axis, the tape permits the others to drop one after another until all have exposed their reverse face to the spectators. The clattering noise and the jumping-jack movement that the apparatus makes is a fine thing with which every once in a while to wake up a sleepy audience. But a high death rate is not such a shock after all, because all Chinese will tell you that China is overpopulated. “Why, Dr. Peter,” protested one member of an audience, “we depend on fever and plague and smallpox to keep us from crowding each other off into the ocean ! ” Is China Overpopulated? So then, I take up the question, “Is China overpopulated?” Here are two tables and on each there are 80 men in rows of ten. The table at the left is Europe and the one at the right is Asia. The tops of the tables are square and represent one square li, which equals one-ninth of a square mile. With these tables can be demonstrated the fact that China is not overpopulated. China ranks only tenth in density of population among the great nations. 1 Then when I tell my audience that there are 13 people per square li in Europe and only 6 per square li in Asia, 13 figures appear on one table and 6 on the other. I clear the tables again and say, “In Germany before the war [there were 33 people per square li,” and 33 men pop up. Next, England, 40; little Hol- land, 53; and Belgium, 73. “What country would you like to '“China: an Interpretation,” James Whitford Bashford (Abingdon Press). 17 03 g 3 ^ .3 o) 3 S Cu zs S. ^ jsM “"o 2 c i o “•43 3 : "3 M a. <= S ’B m 'r! bfli? .3 *tn s c 3 0 ) a-a 1) O J3 .3 MI" > c -o g g --§_^ a«-g i u'^ tn u ^ O) ^ ^ 0 ; ffj •W 1- C3 “U 0.2'^ o u ® T3 O ti ^ W3 C« &■(/)(-« cd L. 03 !S .ti ^ e c 5 rt o O (/) u. u •- •£ii rt ^ 3 ..-T d. cfl ^ ^ a> c; 3 w <1J h 03 S c ^ - 30 * (U TJ O cfl O 3 ^.2 J.5 d 18 HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN know about next?” This is always a safe question because a Chinese audience will always answer, “Japan.” I turn to the table representing all of Asia and I pull the lines — • 28 men pop out. Then India, 20. Then I ask, “What country next?” and of course the answer is “China.” At this point I always tell this story: At one of my lectures a man said “One table not enough — want four tables. Fill them all full men and then only you can show how China is overpopulated. Why, China IS overpopulated! We have four times the population of America.” Then I pull out a book; it is convincing to consult a book when there is any doubt about your facts, and say: “In 1910 your government conducted a census and here are the figures.” If I have the time I have a man figure the problem out on an abacus. I demonstrate that in China there are 11 people per square li. Although there is an unequal distribution of popula- tion, China is not overpopulated. The Foundation of National Health I have been talking about national health. Very naturally the question is coming to the Chinese mind, “What does Dr. Peter mean by national health? How do you get it? Can we send to America for it? What sort of a foundation does it rest on?” When I say a certain sentence a curtain back of me opens and a glass box comes into my hand. “Let the glass box represent National Health. The characters for National Health are written on the box in red. I want to build a foundation of Na- tional Health before your eyes. Now when I have the proper foundation for it this box will light up.” I ask “Can you name one stone in this foundation of National Health?” And from a Chinese audience the answer is always “Money.” My man “Friday” brings out the second box, which has on it the Chinese character for money, and I approach it and place the glass box on it as if my life depended on the glass lighting up. Nothing happens, so “Saturday” brings out a box labeled “Special Health Laws,” the contents of which I explain briefly and place under 19 20 Dr. Peter has built this pyramid, representing the foundation of national health, before the eyes of the audience. He has now triumphantly demonstrated that the light which represents national health will shine only when the last and most important stone, namely, public opinion, is added. (The pyramid here shown is a miniature of the one used regularly by him in China.) HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN “ Money” ; but the glass at the top remains dark. Next comes a larger box labeled “Education” — not reading, writing, and arith- metic, but trained leadership. That box is so heavy that it takes two men to bring it out. It is placed under the other three, but still no light. “What else is needed?” The fifth box is brought out. It is called “Public Opinion.” It is placed under the others and, behold ! the glass box glows with light ! Next I ask, “How is China going to get National Health and everything you have been dreaming about?” A piece of appa- ratus comes forth on a tripod. There are two sets of wheels, one inside the other. The largest one, which forms the outer rim, represents the objective. We must make this wheel turn. The inner wheel is not solid. It is composed of several small wheels. These are the different classes of people in the community, the soldiers, educators, officials, etc., and as these small wheels turn they represent the daily grind. (Some of them touch the big outer wheel but they do not touch each other properly.) These are the people working individually and making no united effort toward the goal they are seeking. If they will work together the big wheel will turn and they can obtain National Health. Then the two sets of wheels lock, the small ones turn round and round and the big one moves with them. This apparatus can be worked with a motor and belt or by hand. China’s Load A man comes out on the platform bending over under the weight of a big load on his back. As he walks across the stage I say, “That is China. See how bowed and bent he is. What can we do to lighten his load?” I open the man’s sack and pull out a box marked “Smallpox”; and then I pull out another marked “Cholera.” The man straightens up a bit and I pullout “Plague” and several other diseases and he stands nearly erect. (I don’t pull out “Tuberculosis.” Nobody has yet disposed of that any- where. I leave that and some others.) It actually is a heavy sack because the boxes are really heavy. As the blocks are lifted 21 HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN out they are passed through the curtains and stacked up on the floor to form a base on which a man can stand. “That is China’s big burden. You can lessen the burden but that is up to you. Would you like to see China fifty years from now? Don’t be hopeless about it. Just because China is stoop- ing under a large pack now is no reason why it should be bent Shelter the B.\by The first of these candles, representing infancy, is long and burns with a dim light. The second, representing middle age, is half burned and has a brilliant light. The third one is old age. It is only a stub and burns with a dim light. “Infancy and old age are like candles newly lit and nearly burned out.” These are the two periods when life is most easily snuflfed out. down always. You can make smallpox vaccination compulsory; you can build barriers around plague and cholera.” “Would you like to see China as it will be after you have re- moved its burden?” With dramatic effect curtains are thrown aside and a man who is in superb physical condition and is full of 22 HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN “pep” appears. He carries a small load, because every nation has its burden of ill health, and he stands on top of the big load he formerly carried. A great Chinese flag hangs over his head and with the lights in the audience dim, he makes an impressive pic- ture. That is the end of my lecture. Additional Object Lessons If I can find an object lesson right in the city in which I am talking, of course the impression is much stronger. In Canton I discovered an old, blind, pock-marked beggar who sat all day at a bridge. He had been sitting there for years and everyone in Canton knew him. We hired him to come to the Young Men’s Christian Association building just as he was. I emphasized that he was not to wash or change his appearance in any way. On the inducement of more money daily than he could beg in several days he came, but very much frightened. He was to be the object lesson for smallpox vaccination, and when I brought him out on the platform he created a sensation. He was poor and ignorant, and by questions and answers through an interpreter I brought out the fact that if he had been educated and had been vaccinated he would have escaped smallpox and today might be selling silks and possibly be a rich man. His sons were also handi- capped because of his ignorance. It weakens the city of Canton to have such a thing attack the people over and over again. Having an Objective Every city needs a general interpretation of the health problem, but in addition we always have a very definite objective. No campaign should be held unless there is a definite objective for it. We are there to help construct something. The definite objective may be one of several things. In Canton it was to promote vaccination for smallpox. The governor had given $10,000 to a Chinese hospital, asking the authorities to use the money in promoting vaccination. Before our campaign the greatest number that came to be vaccinated in one day was ninety-two. The day after the campaign over 800 people were vaccinated. 23 HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN If you have one campaign with a definite objective that is actually achieved, you really get further than if you have six or eight campaigns with weak objectives, each going off half-cocked. Our biggest safeguard is to make sure we know what we’re going out for as a campaign objective. If there is the right objective there will be the right follow-up work. Our Health Faculty One of the most important steps toward getting lasting results from our campaign is the organization in advance of what we call the Health Faculty. This is made up of students from local colleges who are brought together primarily to explain the exhibits. This method of procedure was a development. The first ex- hibit we conducted had no explainers. I rushed around like a chicken without a head and tried to explain it to the whole bunch. From that small and shameful beginning the health faculty started. What I am giving you now is not the first or second plan; it is the ninth or tenth. We do not follow this plan, exactly, all the time, as we often have many obstacles. We make our plan to fit the circumstances. In organizing the health faculty we always depend upon a local man. We organize this group on a military basis with a captain at the head and lieutenants under him. I don’t train the faculty. I train the men who train the faculty. On the first day we get them all together, make them sit down, and explain the whole campaign to them. Then perhaps four or five of us take them to the hall where the exhibits are set up and let them read the captions. When you have 50 in your faculty you take around never more than ten— in five groups. Usually I take the first group and set the pace and then the lieutenants follow along. After this we test them out to see how much they understand. If, as a result of the test, we find that our faculty understand little of what they have read, we know that the busy business man will understand nothing, and we give them another dose. On the second day we start pounding the stuff in by sections. 24 HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN Members of the Health Faculty “Notice that these fellows are wearing badges which we give them as recognition. We make them feel that it is an honor to be on our commit- tee, although, when they return to school, they have to work harder than ever to make up for the time they lost.” 25 HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN We give each man a different section to explain. A man may, if he desires, exchange sections on the quiet with another fellow. We finish the sectional work on the third day and then the lieuten- ants conduct hearings. A few people are invited to these hearings and the faculty explain the exhibits to them. In instructing the faculty we emphasize several points. We give each man a pointer and tell him that it should be held in his left hand, leaving the right hand free to be used in emphasizing his statements. He must not look at the chart he is explaining but should keep his eyes on the people to whom he is talking. Then he must concentrate on the men who are sincerely trying to understand him. There are always some in each group of ten who do not need much help, but the explainer should direct his talk to the men who need help. He should talk on schedule time. He must know how many words should be said on each chart or subject; He must keep his crowd with him. He must not allow tw'o or three to lag behind to look at the first thing after he has gone to the second. If a man cannot hold his crowd to- gether from the very first, he is no good. He must be master of them, keep them with him on the first exhibit, push them to the second, lug them to the third, and drive them to the fourth. Otherwise the procession will be broken up and those who lag behind will miss much of the exhibits farther on. The explainer should deal with one point at a time and hammer that in. In Tientsin our organization was more complicated. There we had a different health faculty for every meeting. Mr. Nipps had charge of them. He saw even more than I had seen. To organ- ize a “close corporation’’ health faculty of a captain, a few lieu- tenants, and a few score of helpers would rob 450 men of the chance to get this inside dope. Mr. Nipps told me that he was willing to do all the work if I would allow him to have a separate faculty for each meeting. He organized that thing so carefully that we left 500 students in Tientsin with the message. In Changsha, where we taught 75 men, I should say that to do this was of more permanent value than to reach the 30,000 people who passed through the hall and spent only a little time at each 26 HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN exhibit. By thoroughly teaching these 75 men we threw mustard seed all over the place. Of course it is a fine thing and it gives you a fine sensation to have thousands of people before you to hear you talk, but the big thing really is to leave a few men, such as the 75 in Changsha, well informed on your subject and im- pressed with the need of carrying on the work begun during the campaign. The thousands who come and see and listen become « then the prepared ground for the health faculty members to cul- tivate after the coolies have toted our exhibit cases out of the city. In addition to the health faculty we have a group of ushers. These ushers, being at the exhibit all the time, get a little more “inside knowledge’’ than do the people who come through only once. The Chinese, like the rest of us, are proud to pass on their superior knowledge. So the ushers, too, help the good work along after we leave the city. In each city we must leave footprints in granite, and we expose the students in our health faculties so frequently and get them to absorb so much of our interpretation, commit them so publicly as exponents that we leave behind us a group of men w'ho will con- tinue to spread our information after we are gone. Our whole method is as yet an unfinished and developing one. From the beginning we have been experimenting, scrapping ideas and pieces of apparatus as we found better ones. I began the demonstrated lectures because I found that large numbers of the people were not interested in unbroken talking. They did not remember what they heard. How Apparatus is Made The chief part of the apparatus used in the exhibits is made at the Young Men’s Christian Association national headquarters by the Chinese staff. Most of these men could neither read nor write. Two of the Chinese staff travel with me to set up material and make new pieces as they are required. Much of the appara- tus that I have described I may not use again. Every audience helps one to learn how to do things better, and new ways of show- 27 HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN ing the same old ideas are constantly being worked into shape and tried out in succeeding campaigns. We are always looking for new material from America. But no matter how clever an idea may seem to be, if it does not get across to our audiences we can- not use it. If our Chinese people become interested in some curious feature about a picture or an object that has nothing to do with the idea we are trying to put over, the picture and the object have no place in our campaign. Ill THE USE OF ILLUSTRATED TALKS IN AMERICA The illustrated or, as Dr. Peter calls it, the “demonstrated talk” is not a new method in this country. We are familiar with the lecturer who describes and at the same time carries out a process before the eyes of his audience. Illustrating information with pictures, or facts and ideas with charts, is also an everyday occurrence. But it is not so common a practice for speakers to give concreteness to abstract ideas with symbols as Dr. Peter has done. The method has been used to some extent in the mission- ary field, in Sunday schools, temperance work, and other move- ments. As far as we know, the members of the Y.M.C.A. lecture department in China have been pioneers in recognizing the wide range of topics and ideas that can be effectively illus- trated by platform speakers. Dr. Peter, as one of this lecture group, has made a definite contribution to the field of health education, not only by demon- strating new possibilities in the use of object lessons, but also by inventing devices that can be used practically without change in public health talks here as well as in China. Indeed, several of his devices illustrate ideas that speakers on many topics in the social welfare field have occasion to interpret to audiences. For ex- ample, his set of interlocking wheels illustrating the value of co- operation in community work; the man carrying a load repre- 28 HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN seating the diseases (or it might be any other set of handicaps) which burden a nation (or any class or group of people) ; these and others of his illustrations could be applied equally well to a great variety of fields as well as to public health. His population tables and “Jacob’s ladder’’ are graphic and interesting forms of presenting statistical facts that are adapted to many uses. But it is not necessary to borrow Dr. Peter’s exact devices. Granted that a speaker may use objects, mechanical devices, and dramatic action to enliven and add clearness to the spoken word, the only limit to varied and effective forms are the speaker’s ability and resourcefulness in producing and employing them. Any method of presenting information so that it actually “gets across,’’ calls for ability, time, thought, and money; so that to say that an illustrated talk demands these is not to suggest that it is more difficult than any other educational method. There is, of course, the danger of misusing mechanical devices or dra- matic action. It is easily possible to make either so clever that it attracts attention to itself instead of to the idea the device is supposed to illustrate; or so elaborate or complex as to obscure rather than clarify the idea. It is surprising that the object lesson talk has not been more widely used than it has, because there is much evidence that people are attracted to and respond to the combination of a good speaker and a set of stage properties. Observation of visitors at fairs and expositions shows that usually the crowd is largest and its members remain longest where a good talker is explaining an exhibit. The patent-medicine salesman has developed a con- siderable technique in using an assortment of queer objects that he spreads out on the ground or on a table or wagon, picking up one or the other to help him drive home an argument. Mr. C. H. Robertson, who was the first of the group of Y.M.C.A. lecturers in China to use this object method, has had striking evidence of its value as an aid to memory. In various parts of the world he has met people who recalled having heard five or ten years earlier his lecture on the gyroscope or on some other scientific instrument or topic, and in nearly every case they 29 HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN remembered not only the form of the lecture but much of the substance of it as well. Perhaps the most natural starting point in scheming out plans for an illustrated lecture on facts and ideas is the exhibit of ob- jects, models, electrical devices, and posters which are now so frequently displayed in a series of booths. Much material of this kind could easily be adapted in size and form to platform use. The next and most difficult step is to find and train people with the ability to talk well while they are displaying illustrative material. There is just as much reason for the thorough training and rehearsal of speakers and demonstrators of social welfare topics as for that of actors or singers. It may be that the failure to develop the object lesson method in America is due to our unwillingness to acknowledge that adults take pleasure in toys. In an article in one of our magazines describing Dr. Peter’s work, his “tinkling bells, moving dolls, and fascinating gimcracks’’ are referred to as peculiarly appropriate to the Chinese grown-ups who still enjoy these things. Perhaps the difference is that they are frank and open about enjoying them and do not feel it necessary to fall back on the American father’s excuse for going to the circus. However, the writer, in observing several audiences of sophisticated people as they listened to Dr. Peter and watched him display his novelties, decided that their attention and interest could hardly be less keen than that given by Chinese grown-ups. 30 Publicity and Education in Social Welfare Publications Prepared by Department of Surveys and Exhibits Russell Sage Foundation THE A B C OF EXHIBIT PLANNING By Evart G. Routzahn and Mary Swain Routzahn The planning, production, and use of graphic material; also the organization and management of exhibitions dis- cussed. Bibliography. Many illustrations. 275 pages. Price, $2.00 net TRAVELING PUBLICITY CAMPAIGNS By Mary Swain Routzahn Accounts of educational tours of railroad trains and motor vehicles, with suggestions on methods. 157 pages IQ illustrations Price, $1.50 net THE HEALTH SHOW COMES TO TOWN By Evart G. Routzahn How Dr. W. W. Peter planned and carried out an unusually successful campaign of health education, including the platform use of mechanical devices and dramatic action. JO pages 10 illustrations Price, 30 cents ELEMENTS OF A SOCIAL PUBLICITY CAMPAIGN By Evart G. Routzahn Consideration of the objective; the audience; the message; the materials and methods. 77 pages Price, 20 cents Send your address if you wish to be notified of other publica- tions on social publicity and popular educational methods. 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