three dollars, and, later, two more machines almost as good cost twenty-five dollars. During the three months of class work, about thirteen dollars has been spent on small supplies, and we expect to close the class for the summer with about $125 left to make a fresh start in the fall.

The first two weeks of class work we made up aprons and underwear without charge in order to advertise the work and to get materials for the girls to work on without extra expense to the department. Since then we have had no difficulty in keeping the girls well supplied with work though almost no advertising has been done except through the girls in the other classes. The students have also come to us principally in the same way; three or four came in response to an advertisement in the "Want" columns of the daily papers, but that advertisement we ran only one week because it seemed best not to encourage the class to become very large till the work had passed the stage of being an experiment. There seems now no reason why the class should not be considerably increased next winter.

Far greater than any financial difficulty has been that of establishing regular attendance upon class work, and we have made and hold to rather rigidly, the rule that a girl who is absent more than twice in any one month shall forfeit her place in the class. This has been necessary almost more on account of the parents' attitude than because the girls themselves under-estimated the opportunity offered them. We have had. too, to face the problem of the temptation which comes to a girl to leave class as soon as she can get work in a shop at very little more than she has earned before. To a girl who has never earned more than four dollars or four and a half dollars a week an increase of a dollar means a good deal. Therein, however, lies one of the advantages in our carrying only morning work. If we can help

a girl to get employment during her afternoons and her two free days at the rate of a dollar a day, we can hold her almost indefinitely. And it has been quite possible to do this, for, as we estimated, the demand for plain. sewing in the homes far exceeds the supply.

S

The progress of the girls may be illustrated by the case of GS, whose highest wages before coming to us had been three and a half dollars a week selling tickets outside a moving picture show. Six weeks after joining our class all of her spare time was engaged at a dollar a day, and she has not had an idle day since. Thus she is earning four dollars a week and fast fitting herself to earn far more. There is no reason why she should not eventually make a first-class dressmaker. who could not en

B

Atirely forfeit the income of five dollars a week that she was. making in a box factory, is now engaged in our own building, waiting on table in the dining room and assisting the maid in the Domestic Science kitchen. She is receiving three and a half dollars a week, and will soon be able to command twice that in the sewing trade.

Of course some of our girls are not naturally equipped with the intelligence that will carry them far, even with the best instruction, and most of them have scant formal education. cation. The former lack we cannot supply, and can only hope to place such girls in carefully selected shops and establishments where they can earn a low living wage under better conditions than those existing in most factories. The latter need we do desire to meet, and are planning another year to give the girls instruction in business methods and English and some talks on hygiene, sanitation, etc.

Up to date the girls have worked only on cotton goods, but have made all kinds. of muslin underwear, nightgowns, kimonas, tailored waists and wash dresses. The teacher in

charge has drafted all patterns and the work has been held to a very high standard. The girl who will not or can not do any but slovenly work we do not want any more than we want one who cannot be depended upon in other ways, and already our work is making a great reputation for itself.

Of course this class is only in its infancy, but we feel that it is a healthy infant and a welcome one in the industrial world. The girls are happy, enthusiastic about their work, and definitely bettering their chances. in life. Their product is in demand and we are sure that the Pittsburgh Young Women's Christian Association trade class has come to stay.

鹦

The Eight-Week Club Plan for the Sake

of a Country Girl

TH

Jessie Field

HERE is just one great, underlying thing that all the girls who live in the country and in small communities need to learn and that is, the joy and the value of working and playing together. In order to learn this there must be a local leader. Now the trouble is in all too many country communities that the trained leaders have all gone away to larger places, and while there is yet much latent leadership in every neighborhood, it has not come into its own enough to be recognized. The girls who could be leaders have not had a chance to try their "leadership wings.'

So the Young Women's Christian Association again calls the attention. of all those interested in girlhood and young womanhood to the possibilities of the Eight-Week Club plan. This plan was thought of and first presented by Miss Helen Barnes, and

BLUE BILL TIME, OUT OF DOORS

has been successfully carried out. The students of the University of Texas have done, especially, fine work with it.

This year there are some new features, including a pamphlet of directions to leaders suggesting what to study, what to do and how to have a good time; there are plans for eight weeks with good books, six weeks with famous women by Miss Thomas; numerous suggestions are given for neighborhood servicehow to help the school, the church, the grange and other local institutions. A special leaflet outlining a course in Bible study is being prepared by Miss Ethel Cutler. special Certificate of Commendation for Community Service will be given to every club which does the required. work and sends in an adequate report at the end of the season.

A

Added impetus to succeed in the truest and best way in the EightWeek Club plan comes, too, from the

fact that Miss Jessie Woodrow Wilson, as a member of the Student Committee of the National Board will be the National Student Leader for the Eight-Week Clubs and will sign the club certificates.

In many localities the work of the Eight-Week Club will be the first of many steps toward the organization of future county Associations. The work outlined is strong in its appeal to the student members of our Associations and to the girls back in their home communities who have not had a chance to go to college.

The full plan as printed below has been sent out to the student Associations:

GENERAL PLAN FOR LEADERS. Members.

Girls and young women in the country and small towns.

Leaders.

Members of student Young Women's Christian Associations who possess the necessary qualifications for the Christian leadership of girls. These leaders are ap

Meetings.

At least eight meetings shall be held during the summer by each club. These meetings shall be for study, to do things, and to have a good time.

1. For the study, leaders may choose from three suggested courses:

(a) Six Bible study lessons and two on Association work, prepared in outline especially for Eight Week Clubs by Miss Cutler.

(b) Six lessons on great leaders (biographies of great women).

(c) Course in literature, for which each girl contributes a book for circulation in the group and for review in the meetings.

2. For the things to do: Study of trees, birds, plant life or some other line of nature lore; sewing, cooking, embroidery, basketry, gardening, music, etc.

3. For the good time: This should be a part of every meeting, but it is suggested that at least two sessions be all for a good time. These might be the first meeting when all the girls of the neighborhood are invited, and another meeting later planned by both the club members and the leader for all the people of the community.

from recommendations made by the cabinets of student Associations.

Motto. "Do YE THE NEXTE THYNGE."

"The girl who sees the world as a whole sees the importance of her own neighborhood in relation to the world, and knows that to bring happiness there is to make very real and definite contribution to the progress of the world. She knows, too, that whether her world be large or small, if she is working in the consciousness of her relation to universal forces, she herself is bound to become a person of power."Jessie Woodrow Wilson.

Purpose.

To bring the girls and young women in small communities together during the summer vacation season for the purpose of learning some of those things which mean a happier and more useful life; to unite them for definite service to their home neighborhoods; to learn about the work of the Young Women's Christian Association, and to be of help in bringing its opportunities to other girls in the country and small towns.

Management.

A simple form of constitution is suggested and each club may have officers of its own, but all matters of policy must be decided by the leader.

Christian Unity

at Work*

This is a full report of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America in quadrennial session at Chicago, Illinois, in 1912.

There are in many places, even among our Association workers, such vague ideas of what the Federal Council of Churches is, and as to whether it is a national movement or not, and as to the denominations which are united in the organization, that it seems wise to give a brief history of its work and aims.

This Convention report is made of a national assembly of denominational bodies joined in co-operative relationship with each other for social service in the church through the Federal Council Commission.

The Federal Council in this unity represents among others: The Presbyterian Board of Home Missions; the Methodist, Baptist, Congregationalist, Disciples of Christ, Christian Church, Society of Friends and United Presbyterian, brotherhoods for this cause, with other bodies in process of organization like the Reformed Church, the Free Baptist and the Methodist Episcopal, and it may be added that no Protestant denomination has any other than a warm

*Christian Unity at Work, edited by Charles S. Macfarland, N. Y. Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. 281 pages, $1 oo net.

spirit of interest in the work of social uplift.

These denominational departments work together in the common task of an interdenominational movement, not unlike our National Board of the Young Womens Christian Association, each denomination having a secretary, and joint secretarial conferences being held with the secretaries of the International Committee of the Young Men's Christian Association and with our own secretaries, and those of other like organizations. The necessity therefore of clearly understanding this movement of the church, which it is our aim to serve, is very evident. It is necessary for our workers to know how to engage in service with the forces of the ministry and the church in all communities where they mutually are striving to solve its problems and needs.

The Church Commission has a growing relationship with such social work as the Playground and Recreation Association, the Child Labor Committee, the Associations for Labor Legislation, and with the organizations studying preventive measures against tuberculosis and reform measures for prisons.

These are mentioned merely to give an idea of the breadth of the reach of the coming church. It would seem as if all philanthropic work, actuated as it must be, by the spirit of Christ, was, like the warp of a garment, incomplete until this unifying shuttle had woven back and forth the woof, and the fabric became one whole piece. It is just such welding together of human interests and concerns which (no matter how widely they were divided in their conceptions) makes us sure of God's hand on the reins that drive the universe. We see Old Testament and secular history, separated bits of events, cemented together into an indissoluble plan, as if we small creators brought our bits of work to our father, along with all our daily happenings, and he took ours and our brother's and said, "See now, what a beautiful thing I shall make of them all together"; with each little piece not insignificant in the whole. gives daily work a dignity, life a vision and suffering a reason which creates willingness in anyone to lend a hand with the small, that God may create the big.

It

One aspect of such a point of view one gets in this book.

still remain." That was only nine years ago, but each year he had become more and more of a living power as the "Letters," at first printed only for private circulation, become more widely known. He and R. L. S. were supposedly putting the best of themselves into other channels, the one into formal writing, the other into preaching. But the things that "still remain" and construct are what they gave of themselves in the extras of life-the unrecorded conversations, and the letters which, meant for their own friends, have since made each of them into a "little friend of all the world." Perchance it is more worth while than we can now see, to let our policies and our committees and our planning wait occasionally while we too give of ourselves in the unnecessary but perhaps more immortal "extras" such as these.

The publication this year of a new book under Forbes Robinson's name, seems to those who know his letters, like a resurrection of some of the living personality of the man who "understood more of the 'things that matter' than any man we shall ever meet.'

"The Sympathy of God" is a group of some of the young chaplain's sermons, most of them preached in country churches near Cambridge. There is little in them that is new in meat and drink, but we care for them because we feel that we personally know him, and beyond that, they have something to give us as leaders because this man was a genius in simplicity, and that is something we can all afford to learn. How many of us are big enough to get above our complexities and the snare of words and end a talk on "The Lord's Prayer" with this sort of directness:

"Go home, then, and use this prayer. The less inclined you are to use it, the more need you have to do so. Lift your heart again and again to thank Our Father. Do not think first of self or heaven or hell. Begin with God. Think about him. Live in him. Do not ask to be happy. Worship God. There is nothing worth having, but God only. 'Whom have I in heaven but thee, and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of thee.' Forget yourself. Worship God."

Those of us who have known him as the friend of Cambridge students, the scholar and spiritual advisor in his study, like to find that he can turn as easily to these simpler folk to whom he speaks of "the Father of all in this village." Scholar as he was, it was yet no wrench to him to turn the trained academic mind to a quite different audience. Why? "This was the secret of his extraordinary interest and amazing belief in nearly every one of us. He saw in us all, however ordinary, however commonplace-yes, however unlovely were our lives-something, somewhere, of Jesus Christ."

Psychology and Industrial Efficiency

When science serves man, and seeks to better the conditions of life, then we begin to see that correlation between all things which ought to exist, and which should be known to exist, but to which we are too often blind.

No one has so harnessed the science of psychology to man's burden as Professor Hugo Münsterberg, and no one has more successfully shown its ability to lift that burden than he, in applying its laws to practical affairs.

In his latest volume he considers the problem of efficiency under three headings: the best possible man; the best possible work; the best possible effect. He bases his study on the assertion that "no waste of valuable possessions (in the United States) is so reckless as that which results from the distributing of living force by chance methods instead of examining carefully how work and workmen can fit one another."

The manner in which he goes about to decide on an employee's fitness for certain lines of work is as follows. First, the particular work is studied. For instance, he discovered that the telephone girls have to go through fourteen psychological processes for every call, from the time the speaker takes down the receiver to the cutting off of connection. A girl is supposed to handle one hundred and fifty calls an hour, she can satisfactorily answer two hundred and twenty-five, and this number not in frequently reaches as high as three hundred. This whole function was resolved into its elements involving memory, attention, intelligence, exactitude and rapidity, and each of these mental acts was tested according to well-known laboratory methods. The results bore out the Bell Telephone Company's knowledge as to the ability of some of their employees whom they had take the professor's tests, and this, with other successes have established beyond peradventure the lack of the necessity for industrial "round pegs in square holes."

Professor Münsterberg advocates governmental stations with expert psychologists to give tests to decide the kind of mental qualities different persons possess and thus facilitate their decisions as to life professions. He believes in vocational training, but thinks the right child should be scientifically guided into the right vocation.

This gives much food for thought. How necessary and important would the services of an expert psychologist be in institutions desiring to help in producing national efficiency?

* Psychology and Industrial Efficiency, by Hugo Munsterberg. Houghton-Mifflin, $1.50 net.

The Standard of Living "This investigation
Among Workingmen's
Families in New York has aimed only to show
City*
wherein the actual con-

tent of the standards (what things, and how many, are had) varies as the two jaws of a vise, wages and prices, contract and relax; and to show how the possibilities of human well-being are modified in consequence of the movement of the external forces that set the economic limits of the standard of living."

Three hundred and ninety-one families of an average size of five persons were chosen for this investigation. Of these, three hundred and eighteen had incomes from $600 to $1,100; twenty-five were below and forty-eight above this amount, but the main attention is devoted to those with incomes between these figures.

Of these families' nationalities, the larger number were Americans, the rest 1oreign-Teutons and Irish being next as to number.

Except for giving the reader this idea of le scope of the research, little more need be said regarding the numerical facts which the book contains, general conclusions being more the aim of the review.

For those interested in the Commission on Thrift and Efficiency the book is of especial value, for, while New York rent and food prices do not prevail over all the United States, yet a general average could easily be struck by almost any city wishing to know how best to help families to spend. Besides this possibility, the appendix gives a form of the questionnaire which was used by the workers in gathering these facts together, and also a summarized report is given of such places as Buffalo, Syracuse, Elmira, Rochester, Victor, Richfield Springs, Albany, Whitehall and Honeoye Falls, including Frank Tucker's address which caused the investigation, Dr. Underhill's report on the nutrition investigation, and a translation from Le Play, with a valuable bibliography. These places could safely be regarded as fairly typical of other places of the same size, with similar industrial interests.

it is rather humiliating to learn that bath-tubs and toilets, "luxuries" in the sense in which Dr. Patten uses the term, are most numerous among the colored people and the Russians. Among many others they have not even been included as a standard of living.

One of the causes mentioned for insufficient provision of food by a family is the desire to save, even at the cost of inadequate nutrition. And one learns in. this book that many are inadequately nourished, whether for this or other reaAs one mother touchingly expressed *The Standard of Living Among Workingmen's Families in New York City, by Robert Coit Chapin. New York Charities Publication Committee. 370 pages, $2.00.