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UC-NRLF 


$B    EhM    SfiD 


COMMUNI^    '  ''' 
CENTERJi«""« 

^^IfhatitzsandHoWto 
Oraanize  it 


HENRY  E. 

JACKSON 


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A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 


2^^ 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

WSW  YOKK  •   BOSTON  •   CHICAGO  •   DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •   SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •   BOMBAY  •   CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Lm 

TOXONTO 


THE  TWO  AMBITIONS   .    .    .   FRANK  F.  STONE 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

WHAT  IT  IS  AND 
HOW  TO  ORGANIZE  IT 


BY 

HENRY  E.  JACKSON 

Special  Agent  in  Community  Organization 

United  States  Bureau  of  Education 

Washington,  D.  C. 


Evtry  Schoolhouse  a  Community  Capitol 
mnd  every  Community  a  little  Democracy 


L.:VV: 


iSeto  gotfe 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1918 

LU  riffhte  reeorved 


13 


OOPTBiaHT.  1918 

By  the  macmillan  company 


8«t  up  »nd  electrotyped.     Published,   May.   1918 


•     •  *  •     »  !! 


THE  WHITE  HOUSE 
WASHINGTON 

March  13,  1918. 
Dear  Mr,  Chairman: 

Your  state,  in  extending  its  national  defense  organi- 
zation by  the  creation  of  community  councils,  is  in  my 
opinion  making  an  advance  of  vital  significance.  It  will, 
I  believe,  result  when  thoroughly  carried  out  in  weld- 
ing the  nation  together  as  no  nation  of  great  size  has 
ever  been  welded  before.  It  will  build  up  from  the 
bottom  an  understanding  and  sympathy  and  unity  of  pur- 
pose and  effort  which  will  no  doubt  have  an  immediate 
and  decisive  effect  upon  our  great  undertaking.  You  will 
find  it,  I  think,  not  so  much  a  new  task  as  a  unification  of 
existing  efforts,  a  fusion  of  energies  now  too  much 
scattered  and  at  times  somewhat  confused  into  one  har- 
monious and  effective  power. 

It  is  only  by  extending  your  organization  to  small 
communities  that  every  citizen  of  the  state  can  be  reached 
and  touched  with  the  inspiration  of  the  common  cause. 
The  school  house  has  been  suggested  as  an  apt  though  not 
essential  center  for  your  local  council.  It  symbolizes 
one  of  the  first  fruits  of  such  an  organization,  namely, 
the  spreading  of  the  realization  of  the  great  truth  that  it 
is  each  one  of  us  as  an  individual  citizen  upon  whom  rests 
the  ultimate  responsibility.  Through  this  great  new 
organization  we  will  express  with  added  emphasis  our 
will  to  win  and  our  confidence  in  the  utter  righteousness 
of  our  purpose. 

Sincerely  yours, 
(Signed)  WooDROw  Wilson. 
[Letter  sent  to  the  chairmen  of 
State  Councils  of  Defense] 


*'A  system  of  general  instruction,  which  shall  reach 
every  description  of  our  citizens,  from  the  richest  to  the 
poorest,  as  it  was  the  earliest,  so  it  shall  be  the  latest  of 
all  the  public  concerns  in  which  I  shall  permit  myself  to 
take  an  interest." 

Thomas  Jefferson. 


»     »   •   ,  *   • 


FOREWORD 

The  challenge  of  the  World  War  to  all 
thoughtful  people  is  to  organize  human  life 
on  saner  and  juster  lines  in  the  construction 
of  a  better  sort  of  world.  This  bulletin  aims 
to  make  a  suggestion  toward  an  answer  to  this 
challenge. 

The  sorrow  and  tragedy  of  the  war  cause 
men  and  women  everywhere  to  ask  themselves 
not  only  what  sort  of  a  world  they  ought  to 
work  for,  but  also  how  and  where  they  can  be- 
gin to  work  for  it.  To  find  a  practical  answer 
to  these  questions  is  the  persistent  prayer  of 
all  who  believe  in  democracy.  Honest  prayer 
is  the  expression  of  a  dominant  desire  for  what 
we  believe  is  best  and  also  the  willingness  to 
cooperate  in  bringing  it  to  pass.  The  follow- 
ing pages  are  addressed  to  those  who  are  will- 
ing to  cooperate  in  answering  their  own 
prayers,  to  those  who  know  what  sort  of  world 
they  ought  to  work  for  but  are  at  a  loss  to 
know  what  is  the  best  instrument  to  be  used 


FOREWORD 

for   constructing   it.     This   bulletin   suggests 
such  an  instrument. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  usually  it  is  com- 
paratively easy  to  interest  ten  men  in  an  in- 
definite scheme  about  which  they  have  nothing 
to  do  but  talk,  whereas  it  is  difBcult  to  induce 
^  one  man  to  undertake  a  more  modest  but  defi- 
'  nite  piece  of  constructive  work.     But  the  war 
i  has  awakened  the  desire  of  all  people  of  good 
will  to  do  something.     They  want  to  make  a 
motor-reaction  to  the  war's  challenge.    They 
say :     "We  see  what  needs  to  be  done.    What 
is  the  best  instrument  with  which  to  do  it? 
That  is  the  difficult  thing  to  find."     The  sug- 
gestion here  made  is  intended  for  such  people, 
I    who  have  discovered  the  futility  of  attempting 
I     to  purify  the  water  in  a  well  by  painting  the 
'    pump,  and  who  therefore  seek  a  constructive 
plan  in  the  process  of  building  a  better  world. 
The  instrument  here  suggested  is  The  Com- 
munity Center,  which  may  be  put  into  opera- 
tion anywhere,  in  city,  village,  or  countryside. 
If  we  desire  to  get  anywhere,  we  have  to  start 
from  somewhere.    The  place  to  start  from  is 
where  we  are.     The  best  point  of  contact  with 
the  world  problem,  raised  anew  by  the  war,  is 


FOREWORD 

to  be  found  in  the  community  where  we  live, 
for  the  world  problem  exists  in  every  com- 
munity in  America.  All  political  questions, 
if  considered  fundamentally,  will  be  found  to 
apply  to  human  needs  which  are  at  once  lo- 
cal, national,  and  international.  The  inter- 
national problem  is  now,  and  has  always  been, 
how  to  organize  and  keep  organized  a  method 
of  mutual  understanding  by  which  nations 
may  cooperate  rather  th^n  compete  with  each 
other.  The  national  problem  is  to  do  the 
same  for  the  social  and  economic  forces  within 
the  Nation  itself.  The  problem  in  any  local 
community  is  to  do  the  same  for  the  forces 
operating  in  that  community.  With  reference 
to  this  present  and  permanent  world  problem 
the  writer  has  attempted  to  answer  two  ques- 
tions— what  is  a  community  center,  and  how 
ought  it  to  be  organized.  He  has  endeavored 
to  make  the  answer  as  brief  as  may  be  con- 
sistent with  clearness. 

Our  three  most  urgent  national  needs  are  to 
mobilize  intelligence,  food,  and  money.  But 
it  is  not  possible  to  mobilize  them  until  we 
first  mobilize  the  people.  The  Nation's  pres- 
ent need  has  made  apparent  the  necessity  of 


FOREWORD 

organizing  local  communities.  The  Council 
of  National  Defense  discovered  it  through  its 
experience  in  the  war.  The  Bureau  of  Edu- 
cation had  begun  the  task  before  we  entered 
the  war.  These  two  organizations  have  now 
united  their  forces  for  the  accomplishment  of 
their  common  purpose  to  promote  community 
organization  throughout  the  Nation.  The 
slogan  of  the  one  is,  ''Every  school  district  a 
community  council  for  national  service." 
The  slogan  of  the  other  is,  "Every  schoolhouse 
a  community  capitol  and  every  community  a 
little  democracy." 

President  Wilson  has  clearly  indicated  the 
profound  significance  of  this  movement  in  the 
letter  he  wrote  to  commend  it.  He  elsewhere 
says  that  our  present  need  is  "to  arouse  and 
inform  the  people  so  that  each  individual  may 
be  able  to  play  his  part  intelligently  in  our 
great  struggle  for  democracy  and  justice." 
This  is  a  perfect  statement  of  the  aim  of  our 
movement.  With  the  addition  of  one  word  it 
would  be  a  complete  description  of  it.  That 
one  word  is  "organize."  The  aim  of  the 
movement — to  arouse  and  inform  the  people, 
to  enable  each  individual  to  play  his  part  in- 


FOREWORD 

telligcntly — can  be  achieved  only  when  the 
people  organize  themselves. 

The  creation  of  a  democratic  and  intelligent 
social  order  is  essentially  the  same  task, 
whether  our  approach  to  it  be  local,  national, 
or  international.  This  fact  has  been  clearly 
understood  by  thinkers  as  far  back  as  Socrates, 
who  said:  "Then,  without  determining  as 
yet  whether  war  does  good  or  harm,  this  much 
we  may  affirm,  that  now  we  have  discovered 
war  to  be  derived  from  causes  which  are  also 
the  causes  of  almost  all  the  evil  in  States,  pri- 
vate as  well  as  public."  Any  one,  therefore, 
who  attempts  to  remove  these  causes  in  a  local 
community  is  working  at  a  world  problem, 
and  he  who  attempts  to  remove  them  as  be- 
tween nations  is  obliged,  in  order  to  preserve 
his  honesty  and  self-respect,  to  make  the  same 
effort  within  his  own  nation  and  in  his  own 
community.  It  magnifies  the  value  and 
stimulates  one's  zest  in  working  for  it  to  re- 
member that  a  community  center  is  the  center  t 
of  concentric  circles  which  compass  not  only  i 
the  local  community  but  also  the  larger  com-  \ 
munities  of  the  Nation  and  the  world.  To  es-  • 
tablish  free  trade  in  friendship  in  all  three 


FOREWORD 

communities  is  the  goal  of  the  community  cen- 
ter movement. 


February  i,  1918. 


k^NRY  E.  Jackson. 


NOTE 

This  book  contains  the  reproduction  of  a 
bulletin,  published  simultaneously  under  the 
same  title,  by  the  United  States  Bureau  of 
Education.  The  Bureau  of  Education  is 
limited  by  law  to  12,500  copies  of  its  bulletins. 
But  in  its  agreement  with  the  Council  of 
National  Defense  to  promote  jointly  the  or- 
ganization of  local  communities,  it  promised 
to  print  and  distribute,  if  possible,  300,000 
copies,  so  that  each  school  district  in  the 
United  States  might  receive  one  copy.  Since 
special  funds  for  this  purpose  have  not  yet 
been  secured,  the  bulletin  is  reproduced  in  this 
form  to  make  it  more  available  for  use  in  the 
national  campaign  for  the  organization  of 
community  centers  and  community  councils. 
The  book  contains  also  an  additional  section 
describing  typical  community  centers  in  opera- 
tion. 

The  Publishers. 


CONTENTS 


The  President's  Letter 
Letter  of  Transmittal 
Foreword        .... 


I 


Part  I— WHAT  IS  A  COMMUNITY  CEN 
TER? 

The  People's  University 
The  Community  Capitol 
The  Community  Forum 
The  Neighborhood  Club 
The  Home  and  School  League 
The  Community  Bank    . 
The  Cooperative  Exchange 
The  Child's  Right  of  Way 

Part  II— HOW    TO    ORGANIZE    A    COM 
MUNITY   CENTER     . 

A  Little  Democracy  . 
Membership  in  America 
The  Community  Secretary 
The  Board  of  Directors 
The  Trouble  Committee 
Public  and  Self-support 
A  Working  Constitution 
Decrease  of  Organizations 
The  House  of  the  People 
Free  Trade  in  Friendship 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Part  III— THE    PRACTICE    OF    CITIZEN- 
SHIP     97 

The  "Common  House"     ....  97 

How  It  Works 98 

A  Village loi 

A  Country-side       ......  104 

A  Suburb 108 

A  Small  City 114 

An  Average  City 117 

A  Big  City 122 

A  State 126 

A  Half-finished  Product     .     .     .132 

"Never  so  Baffled,  But — "        .     .  135 

Lincoln's  Mistake 138 

The  Meaning  of  the  Flag        .     .  140 

Part  IV— A  SUGGESTED  CONSTITUTION  149 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


The  Two  Ambitions Frontispiece 

yAOINO 
PAGE 

A   Suggested   Symbol   for  the  use  of   Community 

Centers 39 


Shoes  which  suggest  a  social  program      ....     97 


LETTER  OE  TRANSMITTAL 

Department  of  the  Interior, 
Bureau  of  Education, 
Washington,  February  19,  191 8. 

Sir:  To  make  more  valuable  to  the  people 
those  things  from  which  the  people  are  accus- 
tomed to  derive  value  has  very  appropriately 
been  said  to  be  the  prime  business  of  legis- 
lators. That  the  schoolhouse,  whose  value  to 
the  people  is  already  great,  may  become  still 
more  valuable  to  them,  is  the  purpose  of  the 
community-organization  movement  which 
this  bureau  has  undertaken  to  foster. 

A  great  democracy  like  ours,  extending  over 
more  than  three  and  one-half  million  square 
miles  of  territory  and  including  more  than 
100,000,000  people  must  be  alive,  intelligent, 
and  virtuous  in  all  its  parts.  Every  unit  of 
it  must  be  democratic.  The  ultimate  unit  in 
every  State,  Territory,  and  possession  of  the 
United  States  is  the  school  district.  Every 
school  district  should  therefore  be  a  little 
democracy,  and  the  schoolhouse  should  be  the 


LETTER  OF  TRANSMITTAL 

community  capitol.  Here  the  people  should 
meet  to  discuss  among  themselves  their  com- 
mon interests  and  to  devise  methods  of  helpful 
cooperation.  It  should  also  be  the  social  cen- 
ter of  the  community,  vv^here  all  the  people 
come  together  in  a  neighborly  w^ay  on  terms 
of  democratic  equality,  learn  to  know  each 
other,  and  extend  and  enrich  the  community 
sympathies. 

For  this  purpose  the  schoolhouse  is  spe- 
cially fitted;  it  is  nonsectarian  and  nonpar- 
tisan; the  property  of  no  individual,  group,  or 
clique,  but  the  common  property  of  all;  the 
one  place  in  every  community  in  v^hich  all 
have  equal  rights  and  all  are  equally  at  home. 
The  schoolhouse  is  also  made  sacred  to  every 
family  and  to  the  community  as  a  whole  by 
the  fact  that  it  is  the  home  of  their  children 
and  the  training  place  of  future  citizens. 
Here  all  members  of  the  community  may 
appropriately  send  themselves  to  school  to 
each  other  and  learn  from  each  other  of  things 
pertaining  to  the  life  of  the  local  community, 
the  State,  the  Nation,  and  the  world. 

The  appropriation  of  the  schoolhouse  for 
community  uses  has  well  been  called  "a  master 


LETTER  OF  TRANSMITTAL 

stroke  of  the  new  democracy."  These  facts 
are  not  new,  but  the  emphasis  on  their  im- 
portance is  new  and  amounts  to  a  new  dis- 
covery. The  Nation's  immediate  need  to  mo- 
bilize the  sentiments  of  the  people  and  to 
make  available  the  material  resources  has 
directed  special  attention  to  the  schoolhouse  as 
an  effective  agency  ready-made  to  its  hand  for 
this  purpose.  The  national  importance  of 
this  new  organization  is  evidenced  by  the  fact 
that  the  Council  of  National  Defense  has 
planned  a  nation-wide  movement  to  organize 
school  districts  or  similar  communities  of  the 
United  States  as  the  ultimate  branches  of  its 
council  of  defense  system,  believing  that  the 
organization  of  communities  will  enable  the 
Council  of  National  Defense  to  put  directly 
before  the  individual  citizen  the  needs  of  the 
Nation,  to  create  and  unify  their  sentiment, 
and  to  mobilize  and  direct  their  efforts  for 
the  defense  of  the  Nation. 

In  order  that  this  organization  may  be  most 
effective  and  be  made  permanent,  the  council 
has  expressed  a  desire  to  cooperate  with  the 
Bureau  of  Education,  and  I  have  detailed  one 
of  the  specialists  in  community  organization  to 


LETTER  OF  TRANSMITTAL 

cooperate  with  the  council  for  the  accomplish- 
ment of  our  common  purpose.  That  the  peo- 
ple may  have  information  in  regard  to  com- 
munity organization  in  its  simplest  form,  I 
recommend  that  the  manuscript  transmitted 
herewith  be  published  as  a  bulletin  of  the 
Bureau  of  Education.  It  has  been  prepared 
at  my  request  by  Dr.  Henry  E.  Jackson,  the 
bureau's  special  agent  in  community  organ- 
ization. 

Respectfully  submitted. 

P.  P.  Claxton, 

Commissioner. 

The  Secretary  of  the  Interior. 


PART  I 
WHAT  IS  A  COMMUNITY  CENTER? 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

WHAT  IT  IS  AND 
HOW  TO  ORGANIZE  IT 

WHAT  IS  A  COMMUNITY  CENTER? 

THE  people's  university 
"All  men  naturally  desire  knowledge,"  is 
the  buoyant  sentence  with  which  Aristotle  be- 
gins his  great  book  on  Ethics.  It  states  our 
ground  of  hope  for  the  possibility  of  progress 
and  for  the  success  of  democracy.  No  demo- 
cratic form  of  government  can  long  endure 
without  popular  education  or  the  means  of 
acquiring  it.  The  first  and  chief  aim  of  the 
community  center  movement  is  to  deepen  the 
content  and  broaden  the  scope  of  the  term 
"education"  and  to  extend  the  activities  of 
the  public  schools  so  that  they  may  evolve  into 
people's  universities. 

When  it  is  remembered  that  only  lo  per 
cent  of  the  adult  citizens  have  had  a  high- 

3 


4^  „\  ,A  COMMIJNITY  CENTER 

school  education  and  only  50  per  cent  have 
ever  completed  the  grammar  grades,  it  be- 
comes apparent  that  one  of  our  greatest  na- 
tional needs  is  a  university  for  the  education  of 
grown  men  and  women.  The  public  school 
as  a  community  center  is  the  answer  to  this 
national  need.  The  community  center  move- 
ment recognizes  the  fact  that  the  mind  matures 
V.  more  slowly  than  the  body  and  that  education 
is  a  life-long  process.  While  the  public 
school  is  dedicated  primarily  to  the  welfare  of 
the  child,  it  is  becoming  daily  more  evident 
that  the  Nation's  welfare  requires  it  to  be  used 
for  adults  and  youths  as  well.  Notwithstand- 
ing the  fact  that  it  is  our  finest  American  in- 
vention and  the  most  successful  social  enter- 
prise ever  undertaken,  its  golden  age  lies  be- 
fore it.  It  is  now  being  discovered  anew  in 
its  possibilities  for  larger  public  service.  The 
;  fact  that  all  men  naturally  desire  knowledge 
»  is  the  fact  which  has  justified  the  investment 
^  of  $1,347,000,000  in  the  public  school  equip- 
ment; it  is  the  fact  which  now  justifies  the  use 
of  this  equipment  by  adults.  In  every  part  of 
the  country  there  is  a  manifest  tendency  for 
the  public  school  to  develop  into  a  house  of 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER         5 

the  people  to  be  used  by  them  for  "mutual  aid 
in  self-development."  This  is  the  significant 
fact  at  the  heart  of  the  community  center 
movement  and  the  touchstone  of  its  value  for 
the  national  welfare. 

THE  COMMUNITY  CAPITOL 
"The  walls  of  Sparta  are  built  of  Spartans," 
sang  an  old  poet.  The  walls  of  America  like- 
wise are  built  of  Americans.  The  primary  V 
function  of  the  public  schools  is  to  make,  not 
merely  good  men  and  women,  but  good  citi- 
zens for  the  Republic.  From  the  standpoint 
of  citizenship,  therefore,  every  schoolhouse 
ought  to  be  used  as  a  polling  place.  This  is 
the  first  logical  step  toward  making  it  the  com- 
munity capitol,  although  it  may  not  be  the 
first  step  chronologically.  This  use  of  the 
schoolhouse  would  save  every  State  many 
thousands  of  dollars  each  year.  When  the 
people  already  own  these  houses,  conveniently 
distributed  in  every  section  of  the  country,  why 
should  public  funds  be  wasted  in  rent  for  other 
buildings?  But  economy,  while  a  sufficient,  is 
not  the  chief  reason  for  making  the  school- 
house  a  polling  place.     The  best  reason  is  the 


6         A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

ideal  for  which  the  ballot  box  stands.  It  is 
the  symbol  of  citizenship  in  America.  As 
such  it  deserves  a  worthy  place.  In  the  last 
/  presidential  election,  President  Wilson  voted 
/  in  a  fire-engine  house  in  Princeton,  and  Candi- 
f  date  Hughes  voted  in  a  laundry  in  New  York 
J  City.  Hitherto  any  kind  of  a  place  has  been 
considered  fit  for  the  highest  act  of  citizenship. 
In  the  Hebrew  republic  the  symbol  of  the 
nation  was  a  small  richly  decorated  box  called 
the  "Ark  of  the  Covenant."  It  was  kept  in 
the  most  honored  place  in  the  national  Temple 
at  the  capital.  The  corresponding  emblem  in 
the  American  Republic  is  the  ballot  box.  It 
ought  to  occupy  a  place  befitting  its  import- 
ance. The  one  fitting  place  is  the  public 
schoolhouse,  the  community  capitol  and  the 
temple  of  American  democracy.  Moreover, 
the  voting  instrument,  which  is  the  chief  na- 
tional emblem  in  every  democracy,  should  be 
constructed  with  architectural  dignity  and  es- 
tablished permanently  in  the  schoolhouse  be- 
cause of  the  ideals  it  embodies  and  the  supreme 
function  it  serves.  It  would  thus  be  a  per- 
petual reminder  that  the  function  of  the 
school  is  to  make  citizens  for  the  Republic. 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER         7 

It  would  cause  the  question  repeatedly  to  be 
asked,  What  kind  of  school  subjects  are  best 
calculated  to  make  good  citizens?  It  would 
help  to  keep  the  curriculum  vitalized,  by  con- 
necting it  with  practical  and  national 
processes. 

It  can  continue  to  be  vital  only  by  the  con- 
tinued process  of  adapting  itself  to  meet  the 
Nation's  expanding  needs.     A  fixed  curricu- 1 
lum  is  a  false  curriculum.     The  significant  I 
fact  about  a  school  is  not  the  condition  in  j 
which  it  is,  but  the  direction  in  which  it  is' 
moving.     Its  only  safety,  like  that  of  an  indi-j 
vidual,  lies  in  moving  on.     It  will  be  stimu- 
lated to  move  on  by  making  the  practice  of 
citizenship   to  be  its  goal.     A  constant   re- 
minder of  the  practice  of  citizenship  is  the 
presence  of   the   polling  instrument  in   the 
school. 

THE  COMMUNITY  FORUM  J 

It  may  or  may  not  have  been  a  mistake  to 
have  granted  suffrage  to  the  average  man. 
An  educational  and  character  qualification  for 
voting  may  now  be  the  wiser  policy  to  pursue 
in  regard  to  both  men  and  women,  for  no 


8         A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

man  is  fit  to  govern  another  unless  he  has  sufH- 
cient  self-control  to  govern  himself,  and  yet 
no  man,  however  intelligent,  can  be  trusted  to 
govern  another  man  without  his  consent.  At 
any  rate,  universal  manhood  suffrage  is  the 
present  fact,  and  nothing  is  so  convincing  as 
a  fact.  Inasmuch  as  the  right  to  vote  on  pub- 
lic policies  is  now  in  the  hands  of  the  average 
man,  it  is  of  paramount  importance  that  he 
should  be  given  the  opportunity  to  make  him- 
self fit  to  perform  this  function  intelligently. 
This  is  the  necessity  on  which  the  community 
forum  fundamentally  rests.  It  is  a  school  for 
citizenship. 

The  community  forum  is  the  meeting  of 
citizens  in  their  schoolhouse  for  the  courteous 
and  orderly  discussion  of  all  questions  which 
concern  their  common  welfare.  A  com- 
munity may  begin  with  questions  in  which 
local  interest  is  manifest,  such  as  good  roads, 
or  public  health,  or  the  method  of  raising  and 
spending  public  funds,  or  methods  of  produc- 
tion and  transportation  of  food  products.  A 
discussion  of  these  questions  will  reveal  at 
once  the  fact  that  they  transcend  local  limits. 
A  road  is  built  to  go  somewhere,  and  it  will 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER         9 

relate  one  community  to  another.  Local 
health  conditions  can  not  be  maintained  with- 
out considering  other  localities,  for  the  causes 
of  local  disease  frequently  lie  elsewhere. 

A  local  community  pays  part  of  the  revenue 
raised  by  the  county.  The  expenditure  of 
these  funds,  therefore,  is  the  affair  of  the  local 
community.  The  same  is  true  of  the  adminis- 
tration of  State  funds.  The  question  of  pro- 
duction and  transportation  is  no  longer  re- 
garded as  a  rural  problem  or  a  city  problem, 
but  a  national  problem.  The  reason  why  no 
community  should  live  for  itself  is  because 
none  exists  by  itself.  Every  community  is  at 
the  center  of  several  concentric  circles.  The 
subjects  of  most  value  for  discussion  in  a  local 
forum  are  those  which  connect  it  with  county, 
State,  and  National  interests.  And  herein 
lies  the  educational  value  of  the  forum. 

One  of  the  folk  high  schools  of  Denmark 
maintains  a  regular  study  called  "A  Window 
in  the  West,"  the  purpose  of  which  is  to  ac- 
quire new  ideas  from  England  and  America, 
that  Denmark  may  use  them  for  its  own  im- 
provement. Such  a  course  should  be  in 
the    curriculurp    of    every    public    school. 


lo       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

The  aim  of  the  forum  is  to  put  a  new  win- 
dow into  the  mental  outlook  of  every  com- 
munity. The  value  of  an  open  mind  can  not 
be  calculated.  Every  great  leader  of  the 
world's  thought  and  action  has  insisted  on  its 
indispensable  importance.  Confucius  ex- 
pressed it  in  the  golden  phrase  "mental  hos- 
pitality." Socrates  used  a  phrase  out  of  which 
was  coined  the  word  "philosopher."  He  said, 
"I  am  not  a  wise  man ;  I  am  a  lover  of  wisdom ; 
a  seeker  after  new  ideas."  Jesus  called  it, 
"the  spirit  of  truth."  So  highly  did  he  regard 
it  that  he  called  it  a  holy  spirit.  The  reason 
why  these  masterful  leaders  of  men  so  prized 
the  habit  of  being  open-minded  is  because 
they  understood  that  without  mental  hos- 
pitality no  progress  in  any  line  is  possible. 

Ours  is  a  Government  by  public  opinion. 
It  is  obvious  that  the  public  welfare  requires 
that  public  opinion  be  informed  and  educated. 
The  forum  is  an  instrument  fitted  to  meet  this 
most  urgent  public  need.  It  is  organized  not 
on  the  basis  of  agreement,  but  of  difference. 
It  aims  not  at  uniformity,  but  unity.  It 
would  be  a  stupid  and  unprogressive  world  if 
all  were  forced  to  think  alike.     We  are  under 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER        ii 

no  obligation  to  agree  with  each  other,  but  as 
neighbors  and  as  members  of  America  it  is  our 
moral  and  patriotic  duty  to  make  the  attempt 
to  understand  each  other. 

Public  discussion  renders  a  great  variety  of 
services  to  spiritual  and  social  progress.  It 
puts  a  premium  on  intelligence,  liberates  a 
community  from  useless  customs,  puts  a  check 
on  hasty  action,  secures  united  approval  for 
measures  proposed,  creates  the  spirit  of  toler- 
ance, promotes  cooperation,  and  best  of  all  and 
hardest  of  all  it  equips  citizens  v^ith  the  ability 
to  differ  in  opinion  without  differing  in  feel- 
ing. This  habit  can  be  acquired  only  through 
practice.  The  forum  furnishes  the  means  for 
mutual  understanding.  It  aims  to  create 
public-mindedness. 

THE  NEIGHBORHOOD  CLUB 
The  basic  assumption   of   the  community  I 
center  movement  is  that  democracy  is  the  or-  J 
ganization  of  society  on  the  basis  of  friend- 1 
ship.     *'Man    is    a    political    animal,"    said 
Aristotle.     He  requires  the  companionship  of 
his  fellows.     His  happiness  is  largely  linked 
up  with  their  approval.     His  instinctive  need 


12       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

for  fellowship  leads  him  to  create  a  sort  of 
social  center  out  of  anything  available  for  the 
purpose.  The  post  office  has  served  as  such  a 
village  center,  but  the  free  delivery  of  mail  is 
destroying  its  social  uses.  The  corner  store 
has  acquired  fame  as  an  informal  forum  and 
neighborly  club,  but  the  mail-order  house  is 
rapidly  robbing  it  of  members,  and  at  best  it 
serves  only  a  few.  The  saloon  has  served  the 
purpose  of  a  neighborhood  club  and  friendly 
meeting  place  on  equal  terms  for  large  num- 
bers of  men,  but  moral  and  economic  consid- 
erations have  doomed  it  to  extinction. 

The  post  office,  corner  store,  and  saloon  are 
passing  as  social  centers,  but  they  must  be  re- 
placed with  something  better  if  they  are  not 
to  be  replaced  with  something  worse.  For 
only  he  can  destroy  who  can  replace.  The 
public  school  therefore  stands  before  an  open 
door  of  opportunity  to  become  a  neighborhood 
club,  where  the  people  can  meet  on  terms 
which  preserve  their  self-respect.  Almost 
every  individual  lives  in  the  center  of  several 
concentric  circles.  There  is  the  little  inner 
circle  of  his  intellectual  and  spiritual  com- 
rades; then  the  larger  circle  of  his  friends; 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER       13 

beyond  that  the  still  larger  circle  of  those  with 
whom  the  business  of  life  brings  him  into  con- 
tact; and  the  largest  circle  of  all  includes  all 
members  of  the  community  as  fellow  citizens. 
There  need  be  no  conflict  among  these  circles, 
no  suggestion  of  inferiority  or  superiority.  It 
is  never  to  be  forgotten  that  these  circles  are 
concentric.  The  experiences  of  life  make 
them  natural  and  necessary. 

The  community  center  is  limited  only  by 
this  last  and  largest  circle.  It  seeks  to 
broaden  the  basis  of  unity  among  men,  to  mul- 
tiply their  points  of  contact,  to  consider  those 
interests  which  all  have  in  common.  It  is  not 
difficult  to  discover  that  the  interests,  which 
unite  men,  are  bigger,  both  in  number  and 
importance,  than  those  which  separate  them. 
The  list  of  things  which  can  only  be  achieved 
as  joint  enterprises  is  long.  Roads  can  only 
be  built  by  community  cooperation.  Only  so 
can  the  community's  health  be  safeguarded. 
Food,  clothing,  and  shelter  are  the  common 
needs  of  all.  Production  and  transportation 
are  therefore  questions  of  social  service.  The 
Greek  word  for  "private,"  peculiar  to  one's 
self,  unrelated  to  the  interest  of  others,  is  the 


14       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

original  of  our  word  "idiot."  The  corre- 
sponding modern  term  in  our  common  speech 
is  "crank."  The  community  center  is  a  sure 
cure  for  "cranks."  It  aims  to  promote  pub- 
lic-mindedness. 

The  schoolhouse  used  as  a  neighborhood 
club  renders  therefore  an  invaluable  public 
service.  It  seeks  to  create  the  neighborly 
spirit  essential  for  concerted  action.  The 
means  employed  are  various — games,  folk 
dances,  dramas,  chorus  singing — which  re- 
quire the  subordination  of  self  to  cooperative 
effort,  dinner  parties,  where  the  people  break 
bread  in  celebration  of  their  communion  with 
each  other  as  neighbors.  These  activities  not 
only  render  a  service  to  the  individual  by  pro- 
moting his  happiness  and  decreasing  his  lone- 
liness, they  discover  in  the  community  unsus- 
pected abilities  and  unused  resources.  To  set 
them  to  work  not  only  develops  the  individual 
but  enriches  the  community  life. 

The  same  is  true  of  the  spirit  of  play  in  gen- 
eral. To  cultivate  the  spirit  of  play  not  only 
meets  an  instinctive  human  need  for  physical 
and  mental  recreation,  but  renders  a  distinc- 
tive service  to  democracy  on  account  of  its 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER        15 

spiritual  value.  One  can  carry  on  the  work 
of  destruction  by  himself,  but  he  must  organize 
in  order  to  produce.  He  must  cooperate  in 
order  to  play.  He  can  not  monopolize  the 
victory ;  he  must  share  it  with  the  team.  Play 
thus  develops  the  spirit  of  sportsmanship,  the 
willingness  to  play  fair,  the  capacity  to  be  a 
good  loser. 

It  thus  becomes  apparent  that  the  neighbor- 
hood club  furnishes  the  key  to  the  possible 
solution  of  a  variety  of  problems — the  Amer- 
icanization problem,  for  example.  The  ob- 
ject of  the  community-center  movement  is  to 
achieve  "freemen's  citizenship,"  both  for  na- 
tive and  foreign-born  alike.  But  citizenship 
means  membership.  It  is  obvious  that  the 
teaching  of  English  to  aliens  is  not  sufficient 
to  make  them  members  of  America.  To  ac- 
quire the  language  as  a  means  of  communica- 
tion with  their  fellows  is,  of  course,  a  neces- 
sary preliminary.  But  it  is  only  a  means  to 
an  end.  If  they  are  ever  to  feel  that  they  be- 
long with  us,  the  right  hand  of  fellowship 
must  be  extended  to  them.  The  neighbor- 
hood spirit  alone  can  create  in  them  the  spirit 
of  America.     One  of  the  by-laws  of  the  con- 


i6       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

stitution  of  the  Hebrew  republic  was  to  this 
effect:  "Love  ye,  therefore,  the  resident 
alien  for  ye  were  resident  aliens  in  the  land  of 
Egypt."  This  law  does  not  enjoin  citizens  to 
teach  them  the  language  of  the  land.  The 
necessity  for  that  is  assumed.  The  chief  thing 
needful,  it  says,  is  to  love  them.  Friendliness 
is  not  only  the  soul  of  democracy  but  also  the 
most  successful  method  of  securing  practical 
results.  The  community  center  is  the  most 
available  and  effective  instrument  through 
which  this  method  can  be  applied.  The 
process  of  Americanization  consists  essentially 
not  in  learning  a  language  but  in  acquiring  a 
spirit. 

Cooperation  and  the  spirit  of  sportsmanship 
are  indispensable  qualities  for  citizens  of  a 
democracy.  The  spirit  and  purpose  of  a 
neighborhood  club  are  clearly  suggested  by 
the  significant  questions  asked  and  answered 
by  a  negro  bishop  of  Kansas.  "When  is  a 
man  lost?"  he  asked.  "A  man  is  never  lost 
when  he  doesn't  know  where  he  is,  for  he 
always  knows  where  he  is  wherever  he  is.  A 
man  is  lost  when  he  doesn't  know  where  the 
other  folks  are." 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER        17 

THE  HOME  AND  SCHOOL  LEAGUE 

The  free  public  school  is  at  once  the  product 
and  safeguard  of  democracy.  The  kind  of 
public  school,  therefore,  which  a  community 
has,  is  an  accurate  index  of  its  community 
consciousness  and  its  estimate  of  democratic 
ideals.  "The  average  farmer  and  rural 
teacher,''  says  T.  J.  Coates,  "think  of  the  rural 
school  as  a  little  equipment  where  a  little 
teacher,  at  a  little  salary,  for  a  little  while, 
teaches  little  children  little  things."  The  ob-  'f 
ject  of  the  home  and  school  department  of  ^ 
the  community  center  is  to  substitute  the  word  ' 
"big"  for  the  word  "little"  in  the  above  state- 
ment, to  magnify  the  work  and  function  of 
the  school,  to  make  it  worthy  to  occupy  a 
larger  place  in  the  people's  thought  and  affec- 
tion. This  is  the  work  which  Home  and 
School  Leagues  are  now  doing.  The  com- 
munity center  in  no  wise  interferes  with  their 
work.  It  is  not  a  rival  but  an  ally.  Its  plan 
is  to  give  to  and  not  to  take  from  the  Home  and 
School  League.  Indeed,  it  is  probable  that 
the  Home  and  School  League  quite  generally, 
may  become  the  parent  organization  out  of 


i8       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

which  will  be  born  the  community  center. 
This  is  the  natural  and  logical  thing  to  happen, 
and  in  many  places  it  is  the  process  of  develop- 
ment now  in  operation.  Wherever  this  oc- 
curs it  is  against  the  natural  order  for  the 
mother  to  be  jealous  of  the  daughter.  If  and 
when  a  Home  and  School  League  expands  it- 
self into  a  community  center,  it  ought  to  be- 
come a  department  of  the  community  organ- 
ization. 

By  becoming  a  department  of  a  larger  or- 
ganization and  limiting  itself  to  its  own  special 
task,  the  Home  and  School  League  will  not 
only  do  its  work  better,  but  will  find  it  more 
than  sufficient  to  occupy  all  its  time.  Its  spe- 
cific work  is  to  promote  the  progress  of  the 
school  and  to  improve  the  school  equipment. 
To  this  end  it  seeks  to  secure  closer  co- 
operation between  the  home  and  school,  the 
parents  and  teachers.  When  Madame  de 
Stael  asked  Napoleon  what  was  needed  to  im- 
prove the  educational  system  of  France,  he  re- 
plied, "Better  mothers."  The  noblest  influ- 
ence on  any  child  is  that  of  a  good  mother. 
Every  school,  therefore,  ought  to  strive  to  keep 
a  close  bond  between  the  home  and  itself.     It 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER        19 

ought  to  do  so  not  only  for  the  sake  of  the 
children  while  they  are  in  school  but  also  be- 
fore they  come  to  school  and  after  they  leave 
it.  To  build  battlements  around  girls  and 
boys  at  the  point  of  their  greatest  danger,  dur- 
ing the  period  between  16  and  21,  when  they 
are  most  neglected,  is  a  task  worthy  in  itself  to 
enlist  the  deepest  interest  and  occupy  the  en- 
tire energy  of  the  Home  and  School  League. 

The  three  unsettled  questions  which  school- 
masters are  always  debating — the  content  of 
the  curriculum,  the  method  of  teaching,  and 
the  business  management — will  be  illuminated 
if  there  is  brought  to  bear  upon  them  the  view- 
point of  parents  who  own  and  support  the 
schools  and  who  are  interested  to  get  the 
proper  return  on  their  investment.  The  same 
will  be  true  of  all  school  questions  if  con- 
sidered frorh  the  standpoint  of  the  community 
center.  It  will  connect  school  activities  with 
life  processes.  This  means  vitality  for  the 
school.  For,  as  the  great  educational  re- 
former Grundtvig  said,  "Any  school  that  has 
its  beginning  in  the  alphabet  and  its  ending 
only  in  book  learning  is  a  school  of  death." 

Inasmuch  as  the  key  to  a  better  school  is  a 


20       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

better  teacher,  the  home  and  school  depart- 
ment of  the  community  center  will  make  it  its 
special  aim  to  develop  the  type  of  teacher 
described  in  Herbert  Quick's  "The  Brown 
Mouse."  It  will  endeavor  to  secure  for 
teachers  not  only  a  larger  degree  of  moral 
support  but  more  adequate  financial  support, 
which  is  not  the  only  thing  needful,  but  the 
first  thing  needful  toward  the  attainment  of 
this  goal.  The  constructive  service  rendered 
to  the  Republic  by  public-school  teachers  is  as 
important,  if  not  the  most  important,  rendered 
by  any  class  of  public  servants,  and  they  are 
not  mercenary  or  lacking  in  heroic  devotion  to 
the  common  welfare.  But  it  is  idle  to  expect 
that  the  right  type  of  teacher  can  be  secured 
or  retained  without  a  decent  living  wage.  If 
Henry  Ford  is  able  to  make  $5  the  minimum 
daily  wage  for  the  work  of  producing  his 
machines,  there  is  still  more  justification  for 
fixing  this  as  the  minimum  for  the  far  more 
delicate  and  difficult  business  of  making  citi- 
zens for  the  Nation.  When  a  community 
offers  such  a  wage,  then  and  then  only  will  it 
be  able  to  secure  a  $5  type  of  person  for  the 
position.     In  order  to  retain  them  after  they 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER       21 

are  secured  there  ought  to  be  a  school  manse 
— a  teachers'  house — as  part  of  the  necessary 
equipment  of  every  school.  Proper  support 
and  housing  in  order  to  secure  the  right  type 
of  teacher  in  itself  constitutes  a  worthy  pro- 
gram for  this  department. 

The  home  and  school  department  will 
naturally  have  charge  of  such  school-extension 
activities  as  evening  classes  for  youths  and 
adults.  These  classes  should  be  designed  not 
only  as  a  part  of  the  work  in  the  Ameri- 
canization of  immigrants,  but  for  the  better 
equipment  of  all  citizens.  "It  is  the  prime 
business  of  legislators,"  said  Confucius,  "to 
make  more  valuable  to  the  people  those  things 
from  which  the  people  are  accustomed  to 
derive  value."  This  states  in  brief  the  func- 
tion of  the  home  and  school  department.  The 
Nation's  destiny  was  decided  at  the  beginning 
by  the  establishment,  for  the  first  time  in  the 
modern  world,  of  a  free  public-school  system. 
To  keep  vital  its  processes  and  to  improve  its 
equipment  that  it  may  be  still  more  valuable  to 
the  people  is  the  chief  business  of  this  depart- 
ment. 


22       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

THE  COMMUNITY  BANK 

The  purpose  of  discussion  in  a  community 
forum  is  not  entertainment  but  action.  It  is 
responsible  discussion ;  that  is,  it  is  discussion 
by  citizens  who  bear  the  responsibility  for 
voting  on  the  questions  under  discussion. 
Such  questions  will  be  many  and  various. 
Some  will  have  a  temporary  and  some  a  per- 
manent value.  They  will  naturally  grow  out 
of  community-center  activities.  But  in  order 
to  guarantee  that  these  social  recreational  and 
educational  activities  shall  be  related  to  life 
there  ought  to  be  established  one  or  two  de- 
partments to  meet  concrete  human  needs. 

One  of  the  best  of  these  is  a  community 
bank,  for  it  not  only  meets  a  practical  need 
but  also  cultivates  an  ethical  view  of  money 
and  uses  it  as  a  means  of  moral  culture.  A 
community  bank  is  primarily  a  savings  bank 
both  for  children  and  adults.  As  regards 
children,  it  ought,  so  far  as  possible,  to  be  a 
part  of  the  curriculum  of  the  school.  Such 
banks  are  now  conducted  in  many  schools  for 
children.  Cooperative  banks  are  conducted 
for  adults  in  some  States  under  the  name  of 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER        23 

credit  unions.  New  York  State  has  a  good 
law  on  credit  unions,  on  which  the  laws  of 
other  States  have  been  modeled. 

But  a  real  community  bank  is  designed  to 
serve  other  purposes  than  those  of  saving.  Its 
aim  is  to  multiply  the  efficiency  of  the  people's 
savings  by  pooling  them  for  cooperative  uses. 
Its  aim  is  to  capitalize  character  and  to 
democratize  credit.  It  serves  a  community 
use  by  enabling  the  people  to  do  jointly  what 
they  can  not  do  separately.  By  clubbing  their 
resources  they  can  use  their  own  money  for 
their  own  productive  purposes. 

Such  a  bank  operated  for  the  common  wel- 
fare will  not  only  furnish  the  working  capital 
for  community  enterprises,  but  will  also  be  a 
loan  society.  It  will  make  short-time  loans 
to  its  members  on  reasonable  terms.  It  will 
thus  become  the  salvation  of  the  poor  from 
the  tyranny  and  degradation  of  the  loan  shark. 
It  will  also  make  large  long-time  loans  to 
young  men  and  women  who  desire  to  marry 
and  start  homes,  in  order  to  enable  them  to 
become  the  owners  of  houses.  It  will  permit 
them  to  repay  the  loan  on  the  amortization 
plan.     No  community  could  render  a  more 


24       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

statesmanlike  service  to  its  members.  The 
service  already  rendered  by  building  and  loan 
associations,  which  are  in  fact  cooperative 
banks,  is  a  guarantee  of  the  success  of  the  plan. 
There  are  in  the  United  States  7,034  such  asso- 
ciations, with  a  membership  of  3,568,342,  and 
assets  amounting  to  $1,696,707,041.  These 
figues  are  eloquent  and  tell  a  significant  story. 
They  show  how  ready  is  the  response  of  men 
to  the  opportunity  of  owning  their  own  houses 
and  that  this  opportunity  needs  to  be  vastly  ex- 
tended. The  motto  of  the  United  States 
league  of  these  associations  is  "The  American 
Home,  the  Safeguard  of  American  Liberties." 
The  motto  is  both  sentimental  and  accurately 
true.  The  well-being  of  a  nation  depends  pri- 
marily upon  the  existence  of  conditions  under 
which  family  life  may  be  promoted  and  fos- 
tered. The  family  is  the  true  social  unit, 
older  than  church  or  state  and  more  important 
than  either.  The  welfare  of  family  life  is 
every  statesman's  chief  concern. 

The  community  bank  enters  not  only  a 
vitally  important  but  a  practically  unoccupied 
field,  and  will  meet  felt  needs  unmet  at  pres- 
ent.    The  cooperative  handling  of  credit  is 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER        25 

not  new.  It  has  been  done  in  Europe  for  50 
years  with  marked  success.  The  community 
bank  is  the  adaptation  to  American  conditions 
of  the  Raiffeisen  Bank  of  Germany,  the  Luz- 
zatti  Bank  of  Italy,  and  the  Government  Bank 
of  New  Zealand.  It  is  a  democratic  bank; 
that  is,  it  is  of  the  people,  in  that  it  receives 
the  people's  money;  it  is  by  the  people,  in  that 
it  is  operated  by  the  people  themselves;  it  is 
for  the  people,  in  that  the  money  is  used  for 
the  welfare  of  the  people  who  saved  it. 

A  community  bank's  ability  to  render  these 
needed  public  services  depends  wholly  on  the 
people's  desire  and  capacity  to  save  and  their 
willingness  to  pool  their  savings.  To  culti- 
vate the  habit  of  thrift  is  the  first  necessity. 
That  America  needs  to  acquire  this  habit  is  too 
obvious  to  need  comment.  Americans  are  the 
least  provident  of  peoples.  Compared  with 
a  list  of  14  other  nations,  the  number  of  people 
out  of  every  thousand  who  have  savings  ac- 
counts is  only  about  one-sixth  as  many  in 
America  as  in  the  nation  highest  on  this  list, 
and  less  than  one-half  as  many  as  in  the  nation 
lowest  on  the  list.  Switzerland  stands  high- 
est, with  554.     Denmark  is  next,  with  442. 


26       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

The  lowest  is  Italy,  with  220.  But  in  America 
it  is  only  99. 

The  economic  welfare  of  a  community, 
however,  is  not  the  most  important  result 
which  the  habit  of  thrift  produces.  Since 
money  is  the  commonest  representative  of 
value  and  a  symbol  of  the  property  sense,  it  is 
the  best  practical  means  of  moral  culture.  A 
community  bank  will  furnish  the  best  antidote 
for  the  common  desire  to  get  something  for 
nothing,  "the  determination  of  the  ownership 
of  property  by  appeal  to  chance,"  the  habit  of 
gambling,  which  is  distorting  the  moral  sense 
of  all  classes  of  people. 

The  community  bank  is  designed  to  promote 
an  ethical  view  of  money.  When  we  consider 
that  if  a  man  earns  $100  for  a  month's  labor  he 
has  put  into  this  money  his  physical  force,  his 
nervous  energy,  his  brain  power,  that  part  of 
his  life  has  been  given  away  in  return  for  it, 
then  money  becomes  a  sacred  thing.  When 
we  consider  the  humiliation  and  suffering  of  a 
destitute  old  age  entailed  by  a  lack  of  economy, 
then  the  need  of  thrift  assumes  a  new  sig- 
nificance. When  one  considers  how  manifold 
are  the  bearings  of  money  on  the  lives  of  men. 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER        27 

and  how  many  are  the  virtues  with  which 
money  is  mixed  up — honesty,  justice,  gener- 
osity, frugality,  forethought,  and  self-sacrifice 
— an  ethical  view  of  it  is  unescapable. 

A  small  competency  is  necessary  to  make 
life  what  it  ought  to  be  for  every  man,  espe- 
cially in  a  democracy.  "Whoever  has  six- 
pence," said  Carlyle,  "is  sovereign  over  all  to 
the  extent  of  that  sixpence ;  commands  cooks 
to  feed  him,  philosophers  to  teach  him,  kings 
to  mount  guard  over  him,  to  the  extent  of  that 
sixpence."  An  assured  competence,  however 
small,  gives  the  priceless  blessing  of  inde- 
pendence. Not  only  personal  health  and 
happiness,  but  social  and  political  independ- 
ence are  involved  in  a  man's  saving  fund. 
The  kind  and  amount  of  service  which  a  com- 
munity bank  can  render  to  democratic  ideals  is 
beyond  calculation. 

THE  COOPERATIVE  EXCHANGE 
The  fundamental  aim  of  the  community- 
center  movement  is  to  secure  cooperation  for 
the  common  welfare.  But  if  cooperation  is  to 
be  anything  more  than  a  beautiful  dream,  there 
must   be    cooperation    about    something.     It 


28       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

must  not  only  be  good,  but  be  good  for  some- 
thing. When  the  spirit  of  cooperation  has 
been  created,  it  must  have  an  outlet  in  action, 
for  to  stir  up  the  emotions  and  give  them  no 
outlet  is  mere  sentimentality  and  is  dangerous 
to  moral  health. 

This  principle  is  at  once  the  reason  and  im- 
pulse back  of  the  cooperative  enterprises  now 
carried  on  in  schools.  They  assume  a  great 
variety  of  forms.  Sometimes  it  is  a  cooper- 
ative creamery  and  cheese  factory,  which  in 
some  rural  sections  has  meant  new  hope  and 
larger  resources,  not  only  for  the  school,  but 
also  for  the  homes  of  the  community.  Some- 
times it  is  a  farmers'  club  for  the  purchase  of 
farm  supplies.  It  may  be  a  canning  club  in 
which  the  women  meet  in  the  school  to  pre- 
serve fruits  and  vegetables  and  sell  them  at 
cost,  in  order  to  raise  funds  for  community 
uses,  or  for  the  national  Red  Cross.  It  may 
be  a  housekeepers'  alliance,  in  which  the 
women  meet  to  exchange  ideas  as  to  the  best 
methods  of  buying  and  preparing  foods.  In 
one  community  center  the  people  have  agreed 
to  get  their  milk  from  one  source  and  to  pay 
for  it  in  advance,  in  order  to  eliminate  the 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER       29 

wastes  in  distribution  and  receive  the  benefit  of 
the  money  thus  saved.  For  the  successful 
handling  of  farm  products  it  is  essential  that 
they  be  standardized  both  in  form  and  quality. 
For  this  purpose  it  would  be  well  to  use  a 
trademark  or  label,  which  would  be  of  psycho- 
logical value  in  suggesting  teamwork,  and  also 
be  a  guarantee  of  quality. 

All  of  these  activities  are  now  in  the  process 
of  being  grouped  together  under  a  buying 
club,  or  cooperative  exchange,  for  the  organ- 
ization of  which  there  is  a  rapidly  growing 
demand.     The  State  of  North  Carolina  has    ( 
already  passed  a  law  authorizing  communities    ,' 
to  organize  them  in  the  schoolhouses.     Co-   ' 
operative  buying  and  banking  has  been  ope-    ; 
rated  with  notable  success  for  50  years  in    } 
England,  Denmark,  and  other  countries.     It 
has  met  little  success  as  yet  in  America,  be- 
cause Americans  have  been  too  rich  and  too 
individualistic.     There  seems  to  be  an  obvious 
need  for  an  intermediate  step  between  un- 
limited competition  and  the  European  type  of 
cooperative  society.     It  seems  probable  that 
this  need  will  be  supplied  by  the  buying  club. 
It  is  not  a  shop  in  the  English  sense,  nor  a 


30       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

store  in  the  modern  sense,  but  a  store  in  the 
original  American  sense — that  is,  a  store- 
house, a  distribution  station  for  goods  kept  in 
their  original  containers.  Indeed,  for  the 
most  part  no  goods  need  to  be  kept  in  the 
schoolhouse  at  all.  The  schoolhouse  is  used 
chiefly  for  the  stimulation  and  formation  of 
plans  of  operation. 

Three  things  are  necessary  to  success  in  any 
practical  cooperative  enterprise — a  desire  to 
save,  good  business  sense,  and  the  spirit  of 
cooperation;  of  these  the  greatest  is  the  last, 
because  cooperation  is  primarily  a  state  of 
mind;  it  is  a  matter  of  education.  It  is  sig- 
nificant that  the  cooperative  societies  of  Eng- 
land not  only  gave  the  name  "society"  to  their 
organization,  but  also  devote  2>4  per  cent  of 
their  annual  profits  to  the  education  of  their 
members  in  the  principle  and  practice  of 
cooperation. 

Thus  there  grew  up  in  these  stores  real 
social-center  activities.  In  America  social 
and  civic  activities  are  already  started  in  the 
schoolhouses,  and  out  of  them  practical 
cooperation  is  now  developing.  Our  ap- 
proach is  the  reverse  of  the  English  expe- 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER       31 

rience,  but  the  principle  is  the  same.  It  is 
highly  important  to  see  clearly  that  the  other 
community-center  activities  are  an  educational 
necessity  to  the  success  of  its  practical  cooper- 
ative enterprises.  A  buying  club  unattached 
to  the  means  of  creating  the  cooperative  spirit 
is  almost  sure  to  fail. 

It  will  save  time  to  recognize  at  the  begin- 
ning that  to  acquire  the  spirit  and  method  of 
cooperation  is  a  slow  process  of  education. 
The  chief  danger  to  be  guarded  against  is  the 
common  tendency  on  the  part  of  Americans  to 
demand  fruit  the  day  the  tree  is  planted. 
While  the  spirit  of  cooperation  is  difficult  to 
acquire,  like  all  other  good  things,  yet  it  is 
worth  all  it  costs.  Cooperation  in  buying  and 
banking  is  itself  the  best  means  for  moral  cul- 
ture. Its  educational  value  is  of  the  highest. 
It  minimizes  the  evils  of  debt,  cultivates  self- 
control  and  self-reliance,  checks  reckless  ex- 
penditures, develops  a  sense  of  responsibility, 
quickens  intelligence  and  a  public  spirit,  and 
prepares  citizens  for  self-government  in  a 
democratic  state.  The  schoolhouse  is  not  only 
the  appropriate  place  to  acquire  these  educa- 
tional values  and  cooperative  virtues,  but  it 


32       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

also  furnishes  the  inspiration  for  success  in  the 
process,  because  the  American  public  school 
is  itself  the  most  successful  social  enterprise 
yet  undertaken  in  this  or  any  other  nation. 

THE  child's  right  OF  WAY 
It  is  because  there  exists  in  America  a 
marked  degree  of  independence  and  initiative, 
and  consequently  a  wide  divergence  in  local 
conditions,  that  community  centers  differ 
widely  in  the  kind  and  number  of  their  ac- 
tivities. While  variety  in  unity  is  the  demo- 
cratic law  of  development,  yet  unity  in  variety 
is  the  other  half  of  the  same  law.  There 
are  certain  kinds  of  activities  required  by 
universal  human  needs.  The  activities  herein 
described  are  the  typical  activities  adapted  to 
the  average  normal  community,  both  rural  and 
urban.  If  then  one  were  asked  what  a  com- 
munity center  aims  to  be,  it  is  a  sufficiently  full 
/  and  accurate  answer  to  say  that  it  is,  what  has 
just  been  briefly  described,  a  people's  univer- 
sity, a  community  capitol,  a  forum,  a  neigh- 
borhood club,  a  home-and-school  league,  a 
community  bank,  and  a  cooperative  exchange. 
It  is  all  of  these  in  one  organization.     The 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER       33 

unity  among  them  is  vital  and  organic  like 
the  unity  of  the  fingers  in  a  hand. 

Whatever  the  number  and  variety  of  ac- 
tivities undertaken,  the  distinguishing  mark  of 
the  community  center  is  the  fact  that  it  is  or- 
ganized not  on  the  basis  of  personal  pleasure 
or  private  profit  or  any  political  or  religious 
creed,  but  on  the  basis  of  responsibility  for  the 
welfare  of  children.  The  "house  of  the  peo- 
ple" in  which  it  meets  is  the  symbol  of  its  cen- 
tral idea.  The  public  school  is  the  only 
national  institution  primarily  dedicated  to  the 
welfare  of  the  child. 

Here  as  nowhere  else  men  and  women  forget 
their  partisan  and  sectarian  divisions  and 
breathe  an  atmosphere  which  accentuates  their 
resemblances  and  minimizes  their  differences. 
Childhood  is  the  ground  floor  of  life.  It  takes 
us  beneath  all  superficial  and  artificial  distinc- 
tions. 

Centuries  ago  a  great  statesman  and  phil- 
osopher said  that  the  key  to  any  right  solution 
of  our  social  and  economic  problems  is  to  be 
found  by  "setting  the  child  in  the  midst  of 
them."  Jesus  regarded  the  child  as  the  model 
citizen  in  the  Kingdpm  of  God,  which  was  his 


34       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

term  for  democracy.  The  child  is  still  the 
most  respectable  citizen  we  have.  The  posi- 
tion of  Jesus  on  the  place  of  the  child  has  been 
shown  by  John  Fiske  to  be  abundantly  sup- 
ported by  the  biological  history  of  the  race. 
The  prolonged  infancy  of  the  human  baby  is 
the  factor  which  developed  motherhood  and 
all  our  altruistic  sentiments.  And  it  will  be 
by  keeping  the  child  in  the  midst  of  our 
thought,  by  giving  the  child  the  right  of  way 
in  our  economics,  by  making  the  child's  wel- 
fare the  formative  principle  in  our  social  and 
civic  activities  that  we  will  transform  these 
activities  into  community  interests. 

This  the  community  center  aims  to  do.  In 
brief,  it  is  a  movement  for  the  extension  of  the 
spirit  of  the  home  and  fireside,  the  spirit  of 
childhood,  of  good  will,  of  intelligent  sym- 
pathy, of  mutual  aid — the  extension  of  this 
spirit  to  all  the  activities  of  the  community. 
The  indispensable  importance  of  this  spirit 
can  not  be  overemphasized,  for  without  it  a 
community  center  is  a  body  without  a  soul,  and 
a  body  without  a  soul  is  not  a  living  thing.  A 
community  center's  capacity  to  produce  prac- 
tical results  is  always  to  be  measured  by  its 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER        35 

capacity  to  create  such  a  spirit.     For,  as  John 
Dewey  wisely  says : 

The  chief  constituent  of  social  efficiency  is  intelligent 
sympathy  or  good  will.  For  sympathy,  as  a  desirable 
quality,  is  something  more  than  mere  feeling.  It  is  a  cul- 
tivated imagination  for  what  men  have  in  common  and  a 
rebellion  at  whatever  unnecessarily  divides  them. 


PART  II 

HOW  TO  ORGANIZE  A  COMMUNITY 
CENTER 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE  A  COMMUNITY 
CENTER 

What  needs  to  be  done  is  fairly  clear;  how 
to  do  it  is  the  difficult  thing.  ''If,"  said  the 
shrewd  Portia,  "to  do  were  as  easy  as  to  know 
what  were  good  to  do,  chapels  had  been 
churches  and  poor  men's  cottages  princes' 
palaces."  Nevertheless,  to  discover  how, 
while  difficult,  it  is  an  inspiring  task.  In  the 
organization  of  a  community  center  the  essen- 
tial factors  to  be  considered  are  its  member- 
ship, its  size,  its  executive  officer,  its  board  of 
directors,  its  finances,  and  its  constitution. 
The  suggestions  here  offered  concerning  them, 
together  with  the  reasons  for  the  suggestions, 
are  the  product  of  experience  and  have  been 
tested  in  operation. 

A  LITTLE  DEMOCRACY 

The  organization  of  a  community  around 

the  schoolhouse  as  its  capitol  is  the  creation  of 

a  new  political  unit,  a  little  democracy.     It  is 

new  in  the  sense  that  it  is  the  revival  and  en- 

39 


40       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

largement  of  an  old  institution  that  we  ought 
not  willingly  to  let  die.  Thomas  Jefferson  did 
not  exaggerate  when  he  said : 

Those  wards  called  townships  in  New  England  are  the 
vital  principle  of  their  governments,  and  have  proved 
themselves  the  wisest  invention  ever  devised  by  the  wit 
of  man  for  the  perfect  exercise  of  self-government  and  for 
its  preservation.  *  *  *  As  Cato,  then,  concluded  every 
speech  with  the  words,  ''Carthago  delenda  est,"  so  do  I 
conclude  every  opinion  with  the  injunction,  "Divide  the 
counties  into  wards." 

The  movement  to  organize  local  self-gov- 
erning communities  takes  us  back  not  only  to 
the  New  England  town  meeting  but  still  fur- 
ther back  to  the  Teutonic  "mark,"  the  Russian 
"mir,"  and  to  the  ancient  Swiss  cantonal  as- 
sembly. The  fact  that  free  village  commun- 
ities in  some  form  have  existed  in  so  many 
parts  of  the  world  is  a  significant  indication  of 
a  universal  conviction  that  such  organization 
is  a  necessity  to  human  welfare. 

The  community  center  aims  to  form  such  a 
free  village  community,  a  town,  a  borough,  a 
little  democracy,  both  in  the  cities  and  the 
open  country.  Its  capitol,  or  headquarters,  is 
the   schoolhouse,    because   this    is    the   most 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE  41 

American  institution  and  the  only  one  suitable 
for  the  purpose.  It  alone  provides  a  place 
where  all  can  meet  on  equal  terms  of  self- 
respect.  It  is  conveniently  distributed  in 
every  city,  town,  and  village  in  America.  The 
term  "center"  applies  to  the  schoolhouse,  the 
place  of  meeting.  The  term  applied  to  the 
organization  of  the  people  themselves  is  "com- 
munity association." 

The  first  step  in  organization  is  to  define 
the  boundaries  of  the  community.  These 
ought  to  be  determined  along  naturaljines, 
such  as\  the  territory  from  which  the  children 
in  the  school  are  drawn,  or  a  district  in  which 
the  people^come  together  for  other  reasons 
than  the  fact  that  an  artificial  line  is  drawn 
around  them.     It  ought  not  to  be  too  large. 

Being  a  little  democracy,  all  adult  citizens, 
both  men  and  women,  living  in  the  prescribed 
territory  are  members  of  it.  It  must  be  com- 
prehensive if  the  public  schoolhouse  is  to  be 
used  as  its  capitol.  It  must  be  nonpartisan, 
nonsectarian,  and  nonexclusive.  You  do  not 
become  a  member  of  a  community  center  by 
joining.  You  are  a  member  by  virtue  of  your 
citizenship    and    residence    in    the    district. 


42       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

Everywhere  else  men  and  women  are  divided 
into  groups  and  classes  on  the  ground  of  their 
personal  taste  or  occupation.  In  a  com- 
munity center  they  meet  as  "folks"  on  the 
ground  of  their  common  citizenship  and  their 
common  human  needs.  This  is  the  distin- 
guishing mark  of  the  community  center. 

It  is  quite  true  that  this  democratic  ideal  is 
difficult  to  operate.  That  is  nothing  against 
it.  AH  worth-while  ideals  are  difficult. 
Fisher  Ames  says,  "A  monarchy  is  a  merchant- 
man which  sails  well  but  will  sometimes  strike 
a  rock  and  go  to  the  bottom,  whilst  a  republic 
is  a  raft  which  will  never  sink,  but  then  your 
feet  are  always  in  the  water."  Let  us  grant 
that  it  may  be  even  hot  water,  but  it  is  quite 
as  true  that  the  very  difficulty  in  operating  the 
democratic  ideal  constitutes  its  fascination  and 
its  worth.  When  a  thing  becomes  easy  of  ac- 
complishment it  loses  much,  both  of  its  value 
and  its  interest. 

MEMBERSHIP  IN  AMERICA 
It  is  possible  for  the  form  of  democracy  to 
exist  without  its  spirit  and  method.     The  term 
"community"^  is  not  merely  "a  geographical 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE  43 

expression."  It  applies  not  only  to  a  geo- 
graphical area,  but  embodies  an  idea.  Its  real  y 
content  includes  the  spirit"  and"  method  of  — 
democracy.  Unless  it  promotes  this  spiritual 
ideal  its  meaning  is  of  small  value.  The  Cen- 
tury Dictionary  quotes  the  Attorney  General  of 
the  United  States  as  saying,  ^^The  phrase,  ^a 
citizen  of  the  United  States'  without  addition 
or  qualification  means  neither  more  nor  less 
than  a  member  of  the  Nation." 

Membership  implies  obligation  and  respon- 
sibility. It  gives  not  only  a  new  sense  of  pride, 
but  an  intimate  feeling  of  duty  to  the  common 
welfare,  for  a  man  to  say  to  himself,  "I  am  a 
member  of  America."  To  make  citizenship 
mean  membership  is  one  of  the  obvious  needs 
in  every  community.  The  outstanding  char- 
acteristic of  the  American  Republic,  which  is 
unlike  any  other  in  the  world,  is  that  it  is  a 
double  government,  a  double  allegiance.  It 
is  a  "Republic  of  republics."  Every  citizen 
feels  two  loyalties — one  to  his  State  and  the 
other  to  his  Nation.  In  addition  to  these  two 
he  feels  a  third  loyalty.  It  is  to  his  local  com- 
munity. And  just  as  every  man  is  a  better 
ciUzcn  if  he  is  first  of  all  devoted  to  his  own 


44       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

family,  so  will  he  be  more  loyal  to  the  State 
and  Nation  if  he  is  loyal  to  his  own  com- 
munity. 

To  induce  citizens  to  recognize  their  re- 
sponsibility for  the  administration  of  public 
business,  to  become  active  members  of  their 
own  communities,  to  assist  in  the  improvement 
of  local  schools,  of  politics,  of  roads,  of  the 
general  health,  of  housing  conditions — this  is 
the  result  which  the  community  center  aims  to 
achieve.  It  is  the  law  of  all  improvement 
that  you  must  start  from  where  you  are.  If  a 
man  can  not  love  his  own  community,  which 
he  can  see,  how  can  he  love  the  whole  country, 
which  he  can  not  see? 

The  success  of  the  work  in  any  community 
depends  on  the  amount  of  public-mindedness 
existing  there  or  the  possibility  of  creating  it. 
Those  who  undertake  community-center  work 
ought  to  guard  themselves  against  the  danger 
of  expecting  too  much  at  the  start.  To  de- 
velop public-mindedness  is  a  slow  and  difficult 
task.  It  ought  never  to  be  forgotten  that 
democracy,  like  liberty,  is  not  an  accomplish- 
ment but  a  growth,  not  an  act  but  a  process. 

It  is  of  the  highest  importance  that  this  f ^gt 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE  45 

should  be  perceived  by  pioneers  in  community 
work,  in  order  that  they  may  not  be  deceived 
by  the  passion  for  size  and  numbers.  A  dozen 
public-minded  persons  are  sufficient  for  a  be- 
ginning. One  of  the  biggest  movements  in 
history  began  with  a  little  circle  of  12  men. 

They  who  have  discovered  the  meaning  of 
democracy  do  not  need  large  immediate  results 
to  keep  up  their  courage;  they  only  need  a 
cause;  and  the  greatest  of  all  causes  is  con- 
structive democracy.  The  people  will  re- 
spond when  they  understand.  In  the  entire 
history  of  the  community-center  movement 
there  has  never  been  a  time  more  than  now 
when  they  were  so  ready  to  respond.  Let  no 
worker  in  any  community  despise  small  begin- 
nings. It  is  always  better  to  begin  small  and 
grow  big  than  to  begin  big  and  grow  small. 

THE  COMMUNITY  SECRETARY 
Nothing  runs  itself  unless  it  is  running  down 
hill.  If  community  work  is  to  be  done,  some- 
body has  to  be  the  doer  of  it  The  growing 
realization  of  this  fact  has  led  to  the  creation 
of  a  new  profession.  The  term  applied  to  this 
profession    is     "community    secretary,"     "a 


46       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

/  keeper  of  secrets,"  a  servant  of  the  whole  com- 
(  munity.  This  community  executive  should  be 
elected  by  ballot  in  a  public  election  held  in 
the  schoolhouse  and  supported  out  of  public 
funds.  There  are  now  four  such  publicly 
elected  and  publicly  supported  community 
secretaries  in  Washington,  D.  C,  and  eight 
more  such  offices  are  in  the  process  of  being 
created.  It  seems  certain  that  it  is  destined 
to  be  one  of  the  most  honored  and  useful  of 
all  public  offices.  Its  ideal  was  expressed  by 
the  ^^first  real  democrat  in  history,"  when  he 
said,  "The  kings  of  the  Gentiles  are  their  mas- 
ters, and  those  who  exercise  authority  over 
them  are  called  benefactors.  With  you  it  is 
not  so;  but  let  the  greatest  among  you  be  as 
the  younger,  and  the  leader  be  like  him  who 


serves." 


The  qualifications  for  this  office  are  mani- 
festly large,  and  its  duties  complex  and  exact- 
ing. The  ablest  person  to  be  found  is  none  too 
able.  The  function  of  the  secretary  is  nothing 
less  than  to  organize  and  to  keep  organized  all 
the  community  activities  herein  described;  to 
assist  the  people  to  learn  the  science  and  to 
practice  the  art  of  living  together;  and  to  show 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE 


@ 


them  how  they  may  put  into  effective  opera- 
tion the  spirit  and  method  of  cooperation. 
Who  is  equal  to  a  task  like  this?  In  addition 
to  intellectual  power  and  a  large  store  of  gen- 
eral information,  one  must  be  equipped  with 
many  more  qualities  equally  important.  The 
seven  cardinal  virtues  of  a  community  secre- 
tary are:  Patience,  unselfishness,  a  sense  of 
humor,  a  balanced  judgment,  the  ability  to 
differ  in  opinion  without  differing  in  feeling, 
respect  for  the  personality  of  other  people,  and 
faith  in  the  good  intentions  of  the  average 
man.  When  one  considers  the  requirements 
for  this  office,  one's  first  impulse  is  to  do  what 
King  Solomon  did.  After  making  a  rarely 
beautiful  description  of  a  wise  and  ideal  wife, 
he  ended  it  by  asking,  "but  where  can  such  a 
woman  be  found?" 

There  will  be  no  dearth  of  able  men  and 
women  to  fill  this  office,  when  once  it  is  prop- 
erly created  and  adequately  supported.  For 
there  is  a  particular  satisfaction,  not  other- 
wise obtainable,  to  be  derived  from  the  service 
of  a  cause  bigger  than  one's  personal  interests. 
Where  possible,  the  community  secretary 
ought  to  be  the  principal  of  the  school.     But 


4B       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

where  the  principal  can  not  be  released  from 
his  other  duties  sufficiently  to  undertake  the 
work,  the  secretary  ought  to  be  a  person  who  is 
agreeable  to  the  principal,  in  order  to  insure 
concerted  action.  In  thousands  of  villages 
and  open-country  communities  the  teacher's 
work  lasts  for  only  part  of  the  year  and  the 
compensation  is  shamefully  inadequate.  This 
is  a  great  economic  waste  as  well  as  an  injury 
to  children.  If  these  teachers  were  made 
community  secretaries,  were  given  an  all-year- 
round  job  and  were  compensated  for  the  addi- 
tional work  by  a  living  wage,  it  would  mean  a 
better  type  of  teacher  and  a  better  type  of 
school.  The  bigger  task  would  not  only  de- 
mand the  bigger  person,  but  the  task  itself 
would  create  them.  Moreover,  when  the 
teacher's  activities  become  linked  up  with  life 
processes  the  community  will  be  the  more  will- 
ing to  support  the  office  adequately.  It  seems 
clear  that  the  office  of  community  secretary  is 
the  key  to  a  worthier  support  of  the  school. 
It  will  magnify  the  function  of  teaching, 
give  a  new  civic  status  to  the  teacher,  and 
make  more  apparent  the  patriotic  and  con- 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE 


structive  service  which  the  school  renders  the 
nation. 

While  the  demands,  which  this  new  profes- 
sion makes,  may  seem  discouragingly  high, 
nevertheless  therein  lie  its  merit  and  charm. 
^'Our  reach  should  exceed  our  grasp,"  or 
there  is  no  opportunity  for  growth.  The  posi- 
tion is  so  big  that  it  can  not  be  outgrown.  It 
is  worthy  of  any  one's  life-time  loyalty.  A 
change  to  any  other  vocation  is  not  a  promo- 
tion. A  teacher  who  is  a  community  secre- 
tary, or  who  is  associated  with  one  in  com- 
munity work,  is  justified  in  having  the  same 
degree  of  self-respect  and  exalted  regard  for 
the  worth  of  his  work  which  was  expressed  by 
a  great  pioneer  in  the  same  field,  Pestalozzi. 
At  one  period  of  his  career,  he  went  to  Paris, 
and  a  friend  endeavored  to  present  him  to 
Napoleon  the  Great.  Napoleon  declined. 
"I  have  no  time  for  A.  B.  C,"  he  said. 
When  Pestalozzi  returned  to  his  home  his 
friends  asked  him,  "Did  you  see  Napoleon  the 
Great?"  "No;  I  did  not  see  Napoleon  the 
Great,  and  Napoleon  the  Great  did  not  see 
me." 


© 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 


THE  BOARD  OF  DIRECTORS 
However  able  a  community  secretary  may 
be,  no  one  alone  is  able  enough  for  the  con- 
structive kind  of  work  which  the  community 
center  requires.  Since  it  is  a  cooperative  en- 
terprise, it  is  necessary  that  it  be  democrati- 
cally organized.  The  next  step  in  its  organ- 
ization, therefore,  should  be  to  provide  the 
secretary  with  a  cabinet.  It  may  be  called  a 
board  of  directors,  or  a  community  council,  or 
an  executive  committee.  These  names  sug- 
gest its  various  functions.  Its  first  function  is 
to  give  council  and  advice  to  the  community 
secretary,  to  act  as  a  little  forum  for  discus- 
sion, out  of  which  may  develop  wise  methods 
of  procedure.  Its  next  function  is  to  share 
with  the  secretary  the  responsibility  for  the 
work,  the  burden  of  which  is  too  heavy  to  be 
borne  by  any  one  alone.  But  the  cabinet  is  not 
a  legislative  body  alone  to  determine  what  is  to 
be  done,  but  also  an  executive  body  as  well. 
It  is  not  only  an  executive  body,  to  carry  out 
the  general  plans  of  the  association,  but  also  a 
body  of  directors  to  plan  and  conduct  special 
kinds  of  activities.     In  every  community  there 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE  51 

are  men  and  women  who  have  the  ability  and    / 
leisure  to  render  public  service.     As  directors 
they  would  have  a  recognized  position  and 
channel  through  which  they  can  more  effec- 
tively render  such  service. 

Each  director  ought  to  be  the  head  of  a  de- 
partment of  work,  or  at  least  the  head  of  every 
department  of  work  ought  to  be  a  director. 
The  head  of  each  department  ought  to  choose 
the  members  of  his  own  committee.  Thus  by 
having  the  heads  of  departments  of  work  on 
the  board  of  directors,  the  entire  work  of  the 
association  can  be  frequently  reviewed,  and  the 
departments  of  activity  can,  by  cooperating, 
not  only  avoid  needless  waste  through  dupli- 
cation, but  also  stimulate  each  other.  The 
board  of  directors  ought  to  hold  regular  meet- 
ings in  the  schoolhouse,  and  in  order  that  the 
work  may  be  responsive  to  public  opinion  the 
meetings  ought  to  be  open  to  any  who  wish  to 
attend  them,  just  as  the  meetings  of  a  town 
council  are  open.  The  community  center 
stands  for  visible  government,  and  daylight 
diplomacy.  ^ 

In  the  conduct  of  the  association's  activities 
a  large  measure  of  freedom  ought  to  be  granted 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 


the  directors  as  well  as  the  secretary.  There 
can  be  no  responsibility  without  freedom. 
The  test  of  democracy  is  its  willingness  to 
trust  its  leaders.  It  is  a  test  which  democ- 
racies find  it  difficult  to  measure  up  to.  The 
association  ought  to  hold  its  officials  to  strict 
accountability,  and  it  has  the  power  to  recall 
and  replace  them,  but  while  they  are  in  office 
and  bear  the  responsibility  they  ought  to  be 
given  freedom  to  use  the  means  and  methods 
which  in  their  judgment  are  best  suited  to 
produce  the  results  expected  of  them.  The 
question  here  raised  by  democracy  is  not  the 
extent  of  authority  but  its  source.  The  prin- 
ciple of  democracy  is  preserved  if  the  source 
of  authority  is  limited;  the  efficiency  of 
democracy  is  secured  if  the  extent  of  authority 
is  enlarged. 

The  directors  in  community-center  work 
will  not  only  feel  the  need  of  taking  counsel 
with  each  other,  but  also  of  getting  suggestions 
from  other  communities.  In  every  city  and 
county,  the  community  associations  would  do 
wisely  to  form  a  league  for  the  purpose  of 
pooling  their  experience  and  helping  each 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE 

other  in  what  is  manifestly  a  difficult  task.  In 
such  a  conference  the  representatives  of  local 
communities  would  discover  that  there  may  be 
many  good  roads  leading  to  the  same  goal. 
Moreover,  while  it  is  possible  to  agree  on  our 
goal,  it  is  rarely  possible  to  agree  on  the 
methods  of  reaching  it.  No  principle  is  more 
important  to  observe  in  conducting  community 
work.  If,  then,  we  can  agree  on  our  goal,  we 
may  well  spare  criticism  on  our  fellows  who 
travel  a  road  different  from  ours. 

THE  TROUBLE  COMMITTEE 
It  is  not  so  difficult  to  organize  a  community 
center;  the  difficulty  is  to  keep  it  organized. 
By  no  means  the  only  one,  but  the  chief  means 
of  securing  a  permanently  useful  community 
center  is  to  have  a  wise  and  constructive  pro- 
gram, big  enough  to  merit  interest.  A  good 
way  to  formulate  such  a  program  is  to  appoint 
a  permanent  committee  which  we  may  call 
"the  trouble  committee."  The  function  of 
this  committee  is  not  to  make  trouble,  but  to 
remove  it.  Its  task  is  to  discover  the  causes 
of  trouble  in  the  community,  to  learn  the  rea- 


L 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

sons  for  dissatisfaction,  to  state  the  problems 
which  ought  to  be  solved,  to  exhibit  the  thing 
that  needs  to  be  done. 

A  community  center  can  get  helpful  sugges- 
tions concerning  programs  from  State  uni- 
versities or  extension  committees,  and  it  w^ill 
naturally  w^ant  to  discuss  the  questions  promi- 
nently in  the  public  mind,  but  the  most  inter- 
esting and  constructive  program  is  the  attempt 
to  improve  conditions  of  living  oii  its  home 
soil.  In  such  a  program  the  first  thing  needed 
preparatory  to  action  is  diagnosis.  Problem 
making  is  almost  as  important  as  problem 
solving.  To  know  what  the  problem  is,  is 
half  the  battle.  When  the  terms  of  a  prob- 
lem are  accurately  stated,  the  problem  itself 
is  partly  solved  in  the  process.  It  was  a  fre- 
quent experience  of  Lincoln  that,  after  he  had 
stated  the  facts  of  a  case  in  court,  the  trial  of 
it  was  arrested  and  called  off. 

The  work  of  the  trouble  committee  is  prob- 
lem making.  For  example,  why  are  country- 
bred  boys  leaving  the  farm  in  such  large  num- 
bers; is  farming  a  profitable  industry;  to  what 
extent  is  the  food  of  the  country  produced  by 
the  unpaid  labor  of  children;  does  it  pay  bet- 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE  55 

ter  to  rent  or  to  own  a  farm ;  could  an  average 
young  man  earn  enough  from  a  farm  to  pay  for 
it  by  honest  labor  in  a  reasonable  number  of 
years;  why  do  half  the  girls  and  boys  fail  to 
finish  the  grammar  grades  in  school;  is  the 
work  of  transportation  and  distribution  of 
food  supplies  economically  done;  why  is  the 
cost  of  living  so  high?  If  any  community 
center  should  attempt  to  discover  the  causes  of 
these  unsatisfactory  conditions,  it  would  be  a 
vital  and  attractive  program  sufficient  to  oc- 
cupy it  for  several  years. 

The  function  of  the  trouble  committee  is  to"^ 
furnish  nuts  for  the  community  association  to  ' 
crack.  No  one  believes  in  diagnosis  for  the 
sake  of  diagnosis  any  more  than  he  believes  in 
^'amputation  for  the  sake  of  amputation."  Its 
only  use  is  to  reveal  the  disease  and  to  point 
the  way  to  a  remedy.  The  aim  of  the  trouble 
committee  is  to  point  out  the  difficulties  at  the 
bottom  of  our  social  problems  for  the  sake  of 
removing  them.  Whenever  they  are  re- 
moved, the  problem  vanishes.  The  method 
of  the  committee  is  constructive  democracy. 

No  community,  however,  ought  to  assume 
that  it  can  solve  all  of  its  problems,  at  least,  not 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

speedily.  "We  are  not  born,"  said  Goethe, 
"to  solve  the  problems  of  the  world  but  to  find 
out  where  the  problems  begin,  and  then  to 
keep  within  the  limits  of  what  we  can  grasp," 
This  is  a  luminous  remark,  and  the  trouble 
committee  merely  assumes  that  in  treating  any 
problem  the  place  to  begin  is  at  the  beginning 
of  it,  and  that  the  beginning  of  it  is  its  cause. 
It  assumes  that  "there  is  no  alleviation  for 
the  suffering  of  mankind  except  veracity  of 
thought  and  action,  and  the  resolute  facing  of 
the  world  as  it  is."  It  assumes  that  it  is  not 
possible  to  purify  the  water  in  a  well  by  paint- 
ing the  pump.  It  is  painful  to  think  how 
much  social  energy  has  been  wasted  in  this 
process.  No  community  center  whose  pro- 
gram is  limited  to  painting  the  pump  can 
either  win  or  long  hold  the  support  of  thought- 
ful men  and  women.  Nor  does  it  deserve  to. 
The  test  of  sanity  used  in  some  asylums  is  to 
take  the  patient  to  a  trough  partially  filled  and 
into  which  an  open  spigot  is  pouring  new  sup- 
plies of  water.  The  patient  is  asked  to  bail 
the  water  out  of  the  trough.  If  he  attempts 
to  do  so  without  first  turning  off  the  flow  he  is 
regarded  as  insane,  and  properly  so.     It  is  ob- 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE  57 

viously  sane  to  turn  off  the  spigot,  to  remove 
the  causes  of  disorder,  if  we  ever  expect  to  pro- 
duce a  social  order  in  harmony  with  the  intel- 
ligence and  conscience  of  the  Nation.  This 
is  the  purpose  and  function  of  the  trouble  com- 
mittee. For  the  most  part,  this  committee 
holds  the  key  to  the  success  or  failure  of  a 
community  center.  —- 

PUBLIC  AND  SELF-SUPPORT 
The  finances  of  an  organization  usually  con- 
stitute its  storm  center.  Money  is  the  kind  of 
thing  it  is  difficult  to  get  along  with  and  im- 
possible to  get  along  without.  After  a  com- 
munity center  determines  its  plans  and  poli- 
cies, the  next  question  in  its  organization  is 
finance.  But  since  money  is  the  root  of  so 
much  trouble,  it  ought  to  be  kept  in  the  back- 
ground. It  is  properly  called  "ways  and 
means."  It  is  not  the  end;  human  welfare  is 
the  end.  Money  is  a  detail,  and  ought  always 
to  be  treated  as  such. 

The  superior  advantage  of  a  community 
center  over  private  organizations  is  that  it  does 
not  need  an  amount  of  money  sufficient  to 
cause  it  any  distress.     To  begin  with,  there 


58       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

are  no  dues.  They  are  already  paid  when  the 
taxes  are  paid.  The  schoolhouse,  together 
with  heat,  light,  and  janitor  service,  and  in 
some  places  a  portion  of  the  secretary's  sal- 
ary, is  provided  out  of  public  funds.  Thus 
the  overhead  charges  are  comparatively  very 
small.  The  time  will  doubtless  come  when 
the  entire  expense  will  be  provided  out  of  pub- 
lic funds,  but  the  movement  is  new;  and  for 
the  present  and  immediate  future,  if  the  build- 
ing, heat,  light,  and  janitor  service  are  pro- 
vided, it  is  all  that  can  reasonably  be  expected. 
The  community  center  needs,  for  the  pres- 
ent, to  supplement  its  public  funds.  The 
highest  salary  paid  out  of  public  funds  to  a 
community  secretary  in  Washington,  D.  C,  is 
$420  per  year.  This  is  not  a  salary,  but  a 
contribution  toward  a  salary.  This  amount 
must  be  increased  if  we  can  hope  ever  to  se- 
cure and  retain  the  right  type  of  person  for 
this  position.  Then  there  is  the  stationery, 
postage,  printing,  and  clerical  work.  How 
are  these  needs  to  be  met?  The  only  way  is 
by  voluntary  effort.  Each  department  of  ac- 
tivity ought  to  be  self-supporting.  Those  de- 
partments, like  the  buying  club  and  the  bank, 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE  59 

which  have  an  income  ought  to  contribute  a 
certain  regular  percentage  to  the  association 
as  a  whole,  because  its  general  activities  are 
necessary  to  the  success  of  these  departments. 
This  percentage  should  be  considered  part  of 
the  necessary  operating  expenses  of  each  de- 
partment. The  members  of  the  community 
association  ought  to  register  to  indicate  their 
intention  to  take  an  active  part  in  its  affairs. 
When  they  do,  a  small  registration  fee  should 
be  charged. 

These  two  sources  will  doubtless  net  suf- 
ficient funds.  If  they  do  not,  then  voluntary 
contributions  and  entertainments  should  fur- 
nish what  is  needed.  It  ought  to  be  clearly 
noted  that  for  a  community  center  to  raise  part 
of  its  funds  by  voluntary  effort  does  not  mean 
that  it  is  privately  supported.  The  commun- 
ity association  is  a  public  body.  As  such, 
what  money  it  raises  is  public  money.  It  is 
not  private  support,  but  voluntary  self-help. 
In  a  community  center,  public  support  and 
self-support  are  one  and  the  same  thing. 
Since  the  amount  needed  to  be  raised  by  vol- 
untary effort  is  smaller  than  the  amount  re- 
ceived from  public  funds,  there  is  little  dan- 


6o       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

ger  that  large  givers  will  have  the  opportun- 
ity to  dominate  the  policies  of  the  community 
center  through  their  gifts.  Above  all  others, 
this  is  the  one  danger  most  to  be  guarded 
against.  Because  it  is  chiefly  supported  by 
public  taxation,  the  community  center  is  a 
place  where  all  can  meet  on  the  basis  of  self- 
respect,  where  a  man's  standing  is  determined 
not  by  gifts  of  money,  but  by  character  and 
intelligence.  Whenever  this  condition  ceases 
to  exist,  the  community  center  dies. 

But  so  long  as  the  finances  are  organized 
democratically,  the  need  for  the  community 
itself  to  raise  part  of  its  fund  is  a  moral  ad- 
vantage and  is  social  justice.  For  until  pub- 
lic opinion  becomes  informed  and  unified,  a 
city  or  county  must  be  fair  to  all  its  communi- 
ties. To  compel  one  community,  without  its 
consent,  to  support  the  activities  of  another  is 
manifestly  unjust  and  undemocratic.  Whit- 
man's definition  of  democracy,  "I  will  have 
nothing  which  every  other  man  may  not  have 
the  counterpart  of  on  like  terms,"  is  our  guid- 
ing principle  in  community  finances.  For  a 
community  to  raise  part  of  its  funds  is  not 
only  social  justice  to  other  communities  but  a 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE  6i 

benefit  to  the  community  itself.  The  com- 
munity center  is  an  enterprise  for  mutual  aid 
in  self-development.  The  process  of  raising 
part  of  its  own  funds  is  one  of  the  means  of 
such  development.  The  people  are  com- 
pelled to  pay  taxes,  but  what  they  freely  choose 
to  contribute  to  their  own  enterprise  is  the 
only  trustworthy  guide  to  their  attitude  toward 
it  and  the  best  stimulus  of  their  devotion  to  it. 
There  can  be  self-development  only  where 
there  is  freedom.  Partial  voluntary  support 
by  a  community  insures  local  autonomy. 
"Democracy,"  says  Bertrand  Russell,  ^^is  a  de- 
vice— the  best  so  far  invented — for  diminish- 
ing the  interference  of  governments  with  lib- 
erty." But  political  freedom  is  conditioned 
upon  financial  freedom.  A  degree  of  self- 
support,  therefore,  frees  a  community  from 
the  domination  of  city  and  county  govern- 
ments. These  considerations,  if  accepted  as 
true,  convert  apparent  burdens  into  blessings 
and  weights  into  wings. 

A  WORKING  CONSTITUTION 
What's  a  constitution  among  friends?    It's 
a  necessity  if  they  are  to  continue  to  be  friends. 


62  ;    A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 


s  the  word  itself  suggests,  a  constitution  es- 
tablishes the  basis  on  which  friends  may  stand 
for  the  accomplishment  of  their  common  pur- 
poses. Its  value  is  always  to  be  measured  by 
the  importance  of  the  purpose  to  be  accom- 
plished. Inasmuch  as  the  purpose  of  a  com- 
munity center  is  of  the  highest  value  not  only 
to  the  welfare  of  the  local  community,  but  also 
to  the  welfare  of  democracy  in  the  Nation  and 
in  the  world,  the  making  of  its  constitution  is  a 
highly  important  item  in  its  organization. 
*'If  democracy,"  said  Havelock  Ellis,  "means 
a  state  in  which  every  man  shall  be  a  freeman, 
neither  in  economic,  nor  intellectual,  nor 
moral  subjection,  two  processes  at  least 
are  necessary  to  render  democracy  possible; 
on  the  one  hand,  a  large  and  many-sided  edu- 
cation; on  the  other,  the  reasonable  organiza- 
tion of  life" — nothing  less  than  to  state  how 
these  two  objects  may  be  secured  is  the  purpose 
of  the  constitution  of  a  community  center. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  this  constitution  is 
very  different  from  that  of  an  ordinary  society, 
which  merely  aims  to  give  information  about 
officers  and  meetings.  This  one  may  deeply 
affect  the  spiritual  and  economic  life  of  a  com- 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE  (^ 

munity.  As  the  expression  of  certain  ideas  in 
a  document  known  as  "Magna  charta,"  was  a 
great  gain  in  the  long  fight  for  freedom  in  the 
English-speaking  world,  so  the  expression  of 
a  community's  new  social  purpose  may  mean 
new  freedom  for  it. 

As  regards  the  work  of  the  community  cen- 
ter, the  constitution  is  a  working  agreement, 
a  clear  understanding  as  to  what  is  to  be  done 
and  who  is  to  do  it.  A  clear  statement  will 
prevent  needless  friction  and  confusion.  As 
regards  the  growth  of  the  work  in  the  com- 
munity, the  constitution  will  serve  the  purpose 
of  propaganda.  If  a  new  or  uninformed 
member  of  the  community  should  ask  an  ac- 
tive member,  "What  is  a  community  center 
and  what  is  its  purpose?"  a  copy  of  the  consti- 
tution ought  to  furnish  a  full  answer  to  his 
question.  Therefore,  it  should  not  be  too 
brief,  if  it  is  to  serve  this  purpose. 

Each  community  ought  to  draft  its  own  con- 
stitution, not  only  because  the  needs  of  com- 
munities vary,  and  not  only  because  it  should 
be  the  honest  expression  of  the  community's 
own  thought  and  purpose,  but  especially  be- 
cause a  constitution  brought  from  outside  and 


64       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

dropped  on  the  people's  heads  has  little  value 
for  the  community.  Of  course,  it  is  possible 
for  a  community  to  work  over  and  assimilate 
another  community's  constitution  until  it  be- 
comes its  own.  It  ought  also  to  get  help  and 
suggestions  from  as  many  constitutions  as  it 
can  find.  For  this  reason  there  will  be  found 
in  Part  IV  the  copy  of  a  constitution  which 
the  writer  prepared  to  meet  the  needs  of  the 
Wilson  Normal  Community  in  Washington, 
D.  C,  his  own  community.  It  was  patiently 
considered  in  committee  and  thoroughly  dis- 
cussed in  public  meetings.  It  is  now  in  oper- 
ation. 
y^"^  It  is  better  for  the  people  to  make  their 
own,  either  by  creating  a  new  one  or  adapting 
others  to  their  needs,  even  if  it  is  not  as  well 
done  as  somebody  else  could  do  it  for  them. 
In  starting  a  community  center  an  organizing 
committee  should  be  charged  with  the  task  of 
drafting  and  submitting  a  constitution.  If 
several  weeks  were  spent  on  the  task  both  in 
committee  work  and  in  public  discussion,  the 
time  would  be  well  spent.  The  educational 
value  of  the  process  is  too  great  for  the  people 
to  miss.    The  process  would  educate  a  con- 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE         /  65 


siderable  number  who  will  grasp  the  meaning 
of  a  community  center  and  who  will  therefore 
be  equipped  to  a  degree  for  conducting  its 
work. 

While  the  types  of  constitutions  will  be  very 
various,  yet  there  are  certain  formative  prin- 
ciples which  are  basic  in  the  structure  of  a 
community  center.  They  are  so  essential  to 
the  life  of  the  community  ideal  that  the  writer 
has  called  them  "The  ten  commandments  for  a 
community  center."    They  are  as  follows: 

I.  It  must  guarantee  freedom  of  thought 

and  freedom  in  its  expression. 
II.  It  must  aim  at  unity,  not  uniformity, 
and  accentuate  resemblances,  not  dif- 
ferences. 
III.  It  must  be  organized  democratically, 
with  the  right  to  learn  by  making 
mistakes. 
IV.  It  must  be  free  from  the  domination  of 
money,  giving  the  right  of  way  to 
character  and  intelligence. 
V.  It  must  be  nonpartisan,  nonsectarian, 
and   nonexclusive  both  in  purpose 
and  practice. 


Q 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 


VI.  Remember  that  nothing  will  run  itself 
unless  it  is  running  down  hill. 
VII.  Remember  that  to  get  anywhere,  it  is 
necessary  to  start  from  where  you  are. 
VIII.  Remember  that  the  thing  to  be  done  is 
more  important  than  the  method  of 
doing  it. 
IX.  Remember  that  the  water  in  a  well  can 
not  be  purified  by  painting  the  pump. 
X.  Remember   that   progress   is    possible 
only  when  there  is  mental  hospitality 
to  new  ideas. 

DECREASE  OF  ORGANIZATIONS 
Edward  Everett  Hale  reported  Louis  Agas- 
siz  as  saying  that,  when  he  came  to  America, 
one  of  the  amazing  things  he  discovered  was 
that  no  set  of  men  could  get  together  to  do  any- 
thing, though  there  were  but  five  of  them,  un- 
less they  first  drew  up  a  constitution.  If  lo 
botanists,  he  said,  met  in  a  hotel  in  Switzer- 
land to  hear  a  paper  read,  they  would  sit  down 
and  hear  it.  But  if  American  botanists  meet 
for  the  same  purpose,  they  spend  the  first  day 
in  forming  ari  organization,  appointing  a  com- 
mittee to  draw  a  constitution,  correcting  the 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE 


(3>^. 


draft  made  by  them,  appointing  a  committee 
to  nominate  officers,  and  then  choosing  a  pres- 
ident, vice  president,  two  secretaries,  and  a 
treasurer.  This  takes  all  the  first  day.  If  any 
of  these  people  are  fools  enough  or  wise 
enough — ^^persistent"  is  the  modern  word — to 
come  the  next  day,  all  will  be  well.  They  will 
hear  the  paper  on  botany.  This  is  a  good- 
natured,  but  well-deserved,  criticism  of  the 
common  tendency  to  start  a  new  organization 
if  any  one  has  an  idea  he  wishes  to  propagate. 

The  resulting  damage  of  a  multiplicity  of 
organizations  is  that  so  much  energy  is  con- 
sumed in  the  work  of  organizing  that  there  is 
not  enough  left  to  operate  them.  It  is  like  the 
steamboat  of  Lincoln's  story,  with  a  7-foot 
whistle  and  a  5-foot  boiler.  Every  time  the 
whistle  blew,  the  engine  had  to  stop  running. 

There  now  exist  over  80  separate  organiza- 
tions for  the  purpose  of  supplying  some  kind 
of  war  relief.  Many  of  them  have  already 
applied  and  more  doubtless  will  apply  for 
permission  to  use  the  public  schools  to  advance 
their  various  causes.  It  would  be  nothing 
short  of  a  public  benefaction  if  some  device 
could  be  found  to  decrease  the  present  number 


^    (  68)      A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 


of  organizations  and  prevent  the  inexcusable 
economic  waste  due  to  the  duplication  of  ac- 
tivities. It  is  because  we  have  so  many  or- 
ganizations (plural)  that  we  need  more  or- 
ganization (singular)  as  a  cure  for  this  need- 
less waste. 

The  community  center  is  such  a  device.  It 
can  perform  this  function  because  it  is  a  com- 
prehensive organization.  The  center  of  any 
American  community  is  the  free  public  school, 
the  only  center  it  has.  The  community  cen- 
ter is  not  a  rival,  but  an  ally,  of  other  organiza- 
tions. It  is  more;  it  is  their  foster  mother; 
it  is  thejjiatrix  which  gives  them  their  setting. 
It  embraces  them  as  departmental  activities. 
It  is  a  coordinating  instrument.  It  is  a  bureau 
of  community  service.  Both  its  spirit  and 
method  are  well  stated  in  the  lines  of  Edwin 
Markham,  which  he  appropriately  calls  *'Out- 
witted" : 


He  drew  a  circle  which  shut  me  out, 
Heretic,  rebel,  a  thing  to  flout; 
But  Love  and  I  had  the  wit  to  win. 
We  drew  a  circle  that  took  him  in. 

The  fact  that  a  community  center  is  the 
community  matrix  explains  why  and  how  it 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE  69 

can  decrease  the  number  of  organizations  and 
prevent  unnecessary  new  ones  from  forming. 
The  method  of  direct  attack  is  not  only  incon- 
siderate, but  is  foredoomed  to  failure.  If  a 
community  center  should  say  to  any  existing 
organization,  ^'We  want  you  deliberately  to 
disband,  to  chloroform  yourself,"  it  would  de- 
feat its  own  purpose.  Human  nature  just 
doesn't  operate  that  way.  The  wiser  method 
of  the  community  center  is  to  relate  them  to 
each  other  and  to  itself,  as  departments  of  ac- 
tivity, so  that  duplication  may  be  exhibited  as 
social  waste.  The  mere  exhibition  of  this  fact 
will  induce  some  organizations  voluntarily  to 
disband  or  merge  with  others.  The  disease  of 
overorganization,  like  some  other  diseases, 
only  needs,  for  its  cure,  exposure  to  the  fresh 
air.  The  community  center  furnishes  the  at- 
mospheric condition  of  public  opinion,  in 
which  unfit  organizations  will  naturally  die 
and  the  fit  survive.  The  method  is  both  gen- 
tle and  just.  It  treats  outgrown  organizations 
as  we  always  treat  outgrown  laws.  We  do  not 
rescind  them,  we  just  let  them  die. 

Just  as  fair  competition  in  an  open  field  fur- 
nishes the  condition  under  which  weak  and 


? 


70       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

less  worthy  organizations  die^  likewise  it  fur- 
nishes the  condition  under  which  strong  and 
worthy  ones  thrive  and  expand.  All  they  ask 
is  a  fair  field  and  no  favors.  Their  work 
speaks  for  itself.  The  civilian  relief  work  of 
the  Red  Cross  is  a  case  in  point.  The  Red 
Cross  has  enlarged  the  scope  of  its  activities  to 
include  not  only  remedial  but  constructive 
work.  Its  policy  is  not  only  to  cure  but  to 
prevent  disease.  Constructive  work  under  the 
noble  name  and  sign  of  the  Red  Cross  in  up- 
building the  Nation's  strength  is  so  akin  to  the 
aims  of  the  community  center  that  they  ought 
to  cooperate  in  order  to  save  needless  social 
waste.  They  travel  the  same  road ;  they  ought 
to  travel  together  as  comrades.  A  few  coun- 
ties now  employ  Red  Cross  public  health 
nurses.  One  State  has  recently  passed  a  law 
which  provides  that  each  of  its  counties  shall 
support  out  of  public  funds  a  nurse  for  town 
and  country  service.  It  is  only  a  question  of 
time  when  a  public  health  nurse  will  be  at- 
tached to  every  community  center. 

The  community  center  is  the  natural  hub  of 
a  community  wheel.  It  does  not  claim  to  be, 
it  is  necessarily,  the  comprehensive  organiza- 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE  71 

tion.  But  Red  Cross  work  ought  to  be  a  de- 
partment of  the  community  center.  They 
need  each  other.  The  community  center  is  in 
a  position  to  open  just  the  kind  of  a  door  of 
opportunity  which  the  Red  Cross  needs  for 
the  success  of  its  work.  There  are  large 
classes  of  people  who  have  not  enlisted  in  Red 
Cross  work.  And  yet  they  have  sons  in  the 
war  and  are  making  heroic  sacrifices.  They 
desire  to  do  war  work  as  they  have  always 
been  willing  to  do  relief  and  constructive  work 
in  times  of  peace.  But  they  will  not  come  to 
fashionable  hotels  or  similar  exclusive  places. 
For  obvious  reasons  they  will  come  to  the 
schoolhouse.  If,  therefore,  Red  Cross  units 
were  organized  as  departments  of  community 
centers,  the  Red  Cross  could  enlist  in  its  serv- 
ice a  multitude  now  outside  of  its  reach,  and 
the  Red  Cross,  because  of  its  resources  and  its 
semiofficial  character,  could  put  the  aims  of 
the  community  center  into  operation.  The 
opportunity  for  mutual  service  is  such  that  it 
would  be  a  statesmanlike  move  if  the  Red 
Cross  should  devote  time  and  money  to  the 
establishment  of  community  centers  as  the 
most   practical    and   economical   instruments 


72       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

through  which  to  expand  its  activities.  A 
Red  Cross  unit  ought  to  exist  as  a  department 
of  the  community  center  in  every  school  dis- 
trict of  the  United  States. 

The  community-center  movement  and  the 
Red  Cross  have  the  more  reason  for  uniting 
their  strength  because  the  preventive  work 
which  they  both  aim  to  do,  while  more  im- 
portant, is  less  dramatic  and  usually  attracts 
less  popular  support.  But  it  is  to  this  kind 
of  work  that  the  world  gives  its  verdict  of 
approval  when  the  perspective  of  time  en- 
ables it  to  distinguish  between  the  big  and 
the  little.  It  is  doubtful  whether  to-day  one 
man  in  a  thousand  knows  the  names  of  the  two 
generals  who  commanded  the  opposing  armies 
in  the  Crimean  War.  Even  when  they  are 
mentioned — Lord  Raglan  and  Gen.  Toddle- 
ben — they  sound  strangely  unfamiliar.  But 
there  was  one  participant  in  that  war  whose 
name  is  now  a  household  word — Florence 
Nightingale.  Yet  it  was  the  generals  who 
occupied  the  conspicuous  positions;  it  was 
they  who  rode  horseback  and  wore  showy  uni- 
forms; it  was  they  for  whom  the  bands  played 
and  the  soldiers  applauded,  while  this  Red 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE  73 

Cross  nurse  did  the  apparently  commonplace 
work  of  giving  cups  of  cold  water  to  wounded 
soldiers  and  easing  the  head  of  some  home- 
sick man  as  he  lay  dying.  But  these  wounded 
men  kissed  her  very  shadow  where  it  fell.  It 
was  a  healing  shadow.  Such  constructive 
work,  even  though  it  consists  in  little  deeds  of 
wayside  kindness,  is  work  for  the  ages.  Such 
constructive  work  will  be  so  needed  to  heal 
the  wounds  in  the  social,  industrial,  and  politi- 
cal world  in  the  reconstruction  days  immedi- 
ately ahead  that  the  community  center  and  the 
Red  Cross  would  do  wisely  to  unite  their 
strength,  not  only  to  meet  the  Nation's  present 
need  but  to  assist  in  building  a  better  sort  of 
world.  The  task  of  the  community-center 
movement  is  at  once  so  difficult  and  so  essen- 
tial for  the  success  of  our  experiment  in  de- 
mocracy that  it  needs  the  assistance  of  every 
agency  whose  aims  are  similar  to  its  own.  In 
helping  to  create  community  centers  the  Red 
Cross  would  not  only  be  serving  itself  but  ren- 
dering a  national  service  of  the  highest  im- 
portance. 

We  are  thus  equipped  with  a  wise  principle 
always  to  be  observed  in  the  organization  of  a 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

community  center.  It  should  adapt  itself  to 
the  organizations  already  in  the  field  and  co- 
operate with  them.  It  does  not  antagonize 
them  but  assists  them  to  expand  into  some- 
thing bigger.  It  may  more  speedily  reach  its 
goal  if  it  would  evolve  out  of  some  good 
existing  organization.  A  community  center 
never  loses  sight  of  its  ultimate  purpose,  but  it 
does  not  disdain  to  make  use  of  the  instru- 
ments which  lie  at  its  hand  because  they  are 
imperfect.  Lincoln  applied  this  principle  in 
the  policy  of  reconstruction  he  had  begun. 
Although  he  was  bitterly  criticized  for  it  he 
defended  it  in  the  last  speech  he  ever  made. 
"Concede,"  he  said,  "that  the  new  government 
of  Louisiana  is  only,  to  what  it  should  be,  as 
the  egg  is  to  the  fowl ;  we  shall  sooner  have  the 
fowl  by  hatching  the  egg  than  by  smashing  it." 

THE  HOUSE  OF  THE  PEOPLE 
Whenever  an  idea  gets  itself  embodied  in 
concrete  form,  visible  to  the  eye,  it  becomes 
the  more  potent  and  persuasive.  The  reason 
why  the  ancient  and  common  use  of  symbols 
renders  a  distinct  service  to  ideals  is  obvious. 
Sense  impressions  received  through  the  eye 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE 


(^ 


gate  are  more  vivid  and  permanent  than  those 
received  through  any  other  gate.  We  say,  ^^in 
one  ear  and  out  the  other";  we  do  not  say,  "in 
one  eye  and  out  the  other."  As  an  efficient 
means  of  propaganda,  therefore,  it  is  pro- 
foundly important  that  the  community  ideal 
should  be  embodied  in  a  type  of  school  build- 
ing which  represents  it.  If  it  is  to  be  used  as 
a  house  of  the  people,  it  ought  to  look  like  a 
house  of  the  people.  A  community  which 
plans  to  build  a  new  schoolhouse  or  to  adapt 
an  old  one  to  new  community  uses  must  con- 
sider two  questions:  First,  what  are  its  in- 
ternal needs?  Second,  what  style  of  building 
best  serves  these  needs?  The  two  questions 
are  one  and  inseparable.  They  are  related  to 
each  other  like  a  man  and  his  clothes  or  like 
ideas  and  the  words  which  express  them. 

What  are  the  internal  needs  and  community 
uses  which  the  new  type  of  school  buildings  is 
required  to  meet?  The  essential  needs  may 
fairly  be  regarded  as  seven.  They  seem  to  re- 
quire a  large  expenditure,  but  from  the  stand- 
point of  community  finances  the  facilities  here 
suggested  obviously  mean  a  wise  economy,  be- 
cause they  will  prevent  a  needless  duplication 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

^  buildings.  They  are  used  not  only  for 
school  activities,  but  also  for  every  variety  of 
activity  by  youths  and  adults.  These  essen- 
tial facilities  are  as  follows : 

1.  An  assembly  room;  to  be  used  also  for  so- 
cial games,  folk  dances,  dinner  parties,  and 
gymnasium  purposes. 

2.  Classrooms;  to  be  so  arranged  that  they 
may  be  used  also  for  departmental  activities 
of  the  community  center. 

3.  A  workshop;  to  be  used  also  for  voca- 
tional night  classes  and  for  mechanical  experi- 
mental work  as  recreation. 

4.  Library  and  reading  room;  to  be  used 
also  as  a  neighborhood  club,  conference  room, 
and  a  clearing  house  for  information. 

5.  Kitchen  and  storeroom;  to  be  used  also 
for  household  economics,  community  dinners, 
and  cooperative  exchanges. 

6.  An  open  fireplace;  to  be  used  for  its  spir- 
itual value  in  creating  good  cheer  and  the 
neighborly  sense  of  fellowship. 

7.  Voting  instruments ;  to  be  erected  perma- 
nently and  used  not  only  in  the  curriculum  of 
the  school  and  in  public  elections,  but  also  as 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE  h^ 


a  symbol  of  the  aim  for  which  both  the  school 
and  community  center  stand. 

In  addition  to  these  seven  practical  and  typ- 
ical features  of  a  community  schoolhouse, 
there  is  one  small  luxury  which  properly  may 
be  regarded  as  a  necessity.  On  the  lawn  of 
every  community  school  should  be  erected  a 
sundial.  Its  use  is  not  the  ordering  of  the 
day  by  the  sundial  rather  than  the  time-table 
in  order  to  stimulate  good  and  honest  work; 
nor  is  its  use  to  act  as  a  reminder  of  the  need 
of  leisure  for  personal  growth,  although  it 
would  serve  both  of  these  purposes.  But  its 
chief  use  is  to  be  the  symbol  of  an  idea,  with- 
out which  a  community  center  can  not  live. 
Charles  Lamb  said  that  if  a  sundial  could  talk, 
it  would  say  of  itself,  "I  count  only  those  hours 
which  are  serene."  It  operates  only  when  the 
sun  shines.  It  illustrates  the  wisdom  of  look- 
ing on  the  bright,  not  the  dark  side  of  things; 
of  being  positive,  not  negative;  of  accentuat- 
ing the  resemblances,  not  the  differences;  of 
cultivating  one's  admirations,  not  one's  dis- 
gusts. Without  the  practice  of  the  principle 
of  the  sundial,  the  people  of  the  community 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

can  never  be  mobilized  for  effective  concerted 
action  and  national  service. 

In  view  of  patriotic  ideals  like  these  which 
the  school  is  designed  to  serve,  the  question 
concerning  the  style  of  building  acquires  a  new 
and  profound  significance.  What  type  of  ar- 
chitecture most  fittingly  represents  the  institu- 
tion most  characteristic  of  the  American  ideal, 
the  community  schoolhouse?  Two  types  have 
been  generally  suggested  and  widely  used. 
They  are  the  colonial  and  the  Tudor  or  col- 
legiate gothic.  Both  have  real  merits,  but 
both  have  defects  which  seriously  handicap 
their  use  for  our  purpose.  The  colonial  has 
simple,  effective  lines,  but  is  cold,  rigid,  puri- 
tanic, and  lacking  in  joy.  Moreover,  in  its 
more  elaborate  forms,  it  was  the  common  type 
used  for  the  elegant  mansions  of  southern  aris- 
tocracy. Their  pillared  porticoes  suggest  a 
coach  and  four  driving  under  them. 

The  Gothic  type  has  the  advantage  of  be- 
ing more  economical  to  build.  Its  chief  merit 
originally  was  its  "rudeness"  or  imperfection. 
The  term  "Gothic"  was  at  first  a  term  of  re- 
proach, but  it  acquired  honor  as  men  discov- 
ered that  every  great  work  ought  to  be  imper- 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE  (79 


feet  if  it  is  inspired  by  an  unattainable  ideal, 
as  it  ought  to  be.  For  this  reason  the  lines  in 
a  Gothic  building  suggest  aspiration.  The 
distinguishing  feature  of  Gothic  architecture 
is  that  its  beautiful  ornaments,  while  always 
aspiring  after  an  unattained  perfection,  always 
rest  on  the  utilitarian  principle  of  use.  The 
flying  buttress  was  not  attached  to  a  Gothic 
cathedral  as  an  ornament.  It  was  put  there 
to  prop  up  the  wall.  The  pinnacle  on  its  top, 
ornamental  as  it  is,  was  not  put  there  as  an 
ornament.  It  was  put  there  as  a  weight  to 
keep  the  prop  from  slipping  off  the  wall. 

In  spite  of  the  obvious  and  great  merits  of 
the  Gothic  type  of  building,  which  can  and 
ought  to  be  utilized  in  new  forms,  its  defects 
should  be  frankly  recognized.  It  has  been 
associated  in  our  thought  with  exclusive,  clois- 
tered seats  of  learning,  like  Cambridge  and 
Oxford ;  it  lends  itself  easily  to  indulgence  in 
elaborate  display  of  art  for  art's  sake  instead 
of  for  life's  sake;  and  it  is  a  permanent  re- 
minder of  mediaeval  ecclesiasticism,  which  is 
out  of  harmony  with  modern  ideals  of  democ- 
racy. 

It  seems  evident  that  the  appropriate  style 


8o)      A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

of  architecture  to  embody  the  democratic  idea 
for  which  America  stands  remains  still  to  be 
created.  The  best  is  yet  to  be.  Ruskin  says 
that: 

Great  nations  write  their  autobiographies  in  three 
manuscripts— the  book  of  their  deeds,  the  book  of  their 
words,  and  the  book  of  their  art.  Not  one  of  these 
books  can  be  understood  unless  we  read  the  two  others, 
but  of  the  three,  the  only  trustworthy  one  is  the  last. 

What  men  embody  in  material  form,  invest 
large  sums  of  money  in,  and  lovingly  seek  to 
beautify,  is  a  sure  index  of  the  value  they  place 
upon  it.  America  has  not  yet  written  her 
autobiography  in  architecture,  but  she  has 
started  to  write  it,  and  has  begun  to  express 
her  appreciation  of  the  indispensable  import- 
ance of  education  to  a  democracy,  as  is  seen  in 
the  handsome  new  school  buildings  now  being 
erected  in  all  parts  of  the  country.  A  rare  op- 
portunity to  render  a  patriotic  service  is  now 
afforded  to  those  architects  who  are  also  ar- 
tists, if  they  have  the  courage  to  discard  an- 
cient conventional  standards  and  create  a  new 
type  to  represent  the  American  democratic 
idea. 

In  this  process  laymen  in  art  have  a  marked 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE  8i 

responsibility,  because  they  finally  determine 
the  kind  of  building  to  be  erected.  In  a 
democracy,  art,  like  everything  else,  is  pro- 
foundly affected  by  public  opinion.  More- 
over, laymen  can  prevent  professional  archi- 
tects from  imposing  any  one  conventional  type 
of  school  building  upon  all  communities.  To 
do  so  would  be  deadly  dullness.  This  will  be 
prevented  also  by  the  need  for  adaptation  in 
various  sections  of  the  country  to  conditions  of 
climate,  to  materials  available  for  use,  and  to 
the  location  of  buildings.  But  while  there 
should  be  variety  of  form,  there  are  certain 
formative  principles  which  must  always  dis- 
tinguish a  community  type  of  building.  It 
must  be  a  democratic  building;  that  is,  it  must 
be  beautiful,  because  hunger  for  beauty  is  uni- 
versal and  beauty  is  of  the  highest  educational 
value ;  it  must  be  cheerful,  for  to  dispense  joy 
to  all  is  a  duty  demanded  of  the  democratic 
ideal ;  it  must  be  in  simple  good  taste,  so  that 
the  average  man  will  feel  unoppressed  and  un- 
embarrassed by  it;  it  must  be  economical  to 
build,  and  a  beautiful  building  is  necessarily 
more  economical;  it  must  be  low,  springing 
out  of  the  soil,  easy  of  access,  wide  spreading, 


82  j     A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

ample  for  hospitality,  for  no  man  can  be  a 
democrat  by  himself;  it  must  be  an  honest 
building;  that  is,  its  beauty  must  be  organic. 
It  is  not  artificial  adornment  superimposed 
from  the  outside,  but  inheres  in  the  structure 
itself.  It  is  like  the  true  beauty  of  com- 
plexion, which  does  not  depend  on  an  external 
application  of  paint,  but  on  the  rude  internal 
facts  of  digestion  and  circulation  of  blood. 
No  beauty  exists  in  nature  unconnected  with 
her  useful  processes.  Likewise  a  democratic 
building  is  natural  and  honest.  It  has  little 
or  no  ornament;  its  charm  is  an  inborn  fitness 
and  proportion.  No  canon  of  taste  is  more 
holy  than  fitness. 

The  style  of  architecture  which  embodies 
these  essential  principles  of  a  democratic 
building  more  nearly  perhaps  than  any  other 
is  the  new  Santa  Fe  type,  which  is  a  combina- 
tion of  the  old  mission  and  adobe  style  in  such 
a  way  as  to  justify  us  in  regarding  it  as  a  real 
American  product.  It  is  well  illustrated  in 
the  Alhambra  Consolidated  School  near  Phoe- 
nix, Ariz.  The  artist-architect  who  has  cour- 
age to  escape  from  slavery  to  the  precedents  of 
yesterday  and  the  stupid  imitations  of  out- 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE         ( J^ 

grown  standards,  and  who  will  take  for  his 
motto  ''Not  one  thing  that  you  do  not  know  to 
be  useful  and  believe  to  be  beautiful,"  has  to- 
day the  opportunity  to  assist  the  people  to 
create  a  new  representative  American  archi- 
tecture, fitted  to  express  their  new  discovery  of 
the  need  for  a  community  schoolhouse.  To 
build  a  real  house  of  the  people  is  a  patriotic 
service  of  the  highest  order.  Fletcher  B. 
Dresslar,  in  his  able  and  comprehensive  bul- 
letin on  American  Schoolhouses,  very  appro- 
priately reminds  the  builders  of  one  of  these 
temples  of  democracy  that  ''Whoever  under- 
takes to  build  a  schoolhouse  to  meet  and  foster 
these  ideals  ought  to  approach  his  task  with 
holy  hands  and  a  consciousness  of  the  devotion 
which  it  is  to  typify." 

FREE  TRADE  IN  FRIENDSHIP 
This,  then,  is  the  writer's  understanding  as 
to  what  a  community  center  is  and  how  to  or- 
ganize it,  briefly  stated.  To  treat  in  brief  a 
subject  so  big  with  meaning  for  the  common 
welfare,  one  needs  what  the  poet  Keats  calls 
"negative  capabilities";  he  must  know  what  to 
leave  in  the  inkstand,  unsaid. 


^84       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

/  But  after  the  most  efficient  methods  of  or- 
ganization have  been  discovered  and  applied, 
there  is  one  word  which  must  never  be  left 
unsaid  or  unheeded.  Organization  is  to  the 
thing  to  be  done  what  a  shell  is  to  an  egg. 
And  while  a  shell  is  necessary  for  the  conven- 
ient handling  of  eggs,  the  shell  is  not  the  egg. 
The  egg  of  a  community  center,  its  heart  and 
soul,  is  an  idea,  a  spiritual  purpose.  To  sac- 
rifice its  soul  to  efficiency  is  like  selling  the  egg 
for  the  shell. 

"^'  ^f  Ruth's  sickle,  used  in  the  Hebrew  repub- 
lic, were  placed  by  the  side  of  the  McCormick 
reaper  in  a  world's  fair,  our  progress  in  me- 
chanical efficiency  would  be  dramatically  ex- 
hibited. But  how  about  Ruth  herself?  If 
she  appeared  among  the  women  at  the  fair, 
would  our  superiority  in  that  branch  of  man- 
ufacture be  so  apparent?  Is  it  Ruth  or  only 
her  sickle  we  have  improved?  Almost  every 
nation  has  at  its  beginning  some  formative 
principle  which  shapes  its  organization  and 
determines  its  contribution  to  the  world's  wel- 
fare. In  Palestine  it  was  religion ;  in  Greece 
it  was  culture;  in  Rome  it  was  law;  in  Amer- 
ica it  is  what?     Her  birth  and  history  clearly 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE 


Q) 


indicate  that  America's  high  mission  is  the  en- 
franchisement of  manhood,  the  development 
of  the  individual.  This  purpose  is  the  soul 
of  the  community  center  movement. 

The  community  ideal  is  fittingly  expressed 
in  a  high  relief  by  Frank  F.  Stone,  w^ho  illum- 
inates it  by  contrasting  it  with  its  opposite 
ideal.  In  this  v^ork  of  art  three  figures  are 
represented.  On  the  right  is  the  figure  of  a 
v^ell-fed,  self-centered  man.  The  expression 
on  the  face  is  a  freezing  scorn  and  utter  dis- 
dain of  his  fellow  men.  The  crown,  miter, 
money  bag,  sword,  and  ermine  robe  which  he 
holds  in  his  hands,  all  indicate  that  he  is  an 
egotist,  who  through  wealth,  the  assumption 
of  divine  rights,  the  accident  of  birth,  or  the 
sword  of  force  seeks  power,  prestige,  and  ad- 
vantage over  others.  Opposite  him  is  the  type 
of  a  true  democrat,  who  finds  life  not  insipid, 
but  inspiring.  He  is  in  the  act  of  scaling 
the  difficult  heights  of  human  achievement 
through  his  own  unaided  efforts.  But  he  is 
unwilling  to  rise  alone,  and  as  he  fixes  his  eyes 
on  the  heights  which  beckon  him,  he  reaches 
down  a  helping  hand  to  raise  a  weaker  brother 
with  himself.     No  work  of  art  could  more 


86       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 


clearly  represent  the  community  center  ideal, 
together  with  the  ideal  which  it  seeks  to  re- 
place. The  only  effective  way  to  destroy  an 
unworthy  ideal  is  to  replace  it  with  a  better 
one. 

The  community  center  aims  to  realize  its 
ideal  by  promoting  free  trade  in  friendship 
among  all  individuals  and  classes  of  the  com- 
munity. This  is  its  most  efficient  means  for 
producing  results,  because  men  are  more  influ- 
enced through  their  feelings  than  their  intel- 
lects. This  is  the  reason  why  "poets  are  the 
unacknowledged  legislators  of  the  world." 
For  the  same  reason  friendship  is  the  chief 
solvent  of  social  and  industrial  difficulties. 
When  David  Grayson  sat  at  dinner  with  a  fac- 
tory owner,  Mr.  Vedder,  and  was  helping  him 
to  settle  a  strike  then  in  operation,  Mr.  Vedder 
asked  him  what  kind  of  social  philosopher  he 
called  himself.  "I  do  not  call  myself  by  any 
name,"  said  Grayson,  **but  if  I  chose  a  name, 
do  you  know  the  name  I  would  like  to  have  ap- 
plied to  me?"  "I  can  not  imagine,"  was  the 
answer.  "Well,  I  would  like  to  be  called  'an 
introducer.'  My  friend,  Mr.  Blacksmith,  let 
me  introduce  you  to  my  friend,  Mr.  Plutocrat, 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE        (Sy  j 


\.     / 


I  could  almost  swear  that  you  are  brothers,  so 
near  alike  you  are.  You  will  find  each  other 
wonderfully  interesting,  once  you  get  over  the 
awkwardness  of  the  introduction."  "It  is  a 
good  name,"  said  Mr.  Vedder,  laughing. 
"It's  a  wonderful  name,"  said  Grayson,  "and 
it's  about  the  biggest  and  finest  work  in  the 
world — to  know  human  beings  just  as  they  are 
and  to  make  them  acquainted  with  one  another 
just  as  they  are.  Why,  it's  the  foundation  of 
all  the  democracy  there  is  or  ever  will  be. 
Sometimes  I  think  that  friendliness  is  the  only 
achievement  of  life  worth  while,  and  un-, 
friendliness  the  only  tragedy."  The  commun-l 
ity  center  is  a  factory  for  the  manufacture  of] 
friendship,  and  the  chief  business  of  a  com-\ 
munity  secretary  is  to  be  "an  introducer."         ) 

Just  as  the  mere  statement  of  a  problem  is 
half  of  its  solution,  likewise  free  trade  in 
friendship  among  men  would  break  down  half 
the  barriers  which  separate  them,  because  it 
would  remove  the  chief  cause  of  their  strife. 
For  a  community  to  carry  on  its  work  without 
cultivating  the  spirit  of  friendship  is  like 
drawing  a  harrow  over  frozen  ground.  This 
is  so  essential  to  success  that  one  of  its  chief 


88       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

aims  should  be  to  promote  free  trade  in  friend- 
ship by  producing  a  collection  of  community 
center  songs,  so  that  the  people  could  sing  the 
sentiment  as  it  is  expressed  in  such  poems  as 
Richard  Burton's — 

If  I  had  the  time  to  find  a  place 
And  sit  me  down  full  face  to  face, 

With  my  better  self  that  can  not  show 

In  my  daily  life  that  rushes  so : 
It  might  be  then  I  would  see  my  soul 
Was  stumbling  still  toward  the  shining  goal, 
I  might  be  nerved  by  the  thought  sublime — 
If  I  had  the  time! 

If  I  had  the  time  to  let  my  heart 
Speak  out  and  take  in  my  life  a  part, 
To  look  about  and  to  stretch  a  hand 
To  a  comrade  quartered  in  no-luck  land ; 
Ah,  God!  If  I  might  but  just  sit  still 
And  hear  the  note  of  the  whippoorwill, 
I  think  that  my  wish  with  God's  would  rhymfr— 
If  I  had  the  time! 

If  I  had  the  time  to  learn  from  you 
How  much  for  comfort  my  word  could  do; 
And  I  told  you  then  of  my  sudden  will 
To  kiss  your  feet  when  I  did  you  ill ; 
If  the  tears  aback  of  the  coldness  feigned 
Could  flow,  and  the  wrong  be  quite  explained^ 
Brothers,  the  souls  of  us  all  would  chime, 
If  we  had  the  time! 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE  89 

The  community  center  seeks  to  promote 
freindship,  not  only  in  local  communities  but 
also  among  communities,  and  not  only  among 
communities  in  a  single  state  or  nation,  but 
among  the  larger  communities  of  the  nations 
themselves,  by  stimulating  devotion  to  com- 
mon ideals,  for  there  can  be  no  friendship  un 
less  there  is  similarity  of  aims  and  purposes. 
There  is,  perhaps,  no  more  accurate  or  beau- 
tiful expression  of  that  which  separates  and 
unites  national  communities  than  is  to  be 
found  in  the  following  letter  sent  to  America 
by  a  pupil  in  Paris  and  made  public  by  John 
H.  Finley: 

It  was  only  a  little  river,  almost  a  brook;  it  was  called 
the  Yser.  One  could  talk  from  one  side  to  the  other 
without  raising  one's  voice,  and  the  birds  could  fly  over 
it  with  one  sweep  of  their  wings.  And  on  the  two  banks 
there  were  millions  of  men,  the  one  turned  toward  the 
other,  eye  to  eye.  But  the  distance  which  separated  them 
was  greater  than  the  stars  in  the  sky ;  it  was  the  distance 
which  separates  right  from  injustice. 

The  ocean  is  so  vast  that  the  sea  gulls  do  not  dare  to 
cross  it.  During  the  seven  days  and  seven  nights  the 
great  steamships  of  America,  going  at  full  speed,  drive 
through  the  deep  waters  before  the  lighthouses  of  France 
come  into  view;  but  from  one  side  to  the  other  hearts 
are  touching. 


90  )     A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 


Manifestly  the  task  of  the  community  center 
is  complex  and  difHcult.  Our  business,  how- 
ever, is  not  to  debate  the  possibility  of  reach- 
ing the  goal,  but  to  make  a  start  toward  it. 
When  Socrates  was  asked,  "How  shall  we  get 
to  Mount  Olympus?"  he  answered,  "By  doing 
all  your  walking  in  that  direction."  While 
we  keep  Mount  Olmypus  in  sight  to  give  us 
direction,  we  must  recognize  that  the  amount 
of  possible  progress  toward  it  is  determined  by 
conditions  as  we  find  them.  Our  choice  does 
not  lie  between  the  ideal  and  the  actual.  We 
must  always  choose  both.  We  must  know  not 
only  the  goal  but  the  road  to  it.  Our  practi- 
cal problem  is  to  devise  a  working  plan  which 
includes  what  is  both  ideally  desirable  and 
actually  possible.  If  we  are  ever  to  arrive  at 
Mount  Olympus,  we  must  start  from  where  we 
are,  we  must  take  things  "as  is";  we  must  "ac- 
cept the  universe"  and  "try  to  fashion  it  as  best 
we  may  with  patience  and  good  humor. 

Although  the  road  to  the  community  center 
goal  is  difficult,  nevertheless  the  hope  of  ul- 
timate success  has  the  best  of  guarantees.  It 
is  buttressed  by  unescapable  necessity.  The 
solid  basis  on  which  this  hope  rests  is  the  lack 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE  /91 


of  self-sufficiency.  On  this  fact  society  itself 
is  founded.  On  this  principle,  Plato  con- 
structed his  republic.  No  community  nor  na- 
tion, as  well  as  no  individual,  is  self-sufficient. 
This  applies  both  to  the  supply  of  physical 
necessities  and  the  supply  of  food  for  minds 
and  souls.  No  nation,  as  no  man,  can  long 
live  a  Robinson  Crusoe  type  of  existence. 
They  have  a  community  of  interests.  All  men 
are  political  animals.  They  must  have  with 
each  other  some  kind  of  business,  either  good 
or  bad.  The  community  center  movement 
merely  aims  to  make  this  business  good  instead 
of  bad.  The  obvious  sanity  of  this  policy  is 
the  guarantee  of  its  ultimate  triumph. 

While  a  lack  of  knowledge  concerning  both 
the  spirit  and  method  of  democracy  makes  the 
road  to  this  goal  a  difficult  one  to  travel,  yet 
the  rewards  by  the  way  are  always  in  propor- 
tion to  the  hardships.  The  satisfaction  of 
working  for  a  cause  bigger  than  one's  private 
advantage  is  never  lost,  whatever  be  the  for- 
tunes of  the  cause  itself.  Eric,  a  dying  soldier 
boy  in  France  writing  his  last  letter  to  his 
father  and  mother,  well  expressed  both  the  sat- 
isfaction and  its  cause  when  he  said :     "To  a 


Q 


A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 


very  small  number  it  is  given  to  live  in  history ; 
their  number  is  scarcely  i  to  10,000,000.  To 
the  rest  it  is  only  granted  to  live  in  their  united 
achievements."  This  is  the  experience  not 
only  of  vision-seeing,  chivalrous  youths  w^ho 
have  not  yet  exchanged  their  ideals  for  their 
comforts,  but  it  is  the  experience  also  of  a  ma- 
ture man  like  Thomas  Jefferson.  When  the 
long  shadows  fell  across  his  life  and  he  came 
to  write  his  epitaph,  this  is  what  he  wrote: 

HERE   WAS    BURIED 

THOMAS   JEFFERSON 

AUTHOR   OF   THE 

DECLARATION 

OF 

AMERICAN  INDEPENDENCE 

OF    THE 

STATUTE   OF   VIRGINIA 

FOR 

RELIGIOUS   FREEDOM 

AND    FATHER   OF   THE 

UNIVERSITY   OF   VIRGINIA. 

It  is  highly  significant  that  he  never  men- 
tions the  fact  that  he  had  been  governor  of 
Virginia,  Secretary  of  State,  minister  to 
France,  twice  President  of  the  United  States. 
That  is  to  say,  he  never  mentions  any  personal 
rewards,  anything  that  the  people  had  done 


HOW  TO  ORGANIZE  (93 

for  him,  but  only  what  he  had  done  for  the 
people,  only  the  service  which  his  genius  and 
loyalty  had  rendered  to  the  community  causes 
of  democracy  and  education.  This  alone  is 
what  he  cared  to  remember  with  joy  and  pride. 
This  is  why  the  community-center  movement 
is  justified  in  claiming  the  major  loyalty  of  all 
soldiers  of  the  common  welfare. 


PART  III 
THE  PRACTICE  OF  CITIZENSHIP 


SHOES  WHICH  SUGGEST  A  SOCIAL  PROGRAM 


THE  PRACTICE  OF  CITIZENSHIP 
THE  "COMMON  HOUSE" 

"Come  with  me  now  to  the  common  house, 
the  Maison  Commune,  and  tell  me,  first,  if  you 
know  a  more  beautiful  name  than  this !  The 
common  house!  What  ideas  the  familiar 
term  awakens!  There  is,  in  the  village,  a 
house  that  belongs  to  no  one  in  particular,  that 
is  open  to  the  poor  as  to  the  rich;  that  is,  so 
to  speak,  the  domestic  center,  the  home  of  the 
village  itself." 

With  this  statement  President  Poincare  of 
France  closes  his  sketch  of  the  checkered  and 
stormy  struggle,  on  the  part  of  his  country,  to 
secure  stable  local  self-government.  There 
are  in  France  to-day  36,225  communes,  each 
with  its  common  house,  its  mayor  and  its  coun- 
cilors. Only  recently  have  the  liberties  of 
local  communities  been  put  on  a  firm  footing, 
although  the  Constituent  Assembly  in  1789  en- 
deavored to  revive  and  establish  them.  The 
leaders  of  the  French  Revolution  and  the  lead- 
ers of  the  American  Revolution  agreed  in  be- 

97 


98       A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

lieving  that  the  commune,  the  organized  local 
community,  is  the  corner-stone  of  the  national 
edifice  and  the  administrative  unit  most  in  con- 
formity with  the  nature  of  things.  This  ideal 
America  has  rediscovered,  and  is  now  attempt- 
ing to  put  it  into  operation  through  its  com- 
munity-center movement.  It  is  this  ideal  on 
account  of  which  the  United  States  Bureau  of 
Education  and  the  Council  of  National  De- 
fense have  united  their  forces  for  the  purpose 
of  promoting. 

HOW  IT  WORKS 
To  build  a  Maison  Commune,  to  make  every 
schoolhouse  the  community  capitol  and  every 
community  a  little  democracy,  is  indeed,  as 
President  Poincare  says,  a  beautiful  ideal. 
But  how  does  it  work?  That  is  the  question 
with  which  this  ideal  is  constantly  challenged. 
Let  us  fearlessly  accept  the  challenge,  for 
ideals  are  intended  to  be  operated.  At  the 
same  time  it  ought  to  be  frankly  admitted — 
indeed  it  ought  not  to  need  stating — that 
neither  in  France  nor  in  America  does  the 
ideal  community  as  yet  exist.  The  commun- 
ity, or  the  individual,  laying  claim  to  a  ful- 


PRACTICE  OF  CITIZENSHIP    99 

filled  ideal  either  must  have  a  low  ideal,  or 
be  self-deceived.  The  praise  of  a  freeman's 
citizenship  is  sung  as  a  kind  of  doxology  in 
public  assemblies.  It  is  an  emotional  outlet 
for  our  worship  of  American  ideals.  But  the 
practice  of  citizenship  in  an  actual  community 
is  quite  a  different  thing,  and  obviously  a  com- 
plex and  difficult  enterprise.  The  general 
principles  expressed  in  the  first  part  of  our 
Declaration  of  Independence  are  beautiful 
ideals,  but  when  we  came  to  its  bill  of  partic- 
ulars our  trouble  began.  It  led  to  the  Revolu- 
tionary War.  The  ideals  of  the  Declaration 
did  not  even  get  themselves  embodied  in  the 
Constitution  and  have  never  since  been  prac- 
ticed in  any  American  Community.  This  is 
nothing  against  the  ideals.  It  is  no  reason 
why  one's  devotion  to  them  should  cool. 
Quite  the  contrary;  it  is  the  most  cogent  reason 
for  the  renewal  of  loyalty  and  the  increase  of 
zest  in  working  for  their  realization.  All 
worth-while  ideals  are  difficult  to  operate. 
"The  task  of  the  American  freeman,"  says 
Francis  B.  Gummere,  "is  to  see  his  ideal  com- 
munity steady  and  whole,  and  to  put  its  yoke 
upon  his  own  neck." 


loo     A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

While  the  kind  of  community  whose  organ- 
ization we  seek  to  promote  is  an  imagined 
community,  and  does  not  yet  exist,  yet  there 
have  always  been  encouraging  approximations 
to  it.  Approximations  to  it  exist  to-day  in 
larger  numbers,  both  in  America  and  in  other 
nations,  than  at  any  previous  period  of  his- 
tory. Indeed,  so  numerous  are  they  that  a 
brief  description  of  them  would  occupy  a  vol- 
ume. A  present  urgent  need  of  the  Bureau 
of  Education  is  to  prepare  such  a  descriptive 
report  in  order  to  answer  the  requests  for  in- 
formation which  the  newly  awakened  interest 
in  community  organization  has  inspired  in  all 
sections  of  the  country. 

Within  the  limits  here  allotted  it  is  possible 
to  give  only  a  few  brief  illustrations.  But 
they  are  illustrations  of  typical  communities; 
the  writer  has  first-hand  knowledge  of  them, 
and  they  are  representative  of  permanently 
important  lines  of  work  now  in  the  process  of 
development.  The  communities  here  selected 
for  illustration  are:  A  village,  a  country- 
side, a  suburb,  a  small  city,  an  average  city, 
a  big  city,  a  state. 


PRACTICE  OF  CITliENitifF''ic>r 

A  VILLAGE 

The  village  referred  to  has  a  population  of 
500  and  is  surrounded  by  a  rich  farming  coun- 
try. The  way  this  farm-village  began  its  com- 
munity work  is  significant.  Some  women  in 
the  village  church  gave  a  simple  amateur  play, 
a  community  drama,  to  satisfy  the  young  peo- 
ple's desire  for  pleasure,  to  promote  the  spirit 
of  cooperation  and  incidentally  to  raise  money 
for  the  church.  It  was  a  marked  success,  but 
when  the  proceeds  were  presented  to  the 
church  officials,  they  refused  it  on  the  ground 
that  it  was  tainted  money.  This  event  bore 
immediate  fruit.  It  at  once  revealed  the 
necessity  for  a  building  to  meet  the  obvious 
needs  of  the  community,  which  the  church 
refused  to  meet.  A  movement  was  started  to 
secure  one.  It  met  with  enthusiastic  response. 
A  beautiful  community  building  was  erected 
and  dedicated,  free  of  debt.  I  had  the 
honor  of  giving  the  dedication  address.  In 
it  are  conducted  lectures,  community  dramas, 
games,  socials  and  dances.  It  houses  a  library 
and  provides  preaching  on  Sundays.  The 
community  spirit  thus  created  has  been  so  im- 


rbi     A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

pressive  and  helpful  that  one  citizen  asked  for 
the  privilege  of  endowing  the  building.  The 
amount  is  not  sufficient  to  cripple  the  move- 
ment, but  enough  to  ease  the  burden  of  raising 
operating  expenses.  It  has  so  unified  and  en- 
thused the  community  as  to  inspire  the  erec- 
tion of  a  large  new  schoolhouse,  a  far  better 
equipped  building  than  previously  would  have 
been  possible.  These  are  visible  signs  of  the 
new  spirit  of  neighborhood  and  responsible 
citizenship  born  in  the  community. 

The  significant  fact  exhibited  in  this  com- 
munity's experience  is  the  need  to  broaden  the 
scope  and  deepen  the  content  of  religion.  But 
since  religion  is  still  regarded  by  many  as  a 
dogma  instead  of  an  attitude  to  life,  it  is  bet- 
ter not  to  use  this  term  and  say  rather  that  the 
community  achieved  its  freedom  from  the 
false  distinction  between  sacred  and  secular. 
The  contribution  which  this  farm  village 
makes  to  other  communities  needs  to  be  em- 
phasized. It  can  be  done  most  briefly  and 
effectively  by  relating  it  to  an  incident  in 
Mark  Twain's  wise  book,  ^'A  Connecticut 
Yankee  at  the  Court  of  King  Arthur."  He 
describes  a  certain  zealot  and  anchorite,  who 


PRACTICE  OF  CITIZENSHIP    103 

condemned  himself  to  the  treadmill  practice 
of  bending  and  unbending  his  body — bowing 
and  rising — all  day  long,  day  after  day  and 
year  after  year.  That  was  his  religion, — his 
whole  religion  as  he  conceived  it — and  by  its 
practice  he  had  won  for  himself  a  reputation 
for  transcendent  piety.  But  to  the  hard- 
headed,  practical  Yankee  this  looked  like  a 
waste  of  energy  and  he  began  to  study  how  to 
utilize  it  and  turn  it  to  some  good  purpose. 
Accordingly  he  arranged  a  device  by  which 
the  old  ascetic  was  hitched  to  a  sewing-ma- 
chine, and  as  he  continued  to  practice  his  re- 
ligion he  was  made  to  turn  the  machine  and 
thus  his  piety  was  turned  to  some  account. 
Mark  Twain  is  justified  in  turning  the  weapon 
of  his  humor  against  the  distinction  between 
sacred  and  secular,  because  while  it  has  no 
existence  in  fact,  and  is  merely  a  mental  illu- 
sion, it  has  done  untold  damage  to  human  wel- 
fare. The  progress  of  the  community  center 
movement  requires  that  everywhere  this  dis- 
tinction be  destroyed,  just  as  this  farm  village 
succeeded  in  doing. 


I04     A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

A  COUNTRY-SIDE 

The  open-country  community  selected  for 
illustration  is  a  county.  The  special  feature 
of  its  work  here  described  is  a  new  enterprise 
and  suggestive  to  other  counties.  The  local 
communities  of  this  county  were  requested  to 
send  as  many  of  their  members  as  could  come 
to  a  country  schoolhouse  and  spend  one  week 
together  in  community  center  activities. 
They  came — men,  women  and  children, 
youths  and  adults, — they  came  on  foot,  by 
mule-back  and  in  automobiles, — they  came 
every  day  from  near  and  far,  some  as  far  as 
twenty  miles.  They  increased  in  numbers  as 
the  week  went  on.  This  experiment  may  most 
accurately  be  described  by  calling  it  a  people's 
university.  There  was  present  a  faculty  of 
over  a  dozen  members,  made  up  of  representa- 
tives from  the  state  departments  of  education, 
agriculture,  health,  road-making,  fire  protec- 
tion and  from  the  state  university  and  state 
normal  college,  and  the  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Edu- 
cation. Each  morning  the  faculty  met  on  the 
porch  of  a  near-by  hotel  to  adjust  the  day's 


PRACTICE  OF  CITIZENSHIP    105 

program  and  indulge  in  jollity  and  recreation 
(it  is  a  prohibition  state). 

The  day's  work  lasted  from  3  to  10  P.  M. 
The  afternoon  was  devoted  to  instruction  in 
road-making,  home  economics,  cooperative 
buying  and  selling,  fire  protection,  organized 
play,  music,  boys'  and  girls'  club  work. 
There  were  classes  for  all,  both  young  and  old, 
the  teachers  each  day  exchanging  classes.  At 
the  twilight  hour  all  remained  for  a  picnic 
supper  in  the  grove  surrounding  the  school- 
house.  It  was  a  real  "communion  supper,"  in 
which  we  broke  bread  together  as  friends  and 
neighbors  devoted  to  the  common  welfare. 

No  such  People's  University  is  complete 
without  a  motion  picture  outfit  as  a  time-sav- 
ing instrument  of  instruction.  But  there  was 
no  electricity  in  the  county.  How  could  it 
be  managed?  Where  there's  a  will  there's  a 
way.  The  leaders  of  the  experiment  secured 
two  Ford  automobiles.  On  one  they  placed  a 
Delco-Light  machine  which  made  the  electric- 
ity. On  the  other  they  put  a  projector. 
Twenty  educational  reels  were  sent  from  the 
Federal    Departments    at    Washington,    and 


io6     A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

story  reels  were  secured  from  private  agencies. 
The  schoolhouse  was,  of  course,  too  small  to 
hold  the  people.  The  screen  was  hung  on  the 
side  of  the  building  and  the  people  seated  in 
the  grove.  The  evening  program  consisted  of 
community  singing,  motion  pictures  and  a  lec- 
ture by  the  writer  on  community  organization. 
To  him  the  prospect  of  competing  with  motion 
pictures  was  a  source  of  anxiety,  especially 
since  more  than  half  of  the  people  had  never 
seen  a  motion  picture.  But  his  fear  was  un- 
justified. They  enjoyed  the  pictures  but  did 
not  lose  their  heads  over  them.  It  is  no  small 
compliment  to  them  to  report  their  repeated 
remarks  that  they  did  not  come  for  pictures 
but  for  a  serious  discussion  of  their  community 
problems.  Moreover,  the  writer  presented  to 
them  exactly  the  same  lectures  which  he  had 
delivered  to  a  summer  school  in  a  rich  and 
learned  northern  university,  and  they  received 
the  same  appreciation,  only  more  so,  which 
means  that  one  never  needs  to  talk  down  to  the 
people  provided  he  uses  language  they  can  un- 
derstand. They  may  not  be  bookish  but  they 
know  how  to  think  about  life's  fundamentals. 
This  was  an  experiment  in  taking  a  univer- 


PRACTICE  OF  CITIZENSHIP    107 

sity  to  the  people  who  need  it  most.  It  is  a 
new  kind  of  university  extension.  It  is  ap- 
plied democracy.  Its  value  cannot  be  over- 
estimated. For,  as  President  Wilson  said,  "A 
kind  of  liberal  education  must  underlie  every 
wholesome  political  and  social  process,  the 
kind  of  liberal  education  which  connects  a 
man's  feeling  and  his  comprehension  with  the 
general  run  of  mankind,  which  disconnects 
him  from  the  special  interests  and  marries  his 
thought  to  the  common  interests  of  great  com- 
munities." 

The  significant  fact  about  this  county's  ex- 
periment is  that  the  people's  response  amply 
justifies  the  labor  involved  in  it.  One  result, 
for  example,  was  that  the  county  commission- 
ers appropriated  $12,000  to  secure  better 
sanitary  conditions  in  the  county.  This  is 
an  index  of  far  larger  results.  The  sight  of 
the  people  seated  in  the  schoolhouse  grove  on 
those  warm  moon-light  nights — their  wistful 
eager  faces,  their  hunger  for  knowledge,  their 
new  sense  of  community  responsibility,  their 
social  and  mental  hospitality — leaves  a  picture 
in  the  writer's  memory  never  to  be  forgotten 
and  furnishes  a  ground  of  hope  that  their  en- 


io8     A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

larged  outlook  upon  life  will  issue  in  recon- 
structed communities.  As  the  week  drew  to 
a  close  the  members  of  the  faculty  were  moved 
in  common  by  a  new  and  strangely  vital  im- 
pulse which  they  confessed  to  each  other.  It 
was  a  sort  of  religious  passion.  They  said  this 
is  the  new  evangelism,  an  educational  evangel- 
ism. This  same  work  must  be  done  in  every 
community  of  the  State.     And  so  it  ought. 

A  SUBURB 

The  suburb  selected  for  illustration  is  at- 
tached to  one  of  our  eastern  cities  already  fa- 
mous for  the  beauty  of  its  suburbs.  This  one 
is  among  the  best.  It  has  no  school,  no 
church,  and  no  town  government,  on  account 
of  which  happy  condition  of  freedom  the 
writer  has  told  the  people  they  are  to  be  con- 
gratulated, because  there  are  so  many  things 
they  will  not  have  to  unlearn  and  so  much 
dead  lumber  they  will  not  have  to  remove. 
The  door  is  wide  open  for  a  fine  piece  of 
constructive  work.  The  work  of  construc- 
tion is  so  much  easier  than  that  of  reconstruc- 
tion or  destruction. 

The  writer  has  urged  this  community  to 


PRACTICE  OF  CITIZENSHIP    109 

organize  its  community  life  comprehensively, 
and  to  build  its  proposed  "common  house"  in 
such  a  way  that  it  will  serve  as  a  school,  as  a 
social  club  and  as  a  town  hall  all  at  once.  He 
is  also  urging  it  to  take  a  big  step  in  advance 
and  to  make  its  "city  manager"  and  school 
principal  to  be  one  and  the  same  person  in 
order  to  become  an  object  lesson  to  towns  and 
cities  and  demonstrate  how  it  is  possible  to 
unify  and  simplify  public  affairs,  to  give  the 
school  the  dominant  place  it  deserves  and  to 
redeem  politics  from  its  low  condition.  More 
than  75  per  cent  of  the  money  raised  by  this 
community  from  taxation  would  be  used  for 
school  purposes.  Its  other  public  interests 
are  quite  subordinate.  Indeed  it  is  getting  on 
very  well  now  without  any  town  government 
at  all  except  the  slight  amount  exercised  by 
the  township.  In  organizing  its  public  ac- 
tivities this  community  has  the  rare  chance  of 
doing  the  obviously  wise  but  daring  thing  of 
putting  first  things  first  and  second  things 
second. 

It  has  already  made  a  fair  start.  It  has  in- 
corporated its  community  association  in  order 
not  only  to  hold  property,  but  especially  in 


no     A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

order  to  safeguard  the  community's  develop- 
ment until  such  time  as  a  state  law  can  be 
enacted  for  the  incorporation  of  towns  on  lines 
better  suited  to  promote  economic  and  social 
welfare.  It  has  secured  an  old  stone  mill 
building  long  unused  and  fitted  it  up  to  serve 
as  an  assembly  room  and  social  center. 
Through  the  use  of  this  old  building  a  rarely 
beautiful  neighborhood  spirit  has  already  been 
created. 

For  several  years,  in  this  old  building,  com- 
munity drama  has  been  developed  to  a  high 
degree  of  perfection.  Community  drama  has 
been  called  the  "ritual  of  the  religion  of 
democracy."  It  has  been  so  used  by  this 
suburb.  Members  of  the  Community  have 
both  written  and  staged  plays  of  the  highest 
merit.  The  writer  here  witnessed  a  play 
called  "The  Artsman,"  a  local  product,  which 
would  have  done  credit  to  any  theater  in  the 
country.  The  secret  of  its  charm,  as  of  all 
good  work,  was  its  sincerity.  This  was  re- 
vealed by  a  touching  little  circumstance.  The 
author  of  the  drama,  who  was  to  have  taken 
the  leading  part,  died  before  the  play  was 
given.     He  had  planned  to  build  a  real  fire- 


PRACTICE  OF  CITIZENSHIP    iiii, 

place  on  the  stage  to  add  a  touch  of  reality 
to  the  drama.  In  respect  to  his  wish  the 
young  people,  some  of  whom  had  parts  in  the 
play,  built  with  their  own  hands  out  of  real 
stone  a  fireplace  which  burned  real  wood. 
Any  community  where  such  sincere  devotion 
is  possible  exhibits  unusual  capacity  for  realiz- 
ing community  ideals.  When  the  story  of  the 
spiritual  value  of  community  drama  comes  to 
be  written,  what  this  little  suburb  has  done 
will  occupy  a  worthy  place  in  it. 

The  typical  suburb  is  in  special  need  of  a 
community  center,  because  it  lacks  a  per- 
sonality, a  community  sense.  It  is  neither  city 
nor  country.  It  is  chiefly  an  eating  and  sleep- 
ing place.  It  is  semi-detached  from  normal 
activities,  and  has  a  tendency  to  breed  a  semi- 
detached type  of  man.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  suburb,  just  because  its  members  have 
broken  away  from  their  old  moorings  and  tra- 
ditions and  represent  previous  environments  so 
various  in  their  nature,  is  a  place  especially 
fitted  for  a  comprehensive  organization  like  a 
community  center.  From  long  and  intimate 
acquaintance  with  suburbs,  the  writer  feels 
that  the  suburb  is  the  most  fruitful  of  all  fields 


112      A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

for  the  rapid  growth  of  the  community  center 
ideal  and  can  make  a  distinct  contribution  to 
it  if  it  is  awake  to  its  opportunity  and  if  money 
has  not  destroyed  its  capacity  for  public- 
mindedness. 

The  suburb  here  referred  to  is  a  striking  ex- 
ample of  the  opportunity  which  suburbs  in 
general  have.  Unhandicapped  in  the  process 
of  organizing  its  life,  it  has  the  chance  to  do 
pioneer  work  of  the  highest  value.  It  can 
show  town  and  city  governments  how  they  may 
eliminate  needless  waste  and  duplication  by 
using  the  schoolhouses  as  convenient  and  effec- 
tive avenues  through  which  to  perform  admin- 
istrative functions  and  public  services,  such  as 
voting,  recreation,  health,  fire-protection,  vital 
statistics  and  many  more. 

If  it  were  not  so  new  it  would  seem  an 
obviously  wise  thing  to  say  that  every  police- 
man ought  to  be  an  assistant  community 
secretary,  that  he  ought  to  receive  a  course 
of  instruction  in  social  service,  and  that 
he  ought  to  be  a  type  of  man  capable  of  taking 
such  a  course.  He  ought  at  least  to  be  a 
scoutmaster,  and  all  the  boys  in  his  district 


PRACTICE  OF  CITIZENSHIP    113 

should  be  his  assistants.  A  school  would  do 
wisely  to  include  in  its  curriculum  such  a  field 
course  in  civics  for  its  boys.  This  may  of 
course  necessitate  a  new  type  of  policeman  but 
this  is  the  intention.  If  policemen  became 
social  workers  it  would  halve  their  troubles 
and  double  their  joys;  that  is,  it  would 
make  them  four  times  as  efficient  as  at  present. 
A  beginning  in  this  direction  has  already 
been  made  at  Toledo,  Ohio,  where  they  have 
discarded  their  clubs  and  adopted  the  slogan 
that  their  business  is  to  help  and  not  hurt 
people.  A  policeman  should  be  rewarded 
not  for  the  number  of  arrests  he  succeeds  in 
making,  but  for  the  number  he  succeeds  in 
making  unnecessary.  His  aim  should  be  pre- 
vention instead  of  cure. 

The  suggestion  to  affiliate  the  town  govern- 
ment and  the  school,  which  this  suburb  is  con- 
sidering, does  not  mean  that  politics  should  be 
taken  into  the  schools  but  that  the  schools 
should  be  taken  into  politics.  It  means  that  it 
is  the  effective  method,  if  there  is  any,  by 
which  to  redeem  the  term  politics,  and  make  it 
synonymous,  not  with  partisan  and  personal 


114     A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

profit,  but  with  social  service,  as  it  once  was 
and  as  it  will  be  again  when  the  community 
center  movement  becomes  dominant. 

A  SMALL  CITY 
The  small  city,  whose  community  center  is 
selected  for  illustration,  is  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  cities  in  America.  Its  community 
center  referred  to  is  characteristic  of  the  city. 
The  building  is  the  best  equipped  building  for 
community  center  work  which  the  writer  has 
as  yet  anywhere  seen.  This  community  is  also 
in  the  forefront  of  community  development  in 
that  it  has  a  secretary,  publicly  elected  by  the 
people  of  the  neighborhood  and  supported  out 
of  public  funds.  This  fact  needs  to  be  care- 
fully noted  because  it  is  certain  to  become 
more  and  more  apparent  that  complex  work  of 
this  sort  cannot  be  carried  on  with  success 
unless  trained  workers  are  employed.  In- 
deed the  need  of  leadership  has  already  be- 
come urgent.  It  is  already  clear  that  the  field 
for  community  work  will  be  ready  much 
sooner  than  workers  can  be  prepared  to  man  it. 
Even  this  community  with  its  fine  equipment 
is  typical  of  this  condition.     It  has  the  most 


PRACTICE  OF  CITIZENSHIP    115 

complete  and  business-like  organization  that 
the  writer  has  seen.  Its  machinery  is  first 
class.  It  only  needs  to  be  operated.  But 
there  is  a  call  for  more  work  to  be  done  than 
any  one  person  can  do. 

In  these  circumstances  it  has  centered  its 
effort  along  one  or  two  lines  of  activity  chiefly. 
Its  main  work  at  present  is  to  equip  its  mem- 
bers with  useful  occupations.  It  conducts 
evening  classes  in  sewing,  millinery,  civil  serv- 
ice preparation,  public  speaking,  parliamen- 
tary law,  and  other  subjects.  It  pays  special 
attention  to  health  and  recreation.  It  con- 
ducts classes  in  gymnasium  work  for  girls 
and  women,  social  and  rhythmic  dancing,  am- 
ateur theatricals,  junior  and  senior  orches- 
tra, grade  violin  classes.  The  number  at- 
tending these  classes  is  about  800  per  week. 
During  special  weeks  there  have  been  as  many 
as  2,000  in  attendance,  but  the  average  is  about 
800  in  the  winter  season.  The  amount  re- 
ceived to  defray  operating  expenses  last  year 
was  over  $2,000.     This  year  it  will  be  more. 

In  addition  to  these  there  are  many  other 
activities  like  war  kitchen  work,  lectures  on 
food  conservation  and  special  entertainments. 


ii6     A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

A  start  has  been  made  in  community  buying, 
and  plans  are  all  made  to  operate  a  community 
bank.  But  the  fact  of  importance  about  this 
community  is  the  marked  success  it  has  made 
in  its  work  of  vocational  training.  It  does  not 
neglect  cultural  activities,  because  it  believes 
that  men  and  women  are  something  more  than 
working  machines.  But  it  believes  that  the 
first  essential  equipment  for  a  citizen  in  a 
democracy  is  the  capacity  for  self-support.  It 
is  not  the  only  equipment  but  it  is  the  first. 
It  was  the  law  and  custom  of  the  Hebrew 
Republic  that  every  man  and  woman  should 
have  a  trade.  It  is  a  good  rule  for  every 
Republic,  for  no  citizen  of  a  democracy  ought 
to  be  a  beggar.  Moreover,  those,  who  do  not 
need  to  earn  a  living,  most  of  all  need  the  edu- 
cation which  manual  training  gives.  This  is 
a  cardinal  doctrine  of  the  community  center 
movement.  Every  community  center  ought 
to  have  a  workshop  open  in  the  evenings, 
where  mechanics  may  go  to  school  to  each 
other  and  where  they  may  get  expert  help  and 
advice  that  they  may  secure  greater  pro- 
ficiency. That  is  the  message  of  this  particu- 
lar center  to  other  communities. 


PRACTICE  OF  CITIZENSHIP    117 

AN  AVERAGE  CITY 

The  type  of  work  in  an  average  city,  here 
given  for  illustration,  is  selected  because  it 
embodies  a  distinctive  idea  of  great  value.  It 
is  a  poor,  populous  typical  manufacturing  cen- 
ter. The  school  is  over-crowded  with  chil- 
dren and  the  district  is  over-crowded  with 
saloons.  The  school  has  an  especially  poor 
equipment,  but  it  has  a  principal,  equipped 
with  genius  and  a  social  vision. 

She  devised  a  system  by  which  she  knows 
each  day  why  absent  students  are  absent.  A 
common  cause  for  absence  was  discovered  to 
be  the  lack  of  shoes  suitable  to  wear  on  stormy 
days.  She  removed  this  cause  by  having  the 
shoes  mended  by  boys  in  the  manual  training 
department  and  lending  the  children  shoes 
while  their  own  were  being  mended.  The 
boys  did  this  work  so  well  that  they  were 
asked  to  mend  shoes  for  people  outside  the 
school.  For  this  they  received  pay,  which 
they  needed  in  order  to  be  able  to  remain  in 
school,  instead  of  leaving  school  in  order  to 
help  support  the  family  by  outside  work. 
Thus  was  born  a  cobbling  shop.     Then  the 


ii8      A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

principal  realized  that  it  would  be  unwise  for 
some  of  the  boys  to  take  home  the  money  they 
earned,  because  it  would  be  spent  by  unworthy 
parents  in  the  saloon.  She  therefore  started 
a  savings  bank  to  safeguard  these  earnings. 
Thus  there  originated  two  economic  enter- 
prises— a  bank  and  a  cobbling  shop. 

On  one  of  my  visits  I  bought  a  pair  of  these 
little  dilapidated  shoes,  for  the  sake  of  the 
parable  they  embodied.  Their  owner  was  a 
little  girl.  The  health  of  this  potential 
mother  of  future  American  citizens  was  in 
danger.  Her  education  was  interrupted ;  she 
was  debarred  from  the  school  equipment,  the 
expense  of  which  went  on  whether  she  was 
present  or  absent.  The  principal  attempted 
to  meet  these  obvious  human  needs,  and  yet  she 
was  called  before  the  school  board  and  re- 
quired to  explain  and  defend  her  unusual 
audacity.  The  interesting  fact  to  note  is  that 
it  is  the  principal  who  took  the  initiative  in 
this  community  work.  She  is  the  type  de- 
scribed in  Herbert  Quick's  "The  Brown 
Mouse."  She  is  a  woman  of  tact  and  force, 
and  was  able  to  continue  her  work  in  spite  of 
opposition. 


PRACTICE  OF  CITIZENSHIP    119 

The  situation  in  this  district  bristles  with 
interesting  problems.  Close  to  the  school 
there  is  a  social  settlement  with  four  resident 
workers  and  a  large  yearly  budget.  It  has  not 
been  a  great  success.  The  school  is  doing  the 
same  work  better  and  at  less  expense.  The 
school  and  settlement  needed  each  other. 
How  to  coordinate  them  is  the  question  which 
the  writer  was  asked  to  assist  in  solving.  It  is 
a  question  which  everywhere  will  demand  in- 
creasing attention.  The  wise  step  taken  by 
this  school  in  arranging  that  clinics,  conducted 
by  city  and  private  agencies  for  mothers  and 
babies,  use  the  schoolhouse  instead  of  pri- 
vately rented  quarters  is  a  similar  question  of 
great  social  interest.  Interesting  as  these 
questions  are  they  are  here  passed  over  in 
order  to  center  attention  on  the  shoe-shop. 
The  issue  raised  by  it  is  the  extent  to  which  a 
school  ought  to  be  used  to  meet  economic  needs 
which  involve  the  moral  and  spiritual  welfare 
of  the  community,  the  extent  to  which  articles 
made  in  the  schools  can  be  sold  to  the  com- 
munity, the  extent  to  which  school  activities 
can  be  related  to  life  processes.  It  is  an  issue 
of  immediate  and  growing  importance. 


I20     A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

A  picture  of  the  shoes  referred  to  is  repro- 
duced at  the  head  of  this  chapter,  because  they 
suggest  a  complete  social  program.  This 
fact  is  here  emphasized  because  so  many  com- 
munities are  at  a  loss  to  know  what  activities 
to  undertake  and  are  constantly  asking  some 
one  to  furnish  them  a  program.  The  truth  is 
that  the  home-soil  of  any  community  will 
probably  furnish  all  the  program  it  needs  to 
ask,  just  as  in  the  district  under  discussion. 
Take  so  simple  and  obvious  a  starting  point  as 
this  little  pair  of  shoes.  If  the  adults  of  a 
community  center,  who  are  organized  on  the 
basis  of  their  responsibility  for  children,  were 
to  follow  the  lead  presented  by  these  shoes  and 
inquired  into  the  causes  which  compel  the 
owners  of  such  shoes  to  drop  out  of  school,  it 
would  lead  them  into  the  home  and  its  con- 
ditions; it  would  lead  them  into  the  factory  to 
discover  the  amount  of  wage  received;  it 
would  lead  them  into  the  saloon  to  discover 
what  proportion  of  the  wage  was  wasted  there ; 
it  would  lead  them  into  the  school  to  discover 
whether  the  studies  were  such  as  to  hold  the 
interest  of  children  and  to  equip  them  for  their 
work  in  life.     Here's  a  program  ready-made 


PRACTICE  OF  CITIZENSHIP    121 

and  amply  sufficient  to  enlist  the  best  thought 
of  any  community  for  an  unlimited  period. 

In  this  neighborhood  over  91  per  cent  of 
the  girls  and  boys  are  eliminated  from  school 
before  they  finish  the  grammar  grades.  This 
percentage  is  abnormally  high,  but  the  average 
is  over  50  per  cent  for  the  entire  country.  The 
fact  that  the  majority  of  our  children  do  not 
receive  as  much  as  a  grammar  school  education 
is  an  un-American  and  a  suicidal  national 
policy  and  forebodes  serious  evil  to  the  Re- 
public's future.  If  any  community  believed 
that  the  child  is  the  nation's  biggest  asset  and 
should  set  itself  the  task  of  providing  such 
ways  and  means  or  removing  such  obstacles  as 
may  be  necessary  to  enable  all  children  to 
remain  in  school  until  they  have  finished  the 
grammar  grades;  if  it  adopted  the  slogan — at 
least  a  grammar  school  education  the  mini- 
mum for  every  American  girl  and  boy;  if  it 
courageously  attempted  to  remove  the  causes 
which  now  rob  the  children  of  this  minimum, 
whether  these  causes  be  the  kind  of  studies 
now  pursued  in  school,  the  home  conditions  of 
the  children,  or  the  economic  conditions  of 
the  community,  it  would  render  a  national  ser- 


122     A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

vice  second  to  none  in  permanent  value.  It  is 
a  project  big  enough  and  vital  enough  to  enlist 
the  loyal  support  of  every  lover  of  American 
ideals. 

A  BIG  CITY 

When  we  come  to  a  big  city  our  real  trouble 
begins.  It  is  so  vast,  so  complex,  that  one  is  at 
a  loss  to  know  where  to  begin  or  end.  A  big 
city  is  a  whole  nation  in  itself,  and  it  is  essen- 
tial that  we  think  of  it  in  these  terms.  It  is 
because  of  this  complexity  that  the  writer  has 
selected  for  illustration  a  phase  of  community 
activity  which  is  essential  to  effective  work  in 
a  big  city. 

The  district  of  the  city  here  referred  to  con- 
tains a  population  of  40,000.  In  it  there  are 
more  hospitals  and  more  sickness;  more 
charity  organizations  and  more  poverty  than 
exists,  perhaps,  in  any  other  community  of  like 
size  in  the  world.  It  seems  incredible  but  it  is 
true  that  there  are  as  many  as  147  agencies  and 
organizations,  municipal,  private  and  char- 
itable, all  operating  on  the  defenseless  private 
citizen.  Talk  of  the  "simple  life"!  Where 
can  such  a  thing  be  found  in  such  a  com- 
munity?    One  mother  in  this  district,  whose 


PRACTICE  OF  CITIZENSHIP    123 

sense  of  humor  gave  her  some  relief,  told  a 
friend  of  the  writer  that  she  felt  she  would  be 
driven  to  the  expediency  of  keeping  office 
hours  in  her  home  in  order  to  receive  all  the 
organizations  desiring  to  operate  on  her. 

The  immense  amount  of  needless  waste  in 
overhead  charges  through  duplication  and 
conflict  of  activities,  which  must  necessarily  re- 
sult, from  such  conditions,  is  too  obvious  to 
need  explanation.  It  is  a  condition  of  things 
in  which  the  law  of  diminishing  returns  is 
operating  at  full  speed.  Is  it  any  wonder  that 
James  Bryce  said  the  government  of  our  cities 
is  America's  most  conspicuous  failure?  With 
a  view  of  eliminating  some  of  the  causes  of  this 
failure  a  group  of  pioneer  social  workers  have 
put  into  operation  in  this  neighborhood  an  in- 
strument which  the  writer  believes  will  be 
widely  adopted  in  other  districts  of  the  city. 
It  is  "a  community  clearing  house."  It  is  as 
yet  a  laboratory  experiment  in  community 
work,  but  it  has  already  demonstrated  its 
obvious  usefulness. 

This  particular  community  clearing  house 
is  an  intelligence  office  for  information.  It  is 
a  point  of  contact  between  the  people  and  the 


124     A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

municipal  government.  It  bridges  the  gulf 
between  them.  It  furnishes  information  to 
municipal  departments  concerning  the  needs 
of  the  people.  It  furnishes  information  to  the 
people  concerning  the  services  w^hich  their 
government  is  prepared  to  render.  It  also  ren- 
ders the  same  sort  of  service  to  the  numer- 
ous social  service  agencies  and  institutions, 
both  public  and  private,  operating  in  this  dis- 
trict. They  call  it  "a  neighborhood  gateway 
to  all  the  city's  resources  of  helpfulness." 

What  this  service  means  to  the  lonely,  needy, 
bewildered  citizens  of  a  big  city  can  only  be 
appreciated  by  one  familiar  with  its  life.  To 
bring  together  human  needs  and  the  municipal 
agencies  designed  to  meet  them,  this  is  a  task, 
the  importance  of  which  can  be  learned  only 
by  experience.  To  one  ignorant  of  them, 
helpful  institutions  might  as  well  be  non-ex- 
istent unless  the  knowledge  of  them  is  made 
available  for  use.  The  clearing  house  not 
only  makes  such  knowledge  available,  but  one 
of  its  chief  merits  is  that  it  does  it  speedily. 
The  common  cause  of  an  incalculable  burden 
on  the  city  is  the  fact  that  moral  and  physical 
ills  arc  neglected  so  long  that  the  remedy, 


PRACTICE  OF  CITIZENSHIP    125 

when  it  is  applied,  is  of  little  avail.  Most  of 
the  social  energy  of  a  large  city  is  consumed 
in  attempting  to  undo  what  might  have  been 
prevented. 

The  clearing  house  has  a  large  significance 
for  a  city  community.  There  should  be  a 
central  clearing  house  in  every  large  city  dis- 
trict and  a  sub-station  of  it  in  each  one  of  its 
local  community  centers.  The  general  data 
gathered  by  the  central  clearing  house  can  be 
made  available  for  each  local  schoolhouse,  but 
only  through  the  local  center  can  the  human 
needs  be  made  adequately  known.  The  influ- 
ence of  the  clearing  house  upon  the  average 
citizen's  attitude  to  his  city  government  and 
also  upon  the  character  of  the  government 
itself  will  undoubtedly  produce  a  marked  and 
helpful  change.  One  of  the  pioneers  of  the 
project  wisely  says :  "It  is  important  that  the 
people  have  an  intelligent  sympathy  toward 
their  own  government.  .  .  .  Ignorance,  re- 
sistance, and  hostility  must  be  transformed 
into  sympathy  and  understanding.  The  indi- 
vidual and  his  immediate  group  must  be  led 
to  initiate  their  own  improvement."  Does  not 
this  state  a  basic  need  of  the  big  city?     And 


126     A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

is  not  this  the  need  which  the  community  cen- 
ter is  designed  and  equipped  to  meet? 

A  STATE 

The  state  selected  for  illustration  has  in  suc- 
cessful operation  an  overhead  organization, 
which  in  an  expanded  form  the  writer  believes 
every  other  state  should  duplicate.  It  is  a 
state  Bureau  of  Community  Service.  It  is  a 
central  bureau  composed  of  a  representative  of 
the  state  department  of  education,  agriculture, 
health,  the  college  of  agriculture,  and  me- 
chanical arts,  the  normal  and  industrial  col- 
lege and  the  farmer's  union.  It  is  designed  to 
coordinate  state  agencies  so  that  they  will  be 
real  allies,  and  not  rivals  in  the  public  service. 
Its  chairman  is  the  state  commissioner  of  edu- 
cation. It  employs  an  executive  secretary. 
The  state  appropriates  $25,000  annually  for 
its  use. 

It  seems  desirable,  in  order  to  secure  the  best 
results,  that  the  plan  on  which  this  state  has 
organized  its  bureau  should  be  enlarged.  Its 
membership  ought  to  include  representatives 
not  only  of  state  departments,  but  also  of  vol- 
unteer agencies,   and  individuals  who  have 


PRACTICE  OF  CITIZENSHIP    127 

rendered  conspicuous  service  to  community  de- 
velopment or  who  have  special  equipment  for 
it.  The  application  of  the  term  "State"  needs 
also  to  be  expanded  to  include  cities  of  the  first 
class.  They  ought  to  organize  their  own  ser- 
vice bureaus.  They  ought  to  be  regarded  as 
city-states  and  treated  as  separate  units.  They 
are  more  populous  than  some  states,  indeed  one 
borough  of  New  York  City  is  several  times 
more  populous  than  some  states.  Moreover, 
a  big  city's  problems  are  peculiar  to  itself.  In 
the  work  of  the  Council  of  National  Defense 
it  was  found  necessary  to  deal  with  New  York 
City  as  a  separate  entity.  With  the  consent  of 
the  State  Council,  it  was  so  arranged.  For 
several  years  in  educational  matters  the  same 
plan  has  been  in  practical  operation,  though 
never  definitely  agreed  upon. 

The  need  for  such  a  bureau  in  states  and 
cities  at  once  becomes  obvious  the  moment  one 
attempts  to  do  any  constructive  work.  The 
same  old  needless  waste  through  duplication 
and  conflicts  everywhere  clutters  up  the  high- 
way and  obstructs  progress.  It  is  one  of  the 
ugliest  of  our  social  diseases.  But  our  present 
public  need  calls  for  concerted  action  and  to 


128     A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

this  call  there  is  a  most  encouraging  response. 
Recently  one  of  our  large  cities  invited  the 
writer  to  assist  in  coordinating  its  organ- 
izations with  the  mayor's  committee  of  defense 
for  the  sake  of  their  common  purpose.  There 
were  found  to  be  seven  large  city-wide  ac- 
tivities, as  well  as  many  smaller  ones,  all  aim- 
ing at  the  same  thing,  but  each  going  its  own 
way.  The  facts  themselves  demand  a  central 
bureau  as  the  only  instrument  to  secure  effec- 
tive action  and  to  prevent  enormous  waste. 
As  soon  as  representatives  of  these  organ- 
izations assembled  in  the  same  room  and  faced 
the  facts,  they  were  public-minded  enough  to 
pronounce  a  unanimous  verdict  in  favor  of  a 
service  bureau  through  which  they  could  do 
team  work.  What  they  will  do  when  they  are 
out  of  each  other's  presence  cannot  be  pre- 
dicted. But  there  seems  to  be  good  ground 
for  hope  that  the  city  will  establish  a  bureau 
of  community  service. 

Such  a  bureau  would  enable  councils  of 
defense  to  do  their  work  more  effectively  by 
utilizing  those  agencies  having  large  expe- 
rience in  community  work.     It  would  also  be 


PRACTICE  OF  CITIZENSHIP    129 

prepared  to  conserve  and  carry  on  any  good 
work  done  by  the  councils  of  defense,  when 
they  go  out  of  business  at  the  close  of  the  war. 
The  virile  and  concerted  moral  forces  evoked 
by  the  struggle  against  the  enemies  of  democ- 
racy outside  the  nation  ought  not  to  be  de- 
mobilized at  the  close  of  the  war,  but  ought  to 
be  retained  as  a  permanent  civilian  army  to  do 
battle  against  the  foes  of  democracy  within  the 
Nation. 

To  be  most  effective  such  a  service  bureau 
ought  to  be  given  a  public  status.  This  can 
be  done  if  it  is  created  either  by  the  Council  of 
Defense  or  by  the  Board  of  Education.  But 
since  the  Council  of  Defense  is  a  temporary 
and  the  Board  of  Education  a  permanent  body, 
it  seems  obviously  wiser  to  relate  it  to  the 
Board  of  Education.  Such  a  Bureau  ought 
to  be  organized  with  care.  How  to  make  it  a 
responsible  body,  and  at  the  same  time  grant  it 
a  large  measure  of  freedom,  requires  careful 
thought.  These  two  elements  can  doubtless 
be  adjusted  by  including  in  the  act,  which 
creates  the  bureau,  a  clear,  definite  statement 
as  to  its  aims  and  purposes,  and  an  equally 


I30     A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

clear  statement  granting  freedom  as  to  means 
and  methods  to  be  used  in  securing  the  results 
expected  of  it. 

As  a  suggested  basis  of  discussion  the  writer 
would  propose  that  a  bureau  of  community 
service  be  composed  of  an  indefinite  number  of 
members,  both  men  and  women,  who  have  spe- 
cial equipment  for  community  work;  that 
among  its  members  there  shall  be  at  least  one 
representative  of  those  organizations,  both 
governmental  and  voluntary,  which  are  non- 
partisan, nonsectarian  and  whose  aim  is  the 
public  welfare;  that  its  members  be  appointed 
either  by  the  Superintendent  of  Public  In- 
struction or  the  Board  of  Education,  until 
three  have  been  appointed,  after  which  they 
shall  be  elected  by  the  Bureau  itself;  that  the 
Bureau  organize  itself,  electing  its  own  offi- 
cers and  making  its  own  rules  of  procedure; 
and  that  the  chairman  of  the  Bureau  be  ap- 
pointed a  collaborator  of  the  United  States 
Bureau  of  Education  in  its  work  of  com- 
munity organization. 

Whatever  form  of  organization  may  be 
deemed  best,  the  need  for  such  a  Bureau  seems 


PRACTICE  OF  CITIZENSHIP    131 

obvious.  It  would  prevent  the  serious  dam- 
age resulting  from  the  needless  waste  through 
the  duplication  of  public  social  agencies 
already  formed,  and  prevent  new  needless 
ones  from  forming.  It  would  furnish  a  point 
of  contact  between  complementary  agencies 
within  the  state  itself,  and  enable  them  to  pool 
their  experience,  and  it  would  furnish  a  point 
of  contact  between  the  State  and  Federal  Gov- 
ernments, thus  providing  in  each  state  a  group 
of  men  and  women,  to  whom  the  United  States 
Bureau  of  Education  could  send  information 
and  from  whom  it  could  receive  information 
to  be  used  for  the  common  advantage  of  all. 
The  country  is  so  big,  that  it  is  physically 
impossible  for  the  Federal  Government  to  act 
through  individuals.  It  must  act  through 
representative  men  and  women.  The  writer 
expresses  the  earnest  hope  that  each  state  and 
city-state  will,  in  the  near  future,  seriously 
consider  the  question  of  creating  such  a  bureau 
of  representatives  for  organized  community 
service,  the  value  of  which  one  state  has  al- 
ready demonstrated. 


132     A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

A  HALF-FINISHED  PRODUCT 

There  are  two  additional  community  ac- 
tivities, of  immediate  and  permanent  im- 
portance, in  which  the  writer  is  engaged. 
They  are  community  buying  and  banking  and 
the  incorporation  of  communities,  so  that  com- 
munity buildings,  erected  to  supplement  the 
facilities  of  the  schoolhouse,  may  be  owned  and 
operated  by  the  community  itself.  But  these 
subjects  require  special  and  extended  treat- 
ment and  are  therefore  omitted  from  this 
sketch. 

The  seven  types  of  communities,  here 
briefly  described,  have  been  selected  not  only 
because  the  writer  has  first-hand  knowledge 
of  them,  but  also  because  they  are  typical  of 
distinct  and  helpful  phases  of  community 
work.  Each  one  has  achieved  a  marked  suc- 
cess in  one  or  more  activities,  which  are  both 
significant  and  suggestive  to  other  communi- 
ties. While  it  is  thus  seen  that  the  community 
center  movement  has  developed  far  enough  to 
permit  us  to  say  that  it  is  in  part  an  accom- 
plished fact,  and  that  hundreds  of  com- 
munities have  made  a  fair  start,  yet  it  needs 


PRACTICE  OF  CITIZENSHIP    133 

to  be  clearly  understood  and  frankly  acknowl- 
edged that  it  is  still  in  its  pioneer  period.  It 
is  in  the  making.  It  is  a  half-finished  prod- 
uct. The  work  is  complex  and  diflScult.  It 
would  be  quite  easy  if  it  were  not  for  human 
nature.  The  problem  is  difficult  because  it  is 
a  human  problem.  But  the  rectification  of 
human  nature  is  the  task  which  the  community 
center  movement  has  deliberately  chosen  in 
spite  of  its  known  difficulties.  It  is  a  pioneer 
in  the  new  science  of  human  economy. 

It  is  not  only  the  complexity  of  human 
nature,  which  makes  its  task  difficult,  but  the 
bigness  of  its  aim.  Its  aim  is  nothing  less  than 
that  suggested  by  the  motto  of  the  French 
Republic:  ^^Liberty,  Equality,  Fraternity." 
Its  aim  is  not  only  high  but  broad,  for  it  real- 
izes the  frequently  forgotten  truth  that  a  citi- 
zen's aspirations  can  never  go  any  higher  on 
the  perpendicular  than  they  go  out  on  the 
horizontal;  that  sympathy  determines  the 
worth  of  aspiration ;  that  if  he  cannot  love  his 
fellow-men  whom  he  can  see,  he  cannot  love 
God,  whom  he  cannot  see.  A  good  symbol 
for  a  community  center  would  be  a  circle,  be- 
cause it  is  not  a  membership  organization,  but 


134     A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

a  comprehensive  one;  it  is  an  all-inclusive 
circle,  vv^hich  embraces  the  w^hole  community. 
Is  it  not  obvious  why  community  center  work 
is  difficult?  Its  glory  consists  in  the  fact  that 
its  reach  exceeds  its  grasp,  as  it  ought  to. 

In  view  of  the  bigness  of  the  task,  and  its 
natural  difficulty  in  ordinary  times,  it  is  a 
source  of  satisfaction  to  note  the  pronounced 
impetus  at  present  given  to  the  movement  by 
the  country's  awakened  sense  of  its  need,  and 
by  the  joint  effort  of  the  Council  of  National 
Defense  and  the  United  States  Bureau  of  Edu- 
cation to  meet  it.  The  Nation's  biggest  need 
is  to  mobilize  its  citizens  in  local  communities 
for  national  service.  This  is  a  necessity  at  all 
times,  but  an  urgent  necessity  in  times  of 
national  danger.  The  first  task  of  the  local 
community  is  to  register  all  its  youths  and 
adults,  to  ascertain  its  human  resources,  to  en- 
list them  in  community  companies  for  public 
service  and  especially  to  create  and  maintain 
a  wholesome  morale,  for  the  nation's  safety, 
either  in  war  or  peace,  depends  on  the  morale 
of  its  civilian  population  more  than  on  any 
other  single  factor.  "Morale,"  said  Napo- 
leon, "is  to  force  as  three  is  to  one." 


PRACTICE  OF  CITIZENSHIP    135 

If,  while  local  communities  are  organizing 
themselves  for  immediate  war  work  they  will 
so  far  as  possible  organize  themselves  along 
permanent  lines  for  constructive  purposes  as 
well,  they  will  not  only  do  the  immediate  task 
better,  but  it  will  save  them  the  labor  of  doing 
the  same  work  twice.  Moreover,  by  such  a 
wise  policy  they  will  be  prepared  to  meet  the 
after-war  problems  immediately  ahead,  which 
in  many  respects  will  be  far  more  difficult  to 
handle  than  are  the  present  problems  of  the 
war  period.  The  question  is  not  whether  it  is 
easy  or  difficult,  but  is  it  a  citizen's  duty.  It 
is  indeed  a  difficult  and  inspiring  task  at  any 
time.  But  the  Nation's  present  and  per- 
manent need  alike  demand  that  it  shall  be 
done,  if  our  experiment  in  democracy  is  not  to 
suffer  shipwreck;  if  America  is  not  to  become 
"a  land  of  broken  promise."  Therefore, 
what?     Therefore,  it  shall  be  done. 

"never  so  baffled,  but — " 
The  man  who  understands  the  meaning  of 
community  organization  for  the  Nation's  fu- 
ture welfare;  who  takes  his  stand  not  on  his 
rights,  but  his  duties;  who  appreciates  the 


136     A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

beauty  of  the  American  ideal,  will  not  be  baf- 
fled but  inspired  by  the  task.  It  is  useless, 
and  may  be  worse,  for  any  man  to  undertake 
community  work  unless  he  is  equipped  with 
this  point  of  view.  He  must  take  the  victory 
with  him  before  the  battle  begins.  This  is  not 
poetry,  it  is  the  plainest  of  common  facts.  It 
is  the  first  essential  qualification  for  a  man  who 
enlists  in  the  cause  of  democracy.  He  does 
not  think  failure,  he  thinks  success.  He  is  an 
optimist  by  conviction,  not  because  he  refuses 
to  face  ugly  facts,  but  because  he  refuses  to  be 
defeated  by  them.  His  motto  is  ''Don't  count 
the  enemy,  beat  him." 

The  real  democrat  does  not  need  success ;  he 
only  needs  a  cause.  That  is,  he  is  a  man  of 
courage.  He  has  the  courage  to  go  on  with- 
out guarantees  of  any  kind.  The  American 
ideal  has  frequently  broken  down  and  in  a 
number  of  respects?  Very  well.  Granted. 
The  real  democrat  does  not  permit  what 
America  has  not  yet  achieved  to  blind  him 
to  the  beauty  of  what  she  has  already  achieved. 
He  knows  that  the  American  ideal  is  the  hope 
of  the  world.  The  call  to  help  that  ideal 
progressively  to  realize  itself,  he  regards  as  a 


PRACTICE  OF  CITIZENSHIP     137 

challenge  to  his  heroism.     He  accepts  it.     He 
has  the  courage  to  **carry  on." 

In  Browning's  poem,  "Ixion,"  occurs  a 
phrase  repeated  three  times,  which  aptly  de- 
scribes the  true  American  spirit.  It  is: 
"Never  so  baffled,  but — "  This  is  character- 
istic of  Browning.  He  always  ends  in  the 
crescendo,  the  rising  scale,  the  optimistic  note. 
He  never  ends  in  the  dumps.  If  he  had  writ- 
ten the  story  of  a  certain  Syrian  nobleman,  he 
would  not  have  said,  as  his  ancient  biographer 
did,  "Naaman  was  a  mighty  man  of  valor,  but 
he  was  a  leper."  He  would  have  reversed  the 
sentence:  "Naaman  was  a  leper,  but  he  was 
a  mighty  man  of  valor."  Stevenson  was  an 
invalid,  but  he  was  a  courageously  happy  man. 
Helen  Keller  is  a  deaf  mute,  but  she  is  a  bril- 
liant and  beautiful  spirit.  There  exist  social 
and  economic  conditions  in  America,  which 
contradict  her  democratic  ideals,  but  she  has 
done  more  towards  the  enfranchisement  of  the 
individual  than  has  ever  been  done  by  any 
Nation  in  any  previous  period  of  history. 
She  is  still  a  young  nation,  but  she  is  the  oldest 
Republic  of  the  World.  ''Never  so  baffled, 
but — "   aptly  expresses  the  kind   of  morale 


138     A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

which,  above  everything  else ,  needs  to  be 
created  in  her  civilian  Army,  and  which  the 
community  center  movement  aims  to  create  by 
mobilizing  her  citizens  in  every  city  and  vil- 
lage and  countryside  community.  If  the 
American  democracy  is  not  as  democratic  as  it 
ought  to  be,  arise,  let  us  do  what  we  can  to 
make  it  so. 

LINCOLN'S  MISTAKE 

The  most  effective  instrument  through 
which  to  stimulate  the  practice  of  citizenship, 
to  mobilize  the  intelligence,  sympathy  and 
material  resources  of  the  people  in  behalf  of 
the  cause  of  democracy,  now  threatened  with 
defeat,  is  the  organization  of  small  com- 
munities into  little  democracies  with  school- 
houses  for  their  capitols.  But  this  is  a  big 
program.  What  can  an  individual  do  to  con- 
tribute to  its  success?  The  first  and  most 
needful  thing  for  him  to  do  is  to  talk  about  it. 
All  great  movements  began  in  talk.  The  be- 
ginning of  a  deed  is  an  idea.  The  best  con- 
ductor of  an  idea  is  a  living  word. 

It  is  a  common  and  careless  habit  to  em- 
phasize the  importance  of  a  deed  by  dispar- 


PRACTICE  OF  CITIZENSHIP    139 

aging  the  importance  of  talk,  forgetting  that 
deeds  and  words  constitute  one  piece  of  goods, 
like  the  two  sides  of  a  shield,  only  their  rela- 
tion is  not  mechanical  as  in  a  shield,  but  vital. 
The  men,  who  have  most  profoundly  affected 
the  course  of  history,  men  like  Confucius, 
Jesus  and  Lincoln,  were  all  teachers,  were 
great  talkers.  Their  weapon  was  an  idea. 
The  instrument  they  used  to  convey  it  was  a 
living  and  dynamic  word.  There  is  now  in 
the  White  House  a  teacher  of  democracy, 
whose  great  speeches  are  more  effective  than 
many  battles. 

In  Lincoln's  memorable  speech  at  Gettys- 
burg, he  made  one  profound  mistake.  He 
said  that  no  words  he  uttered  there  would  long 
be  remembered,  whereas  the  fact  is  that  the 
words  he  uttered  there  seem  destined  to  out- 
live the  memory  of  the  battle.  His  great 
words  are  being  cast  in  bronze  and  hung  in 
innumerable  schools  throughout  the  country. 
Indeed  it  is  not  improbable  that  the  time  may 
come,  when  it  will  be  necessary  to  subjoin  a 
footnote  to  his  speech  in  order  to  inform  the 
people  concerning  the  name  of  the  battlefield, 
on  which  it  was  uttered.     The  movement  to 


I40     A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

organize  local  communities  aims  to  realize  the 
ideal,  which  formed  the  subject  of  Lincoln's 
speech,  and  the  present  great  need  of  the 
movement  is  for  men  and  women,  who  under- 
stand what  it  means  and  who  can  express  its 
meaning  in  living  words,  not  only  to  public 
assemblies,  but  also  in  private  to  their  neigh- 
bors. The  subject  of  the  kind  of  talk  neces- 
sary to  create  public  opinion  effective  enough 
to  organize  local  communities  into  little 
democracies,  is  none  other  than  the  ideal  for 
which  our  flag  stands.  When  that  ideal  is 
once  understood,  and  when  it  is  exhibited  by  a 
community  center  in  operation,  the  average 
man,  both  native  and  foreign  born,  will  gladly 
accept  it,  because  it  is  that  for  which  he  has 
been  searching. 

THE  MEANING  OF  THE  FLAG 
Over  no  institution  does  the  American  flag 
more  appropriately  float  than  over  the  free 
public  schoolhouse.  It  is  not  put  there  for 
decorative  purposes.  The  inner  meaning  of 
its  presence  on  the  schoolhouse  begins  to  ap- 
pear when  we  remember  that  in  every  city  and 
village    and    countryside    girls    and    boys, — 


PRACTICE  OF  CITIZENSHIP    141 

twenty-two  millions  of  them, — every  morning 
stretch  forth  their  hands  towards  the  flag  and 
salute  it  with  the  significant  words, — "I  pledge 
allegiance  to  my  flag  and  to  the  country  for 
which  it  stands,  one  nation  indivisible,  with 
liberty  and  justice  for  all." 

With  the  opening  of  the  schools  in  New 
England,  the  salutation  to  the  flag  is  caught 
up,  hour  after  hour,  with  the  course  of  the  sun 
across  the  continent.  It  is  noon  in  Boston 
before  the  children  in  San  Francisco  pledge 
allegiance  in  their  morning  devotions.  By 
the  time  the  morning  salutation  is  given  in  the 
school  outposts  of  Alaska,  the  school  flag  on 
the  Atlantic  has  been  furled!  Every  moment 
during  the  entire  school  day,  somewhere  in  the 
Republic,  American  girls  and  boys  are  stretch- 
ing forth  their  hands  to  express  their  sincere 
devotion  to  the  nation's  emblem,  and  pledge 
their  allegiance  to  the  liberty  and  justice  for 
which  it  stands. 

It  is  a  scene  which  grips  the  heart  with 
hope,  when  once  it  is  pictured  by  the  imag-^ 
ination.     "Old  Glory,"  says  Eugene  Wood, 
"has  floated  victoriously  on  many  a  gallant 
fight  by  sea  and  land,  but  never  do  its  silver 


142      A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

stars  glitter  more  bravely  or  its  blood-red 
stripes  curve  more  proudly  on  the  fawning 
breeze  than  when  it  floats  above  the  school- 
house,  over  the  daily  battle  against  ignorance 
and  prejudice,  for  freedom  and  for  equal 
rights.  .  .  ." 

"The  flag  of  our  union  forever,"  is  our 
prayer,  our  heart's  desire  for  us  and  for  our 
children  after  us.  Heroes  have  died  to  give 
us  that,  heroes  with  glazing  eyes  beheld  the 
tattered  ensign  and  spent  their  last  breath  to 
cheer  it  as  it  passed  on  in  triumph.  "We  who 
are  about  to  die,  salute  thee."  The  heart 
swells  to  think  of  it.  But  it  swells  to  think 
that  day  by  day  thousands  upon  thousands  of 
little  children  stretch  out  their  hands  towards 
that  flag  and  pledge  allegiance  to  it.  "We 
who  are  about  to  live,  salute  thee !" 

What  is  it  that  these  millions,  who  are  about 
to  live  for  their  country,  are  saluting?  Their 
flag?  Yes.  But  their  flag  only  as  an  emblem. 
An  emblem  of  what?  Their  country?  Yes. 
But  what  is  their  country?  No  one  has  ever 
seen  his  country.  It  is  not  the  soil,  or  the 
buildings  or  the  public  oflScials  or  the  people. 
It  is  an  unseen  spiritual  idea ;  it  is  the  will  to  be 


PRACTICE  OF  CITIZENSHIP    143 

one  nation ;  it  exists  only  in  the  hearts  of  the 
people.  What  is  this  unseen  and  imperish- 
able idea,  which  constitutes  the  country,  and 
of  which  the  flag  is  the  symbol? 

It  has  never  been  better  described  than  in 
the  brief  dynamic  words,  uttered  by  President 
Lincoln,  in  our  most  sacred  building,  the  plain 
brick  building  in  Philadelphia,  in  which  the 
Republic  was  born.  "I  have  often  pondered," 
said  our  typical  American,  "over  the  dangers 
which  were  incurred  by  the  men  who  assem- 
bled here,  and  who  formed  and  adopted  the 
Declaration  of  Independence.  I  have  pon- 
dered over  the  toils  of  the  officers  and  soldiers 
who  achieved  that  independence.  I  have 
often  inquired  of  myself  what  great  principle 
or  idea  it  was  that  kept  this  confederacy  so 
long  together.  It  was  not  the  mere  matter  of 
the  separation  of  the  colonies  from  the 
motherland,  but  that  sentiment  in  the  Declar- 
ation, which  gave  promise  that  in  due  time  the 
weight  would  be  lifted  from  the  shoulders  of 
all  men,"  The  same  sentiment  which  six 
months  later  he  thus  expressed:  "This  is  es- 
sentially a  people's  contest  .  .  .  for  maintain- 
ing in  the  world  that  form  and  substance  of 


144     A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

government  whose  leading  object  is  to  elevate 
the  condition  of  men,  to  lift  artificial  weights 
from  all  shoulders,  to  clear  the  paths  of  laud- 
able pursuits  for  all,  to  afford  all  an  unfettered 
start  and  a  fair  chance  in  the  race  of  life." 

This  is  the  ideal  which  makes  America  to 
be  what  she  is;  it  is  the  ideal  to  which  she  was 
dedicated  at  her  birth;  it  is  the  religion  of 
democracy,  of  which  the  flag  is  the  emblem, 
and  on  account  of  which  it  is  justified  in  claim- 
ing the  major  loyalty  of  all  friends  of  free- 
dom. The  national  movement  to  organize 
local  communities  into  little  democracies  aims 
to  preserve  this  ideal  for  the  flag.  It  not  only 
seeks  to  inspire  all  youths  and  adults  to  pledge 
allegiance  to  the  flag  with  the  same  sincere  and 
understanding  devotion,  with  which  school 
girls  and  boys  pledge  theirs.  It  seeks  to  do 
more.  It  seeks  to  inspire  the  practice  of  citi- 
zenship. If  in  any  section  of  the  country  or 
in  any  phase  of  its  social,  political,  or  indus- 
trial life  the  flag's  ideal  of  liberty  and  justice 
exists  in  theory  only  and  not  in  fact,  it  chal- 
lenges citizens  to  do  their  utmost,  just  as  Lin- 
coln did,  to  make  its  ideal  a  reality  and  to 
exhibit  its  meaning  in  practice. 


PRACTICE  OF  CITIZENSHIP    145 

To  secure  liberty  and  justice  for  all;  to  lift 
artificial  burdens  from  all  shoulders;  to 
achieve  "freemen's  citizenship";  to  preserve 
government  "of  the  people,  by  the  people  and 
for  the  people";  to  develop  small  communities 
into  little  democracies  with  schoolhouses  for 
their  capitols;  to  put  human  rights  above 
property  rights,  as  our  boys  in  the  trenches  of 
France  are  now  doing;  to  apply  ethical 
standards  to  politics  and  economics;  to  make 
social,  political,  and  economic  conditions  such 
that  all  citizens,  both  native  and  foreign  born, 
when  speaking  of  America,  may  say,  "My 
Country"  and  mean  what  they  say;  that  they 
may  say  it  not  only  with  honesty  but  with  such 
a  degree  of  enthusiasm  as  to  be  willing  to  put 
the  interests  of  "My  Country"  above  the  in- 
terests of  "My  Self," — nothing  less  than  this, 
as  I  understand  it,  is  the  meaning  of  the  flag. 
To  make  its  meaning  clear  through  the  prac- 
tice of  citizenship  is  the  aim  of  the  community 
center  movement.  It  is  a  permanent  and 
dominant  challenge  to  all  loyal  citizens,  if 
America  is  not  to  become  "a  land  of  broken 
promise." 


PART  IV 

A  SUGGESTED  CONSTITUTION 


A  SUGGESTED  CONSTITUTION 

The  following  is  the  constitution  prepared 
by  the  writer  for  a  community  center  in  Wash- 
ington, D.  C,  and  is  reproduced  here  as  a  sug- 
gestion to  other  communities : 

PREAMBLE 

We,  the  people  of  the  Wilson  Normal  Community  of 
the  City  of  Washington,  D.  C,  in  order  to  secure  the 
advantages  of  organized  self-help,  to  make  public  opinion 
more  enlightened  and  effective,  to  promote  the  education 
of  adults  and  youths  for  citizenship  in  a  democracy,  to 
organize  the  use  of  the  public  school  as  the  community 
capitol,  to  foster  a  neighborhood  spirit  through  which 
the  community  may  become  a  more  efficient  social  unit, 
to  prevent  needless  waste  through  the  duplication  of  social 
activities,  to  engage  in  cooperative  enterprises  for  our 
moral  and  material  welfare,  and  to  create  a  social  order 
more  in  harmony  with  the  conscience  and  intelligence  of 
the  Nation,  do  ordain  and  establish  this  constitution. 

Article  I. — Name 
The  name  of  this  organization  shall  be  the  Wilson 
Normal  Community  Association,  and  its  headquarters  the 
Wilson  Normal  School  Building. 

Article  II. — Location 

The  community  shall  be  defined  as  follows:     Beginning 
149 


I50     A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

at  Fourteenth  and  W  Streets,  thence  north  on  the  east 
side  of  Fourteenth  Street  to  Monroe  Street,  thence  east 
on  the  cast  side  of  Monroe  Street  and  Park  Road  to 
Georgia  Avenue,  thence  south  on  the  west  side  of  Georgia 
Avenue  to  Irving  Street,  thence  east  on  the  south  side  of 
Irving  Street  to  Soldiers*  Home,  thence  south  on  west 
side  of  Soldiers*  Home,  McMillan  Park,  and  Reser- 
voir to  College  Street,  thence  west  on  north  side  of  Col- 
lege Street  and  Barry  Place  to  Tenth  Street,  thence 
south  on  the  west  side  of  Tenth  Street  to  W  Street,  thence 
west  on  the  north  side  of  W  Street  to  Fourteenth  Street, 
the  place  of  beginning. 

Article  III. — Members 

The  members  of  the  association  shall  be  all  white  adult 
citizens  of  this  community,  both  men  and  women.  A 
limited  number  of  nonresident  members  may  be  received 
into  membership,  provided  they  are  not  registered  members 
of  any  other  organized  community.  Organizations  now 
in  operation  which  are  nonpartisan,  nonsectarian,  and 
whose  aim  is  the  public  welfare,  such  as  "Citizens  associa- 
tions," "Home  and  school  leagues,*'  "Red  Cross  chap- 
ters,** "Women*s  clubs,'*  "College  settlements,**  "House- 
keepers* alliances,"  desiring  to  retain  their  name  and 
identity  for  the  sake  of  cooperation  with  other  branches  of 
similar  organizations,  may  become  departments  of  this 
association.  There  shall  be  no  suggestion  of  superiority 
or  inferiority  among  the  departments.  The  members  of 
each  department  shall  have  the  same  standing  as  all  other 
members. 

Article  IV. — Officers 

The  association  shall  elect  by  ballot  from  its  own 


A  SUGGESTED  CONSTITUTION     151 

members  a  board  of  directors,  or  community  council,  which 
shall  be  both  a  legislative  and  an  executive  body.  It 
shall  consist  of  not  less  than  6  nor  more  than  1 5  members. 
They  shall  be  elected  for  a  period  of  three  years,  except- 
ing for  the  first  year,  when  one-third  of  the  number  shall 
be  elected  for  one  year,  one-third  for  two  years,  and  one- 
third  for  three  years. 

The  chairman  of  the  committee  in  charge  of  each  de- 
partment of  the  association  shall  be  a  member  of  the 
board  of  directors.  A  chairman  may  be  appointed  by  the 
board  or  selected  by  the  department  itself  and  confirmed 
by  the  board.  Chairmen  shall  have  the  right  to  select 
the  members  of  their  own  committees. 

The  community  secretary,  whose  public  election  is  pro- 
vided for  by  the  board  of  education,  shall  be  a  member 
of  the  board  of  directors  and  a  member  ex  officio  of  all 
committees.  It  shall  be  his  duty  to  exercise  general  super- 
vision over  all  the  activities  of  the  association,  and  to 
nominate,  by  and  with  the  consent  of  the  directors,  all 
assistant  secretaries.  They  shall  have  the  right  to  at- 
tend all  meetings  of  the  board  and  take  part  in  the  discus- 
sions, but  shall  have  no  vote. 

As  soon  after  the  annual  election  as  convenient  the 
directors  shall  meet  to  organize,  and  shall  elect  from  their 
own  number  a  president,  vice  president,  and  a  secretary- 
treasurer,  who  shall  perform  the  duties  usually  performed 
by  such  officers,  and  who  shall  also  be  the  officers  of  the 
association. 

Article  V. — Departments 
The  board  of  directors  is  authorized  to  organize  and 
operate   departments  of   activity,   such   as  forum,   civics, 
recreation,  home  and  school,  buying  club,  and  community 


152      A  COxMMUNITY  CENTER 

bank,  whose  activities  shall  be  supervised  and  whose  ac- 
counts shall  be  audited  by  the  board  of  directors. 

1.  Forum  Department:  The  committee  in  charge  of 
this  department  shall  arrange  for  public  meetings,  at  such 
time  as  the  association  may  decide,  for  the  free  and  orderly 
discussion  of  all  questions  which  concern  the  social,  moral, 
political,  and  economic  welfare  of  the  community.  It 
shall  select  a  presiding  officer  for  such  meetings,  secure 
speakers,  suggest  subjects,  and  formulate  the  method  of 
conducting  discussions. 

2.  Recreation  Department:  The  committee  in  charge 
of  this  department  shall  provide  and  conduct  games, 
dances,  community  dramas,  musicals,  motion  pictures,  and 
shall  promote  all  similar  play  activities,  with  a  view  to 
increasing  the  joy,  health,  and  good  fellowship  among  both 
adults  and  youths. 

3.  Civics  Department:  The  committee  in  charge  of  this 
department  shall  provide  the  members  with  the  means  of 
securing  information  concerning  politics,  local,  national, 
and  international;  it  shall  stimulate  a  more  intelligent 
interest  in  government  by  the  use  of  publicity  pamphlets ; 
it  shall  suggest  ways  in  which  the  members  may  con- 
tribute to  the  economic  and  efficient  administration  of  the 
city's  affairs ;  it  shall  provide  courses  of  studies  for  young 
men  and  women  as  a  preparation  for  citizenship,  and  de- 
vise methods  of  organizing  the  youth  into  voluntary,  co- 
operative, and  constructive  forms  of  patriotic  service. 

4.  The  Home  and  School  Department:  The  committee 
in  charge  of  this  department  shall  seek  to  promote  closer 
cooperation  between  the  school  and  home,  the  teachers 
and  parents ;  it  shall  aim  to  improve  the  school  equipment, 
to  secure  more  adequate  support  and  better  housing  con- 
ditions for  teachers;  it  shall  organize  and  conduct  study 


A  SUGGESTED  CONSTITUTION     153 

classes  for  youths  and  adults;  it  shall  provide  such  ways 
and  means  or  remove  such  obstacles  as  may  be  necessary 
to  enable  all  children  to  remain  in  school  until  they  have 
finished  the  grammar  grades,  whether  these  obstacles  be 
the  kind  of  studies  now  pursued  in  school,  the  home  con- 
ditions of  the  children,  or  the  economic  conditions  of  the 
community. 

5.  Buying  Club  Department:  The  committee  in  charge 
of  this  department  shall  organize  and  operate  in  the  school 
a  delivery  station  for  food  products  with  a  view  of  de- 
creasing the  cost  of  living;  it  shall  establish  a  direct  re- 
lation between  the  producer  and  consumer  in  order  to 
eliminate  wastes;  it  shall  seek  to  safeguard  the  people's 
health  by  furnishing  the  purest  food  obtainable;  it  shall 
aim  to  moralize  trade  by  giving  full  weight  and  measure 
and  substituting  public  service  for  private  exploitation;  it 
shall  eliminate  debt  by  asking  no  credit  and  giving  none ; 
it  shall  practice  economy  and  equity  in  order  to  secure 
a  larger  return  to  the  producer  and  decrease  the  cost 
to  the  consumer. 

An  annual  fee  shall  be  required  of  all  members  of  the 
buying  club,  payable  quarterly  in  advance,  to  defray 
operating  expenses,  the  amount  of  the  fee  to  be  determined 
by  the  committee,  and  it  shall  be  decreased  or  increased 
as  the  number  of  members  and  volume  of  business  war- 
rant. All  members  shall  secure  their  goods  at  the  net 
wholesale  cost  price. 

Goods  shall  be  sold  only  to  members  of  the  buying  club. 
Membership  in  the  buying  club  is  open  only  to  members 
of  the  association  and  only  to  those  members  who  are 
depositors  in  the  community  bank. 

The  buying  club  shall  set  aside  annually  a  sum  equal 
to  2  per  cent  of  the  amount  of  its  sales,  to  be  used  by  the 


154     A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

association  for  the  purpose  of  educating  its  members  in  the 
principle  and  practice  of  cooperation,  until  public  appropri- 
ations are  sufficient  to  provide  the  means  for  such  educa- 
tion. 

The  club  shall  set  aside  annually  a  sum  equal  to  I  per 
cent  of  the  amount  of  its  sales  as  a  reserve  fund  to  cover 
unexpected  losses. 

The  committee  in  charge  of  the  buying  club  shall  serve 
without  compensation  but  may  employ  one  or  more  execu- 
tives to  conduct  the  business  of  the  club,  who  shall  receive 
compensation  for  their  services,  the  amount  of  which  shall 
be  fixed  by  the  committee,  but  the  amount  shall  be  deter- 
mined, as  far  as  possible,  on  a  percentage  basis  according 
to  service  rendered. 

All  checks,  drafts,  or  notes  made  in  the  name  of  the 
club  shall  be  countersigned  by  the  chairman  of  the  direct- 
ing committee.  The  executive  in  charge  of  the  buying 
club  shall  be  required  to  give  a  surety  bond. 

6.  Community  Bank  Department:  The  committee  in 
charge  of  this  department  shall  organize  and  conduct  a 
credit  union  bank  for  members  of  the  association  in  order 
to  capitalize  honestly  and  to  democratize  credit,  and  to 
multiply  the  efficiency  of  their  savings  by  pooling  them 
for  cooperative  use.  It  shall  be  known  as  the  "Com- 
munity Bank."  It  shall  receive  savings  deposits  both  from 
children  and  adults  and  shall  make  loans.  It  shall,  if 
possible,  be  a  part  of  the  curriculum  of  the  school,  at  least 
as  regards  deposits  of  children.  The  committee  in  charge 
shall  serve  without  compensation,  but  may  employ  one 
executive  to  conduct  its  business  who  shall  be  required 
to  furnish  a  surety  bond. 

The  bank  shall  make  loans  only  to  individual  members 
of  the  association  and  to  the  buying  club  for  productive 


A  SUGGESTED  CONSTITUTION    155 

purposes,  but  no  loan  shall  be  made  to  any  member  of  the 
committee  in  charge  of  the  bank.  Deposits  may  be  re- 
ceived from  those  other  than  members. 

The  bank  shall  issue  no  capital  stock,  but  shall  charge 
entrance  fees,  which  shall  be  used  as  a  reserve  fund  and 
returned  to  depositors  when  they  withdraw  from  member- 
ship. 

The  bank  may  make  small  short-time  loans  secured 
only  by  the  character  and  industry  of  the  borrower.  It 
may  make  long-time  loans,  secured  by  mortgage,  character, 
and  industry,  to  young  men  and  women  for  the  purpose 
of  helping  them  to  secure  houses  in  which  to  start  homes, 
and  the  payment  of  such  loans  may  be  made  on  the 
amortization  plan. 

The  rate  of  interest  charged  for  all  loans  shall  be  5 
per  cent.  The  amount  of  interest  allowed  on  deposits 
shall  be  the  net  profit  after  operating  expenses  are  paid. 
The  bank  shall  use  no  other  bank  as  a  clearing  house 
which  is  not  under  the  supervision  of  the  United  States 
Government.  All  loans  shall  be  made  by  check  and  all 
such  checks  shall  be  countersigned  by  the  chairman  of  the 
directing  committee. 

An  amount  equal  to  one-half  of  i  per  cent  of  its 
deposits  shall  be  set  aside  as  a  reserve  fund.  An  amount 
equal  to  10  per  cent  of  its  deposits  shall  be  invested  in 
Federal  Farm  Loan  Bonds,  Liberty  Bonds,  or  in  other 
Federal,  State,  or  municipal  bonds. 

The  community  bank  shall  be  operated  not  on  the 
principle  of  unlimited,  joint,  and  several  liability  of  its 
members,  but  it  shall  have  the  right  to  demand  pro  rata 
payments  from  them  to  meet  any  loss  through  unpaid 
loans,  provided  the  reserve  fund  is  not  sufficient  to  cover 
such  losses. 


156      A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 


Article  VI. — Cooperation 

There  shall  be  no  dues  for  membership  in  the  com- 
munity association,  the  dues  having  already  been  paid 
through  public  taxation;  but  the  association,  by  voluntary 
subscription  and  in  other  ways,  may  raise  funds  to 
inaugurate  or  support  its  work  if  the  amount  received 
from  public  appropriation  is  insufficient  to  meet  its  needs. 

The  association  may  unite  with  other  similar  associa- 
tions in  the  District  of  Columbia  to  form  a  community 
league,  in  order  to  conduct  a  central  forum  or  cooperate 
with  each  other  for  any  other  purpose  which  may  serve 
their  common  welfare. 

The  association  adopts  the  policy  of  cordial  cooperation 
with  the  board  of  education  and  provides  that  a  designated 
member  of  the  school  board  may  be  a  member  ex  officio 
of  its  board  of  directors.  He  may  attend  any  of  its 
meetings,  take  part  in  the  discussions,  and  vote  on  all 
questions. 

Article  VII. — Meetings 

The  board  of  directors  shall  hold  monthly  meetings  at 
such  times  as  they  may  determine.  All  regular  monthly 
meetings  of  the  board  shall  be  open  meetings.  When  a 
vacancy  occurs,  through  death  or  otherwise,  the  board  may 
fill  the  vacancy  until  the  next  annual  meeting.  If  any 
director  shall  be  absent  from  three  successive  stated  meet- 
ings without  excuse,  such  absence  shall  be  deemed  a  resig- 
nation. 

Quarterly  meetings  of  the  association  shall  be  held  on 
the  second  Tuesday  of  January,  April,  July,  and  October. 
The  April  quarterly  meeting  shall  be  the  annual  meeting 


A  SUGGESTED  CONSTITUTION    157 

to  elect  officers,  hear  reports  from  all  departments,  and  to 
transact  such  other  business  as  may  be  necessary. 

This  constitution  may  be  amended  at  any  annual  meet- 
ing or  at  any  quarterly  meeting  if  previous  notice  of  the 
proposed  amendment  is  given.  In  all  elections  the  pref- 
erential ballot  may  be  used  with  reference  both  to  officers 
and  measures;  the  initiative,  referendum,  and  recall  may 
be  employed  in  such  manner  as  the  association  itself  may 
determine. 


AN  OUTLINE  FOR  A  CONSTITUTION 

The  following  is  a  digest  of  the  preceding  constitution 
for  those  communities  which  may  prefer  a  briefer  form: 

Article  I. — Name 
This  association  shall  be  known  as  The  Community 

Center    Association    of    School    District    No.    , 

County  of ,  State  of ,  and  its  headquarters 

the  — •  schoolhouse. 

Article  II. — Object 
Its  object  shall  be  to  mobilize  the  people  of  this  com- 
munity for  national  service  and  organized  self-help,  to 
equip  its  members  for  citizenship  in  a  democracy,  to  pre- 
vent needless  waste  through  the  duplication  of  activities, 
and  to  create  a  social  order  in  harmony  with  the  conscience 
and  intelligence  of  the  Nation. 

Article  III. — Members 
Its  members  shall  be  all  adult  citizens  of  the  district. 
Any  organization  which  is  nonpartisan  and  nonsectarian 


158     A  COMMUNITY  CENTER 

and  whose  aim  is  the  public  welfare  may  become  at  depart- 
ment of  the  association. 

Article  IV. — Officers 
The  association  shall  elect  not  less  than  9  and  not  more 
than  15  directors,  who  shall  constitute  the  community 
council.  The  council  shall  elect  from  its  own  members 
a  president,  vice  president,  and  secretary-treasurer,  who 
shall  also  be  the  officers  of  the  association.  The  chair- 
man in  charge  of  any  department  of  work  shall  be  a 
member  of  the  community  council. 

Article  V. — Community  Secretary 
The  community  council  may  employ  an  executive  or 
business  manager  to  carry  on  its  work,  who  shall  be  paid 
either  from  public  appropriations  or  by  volunteer  contri- 
butions. 

Article  VI. — Departments 
The  association  shall  organize  and  conduct  whatever 
departments  of  activity  it  deems  necessary  to  meet  present 
and  permanent  needs,  both  local  and  national,  such  as 
forum,  civics,  recreation,  home  and  school,  buying  club, 
and  community  bank. 

Article  VII. — Finances 
There  shall  be  no  dues  for  membership  in  the  associa- 
tion, the  dues  having  already  been  paid  through  public 
taxation.  But  when  necessary  it  may  raise,  through 
voluntary  subscriptions  and  in  other  ways,  the  funds  re- 
quired to  conduct  its  activities. 


A  SUGGESTED  CONSTITUTION    159 

Article  VIII. — Meetings 
The  association  shall  hold  quarterly  meetings,  one  of 
which  shall  be  the  annual  meeting  to  hear  reports  and 
elect  officers.  The  community  council  shall  hold  regular 
monthly  meetings  which  shall  be  open  to  the  public.  The 
departments  shall  be  free  to  hold  as  many  meetings  as 
may  be  necessary. 


'T'HE  following  pages  contain  advertisements  of  a  few 
of  the  Macmillan  books  on  kindred  subjects. 


Theories  of  Social  Progress 

By  ARTHUR  J.  TODD 
Profeisor  of  Sociology  in  the  University  of  Minnesota 


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In  a  brief  introduction  are  discussed  the  organization  of 
society  and  pathological  social  conditions.  The  second  part  is 
devoted  to  an  extended  discussion  of  the  causes  and  conditions 
of  poverty,  in  which  the  author  has,  by  extensiveness  of  treat- 
ment, placed  the  emphasis  on  the  two  fundamental  economic 
problems,  namely,  those  of  production  and  the  distribution  of 
wealth.  Three  chapters  are  devoted  to  a  discussion  of  the 
biological  factors  in  the  causation  of  poverty.  Readers  not  in- 
terested in  this  aspect  of  the  subject  may  omit  these  chapters, 
however,  without  being  inconvenienced  in  reading  the  remainder 
of  the  book. 

Part  III  describes  the  Remedial  and  Preventive  Meas- 
ures and  includes  chapters  on:  The  Modern  Humanitarian 
Movement;  The  Nature  of  Philanthropy  both  Private  and 
Public;  Dependents  and  Defectives ;  Eugenic  Measures;  Thrift; 
Social  Insurance ;  The  Raising  of  Wages  and  the  Regulation  of 
Labor  Supply ;  The  Productiveness  of  Society ;  The  Industrial 
Democracy. 

The  book  is  suitable  for  use  as  a  text-book  for  college  and 
university  courses  on  charities,  poverty,  pauperism,  dependency 
and  social  pathology.  It  will  also  be  useful  to  persons  who  are 
interested  in  these  important  social  questions. 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

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AMERICAN   SOCIAL   PROGRESS   SERIES 

Edited  by  Professor  SAMUEL  McCUNE  LINDSAY 

Social  Reform  and  the  Constitution 

By  frank  J.   GOODNOW  i2mo,  $i.so 

"  The  work  is  well  worth  not  only  reading  but  study  and  is  a  decided  contribution 
to  the  literature  of  the  subject."  —  Boston  Transcript. 

The  New  Basis  of  Civilization 

By   SIMON  N.   PATTEN  i2mo,$i-oo 

"The  book  is  valuable  and  inspiring  in  its  general  conception  and  guiding 
principles.  Social  workers  will  welcome  it,  and  moralists  should  greatly  profit  by 
Its  teachings."  —  Chicago  Evening  Post. 

Standards  of  Public  Morality 

By  ARTHUR  TWINING   HADLEY  i2mo,$j.oo 

"  The  book  is  worth  reading  not  only  once,  but  twice."  —  N^w  York  Times. 

Misery  and  Its  Causes 

By  EDWARD  T.   DEVINE  i2mOy$i.2S 

"One  of  the  most  vital  and  helpful  books  on  social  problems  ever  pub- 
lished." —  Congregationalist  and  Christian  World. 

Governmental  Action  for  Social  Welfare 

By  JEREMIAH  W.  JENKS  i2mo,$i-oo 

"  Professor  Jenks'  little  book  ought  to  be  in  the  hands  of  every  member  of  every 
legislature  in  the  country."  —  Review  of  Reviews. 

The  Social  Basis  of  Religion 

By  SIMON  N.   PATTEN  i2moy$i.25 

"  It  is  a  work  of  deep  thought  and  abundant  research.  Those  who  read  it  will 
find  their  ideas  and  thoughts  quickened  and  will  be  sure  that  their  time  has  been 
profitably  spent."  —  Salt  Lake  Tribune. 

The  Church  and  Society 

By  R.   FULTON  CUTTING  i2mo,$i,2S 

"  A  stimulating  and  informing  little  book." — Boston  Herald. 

The  Juvenile  Court 

By  THOMAS   D.   ELIOT  i2mo,$i.25 

"  Another  volume  which  will  repay  careful  reading  —  the  most  useful  treatise  on 
youthful  criminology."  —  Providence  Journal. 

Social  Insurance  :    A  Program  for  Social  Reform 

By  HENRY  ROGERS  SEAGER  j2fHo,Si.oo 

The  City  Worker's  World  in  America 

By  MARY  KINGSBURY  SIMKHOVITCH, 

Director  of  Greenwich  House  l2mo,  $1,2$ 


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THIS  BOOK  °NT."f°  CENTS  ON  THE  FOURTH 

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