Woman's Club Work and Programs Part 15

2. _Outdoor Occupations_--Gardens for children. Games. Athletics. Riding and walking parties, picnics, etc. Study of birds. Nature cla.s.ses (b.u.t.terflies, etc.).

3. _Indoor Occupations_--Cla.s.ses in carpentry, weaving, and sewing.

Musical cla.s.ses, the children's chorus, the children's orchestra.

Pantomimes, plays, and dances.

4. _Public Provision for Children_--Museums for children. Public playgrounds. The children's room in the public library. Exhibitions of pictures for children. Ill.u.s.trated lectures in the public school.

BOOKS TO CONSULT--G. Stanley Hall: Educational Problems. L. H. Gulick: Children of the Century. Mangold: Child Problems. Jekyll: Children and Gardens.

Women's clubs should definitely interest themselves in the children of the city or country, and do for them what is not done by the public. The value of playgrounds and gardens in cities, and of children's cla.s.ses in sloyd or manual training in the country, cannot be over-estimated.

Musical training is also valuable, not merely for its esthetic results; and children's choruses, with cantatas and oratorios, may be most interesting. Motion dances and national dances are easily taught, the latter especially in towns and cities where different nationalities are represented in the population.

VII--PUBLIC INSt.i.tUTIONS

1. _Civic_--The court-house: the proper architecture--simplicity and dignity. Improving an old structure. The grounds. Decorations. The jail: what are the present local conditions? Is improvement possible?

Modern ideas of imprisonment and the housing of prisoners.

2. _Useful_--The station: cooperation between the railway company and the citizens. Cleanliness, paint, sanitation, lawns, and flower-gardens.

The water-works: decorative possibilities in the plant. Fountains and flower-beds.

3. _Literary_--The public library: the value of a lecture-hall. The local lyceum. Loan exhibitions. Reading-rooms: importance in the absence of a library. Making the place attractive.

4. _Monumental_--Improvement in public taste. Necessity of a committee to pa.s.s judgment on proposed memorials. Superfluous monuments. Statuary and tablets. The soldier's monument. The local historical society. The cemetery: the ideal location, ownership, and control. Trust funds for perpetual care. Beauty and ugliness in stones. Trees, lakes, flowers.

BOOKS TO CONSULT--Mawson: Civic Art. Bentley and Taylor: Practical Guide in the Preparation of Town Planning Schemes. Ravenscroft: Town Gardening. Penstone: Town Study.

Much can be done by a club toward improving the condition of the local cemetery; perhaps even by moving it from a place too near the heart of town to a more attractive and proper site, planting trees and flowering shrubs, arranging to have gra.s.s and flowers cared for, straightening old monuments, and the like. A paper might deal with the question: How can women carry out their ideas without antagonizing the town council?

VIII--THE TOWN CHURCH

1. _The Church Structure_--A beautiful exterior: simplicity, good taste in material, outline and color. A beautiful interior: quiet decoration; window gla.s.s, good and bad; low-toned carpet and cushions.

2. _Sunday Services_--Dignity and reverence in their conduct. Importance of music. How shall good music be secured in a small neighborhood? The chorus choir. Vesper services.

3. _The Sunday-School_--Modern methods. The graded school. Prizes and exhibitions. Young people's work; relating this to the rest of the church-work.

4. _Week-Day Appointments_--Men's meetings: how to get the men to come.

Civic value of men's church clubs. Women's meetings: the church aid society, the missionary society. Young women's guilds. Clubs for girls and for boys. The Boy Scouts, etc.

5. _The Minister's Home_--Should the social life of the church center in the minister's home? Relation of the minister's wife to her husband's work. Church ownership of the minister's house; its care and improvement.

BOOKS TO CONSULT--C. A. Wight: Some Old Time Meeting Houses of the Connecticut Valley. K. L. b.u.t.terfield: The Country Church and the Rural Problem. W. M. Ede: Att.i.tude of the Church to Some of the Social Problems of Town Life. Ramsay and Beel: Thousand and One Churches. E. C.

Foster: The Boy and the Church.

The question of the use of the stereopticon and moving pictures in connection with the church should be taken up. Shall the Sunday-evening services be varied occasionally by a talk on the Holy Land, or famous paintings of Christ, or the Pilgrim's Progress, or the Pa.s.sion Play at Oberammergau? The distribution of the church flowers after services may be an outcome of this meeting, and a club committee may be appointed to see that they are taken to the sick.

IX--CHARITIES

1. _Existing Local Charities_--Their history, character, and condition.

The poorhouse, free beds in hospitals, distributing agencies.

Discussion: What can we do to improve local conditions?

2. _Best Methods of Helping the Needy_--Peril of indiscriminate giving.

Self-respect in the poor. Place of the friendly visitor.

3. _New Work_--The day nursery, the kitchen garden, the flower-and-fruit committee, home for the aged, free employment bureau, work centers: the laundry and the wood-yard.

4. _Organized Charity_--Discuss the subject of waste through duplication. Gathering and distributing information. Cooperation between church and other societies.

BOOKS TO CONSULT--E. T. Devine: The Practice of Charity. E. T. Devine: Misery and Its Causes. W. H. Allen: Efficient Democracy.

In cities, one of the most valuable helps in charitable organizations is the constant meeting of the workers at informal gatherings, when the larger aspects of the subject are discussed and the various parts of the work are harmonized. The necessity that all should work sympathetically together should be emphasized in a brief talk after this program.

X--LOCAL AMBITIONS

1. _The Town Beautiful_--Description of what is being done in cities, and suggestions thus derived: Washington, Chicago, Cleveland, Minneapolis. L'Enfant's plans for Washington, and their history. What Baron Haussmann did for Paris.

2. _The Plan of the Town_--Is the location of the best? Can the situation be changed in any way for the better? Plan an ideal town on the local site. Value of an outlook for the future.

3. _Landmarks_--Give a brief history of the town; and mention the chief incidents in it, and the names of the princ.i.p.al persons who shared in them. Suggestions as to public memorials, tablets, and monuments.

4. _Specific Improvements_--Removal of unsightly objects and buildings.

Regulation of saloons. Improvement of unsanitary houses. Drainage of swamps and pools in the neighborhood. The surroundings of the railway station.

5. _Organization_--What committees are needed to help improve the town?

How can such committees cooperate with similar men's committees and with the public authorities? How can public sentiment be aroused? Value of an exhibition of plans for ideal towns.

BOOKS TO CONSULT--M. M. Penstone: Town Study. A. D. Webster: Town Planting. H. I. Triggs: Town Planting. Raymond Unwin: Town Planting in Practice.

This program should be of practical value to the local town, summing up the meetings that have preceded this, and presenting certain definite propositions for civic improvements. It might be well to invite some of the officials of the town to be present and offer suggestions. A committee should be appointed at the close to take up the specific plans adopted.

CHAPTER XI

HOLLAND

INTRODUCTORY

No historical study could be of greater interest to clubs than that of Holland. The story of the rise of the Dutch Republic is more stirring than any romance. Her army was small, but unconquerable; her navy successfully fought the navies of far greater nations. Her commerce was unrivaled; her colonies were planted in unknown countries; her artists were the greatest of the world at the time. But, most of all, Holland was wonderful for her great struggle for liberty when liberty was unknown, and the effects of her victory were world-wide. The English and American revolutions were founded on hers.

Clubs can use for reference The Story of Holland, by James E. T. Rogers; Brave Little Holland, by W. E. Griffis; and Motley's stirring book, Rise of the Dutch Republic.