bad streets in their district. They also photograph some of the best streets by way of contrast. By way of demonstration, they make a model of one of the worst streets in the district, and then another model as it might be. These are also on exhibition. The league has a public meeting, that is well worth while, in connection with the exhibition of street photographs and models. They have some members of the city government present, notably the representative of that locality. Many streets have been made over under the leadership of the Junior Protective League.

DOOR-YARDS AND VACANT LOTS.

The boys are not content with making city officials do their duty, but they look after their own and their neighbors' yards and vacant lots.

Here is a sample of the way the Juvenile League gets after a vacant lot. The boys make a sign board 8x12 inches, securely fastened to a substantial stick, which they drive into the ground so that it stays put. Upon one of these sign boards was this:

There were some unusually disgraceful street conditions. The streets were so neglected that after a heavy rain the streets were impassable at some crossings. Not infrequently a teacher could not possibly reach the schoolhouse. On one such morning Miss Mabel Swahn found such a crossing between her and the schoolhouse, and the wideawake boys got a wheelbarrow and wheeled her across the street. One of the specially enterprising boys got his camera and photographed the scene, the street, the wheelbarrow with its fair freight, two boys walking beside and steadying her, and a boy, knee deep in water, wheeling her. The boy made a large photograph for exhibition purposes, and the city fathers at once got busy, and since then there has not been a street in that part of the city left in such a condition as that.

GARDENING.

The civic features of the league do not end with health protection, guarding against temptations and the reclamation of the streets, vacants lots and

private yards, but promote the economic use of home yards and vacant lots. Individual gardens have been made by boys and girls, and under the inspiration of example many a man or woman, in whose home there was no child old enough to do it, has made profitable use of every square foot of ground. Then some schools have secured the privilege from the city to use a vacant city lot, or, perchance, some owner of a vacant lot, for a community garden. The amount raised as a sum total is above computation, while the effect upon health and morals is worth even more than it is economically.

SECURE BRANCH PUBLIC LIBRARY.

The boys and girls in one district made so much use of the far-away public library, and at such a waste of time in walking or of money in riding there, that they petitioned for a branch library. Each petitioner stated how many books he had taken out, told the kind of books he had taken, the length of the walk, or the cost in car fares. One of the winning features was a full-fledged card catalog of the books the pupils in one room had taken from the public library in a year. It was

a genuine card catalog, with every phase of the case used at the library. They got their branch library established. They are now campaigning in a similar way for free bathhouses on the shore of the lake.

STUDY FORESTRY.

One principal, especially-and others incidentally-teaches the real thing in forestry and gardening. No boy or girl graduates from this eighth grade who does not know how to care for trees and lawns from really doing it. They have all pruned trees in the school grounds or in nearby yards or lots. They can protect trees from all sorts of insect enemies, particularly from scales and plant lice. The pupils make their own kerosene emulsion, make their own sprayers, and kill off every annoying insect. Old bicycle pumps of any size are transformed by these boys and girls into sprayers.

The pupils make their own Bordeaux mixture, also, with which they kill off rot, mildew, moulds, blights, and biting insects. They make their own copperas water (two pounds copperas to a gallon of warm water), and by using a copper sprayer kill off all dandelion, plantain, chiccory, and other lawn weeds without injury to the grass. A multitude of men and women of the vicinage now do the same things for the advantage of lawns and grounds.

Nor is this all this special principal,-and incidentally others,-teaches about nitrogen fixing bacteria, teaching the use of all inoculating material. By the by, if the reader is interested in such public service, he should send to the Department of Agriculture at Washington for Farmers' Bulletins, Nos. 173, 243, and 321.

HISTORY BY DRAWING AND MODELING.

From the first grade up, the children draw and model Chicago history. There was an exhibition, both in drawing and in modeling, of old Fort Dearborn, the first house, first store, first shop, first boat, and first everything.

There was also the evolution of transportation in and about Chicago; the evolution of the fire department; of the mail service; of the water system; of the sewer system; of farm machinery; of grain elevators, and a multitude of other phases of historic and industrial progress. They have They have drawn the entire playground scheme of the city, platting the city and putting in the playgrounds everywhere, and then, segregating there a neglected district, showed where another playground ought to be. They then modeled an available place as it now is, a disgrace to the city, and a model as it might be if the city would only do its duty. From the first grade up, every grade has drawn or modeled the various duties of the policemen; of the street cleaning brigade; of the postoffice service; of the life-saving service,-this is especially attractive to them; of the fire department,—another fascinating feature; and every prominent industry of their neighborhood. One line of modeling was a complete village of Pullman and the evolution of the Pullman car.

WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY.

At this famous exhibit at the Walter Scott school, which was open for ten days and visited by each of the twenty-six schools represented in the exhibit, there was a real wireless telegraph, made by a lad of fourteen known as Wireless Davis, and messages were sent and received by him. It was a weird experience for a school exhibit. He had not won his promotion in compound fractions, but teacher, superintendent, and every visitor sat at his feet in rapt admiration.

SOCIAL SERVICE.

the most thrilling of all. Of course they had all the pictures of Miss Addams and of her parents, and of the various houses in which she had lived as they have appeared in the story of her life in the American Magazine, but infinitely more they have no end of their own photographs of Hull House and the conditions thereabouts. It is a marvelous inspiration for uplift work by young and old alike.

Every feature of civic service work in the schools under the expert and special guidance of Assistant Superintendent Kate Starr Kellogg is a part of the noble scheme of Superintendent Ella Flagg Young, who has found time for all this by cutting out detached dates and battles from history, compound fractions, compound interest, and other confounded phases of the useless and traditional in the curriculum of the past.

REACTION UPON ACADEMIC WORK.

It is the uniform testimony of teachers, principals, and supervisors that because of this awakened and awakening interest the children read more spiritedly and intelligently orally, and read much more widely and wisely personally; that they write better and with new zest; that they actually wish to spell correctly the words they write; that geography is relished as it had not

been; and that their desire for a wider horizon of knowledge and a more definite detail in information are greatly promoted by this civic work.

The children do all school work better, school discipline is greatly simplified, and the moral and mental effect is as great as the civic betterment. It is a noble and notable, personal and public, so

How Every School May Be a Child Welfare Conference.

BY WILLIAM H. ALLEN,

Director, Bureau of Municipal Research, New York City.

Out-of-school conferences on child welfare can be successful only as they effect conferences on child welfare within the school and between school teachers and parents.

Because the majority of our 20,000,000 school children are in small cities and rural districts, they are certain not to be fundamentally benefited by any conference that does not centre in the schools. The same energy which an outside agency will spend in getting data for 1,000 children will interest 1,000 principals in securing more complete data for 500,000 children.

The teacher whose pupils present to her 190 days each year the best index of how thirty to fifty families live, can accomplish more than an out-of school conference where 190 people listen to a lecture and adjourn to meet again another day.

In New York city there are 230 members of local school boards charged with the duty to learn

about school progress, sanitary conditions, and teaching efficiency of schools which are supposed to minister to nearly 800,000 children. Systematically for years effort has been made to prevent these local board members from knowing the essential facts about school progress and school problems. Snubbed and almost reviled, this asset has been lost to New York city, though potentially more valuable than any national conference. As a consequence, no one can tell the parents of New York why 200,000 children have failed of promotion this school year, why there is a difference of 100,000 between net enrollment and average register, whether the part-time day, which New York city is spending millions to abolish, is better for the child than the full-time day, or why public imagination and sense of duty are focused upon giving out-of-door fresh air to a handful of children while neglecting to consider physical and mental break-down, due to lack of out-of-door fresh air for hundreds of thousands.

To make every school a child welfare conference, the supreme need at the present time is a demand on the part of the national and state bureaus of education for essential information as to the welfare of each teacher's pupils.

The chief object of a course in English is to develop an interest in literature and in easy, effective expression of thought. Co-operation of class and teacher in pleasing, rational activities is the best means of bringing about this development, and so the emphasis is placed upon content rather than upon form. It is essential that there be variety in the exercises and material, and that the treatment be extensive rather than intensive, but not at the sacrifice of definiteness.

The courses in reading and literature are outlined separately in the first three grades.

The course in literature includes some of the world's masterpieces, which have been chosen to meet various conditions. Such masterpieces are best approached through an oral presentation by the teacher. The greatest world-stories are so vital and true in themselves that they never fail to hold the interest of children if properly presented.

The pupils should have much practice in reading aloud selections adapted to oral rendering. Such reading should consummate an experience which would generally include thoughtful study and exchange of impressions, particularly on the part of the older children. The literary experience of the children may be greatly widened by means of voluntary reading and free discussion in class of books read outside by the various members. Classroom libraries should be collected to provide material for activity of this sort,

The term composition is used to include all efforts on the part of children to express themselves in oral and written language, and, more specifically, the complete treatment of a topic by an individual as opposed to the unordered or broken contributions made in conversation or in question and answer. Oral composition should exceed written composition in quantity, and standards of accuracy should be most carefully observed. Freedom and pleasure in expression for the children should be, from the teacher's point of view, the immediate aim. To the children, the primary interest throughout should be the idea to be expressed. In the early grades the manner of expression should not be called to their attention; but in later grades be regarded as a means to some useful end.

Composition should be of two kinds, according to the purpose directing it, information-giving or pleasure-giving. It should be as varied in subject as the experience and powers of the children permit, and should develop through various activities. Oral reproduction, without comment, should be sparingly but continuously carried on. Impromptu dramatization in the early grades should be followed in later grades by written dramatization, original or based on stories; impromptu speaking and writing on topics of current interest are important.

Co-operation should be encouraged in all the stages of composition-the gathering of material, its arrangement and revision.

Attention to technique begins with responsibility for doing one's own work as well as possible. Correctness and effectiveness in arrangement, number, and order of words should be tested so far as possible by appeal to the ear.

FOR DRAMATIZATION.

FIRST GRADE.-"Hiawatha's Childhood," "The Four Winds," "Building the Canoe," "Little Red Riding Hood," "The Three Bears," "The GingerBread Man," "The Poplar Tree," "How the Sheep Were Brought Home," "The Rainbow Fairy," "The Little Red Hen."

SECOND GRADE.-"The Farmer and His Sons," "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," "The Lion and the Mouse," "The Hare and the Tortoise," "The Three Billy Goats Gruff," "The Three Butterflies," "The Foolish Weather Vane," "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood," "Why the Evergreen Trees Keep Their Leaves."

THIRD GRADE.-"The Country Maid with Her Milk Pail," "Echo," "The Little Hero of Harlem," "The Magic Fiddle," "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," "Robinson Crusoe."

FOR MEMORIZING.

THIRD GRADE.-"Answer to a Child's Question," by Coleridge; "A Boy's Song," by Hogg; "Foreign Lands," by Stevenson; "Norse Lullaby," by Field; "The Owl and the Pussy Cat," by Lear; Twenty-fourth Psalm, from the Bible; "September," by Jackson; "Spring," by Nash; "To a Butterfly," by Wordsworth; "The Tree," by Bjornsen; "The Voice of the Grass," by Boyle; "Where Go the Boats," by Stevenson; "Wishing," by Allingham.

FOURTH GRADE.-"Abou Bed Adhem," by Hunt; "A Child's Thought of God," by Browning; "The Children's Hour," by Longfellow; the First Psalm, from the Bible; "The Fountain," by Lowell; "Jack in the Pulpit," by Whittier; "The Mountain and the Squirrel," by Emerson; "October's Bright Blue Weather," by Jackson; "The Owl," by Tennyson; the Twenty-third Psalm, from the Bible; "Written in March," by Wordsworth; "The Walrus and the Carpenter," by Lewis Carroll.

FIFTH GRADE.-"Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind," by Shakespeare; "The Day Is Done," by Longfellow; "A Farewell," by Kingsley; "Hunting Song," by Coleridge; "Knee Deep in June," by Riley; "The Sea," by Proctor; "The Tiger," by Blake; "To-day," by Carlyle; "Under the Greenwood Tree," by Shakespeare; "The Windy Night," by Read; "Yussouf," by Lowell.

SIXTH GRADE.-"Breathes There the Man," by Scott; "Christmas," from "Marmion," Canto VI.; "Columbus," by Miller; "Consider," by Rossetti;

"The Daffodils," by Wordsworth; "For A' That and A' That," by Burns; "Hohenlinden," by Campbell; "Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead," by Tennyson; "The Legend Beautiful," by Longfellow; "On the Grasshopper and the Cricket," by Keats and by Hunt; "Pioneers," by Whitman; "Santa Filomena," by Longfellow; "Scythe Song," by Lang.

SEVENTH GRADE.-"Ballad of the Boat," by Garnett; "The Bells of Shandon," by Mahoney; "Christmas Everywhere," by Brooks; "The Eternal Goodness," by Whittier; "Home Thoughts from Abroad," by Browning; "The Humble Bee," by Emerson; "Laus, Deo," by Whittier; "The Solitary Reaper," by Wordsworth; "True Knight

hood" (from "Guinevere"), by Tennyson; "Lincoln" (Commemoration Ode, Section V.), by Lowell; Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address"; Stoddard's "Lincoln"; "The Civic Creed."

EIGHTH GRADE.-"The Chambered Nautilus," by Holmes; "Each and All," by Emerson; "The Last Leaf," by Holmes; "Old Glory," by Riley; "On His Blindness," by Milton; "On the Castle of Chillon," by Byron; "The Marshes of Glynn," by Lanier; "The Rhodora," by Emerson; "Ring Out, Wild Bells," by Tennyson; "Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth," by Clough; "Self-Dependence," by Arnold; "The Cloud" and "To a Skylark," by Shelley; "Up-hill," by Christina Rossetti.

Many inquiries have come regarding the announcements that John E. Gunçkel of Toledo was working with the girls. The impression has gone out that he has turned from his famous work with boys. Quite the reverse is true. He was never doing so much with boys as now, but he has broadened it, and does some highly important work with girls.

On Friday afternoon of each week the Newsboys' building is turned over to the girls of the street, i. e., to the sisters of the boys of the street. These girls have the swimming pool, the various baths, the gymnasium, the reading room, the game room, and several expert women leaders of girls have charge of affairs. These girls are under six

teen.

Beatrice Vaughan has organized the working girls of sixteen and upwards into clubs, and these older girls are doing much for Mr. Gunckel's girls.

The accompanying picture shows what a bunch of girls Mr. Gunckel has gathered about him. He is seen in the background with the girls beside the Newsboys' building. This work is second in importance only to his work with the boys of the street.

This August Mr. Gunckel's girls had a picnic at Toledo beach, seventeen miles out from the city, and it was a glorious success. One of the girls took four prizes in the various contests, and gave two of these of her own motion to the two contestants who were nearest her record.

This is a sample of the spirit developed in these girls, sisters of the boys of the street.

Mrs. Beatrice Vaughan's "Our Club" has beautiful rooms, with piano, reading room, and a small dance hall, in which shop girls and store girls spend most of their noon hour, as well as the evening.

HE nature drawing lessons should have one of two reasons for their existence besides learning to represent objects with lines-either the drawings may preserve the facts about form, color, and structure, that can be used later in design, or else record the facts that should be known about the nature that surrounds us.

Autumn is the time of fruitfulness, and the fruits that help our winter stores are only the seed pods of the plants and trees.

The cultivated fruits, grapes, apples, pears, and quince, all make most interesting studies, and when a branch is selected with the fruit attached, excellent pictures may be made if composition is considered.

Grapes are always popular, and can usually be Have four or five bunches on easily obtained. the stems, with a few leaves and tendrils attached, brought to school, and provide half a dozen Sheets of cover paper of dull greens and yellow browns to form backgrounds.

Groups of different shapes can be selected, and the cover paper cut to correspond; for a squareshaped group use a square paper, for a long, narrow group use a similar shape for the background. Fine color harmonies may be obtained with the colored papers. If grapes of a red tone are brought in, use paper of a dull green; with purple grapes, the yellow brown harmonizes well; and if any yellow or green grapes are to be used, paper a darker tone of green or yellow makes a most pleasing combination. Hang these groups in different parts of the room, so that all the pupils will be able to see one or more easily.

When only two or three objects are used in an ordinary-sized schoolroom, there are usually many poor drawings made, because the pupils. cannot see the objects distinctly enough, and the pupils very seldom realize what is the trouble, as they feel that if they can see the general shape of an object, that is sufficient, when really in order to draw well they must see detail clearly.

When several different shaped groups are to be used in one lesson, the children must be shown how to select a harmonizing space on their paper to make their drawing in. If the lesson is given. in a low grade, before the pupils are able to measure easily, provide some pieces of thin cardboard (oak tag is excellent), cut in two or three sizes, such as a square, a wide oblong, and a narrow oblong, that will fit on the sized drawing. paper used, leaving good margins. Teach the