Many of the stores maintain a branch. of the Vacation Savings Fund. This organization is a kind of bank, where working women can make small weekly deposits. They receive no interest in money. They receive a return for the use of their money in the privileges which the Vacation Association furnishes at its headquarters. Here classes in language, embroidery, dancing are provided at nominal cost and oppor

tunities are given for summer vacations
at a low rate.

From this glimpse behind the scenes.
we get an idea of the all around service
of a department store.

Service is the basis of modern salesmanship. Lord and Taylor's instruct their employees, "Aim to make a customer, not a sale."

In the same thorough way the classes visited all other varieties of stores.

CAMP FIRE GIRLS

BY ROY MASON

President Myron T. Scudder, of the Scudder School for Girls, at 316-322 West Seventy-second street, New York City, has conceived and is perfecting a system of study based on the "honors" plan of the Camp Fire Girls, Inc. He is a member of the Board of Directors of that organization and has watched its successful evolution till it now has 90,000 members throughout the United States and in foreign lands. He has made a careful study of President Luther H. Gulick's system of immediate rewards and insignia which afford the stimulus for immediate accomplishment.

The Camp Fire Girls, Inc., founded by Dr. Gulick in 1912, adopted the attractive ceremonial costumes, honor-beads and decorations for the express purpose of being able to award honors and rank for attainments of everyday character. The insignia on the dresses are merely the outward manifestation and record symbolic of real, concrete accomplishments.

Examples of the character of these are: (1) Cooking three ccmmon vegetables each in three ways; () marl: ting one week on two dollars je pr; (3, taking the entire care of one 100m for one month; (4) participating in the carrying out of a party or hike; (5) caring for a baby for an average of one hour a day for a month; (6) swimming one hundred yards; (7) tramping forty miles in any ten days; (8) knowing the planets and seven constellations and their stories; (9) taking a dozen photographs, developing and printing them; (10) trimming a hat; (11) filling a regular position for four months; (12) saving ten per cent. of one's allowance for three months.

Mr. Scudder is proceeding slowly and methodically in his attempt to supply the direct motive, the constant stimulus to lead his girl students on from one accomplishment to another.

"The school," he said, "is life itself, and the idea is to have those attending it live a rich present existence. The future for which they are told they are preparing is dim and distant. to their minds. That incentive is too vague. Immediate reward or recognition for getting a

BK key, "that it was rather difficult for a high stand man, a BK man, to get into trouble. There was an unwritten law as to cuts and absence from classes.

"Our school is limited to one hundred and fifty girls. They now represent twenty-two states. We want to devise a way of having them reach a given standard in a certain amount of time, taking into consideration, of course, the personal equation and individual circumstances. We have already overcome the problem of having the rate of progress of our classes that of the slowest students by placing each scholar in the class where she fits best, but the 'honors' plan would enable us still further to individualize the work.

"The whole curriculum may ultimately be thrown into problems, and the passing of a certain representative part of these may constitute the course of study. In algebra, for instance, if a definite reward were offered for the solution in a given time of four problems in simple equations, and four problems in quadratic equations, the students would be able to observe their own rate of progress.

"The same process could be applied to our other courses. If swimming a certain distance, reading aloud well, telling stories acceptably, preparing a meal of five courses, writing out a scheme of twenty-one menus to cost $1.50, $3.00 or $4.00 a week per person for the raw material, and other social, household, athletic or purely mental accomplishments each added one to the collection of rewards which was to represent the completed structure of the educational course, don't you think that the students would be eager to build? Our difficulty might even be

year.

The Scudder School is comprehensive in its curriculum and has useful courses which deviate from the hard and fast regulations of machine-made education. After this year no girl will be graduated, for instance, unless she has learned to swim. It has a High School department in which the regular New York State Regents examinations are held twice a In connection with this there is a post-graduate course leading to the secretarial diploma. It has courses in home economics, a comprehensive special course for private secretaries, including such subjects as bookkeeping, typewriting, stenography, stenotypy, social amenities, physical training, and suitable athletics are as much a part of the school training as any other. The outfit for the course in scientific filing methods cost over $800.

The executives of the Camp Fire Girls, Inc.,

are gratified at this endorsement by a prominent educator of long experience of the plan which has proved so successful among their girls. The comfortable dormitory of the Scudder School is known as the Camp Fire, and many Scudder girls migrate in summer to the Hanoum Camps for girls at Thetford, Vt. The Camp Fire movement and its related movements such as that germinating in the Scudder School are the embodiment of the idea that under the new conditions of modern life woman must give to the community what she formerly gave to the home. She is now responsible for municipal-housekeeping, the conditions in the bake shops, grocery stores and the factories in which now are performed many of the tasks which were formerly done in the home. As an example of the spread of this "universal motherhood" it may be stated that fourteen girls of the Scudder School "adopted" French fatherless children this. year by agreeing to send small regular sums for their maintenance.

"You are all wrong.

Schoolhouses were meant for children and books and not for these latter-day uses to which people would put them."

It was in the office of the board of education that this remark was made to me. The two men discussing the blue-print of a proposed new schoolhouse were the two members of the board who have, I suppose, the most authority in deciding the ultimate type of school building for the city. The tones of the one who spoke had a touch of finality about them that revealed the utter uselessness of further argument.

There lay the blue-print with its "elevations" drawr to the scale of proper conventionalism, all th details most carefully, and to the uninitiated mysteriously, worked in. I did not know enough to understand one-half the markings. What my mind did grasp was the one point upon which it was focused, and that was— in all the great building plan there was no reckoning for a single space into which two or three hundred people of the neighborhood could come together with comfort.

"If not, why not?" I kept saying over and over to myself. The people want to use their schoolhouses for all sorts of purposes of public good. They prove it by their presence whenever an opportunity is given them. Whereupon came the statement, "Schoolhouses are meant for children and books."

I walked away from the interview, if not a wiser surely a sadder person, my mind swinging between the tragical and farcical horns of the dilemma.

Tragical in that a body of men such as

our

board of education, into whose hands is committed a public trust so fundamentally important to our civic life, should be so blind to the needs of the people, that their ears should be so dulled to the cry of human interest that they fail to vision the wonderful possibilities for public good enfolded in the wider use of these great public buildings.

Farcical, especially here in Philadelphia, where the board is composed of fifteen men nearly all of whom have passed the "three score and ten" of the Psalmist's reckoning, every one of whom is occupied with large business interests of his own which leave but small margin for personal attention to the schools.

So years, ill health and overfilled time make the basis of their excuses for the lack of that personal touch which is so pre-eminently needed. in both social and educational work.

How can one legislate wisely for a constituency of which one knows little or nothing?

Add to this the fact that our board of education, while a tax-levying body, is not a body elected by the people. Does not this make farcical a law that should be a corner-stone in our democracy? And being a woman, the last arraignment is, to my mind, the greatest of them all. It is farcical in the extreme that men, and men alone, should determine the educational interests of the child life of our great city; that men alone should attempt to solve the problems many and varied arising from the different points of view of the home, the school and the community. Future generations no doubt will discuss our methods as a joke.

I agree that schoolhouses are for "children

and books," but in the swift unfolding of our country's needs and responsibilities they must be that plus a great and growing circle of activities related to community well-being, activities which may be carried on during the many hours. when books are closed and children absent.

You ask what plan we would suggest for the extended democratization of these great public structures? We want that it should be made the business of the board of education to see to it that some one capable of such a social trust be given charge of these buildings and the activities for which they may be used after school hours. Some one whose executive head is coupled with a markedly warm and human heart, who will sympathize with the various

groups of persons in their effort toward selfexpression, and with the instinct and training of the true educator draw out the latent possibilities for public service and relate them to life here and now. Some one who will help youth to translate its restlessness and urge for excitement into clean, wholesome activities.

If our young people are flocking by thousands to the moving-picture shows, why is it not the province of a board of education to give in the schoolhouse those films which are good and thus help to "educate" in the best sense? If our young people are dancing, and they are, why, again may I ask, is it not the province of those standing for education to make it possible that Continued on page 48.

The net earning was $219.23. The pupil was Tillie Fullard. The crops were head lettuce, radishes, beans and onions.

It was a rainy day-June 9, 1917,-but the auditorium was so packed with the parents that the children could have no place in the hall.

The exercises were by the children from the rural schools.

Few persons have seen more school exercises than I, and I have never been more interested in any exercises than in these.

A sample exercise will be suggestive. It was by eight boys in one rural school, each of whom had bought a calf from Monroe County, Wisconsin, paying about $18.00 per calf, keeping the calf for baby beef.

They were Holstein calves. Marcus Lustfeldt, six years old, had earned and saved $18.00 with

FIELD

"I have learned to feed my calf by measuring his feed and not guessing at it. I'm not going to guess about anything. I'm going to know what to do and how to do it. I have had to teach my calf to be led. I'm so small that he got away at first. He doesn't get away now."

Each of the eight boys told about his own calf. One boy says: "We keep a record of what each calf costs a boy and we weigh the calf every week to see if he pays."

Another boy said: "We keep our calves clean because it pays better to feed clean calves."

For the entire exercise the boys and girls "talked" about the school-home projects in which they had won their "achievements."

The object of this achievement activity is to honor and stimulate achievement in education. in the same manner the schools have honored

MONTPELIER.

For a city of its size Montpelier has done exceptionally well for the schools and especially for the superintendent, H. S. Stephenson, who, after seven years of service as superintendent with repeated unanimous re-elections, resigns for further professional study.

The city has a Junior High School, an up-tothe-minute elementary building. At High School chapel exercises once a week there is some entertainment by the citizens. The day I was there a Woman's Musical Club sang; sometimes it is a quartet of business men, sometimes a soloist-vocal or instrumental.

POCATELLO.

Pocatello has had a remarkable transformation in the last three years. It now has a firstclass high school building, a first-class hotel, a first-class railroad station, a first-class post-office building, and several first-class banks and business blocks. All of which means that Pocatello is soon to be the largest city in the state, having struck a pace that apparently makes it useless for any other city to compete with it for permanent leadership in Idaho.

Walter R. Siders, superintendent of schools at Pocatello, was the most completely satisfied man whom I found in thirty-seven states this spring. A five-months-old girl was the chief promoter of contentment, but, incidentally, a new six-cylinder Chalmers, an increased salary, an extended term

and the fact that he is the first man west of the Mississippi and the first superintendent of a small city to be elected upon the Board of Trustees of the National Education Association undoubtedly had something to do with his satisfaction with life.

BLACKFOOT.

W. D. Vincent has few equals in community leadership. A few samples are justification for the statement. Nearly 200 men belong to a Volley Ball League of five teams, meeting every Monday evening. One of the leading business men in the city said: "My wife says my business is merely incidental, that I live to play volley ball." The annual banquet of the Volley Ball League is one of the events of the year. Nearly 250 men belong to a Military Brigade of five companies, drilling twice a week under an assigned United States officer. This is not for military service, but for personal physical improvement.

For some time Mr. Vincent has had a month set apart in early spring for farm repairs. Any farmer can send in any farm implement that is mendable and the boys will mend it or make a satisfactory statement why they do not do it.

In the seven years Mr. Vincent has been in Blackfoot the high school enrollment has increased 400 per cent.

In many ways does Mr. Vincent lead the public, in school and out.

-Edward R. Snyder.

PLEASURES IN PEDESTRIANISM

BY BESSIE L. PUTNAM

"We spent two days at Niagara," exclaimed a capable teacher enthusiastically. "The first day we rode and pitied those who walked; the next, we walked and pitied those who rode." And will not every able-bodied person who has been over this ground concur in her conclusions?

No matter whether you want to see people or things; to enjoy nature or art; to be instructed or merely amused, the opportunities are very much greater when you go on foot than in any other way. One may take a bird's-eye view of Manhattan from the top of the Woolworth Building, or get it in motion picture from the top of a sight-seeing car, but if he cares for a true perspective or for the details which make reality out of mere form, let him walk! No

matter what his tastes or interests, he will see and hear and feel very much more.

Walking was not only the first method of locomotion given to man, but it was the first real exercise offered. And with all of our varied means of transportation there is still no more enjoyable diversion, no more healthful exercise than the one offered to our most remote ancestor.

In the mad rush to get there, we make ourselves think that we have not the time to go in the old leisurely fashion. There is the mad whirl of wheels which hustle us hither and thither, and this is good business. But some day we will be compelled to take time to recuperate for the strenuous life. And the where is the gain?

We excuse ourselves with the thought that we are not able to walk. There is no surer way to become able, not only to walk but to do