aspirations of their teacher. They gain a formal control over certain movements of certain limbs, and they must often pay the penalty by becoming acutely self-conscious. "I do not deny that much of what such children learn is admirable, but the example should serve to differentiate, in the minds of my readers, between the end to which my method is directed and that aimed at by schools of dancing. Children who are taught eurhythmics gain the power of controlling all their limbs in accordance with their own volition. Their control may not be perfect, but it represents the volition of each individual child completely. Later on, when their sensitivity to the esthetic values of musical composition finds an instinctive echo in their Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art THE SWIMMERS Sunlight radiates from Sorolla's canvases. Here the light plays through the water in which the boys swim. mind, their movements express, not the teacher's artistic tendencies, but the artistic instincts of the pupil. "In brief, children, and grown-ups for that matter, gain primarily two things by the study of eurhythmics. First, they learn the perfect control of their mental, and by consequence of their physical, apparatus; and secondly, the capacity for analysis, expression and concentration acquired instinctively, gives them a mental and physical poise which many of my pupils believe to be an asset in life of no mean value." a new UNDEMOCRATIC EDUCATION-Education finds critic in Charles M. Schwab, whose views, given in the New York World, shows he condemns colleges, not college men: "The system of education in America to-day is undemocratic. It tends to mold the young manhood of the country into a set type. That type is peculiar to a certain environment of books, of music, of art. It is a type which can not comprehend the dynamics of the workingman's situation; which fails to recognize the importance of the workingman; which even overlooks the distinct entity of the workingman in the molding of a nation. "The educational system is, in this sense, narrowing. It creates an undeniable atmosphere that men become rooted in. Once set in this atmosphere, it is impossible to make them comprehend any problems save those of their immediate surroundings and personal thoughts. That is why we seldom find a college man who is a fit executive for thousands of steel workers. "American colleges need to broaden their outlook. They need to mold men that can see across distances-not into themselves. They need to cover more territory, and this territory needs to engulf the average citizen. For what good is education unless it makes for racial progress, unless it produces a class of men that can bear the burdens of the nation rather than live their own selfish lives?" This event is brought to memory by the death of the painter in Madrid on August 11. But time will not efface this memory, for his work is established in our art galleries, while that enshrined in the Hispanie Museum is a monument to the painter almost as much as to the country whose life and physical aspects it seeks to represent. "His popularity here," says the New York Herald, "was proof of something more than his own genius. It showed how eager the world is to pay deference to any poet who sees life in its loveliest possible manifes tations." Whatever positions he will occupy in the changing field of critical appreciation he has a secure niche in the history of Spanish art. The Herald points this: "Sorolla and Zuloaga revived the glories of Spanish painting which had been in eclipse since the death of Goya. Fortuny and Diaz were Spaniards, but they did not derive from Velasquez or Goya. They were more French in the character of their art. Sorolla, who was born at Valencia, had his first instruction in the academy there, and carried on his artistic education in the Prado at Madrid, where he copied the old masters before he received any impressions of another country's art. Then he went to Italy. He confessed, however, that the strongest influence of any foreign painters on his own genius came from the works of Bastien-Lepage and Menzel, which he studied in Paris." The crowds who besieged his exhibition will for the most part think of him in the terms used by the New York Times: "Few artists ever achieved such overwhelming popularity over night as did Joaquin Sorolla. His fame was no mere transitory craze, for much of his work had lasting merit, and this style made a deep appeal because of its clarity and sanity in a period given over to all manner of confusion and eccentricity. He delighted in color and sunlight-flashing beaches, orangegroves, brilliant lights and shades. Who that saw them can forget his paintings of children by the seashore, of "The Swimmer' and After the Bath'? His was a gift for vivid impressions, rapidly glimpsed and recorded, which rarely failed to appeal by their freshness and sunniness. "Sorolla was one of the first Spanish painters of distinction to record these dazzling colors of his native land. It is one of the strange things of Spanish art that it turned to the somber rather than to the gay. Not even the figures of Goya gave more than the brilliance of personal adornment. Among the moderns, Zuloaga, like so many of his predecessors, also preferred the gray to the bright. The hard, bleak skies of the rainy season seem to have made a deeper impression on Spanish painters than the brilliant lights and shades of the sparkling days of sunshine. Neither the intense coloring of the mesas of Central Spain, so much like our own New Mexico, nor the richer flowering green of the Mediterranean seashore, exercised a strong influence in the past. It remained for Sorolla to capture the sunshine, and this he did as few have ever done before." The writer of the New York Tribune's appreciation is not so confident of Sorolla's value as a vital force in the hierarchy of painting. His career is used to illustrate "one of the most characteristic tendencies in modern art"; the aim to count technique as the all in all. We read: "It was entirely as a technician that he pushed himself to the front nearly thirty years ago, to renovate the methods of his native school, and it was entirely as a technician that he later achieved international fame. Some of the surface aspects of his work might seem to contradict this. He put the joy of living into his pictures an inspiriting thing by itself and those are obviously Spanish types and boats which he portrayed in his popular beach scenes, authentic souvenirs of a national life. But it was his sleight-of-hand with the brush that made these truthful records of his successful. "Spain needed him at just about the date of his decisive appearance. The countrymen of Fortuny, himself a masterly technician, were rarely able to recapture anything but the glitter of his magic, and that they made hard and metallic where he had given it the brilliance of a true jewel. They were steeped in a meretricious artifici Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art THE BATH Sorolla captivated New York with his joyous children disporting by the sea in his native Spain. ality, painting little costume subjects in a thin little manner. He was dazzling because he could not help himself. They tried to be dazzling by recipe. Pradilla and Villegas, who were worthy followers of Fortuny, had, like him, gravitated to Italy, and at home in Madrid the young painters wasted their talents like so many squirrels going round and round in a cage. Sorolla brought a new energy upon the scene. "He let his brush go, first in the rather commonplace, but still workmanlike, mode of the Paris salon, and then in a way of his own that was the more vitalized because he sought his themes out-of-doors. A famous European painter, a type of prodigious dexterity, once visited Sorolla's great exhibition at Paris in 1906, and to his American companion gravely asserted that the Spaniard couldn't have achieved the vividness and accuracy of his impressions if he hadn't had some help from the snapshots of a camera. It was an exaggerated criticism, but it not unreasonably pointed to a really disconcerting note in the painter's diabolical cleverness of hand. That was what pulled him through, a phenomenal manual facility-which is as dangerous and as specious as it is useful. "Manual adroitness is a great gift, but at long last it wears out its welcome. Even after so short a time as has elapsed since the sensational show at the Hispanic Museum in 1909 Sorolla's art has found its respectable but not by any means impressive level. His technique is still amusing, but it has lost its thrill. To see a conjuror take a rabbit out of a hat once, or even twice, is exciting. To see him do it by the year is to be bored. Sorolla was Spanish, no doubt, but he missed the deeper racy tang which gives character to the art of his compatriot, Zuloaga. The interest in his case lies in the lesson it enforces. You can't live as an artist without technique. But you can't live by technique alone." In the latter years of his life Sorolla painted for the Hispanic Museum a group of portraits of Spanish authors and a Panorama of the Forty-nine Provinces of Spain." is that they are "all there to be read and not for adornment." Thus: "Foremost among them is a much-used copy of the Bible. The passages most frequently turned to appear to be the Sermon on the Mount and the Twenty-third Psalm. "For the most part the library consists of works on history, constitutional topics, biography, America's insular possessions and the tariff. That comports with the general impression of the new President as a serious, thoughtful man. Altogether there are fifteen volumes on the tariff, showing Mr. Coolidge's preoccupation with one of the most controversial subjects of American politics and one of the principal issues between the Republican and Democratic parties. "The new President is almost sure to be confronted with questions concerning the Philippines and Porto Rico, and there are several volumes on these countries. There is a place for Norton's 'Constitution of the United States,' and other books on a subject with which it behooves the Chief Executive to be thoroughly familiar. A two-volume life of Whitelaw Reid, once Ambassador to Great Britain, shows interest in the relations between the two nations. "The Future of South America,' 'A Prophet of Universal Peace,' and other books, bear on regional and world questions with which a President must deal. Some New England histories and Wells's 'Outline of History' represent attention to the general history of the past. . 66 "Mr. Coolidge seems to require little leaven in his reading fare. 'Altogether the library comports well with ideas about Mr. Coolidge's personality. Its very sparseness fits in with his frugal habits and his well-guarded tongue. The books are solid and substantial. There is not one among them which could be called startling in any sense. No touch of humor pervades these bookcases, but it may be added parenthetically that perhaps Mr. Coolidge got his fill of humor as presiding officer of the Senate. The Coolidge betrayed by his books is the Coolidge that already exists in the public mind." C LABOR'S CRITICISM OF THE CHURCH HRIST THE CARPENTER, if he were present to-day, might have a lesson particularly applicable to the problem of industrial reform, which, it is asserted from some Labor quarters, the Church He founded either studiously avoids or simply neglects. The advice Christ gave to the young man of many possessions might not be relevant in all cases, as modern conditions go; but the fundamental principles of human relationship which He taught, we are told, lose none of their authority or pertinency because of the complexities of modern industry and social economy. But is the Church as negligent in her attitude toward industrial reform as her outspoken critics assert? There are both writers in the ranks of labor and clerico-economists who are convinced of the contrary, who assert that by showing the disparity between certain wages and human need, for one thing, the Church is blazing the way to economic reform and the abolition of industrial helotry. The end of the twelve-hour day in steel, for which all the churches strove, may be cited as a case in point. The discussion, of paramount interest just now, is carried on in two articles appearing in The Forum and in a symposium of labor leaders in The Homiletic Review. No one can speak for all American labor in regard to any subject, least of all, religion, writes Paul Blanshard, a union official, in The Forum. "There are as many attitudes toward the Church as there are workers," he goes on. "The Labor movement is made up of good Catholics, good Jews, indifferent Protestants, Bolsheviks, Southern Presbyterians, and infidels. The workers do not ordinarily think of their movement as having anything to do with the Church. It is neither hostile nor loyal. It is simply detached." Nevertheless there is an important connection between the two. Both believe that there are certain evils needing correcting, and "Labor believes that the Church must fight those evils or be untrue to its trust." First, there is the inequality of wealth. "The appalling facts of low wages in the factories and mines of America have been revealed by almost every official investigation." The Interchurch World Movement, we are told, recorded that seventy-two per cent. of the steel strikers in the last great strike received less than a minimumof-comfort wage. The Federal Industrial Relations Commission estimated that far more than half of our workers do not receive enough for food, clothes, shelter, and old age. This, exclaims the writer, "in the country of Newport and Palm Beach." Then the writer lists what he terms the "degradation of personality which accompanies the industrial system." He goes on: "We are often accused of being materialists because we fight for a dollar an hour. But what does a dollar an hour mean to us? It means decent teeth, good milk for the children, the best doctor when the baby comes, and an occasional suit of clothes. It means that the children have some chance of going to high school, but not to college; it means that once in two or three years we have a vacation. It means a few magazines and a victrola. It means forty-four dollars a week if we have an eight-hour day. It means that we may go to the poor-house when we are old if we get fired. "These are the human things for which we fight in the labor movement: we fight for money because money means more abundant life. We fight a losing battle in the richest country in the world because we are worth less as the years go on. Our human machines run down and the employers pay nothing for junk." Labor fights also against the monotony of the machine process and the long hours of "uninspiring" work which reduces the workers in almost every industry to "the level of gear shifts, oil-cups, and automatic stitchers," and makes the work itself "as glorious as the crank of a phonograph." Laborers, it is complained, "are bought and sold like cakes of soap and sacks of flour." They are told what unions they can belong to, but they can not dictate to what associations their employers may belong. In their struggle for collective bargaining the law, it is said, is often against them, and organizers are jailed without trial by jury. How loudly, it is asked, does the churchman protest against these things? It is recognized by Mr. Blanshard that a neutral attitude should be maintained in investigating industrial facts; but after facts are disclosed Labor feels that "the Church should be just as militant in its opposition to industrial ills as it was in its fight against negro slavery or the saloon. Why play safe? Jesus didn't." What should the Church do? First of all, Labor "would like to have constant denunciation by preachers and church leaders of low wages, long hours, of the denial of real collective bargaining and the economic inequality of our society." To the decalog is suggested certain additions: "Thou shalt not discharge a man for being a radical. Thou shalt not pay workers a starvation wage if thou hast any gasoline in thy tank." And the name of Christ should not be mentioned in connection with a twelvehour day. Secondly, the Church should make "fact-studies" of modern industrial situations and make the truth known to the public. Thirdly, Labor wants the Church to give it some great personalities "like the late Bishop Williams of Michigan.” As it is, complains S. Yankowsky, editor of Justice (New York), organ of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, "the Church is with the strong. When Labor will have become a force, then and then only will the Church be with Labor." Mr. Yankowsky participates in a symposium on what Labor thinks of the Church, conducted in The Homiletic Review. It is strange, he thinks, that the Church, which "ought to be with and for the weak, the helpless, the downtrodden," is "the mainstay of the oppressor, of the mighty, of the rich." In the same symposium C. F. Stoney, former editor of the Intra-Mountain Worker (Salt Lake City), writes that "the Church should "'bout face,' 'clean house,' 'weed out the followers of Mammon,' and proceed to teach and practise the doctrines of Christ which are embodied in the Golden Rule and the Second Great Commandment." The Church, writes G. W. Perkins, editor of The Cigar Makers' Official Journal (Chicago, "preaches faith, hope and charity. What is needed, he says, is more faith, plenty of hope, less charity, and more justice.” However, all labor is not so dubious about the Church's stand toward Labor. Hugh Frayne, general organizer of the American Federation of Labor, says in The Homiletic's symposium that he has "no complaint to make and no criticism to offer in regard to what the churches generally have been doing." L. H. Moore, editor of The Union Labor Bulletin (East Orange, N. J.), believes that "the Church and Labor are beginning to cooperate," and Edward J. Gainor, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, "can not speak too highly of the Church," and "is convinced that its attitude is so kindly and sympathetic as to justify the Church as being listed prolabor." Says B. A. Larger, general secretary of the United Garment Workers of America: "The Church is doing all it possibly can for the workers to-day." "Any one who makes a statement that the Church in general is not friendly to Labor is either very ignorant or very much prejudiced against religion in general," writes Daniel J. Tobin, general president of the "NO COPS ALLOWED" MIGHT WELL BE THE LEGEND HERE For these small-town picnickers are not trespassers, but are on a playground set aside for them, enjoying normal recreation. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Stablemen and Helpers. Of marked appreciation of the Church's effort is the letter of Phil E. Ziegler, editor of the Railway Clerk Cincinnati), in The Homiletic's symposium: "The splendid statement of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ and the National Catholic Welfare Council on industrial and social problems; the stand taken by these and other churches-Protestant, Catholic and Jewish-on the right of Labor to organize and bargain collectively, employee representation in management, a more equitable distribution of the products of Labor; the courageous report of the Interchurch World Movement on the steel strike; the attitude of the Federal Council on the open shop and the coal and railroad strikes, have left little to be desired by Labor. The influence of these great Church bodies is beginning to be felt. Their ringing declarations in favor of Labor's aims, the establishment of human brotherhood, and the elimination of economic injustice, has, I believe, done much to restore the workers' interest and renew their contact with the Church." To turn again to The Forum, Dean William Palmer Ladd writes that few will maintain that the Church should ally itself with Labor or with any other social, economic, or political group. But that it should hold itself aloof is quite another matter. Dean Ladd, who is chairman of the Social Service Commission of the Federal Council of Churches, and a wellknown Episcopal clergyman, notes that the complexity of modern social and industrial order has created a problem not only for the Church but for society as a whole as well, and for which neither has yet found a solution. But in seeking the solution of this problem the Church must do its share. The Church, he suggests, "can encourage in its members an intelligent attitude toward Labor." It must "insistently preach the necessity of reason and reasonableness if any progress is to be made toward the solution of the labor problem." It should be sympathetic with Labor. It should not be afraid of social change; it should be willing to work for what the Anglican Bishops assembled at Lambeth called "a fundamental change in the spirit and working of our economic life." Finally, the Church's attitude toward Labor must be charged with the religious impulse. "It should enable Labor to purify its aims and to work for them with unflagging zeal. It should lift the mind of the employer into the realm of ideal ends where such petty considerations as his own personal comfort and his property rights will shrivel to their true proportions and where he can see things and men in the light of eternal truth." MAKING ROOM FOR YOUNG TRESPASSERS 66 HERE WE GOIN' TO PLAY?" A small-town boy looks disconsolately at his comrades, and they reply that they must keep off this lawn, that they are forbidden to play on that vacant lot over there, and that they must keep away from the place next door because of the hedge. There is the street, or Spud's shed, where they can look at some questionable pictures Spud has picked up. They go to the shed, where the town "cop" doesn't intrude. It is commonly thought that the small-town boy has the wide country to roam over, but most of the wide country is owned by others and is thickly dotted with the legends, "no trespassing allowed," known to many boys as the chief labels of civilization. In the big city there are municipal recreation grounds, parks, baths, sometimes beaches, Y. M. C. A.'s., and places where children of all creeds may gather. But such places are generally lacking in the smaller centers. So the young "hayseed" must usually limit his activities to the beflivvered street or to some back-alley resort, where questionable indulgences are apt to creep in. All this is brought out in an article in The Christian Herald by Uthai Vincent Wilcox, who tells us also how some small towns have met this condition and "cleaned" up, as it were, by giving the boys and girls places in which to indulge their natural inclination for healthful sport and play, without which no child can attain the full, clean stature which is expected of him or her. It is not always done by municipal authorities; often it is undertaken by private interests who see that in thus serving the children they best serve themselves. The one-gallused rural boy is just as apt to turn out a "bum" and a burden on the community through repression of his inherited tendencies as is the better harnessed city lad who is forced to the gutter. In Mountain View, California, a town of less than 5,000 population, a large publishing institution, we are told, purchased two acres of ground and laid out a baseball diamond with back-stop and bleachers. It is used not only by the employees of the institution, but by the boys and girls of the neighborhood who have really needed some place in which to play after school hours. The way they flocked to this ground, says the writer, "seems to have proved that a real need existed." Beautiful fields, streams, cañons and hills surround Ellwood City, a small Pennsylvania town, and it would seem an ideal spot, says the writer, in which children could grow up and develop physically. "Yet the boys and girls of Ellwood, for the most part, had to play on the streets, or be 'chased off' But the lot was turned over to the boys as a playground and parents do not fear for their children's loss of life or limb or morals. lawns, empty lots and places where fly balls might go through unprotected windows." The Shelby Tube Company investigated conditions. "It was looking to the future welfare of its plant. It was a selfish altruism." The boys and girls it might wish to employ later on were running wild. Moral conditions were becoming bad through the repression of physical develop ment in natural ways. So, continues the writer, "The tube company picked out two and one-half acres in a good location, and the realty firm donated it rent free in order to help out the experiment. The land was leveled, cleared of weeds and brush by volunteers from the local mill company. Slides, swings, see-saws, and sand-piles, as well as volley-ball courts and a wading-pool, were installed, together with drinkingfountains. "Even before the place was ready the children came, and when at last it was thrown open more than one-third of the total school enrollment came out. Even the grown people spent whole days there, some coming from two and three miles out in the country to bring their children to the advantages of an equipped playground. And this in a country town! "The factory men came during their noon hours for simple recreation such as volley-ball, pitching horseshoes, or just playing catch. The community center, as it rapidly grew to be, is supported by the local merchants; public collections are taken now and then to add to its equipment." The results of these experiments in the two widely separated towns, comments the writer, illustrate both the need and a way to meet that need. Both places have noticed a distinct tone of improvement in the town and its children. "Boys and girls learned how to play together, unselfishly and without fear of prohibitions against strenuous exercises and shouting." Some even learned how really to play. Paradoxical as it may seem, says the writer, all boys and girls do not know how to play. "It is not infrequent to find a timid child who has been cheated of this birthright by parents who have exercised the over-restrictive 'don't.'" So, it is asked, "Why may not the thousands of other small towns reap some of the benefits of the cities? Not even an expensive equipment is needed. It is not necessary to go as far as did the tube company in Pennsylvania. Any energetic group of people-fathers and mothers, improvement clubs and associations may rent or lease a field or several vacant lots. Clean up some place where the youth like to congregate. The chances are the community will rally to the purpose. Fathers and older brothers may add swings and lay out baseball diamonds. Every community needs a breathing-place where the active juniors may feel free to run and shout. "The ideal? The future welfare of our democracy and the church is bound up in this matter of saving the small towns. The sculptor works upon marble and knows that ultimately it will perish. The foundry man molds in brass, and knows that time will efface the delicate shadings and effects. The architect conceives great temples and knows that they will burn and crumble, but it is the privilege of the common man and woman to work with the developing souls of boys and girls that will in turn brighten the great future." B THE STATE AS FOSTER FATHER Com ROKEN HOMES MENDED, mothers saved from the loss of their children, children assured a better chance in life-these, we are told, are some of the results of "mothers' pension" laws now in force in all but six States, two States having been added this year. How these beneficent laws are administered and the chief causes leading to calls for public aid are described in a recent report issued by the United States Department of Labor through the Children's Bureau on "Standards of Public Aid to Children in Their Own Homes." munities in six States were studied as being representative of communities varying from the large city to the rural hamlet. The death of the father of the family compelled the mother to seek aid in three-fourths of the cases studied, and in about onefifth of the cases it was the father's illness or other incapacity which led the mother to seek the benefit of the pension law. In the communities studied aid was granted for 3,049 children to the amount of $41,781, the monthly average per child for the different communities varying from $19.68 to $10.17. The public aid granted was usually supposed, we are told, to cover the deficit between the family budget, as estimated, and the family resources, tho in four of the six States visited a maximum was fixt by law beyond which the administrative body could not go, no matter how great the need. Food estimates for a woman or girl over sixteen, as put down in the family budget, varied from $12.35 to $9.78 a month; for young children the estimates are several dollars less. Estimates for clothing allow a woman at home from $5.75 to $2 a month, and children at home somewhat less. In many cases the mothers and children had suffered from low standards of living, and in these the agencies "aimed to bring the families up to par physically, to suggest the best methods of household management, to advise about the recreation of children, and to act as friends of the lonely mother." Perhaps the most interesting part of the report is the chapter devoted to "What the aid meant to the children." Often it meant the difference between despair and a chance. For example, we read: "The 'S' family came to the attention of the officials administering allowances through the school. The teachers reported that the children were irregular in attendance, habitually tardy, and that they were poorly clothed and appeared to be neglected Their school work was poor, and they frequently fell asleep over their lessons. Investigation showed that the father had died the year before, leaving little to his wife and four small sons except the heavily mortgaged ramshackle house in which they lived. They earned a scanty living by selling papers. The mother was frail, and she and the children were out in all kinds of weather, often in rain-soaked shoes and too thin clothing. They were up early in the morning to sell and were often out until late at night. They were given aid. Six years later the writer saw them in a comfortable homelike flat. The oldest boy held a fairly good position and was going to night school. One boy was in high school, and the others had good grade-school records. ' |