TEW YORK CITY is most com N monly thought of by the rest of the country as a great financial and industrial center. We need some- By no means the least of these great educational influences will be found in the activities and achievements of Barnard College for Women, which is associated with Columbia University. It is a little over twenty-five years old, and it has already made its mark upon the education of American women. It has graduated 2,094 of them in its history, and its present enrollment of students is 801. Barnard College is now in the midst of a "drive," the object of which is to raise the sum of five hundred thousand dollars, the income of which will be used in a large measure toward the increase of the salaries of the teaching force. This sum will complete a million-dollar endowment fund. The executive head of Barnard College is Dean Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, Ph.D. (Columbia), LL.D. (Rutgers). She is the daughter of Judge Henry A. Gildersleeve and Virginia C. Gildersleeve. She is a graduate of Barnard and has been associated with it in a teaching capacity for many years and has steadily made for herself a position of influence in the field of women's education. She combines in an unusual degree a spirit of repose with a spirit of efficient energy. One of her colleagues speaks of her as "urbane, patient, assured, imperturbable." The alumnæ of the College gave a dinner in her honor last month which was attended by most of the Faculty and Trustees and many other distinguished guests. The dinner was planned as an expression of admiration and affection for the Dean and a tribute to her marked success as the head of the College. - Perhaps the most interesting announcement made on this occasion was that the portrait of Dean Gildersleeve by Miss Matilda Brownell, reproduced on this page, had been purchased for the College by four of its special friends-Mrs. Helen Hartley Jenkins, Mrs. E. H. Harriman, Mr. Jacob Schiff, and Mr. Charles R. Crane. This portrait is therefore a signal monument of women's achievement, for it is painted by a woman artist of distinction as a tribute to a woman educator of distinction. VIRGINIA CROCHERON GILDERSLEEVE, DEAN OF BARNARD COLLEGE From a painting by Matilda Brownell, recently exhibited at the Knoedler Galleries, New York City, and just purchased and presented to Barnard College by four of its friends T HERE are some four million three hundred thousand-children-of-kindergarten age-four to six yearsin the country. Of these only about five hundred thousand are receiving kindergarten training. The majority of parents who want kindergarten training for their children cannot afford to pay tuition at private kindergartens. Heretofore the kindergarten slogan has been, "Save the child." So it is still. Save the child at its most impressionable age from disorder, filth, and possible crime and teach it the elements of order, decency, and co-operation. As Mr. McAneny has said: "Reduce the cases in our corrective institutions by starting the children right. Better to pay to educate than to reform.' do not always remember that the kindergarten establishes a co-operative relationship between the American or immigrant home and the school. As the school is our strongest influence towards Americanization, the possibilities are thus opened for holding the parent, normalizing and Americanizing him too. For the kindergarten teacher devotes much of her time towards becoming acquainted with the homes of her pupils. Not only is the child in his most impressionable years saved from the deteriorating street influences, but the child's home itself tends in this way to be transformed from a place of restlessness and unloveliness to one of normal and wholesome understanding, observation, and growth. The future of America is thus assured. Americanization means more than the alien's standing at attention when the American flag passes by or when the American anthem is sung; it means more than his learning to read and write the English language. It means giving the right start in life to every alien as to every native-born child, so that they may become true citizens; and it also means giving to the child's parents a sounder citizenship fiber. Years ago, when on a salary of $125 a month in North Carolina, Commissioner P. P. Claxton, now head of the Federal Bureau of Education, personally supported a kindergarten for colored children which cost him $40 a month. In a recent number of "School Life Commissioner missioner Claxton thus summarizes the situation: The great World War will be followed by years of agitation and change in which all institutions of government, including our own, will be tried and tested. Intelligent democracy is the only toward protection against reaction autocracy on the one side and class rule, disintegration, and anarchy on the other. Our American democracy, the hope of the world, demands universal education of the best type-education of all for freedom, initiative, self-restraint, cooperation, and obedience to law. In this education the kindergarten has a very important place. . . . For all our younger children, both of native-born and foreign-born parentage, and especially for the latter, kindergarten schools should be provided, either by public or by private support. Our millions of children of kindergarten age should no longer be deprived of the training which the kindergarten gives in industry, loyalty, patriotism, and the social virtues so essential in our political, social, and industrial democracy. In a later communication Commissioner Claxton writes: The great majority of students of education are convinced of the funda mental value of the kindergarten for little children. The kindergarten has a special value in a State... in which there are large numbers of foreign-born parents, and a careful study of the matter has convinced me that in such States it may become one of the most effective agencies for Americanization. The cost of maintaining kindergartens for all children, especially in the cities, towns, and villages, will be comparatively little, but the results will be very great. Throughout America the friends of the kindergarten regard it as an integral part of every public school system, to be supported and maintained as is any other phase of public school endeavor. Most States have permissive kindergarten legislation—that is, they permit the establishment of kindergartens at the discretion of the educational authorities. But even where the Superintendent of Schools may appreciate the kindergarten's value, local boards of education usually have little conception of its importance either as a channel for education or as an effective Americanizing agency. Some States now go further than mere permissive legislation and provide for kindergartens on petition of parents. In 1913 California passed such a law. It has made possible the work indicated by the illustration on the preceding page, while the charm of a Wisconsin kindergarten is illustrated above. It provides for the establishment of kindergartens upon petition of the parents of twenty-five children of kindergarten age. The California law was passed through the efforts of the women of that State. As a result, the number of kindergarten teachers in California has increased from 149 to 704, with nearly 15,000 boys and over 15,000 girls enrolled. This inspiring example has caused other States to secure similar legislation for instance, Nevada, 1915; Maine and Texas, 1918; and Arizona, 1919. The financial maintenance of their kindergartens comes from the school funds of school districts, or, if necessary, from an additional local tax. In New York State there are over three hundred thousand children for whom kindergartens have not yet been provided. That is why an effort has repeatedly been made to have a law enacted. The principal sections of the bill introduced last winter read as follows: The Board of Education of each school district and of each city may maintain kindergartens free to resident children between the ages of four and six years. Upon petition of the parents or guardians of not less than twenty-five children between the ages of four and six, residing within the district or city, who certify that such children will attend such kindergarten, the Board of Education shall establish and maintain a kindergarten unless a kindergarten is already maintained in the school named in the petition; Provided that no petition shall be effective unless the school in connection with which such kindergarten is desired is named in the petition; And provided further, that no more than one school is named in each petition; And provided further, that the petitioners reside within the section or neighborhood ordinarily served by the school in connection with which such kindergarten is desired; And provided further, that if the monthly average attendance in such class for two succeeding months drops below fifteen the class may be discon 4 tinued for the balance of the school year at the discretion of the local school authorities. These provisions form a model for other States; States which have not already enacted similar legislation should do so. Of course the purpose of any such bill is to compel school officials to establish kindergartens in places where there are none, yet where there are enough parents with children of kindergarten age who want them. Three years ago a similar bill passed the New York State Assembly unanimously, but was held up in the Senate. Last month the bill passed the Senate unanimously, but perished in the Rules Committee of the Assembly, despite the fact that it had received the indorsement of practically every welfare organization in the State. Among the prominent proponents of the measure were: The National Kindergarten Associa- The Public Education Association. The State Teachers' Association. The State Federation of Labor. The New York Woman Suffrage Party. The Women's Municipal League. Citizens of all States who are interested to promote kindergarten extension may write for blank petitions and leaflets to the National Kindergarten Association, 8 West Fortieth Street, New York City. M WHY NOT BE YOUR OWN RETAILER? IKE DUGGAN and Emilio Salvaniniand plain John Smith, three friends of mine who commute on the same car I do, have, in the course of their daily goings to and fro from our Park to the city and contrariwise, arrived at their solution of the causes and the remedy for the high cost of living. Mike summed it up the other day with the epithets, "To the divil with the whole dommed bunch!" meaning, as he made sufficiently clear, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker, and their fellowcitizens who "open shop" for us in the morning and cater to our buying whims until the end of the day, three hundred and some odd days in the year. It has set me to wondering-this solution offered by Mike and Emilio and plain John-what the rumpus is all about, and whether there may not be another and a kindlier and also a better way than to consign one's neighbors to Hades. For I recall that Mrs. Roberts, the baker's wife, happens to be a friend of my wife, and that my boy chums with the son of Nelson, the grocer, and that Lee, the tailor, grows a garden that is the envy of all the neighbors-and of their chickens, mine included. For ours is the average neighborhood, where the melting-pot is boiling away briskly, and rather successfully, I think. The suggestion does not make for a future of peace and contentment, and I rather like a friendly spirit within one's neighborhood. But our neighborhood believes, like a lot of other good American neighborhoods, that high store bills and costly raiment, and all the rest of the cycle of living expenses that wear down the income to almost if not quite nothing a year, would stop their upward course if it were not for the unrighteous rapacity of the retailer. I wonder! What has happened to bring about all the present fuss? The war? Yes; but even before the war, if you remember, we were fussing about the same things that agitate us to-day. We were then saying that the gap between producer and consumer was too wide, and must narrow down. It was, and it is, and it will be narrowed down in good time, but not by dint of much "cussing.' Our grandparents who were so unfortunate as to live "in town did not have our particular present-day troubles. There was the butter man, and "Mis Jenkins with her " garding sass " and "aigs," and the farmer who brought in, late in the fall, the winter's supply of potatoes and celery and rutabagas and cabbage and all the rest of the "truck". folks who considered themselves lucky to make a sale at all. Now of course you know how it is. The garden back of the house has gone. There's a duplex on the spot. A red monster of a furnace has driven all the BY HUGH J. HUGHES coolness out of the cellar, and keeping a winter's supply of vegetables is out of the question. Mother with the tin pan going down cellar for the makings of a toothsome dinner is replaced by mother at the telephone calling up the grocer for the like makings of a similarly toothsome meal, most dissimilarly expensive. Right there is one big reason for the high cost of living. We have banished the cellar, with its darkness, its coolness, its cheapness, and its smells, in exchange for modern heat and modern plumbing and modern sanitation, and we have made the grocer and the butcher the keepers of our neighborhood cellar. We ask them to run errands for us, to keep for us, not merely the old-time line of homegrown stuff, but a supply gathered from all parts of a continent, and if they failhow we do holler! 66 Our grandparents used to have "hogkillings. We don't. They made a 'bee of it, mixing hard work and sociability. They swapped fresh meat. They salted and pickled what they couldn't use fresh. And the folks in town could buy a "quarter" and hang it up to freeze in the wood-shed in winter, and go down to the butcher's twice a week in summer. The wood-shed is gone, thanks to the furnace, and we phone down for three tenderloins, "to to be sent up by five o'clock"! What does that mean? Nothing much; only train-loads of live stock, traveling from the feeding lots of the Middle West to the great packing plants, and other train-loads of refrigerated meats traveling from the packing plants into all the cities and towns and villages of the land, laying down in the meat-market man's place of business just the variety of meat that our neighborhood wants, year in and year out-or else, hear us yell! In the tailor's window there are suits priced at three and four times what you and I used, a few years ago, to pay fortailor-made suits? No, not that. Handme-downs, and proud we were to wear them, remembering, as we might easily them, remembering, as we might easily do-some of us, at least-the home-made suits that grandmother and great-grandmother used to fashion for the men of the family. And I recall, too, as do you, no doubt, that the days of cheap shoes and cheap other things were also the days of cheap service, unpaved streets, unlighted buildings, and, not at all to exaggerate, of many conditions not to our liking. We got the pavements, the lights, the water, the stores, the styles, and now we are paying for these extras on the installment plan. Brethren, that is another reason why living is high-a reason that has no relation at all to the war, nor to anything else save to our wants. We asked for and demanded service of a peculiar charand demanded service of a peculiar char acter from our storekeepers, our haberdashers, our coal men, from everybody within reach, and they, seeing our demand, and needing the cash, set out to give us what we sighed for. Think it over. Wasn't it the fellow who hung onto the old-fashioned ways of doing things that went out of business? If the cobbler didn't perk up and stock up with modern lines of shoes, didn't he cease his cobbling? If the grocer didn't spruce up his store and stock up with the latest and most out-of-season stuff, didn't he quit at the invitation of the sheriff? But I do not wish, nor intend, to rub it in. I simply desire to prove, to your satisfaction as well as to mine, that for a generation we, the consumers, have been traveling away from those happy conditions we now pine for, when every man was, or might be, his own gardener, his own butcher, his own tailor, his own master in his own home. And we went willingly, dropping first one convenience after another for some other and fresher, and therefore more immediately desirable, convenience, every step taking us farther away from the producer, until at last we have become a specialized class of beings, having no power to feed or clothe ourselves, and dependent upon others for the performance of that service. And the natural result is that we pay extravagant prices for a service that our grandparents would deem the height of extravagance. In this we think their judgment in error; but the point right now is that we are paying, roundly paying, for our exemptions and our privileges, and for our lack of ability to help ourselves. And in the meantime what of the farmer? So far as our contracts with him are concerned, he has quite gone out of business. He has learned the desirability of quantity production. His cream goes to a co-operative creamery; his live stock pauses on its way to market to be accounted for by a co-operative live-stock shipping association. He still grows 66 garden sass"-and hauls it to market by auto truck and is back home, a halfdozen or twenty-five miles from the city, for breakfast. He has lost interest in the peddling of butter and eggs and poultry and home-cured hams, and just when we wake up to the fact that we want, and want very sincerely, those plain, homely services we discarded a generation or more ago we also discover that the farmer's delivery wagon, with its good things and its cheap prices, is as extinct as the chariots of Pharaoh. Curiously enough, we, the consumers, have been going in one direction while the producers have been going in the other; while we have ceased to buy in bulk and as directly as possible of the producer, the producer has ceased to be a peddler and has become a quantity pro ducer, a wholesaler of sorts, and is going to the best available market, which most certainly, expense of selling considered, is not the kitchen door of the consumer. There are certain remedies for this situation other than the one suggested by Mike Duggan. Aside from the fact that consigning one's neighbors to Tophet gets one nothing better than burned fingers, there are clear and sufficient reasons why we want to find a better solution than the T one Mike suggests, if there be any such solution. You may say, and I shall not argue with you, that a lot of these fellows are profiteering, but the plain fact is that you can't put a whole Nation into jail. It won't work. And besides, the tail, profiteering, is not wagging the dog, high cest of living. Maybe we think it is, but that is because we are excited and must find somebody to blame for a condition we never expected to find ourselves in, where the very excess of prosperity is making us sit up of nights to try and figure out how to meet our bills. T So I shall dismiss the idea of putting all the profiteers in jail, and pass on to one or two other suggestions that occur to my mind as workable. There is the boycott. A lot of folks are trying it at the present time. "Stop buying the thing that is too high, and it will quit being high," is the philosophy behind this moverent. Sometimes the plan will work, but oftener it will not, for the very good reason that the boycott cuts off one's own nose to spite the other fellow's face. We wear denim overalls, which we hate, to reduce the price of tweeds, which we like. We do the thing we dislike in order to get the thing we like. Practically, after the first glow of the fad disappears we stand to lose. We are not stouthearted enough as a class, we consumers, to go without enough things long enough, and cheerfully enough, to convince the fellows who hold them that we do not and never will want them again. In short, the boycott is a gigantic bluff, and the man against whom it is made knows it is a bluff, and he simply outbluffs us by jacking up the prices a bit on other lines to cover his actual or contingent losses. Home gardens? Yes. For those who have the ground and the liking for a hoe, and who can labor not in vain. Which latter is an art, and cometh by long experience. And remember that we are dealing with the whole circle of high prices, and not with the little segment that can or will be affected by the vegetables that the neighbors' hens miss. Municipal markets? Yes-for those who have the time, and keeping in mind the fact that they solve only a little of the whole problem of household expense. The real service rendered by the municipal market is not that of bringing together producer and consumer to spend their altogether-too-valuable time haggling over the price of a mess of greens, but of making for the market gardener a place where he can quickly and surely dispose of his load of produce to the agent of the consumer-the grocer-who will later on in the day confer with Mrs. Housewife about the matter of what to get for dinner. They serve, too, the few early birds who enjoy putting the morning stars to sleep, or whose necessity drives them out after the nickel that may be saved around 6 A.M. Most of us can save that nickel quicker and a lot more comfortably by putting the amount of energy consumed in going to market into energy consumed in going to market into our regular tasks. In short, the municipal market idea as a solution of the high cost of living is part fad and part fake, and for a few of us there may be, and probably is, a little something of value to it. The parcels post offers its own attractive brand of relief from the middleman. Away with the whole gang! All you have to do is to get a hamper of dewspangled vegetables and fresh-laid eggs once a week. But I've noticed that for one reason or another the same folks seldom enthuse for more than one season. It simply doesn't work. Don't ask me why not. I don't know. I know why I don't patronize that economic highway from the producer to our kitchen. I'm too lazy, and I'd like to have a good opinion of my farmer friends, and I like them to think well of me. And I am afraid that a mess of mildewed peas, and a few overripe eggs, and a roll of rancid butter, might cause me to think things-unkind things. But, like the municipal market, it has its uses, and some of them may, here and there, now and then, fit the consumer's needs. But it's no remedy; it is merely a novelty that one enjoys until something happens. Then he cusses and quits. Or, as may easily happen, the farmer beats him to the point of dissatisfaction, and then there is one more agriculturist voicing his contempt of the city and all its ways. 66 Is there, then, nothing save to let the grocer and the baker and the rest of the gang who are looting us "-you said it, and not I-wear down our pay checks to merely nothing at all? Fortunately, there is something, and the farmer has shown us how to go about it. For years he has been traveling away from the individual consumer, and now he is coming back. For years we have been traveling away from the producer, and if we are ever to close the gap between us, we, the consumers, must turn around and travel the other way. What do I mean, and what are the farmers doing? They are organizing their business cooperatively in such fashion that they can assemble their produce at the local shipping point, and in such volume that they can afford to hire the best business talent to serve them as sales. agents in the distributing markets. What one man alone never could dream of doing, ten thousand men, expressing their will through their organizations, are doing, and successfully doing. As a case in point, the farmers adjacent to the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis felt that they were not getting for their milk the price that they should receive. They organized their own co-operative association, established their own selling agency, supplied the distributers, and to-day the milk in the Twin Cities is not only as cheap as it is in any other municipality of equal rank in the country, but the farmers, by collective co-operative action, have so reduced the costs of handling that they get maximum prices for their raw product. Or another instance. The farmers of Michigan grew tired of raising potatoes for the other fellow to buy and sell. They started in, two years ago, to market their own potatoes. Their local associa tions formed a federation. The federation chose a general manager and salesman through whose office all the potatoes of the locals are sold. The local associa tions get for their potatoes what they bring on the day of sale, less the costs of handling. The farmer who belongs to the local gets for his potatoes all that the terminal market pays, less the costs of handling from his door to the buyer, who is usually some retailer-perhaps the man who serves you. Or, if you happen to be eating oranges packed in southern California, the chances are that you are eating fruit that came that day, or at most but a few days before, out of the hands of the farmer, who, through his co-operative shipping association, has reached across a continent in order to serve you almost as directly as he did in the old days, and a whole lot better. If you eat choice creamery butter from Minnesota, the chances are that you are eating butter that came into the hands of the jobber in New York from the hands of the co-operating farmers of Minnesota. If you happen to buy Danish butter you may be certain the farmer owned it almost to your door. Why not take a tip from the farmers? Can't we consumers do what they have done-what they are now doing? Is there any reason why we cannot own our own retail stores? Is there anybody able to stop us if we shall choose to do so? And if we did own our own stores, would it not settle, and settle rightly, this question of "Who gets it?" If the retailer is taking too much, that is all right when one is his own retailer, and can pay himself in patronage dividends what he has paid out in excessive price. To my mind, here is the answer to the Bolshevik and the social pessimist alike. Don't ask nor expect the State to do it; buy and manage your own business. Organize your association, capitalize it for enough to make a substantial business, make the shares small and fix the interest on them at the current rate, follow the principle of " one man, one vote, elect a sound-headed board of directors, and instruct them to hire a manager who knows his business, charge the current prices, patronize your own store, and prorate your dividends in excess of the interest charges and necessary reserves back to the patrons according to the purchases made. Need we stop there? Can we stop there? And will we? I think not. The consumer has the same right to go back and help close the now-existing gap that the producer has to |