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The public meetings, round table conferences. and committee sessions of the Biennial covered a period of ten days, and the Seventh Regiment Armory, transformed for the purpose into one of the largest auditoriums in the city, was hardly spacious enough to hold the audiences of women who desired to attend the general gatherings of the Federation. Some idea of the size of this Convention of women may be gained from the photograph reproduced in the pictorial section of this issue of The Outlook.

So much for the statistics of this great gathering. If it possessed nothing but size and numbers it would be significant, for when women can unite to the number of two or three millions for a common purpose and manage a congress of ten or fifteen or twenty thousand delegates and representatives, the mere magnitude of the undertaking arrests attention as a feat of organization, if nothing

more.

But the spirit of the Federation, and it may be assumed that the spirit is the result of a definite purpose, represents something very much larger and deeper than a mere gregarious notion of "getting together" on a grand scale. The retiring President of the Federation, Mrs. Pennybacker, has expressed the underlying spirit of the Federation as that of service-by which we take it she means the co-operative service rendered by the women members to the villages, cities, counties, States, or the nation in which they live. All sorts of women's clubs belong to the General Federation-Village Improvement Societies, Art Clubs, Literary Societies, Sewing Circles, Professional and Business Associations, Social Clubs, Educational Groups, etc., etc. The purpose of the General Federation of Women's Clubs is to give all these varied groups of women a general basis, a common meeting-ground, a feeling of solidarity, to the end that there may be promoted "a higher type of citizenship, a better public spirit, and a more alert social consciousness."

HOW THE FEDERATION
AFFECTS SOCIAL LIFE

Now we are relating all this, not for the benefit of our women readers, who probably know much more about it than we do ourselves, but for the enlightenment of some of our men readers who unfortunately are altogether too ignorant or inappreciative of the effective co-operative work which the women of the United States are doing for the gen

eral social good entirely outside of the domain of political action. The programme

of the ten days' Biennial Convention was a remarkable revelation to some of the men who were fortunate enough to be invited guests at various meetings. It was a pamphlet or book of many pages, and afforded a remarkable bird's-eye view of the variety and scope of the work of the Federation.

The organization is Federal in its nature. The separate clubs are combined into local federations, then into State federations, and, lastly, into a National or General Federation. The administrative work of the General Federation is done through departments and sub-departments. Art, Civics, Education, Home Economics, Literature, Legislation, Industrial Conditions, Music, Public Health, and Child Labor are some of the departmental divisions, each having its logical subdivisions. Thus a woman who is interested in æsthetics will find her appropriate place in the work for the promotion of art, while the woman who thinks sanitary garbage collection is the question of the hour in her community will find her active interest in the Department of Public Health. The women who attended the Biennial heard formal addresses and informal talks from experts, both men and women, in the various departments of the Federation's activities, and we venture to say that not a woman delegate went away without a determination to pass along to her fellow-members in her home club some of the encouragement, inspiration, and new knowledge which she received. The Federation does not rest content with the information and interchange of ideas which it provides every two years. It is between times constantly circulating literature, circulars, and letters keeping its subsidiary clubs informed of the progress of all the forms of social, community, and legislative work in which its members are interested.

All in all, the General Federation of Women's Clubs must be regarded, not only as a very significant sign of the times, but as a great instrument of social progress. It means better homes, better schools, better arts and crafts, better legislation for women and children, and a broadening intelligence and a more comprehensive point of view for American women. If there is any general federation that is doing an equal amount of effective work along civic

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and community lines for men, we have not yet heard of it. The United States Chamber of Commerce, which carries its Nation-wide referendums among business men, is perhaps the nearest approach to the federated community work of the women. But the programme and scope of the United States Chamber of Commerce are limited when compared with the varied activities and interests of the General Federation of Women's Clubs. We take our.hats off to the women in token of our admiration for the ability and skill which they have shown in the construction and administration of this great organization.

PRESIDENT DWIGHT, OF YALE

The sudden death, at New Haven on May 26, of ex-President Timothy Dwight, of Yale University, at the age of eighty-seven, recalls to thousands of Yale men, not only the scholar and theologian, but a gentle, tolerant, and sympathetic personality, not austere or narrow-often humorous and always modest. Dr. Dwight's administration stood, in a way, between the Old Yale and the New Yale, between the college reaching out toward university completeness and the equipped, modern university.

No one by temperament and taste could have been less of the "money-getter" type of college president than Dr. Dwight, but he worked unceasingly to enlarge Yale's opportunities. When it became known that he turned back his own salary, that he supplied the college pulpit without charge, and that he even acted as treasurer to reduce expenses, others put their shoulders to the wheels, and in the thirteen years of his presidency (1886 to 1898) the permanent fund more than doubled (he contributed $100,000 personally), the buildings increased like magic, the Faculty was strengthened and broadened, the title of University was secured by law and justified by fact, the elective system, previously tested timidly and tentatively, became firmly established. He retired at the age of seventy, in accordance with his longheld belief that no university president should serve as such beyond that time.

The name of Dwight is famous in American educational and literary annals. The grandfather of the Timothy Dwight who has just died bore the same name and was President of Yale for twenty-two years. That earlier Dr. Dwight was himself a grandson of Jonathan Edwards. Theodore W. Dwight, long President of the Columbia Law School,

was another illustrious member of the Dwight family.

It would take a column to record the list of President Dwight's honors and of his books in his special field; notable were his writings as one of the once famous editors of the "New Englander," his membership of the American Biblical Revision Committee, his editing of the Commentaries by Meyer and by Godet, and his "Memories of Yale Life."

THE PRESBYTERIAN CONFLICT

The conflict of reactionary with progressive theologians was renewed, May 18-26, in the Assembly at Atlantic City, New Jersey, more threateningly than heretofore. Instead of Union Seminary, the New York Presbytery was the object of attack as its stronghold. Besides various overtures against the one or the other from a half-dozen or more presbyteries, fifteen identical overtures praying for effective discipline of the New York Presbytery were presented by presbyteries from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. This unprecedented coalition had been so heralded in the daily press as to rouse wide public interest in its issue.

That the majority of the Assembly was bent on pacific treatment appeared at the outset in its choice of Moderator. The candidate of the coalition, Dr. W. L. McEwan, of Pittsburgh, advocated as hostile to "the poison of unbelief," polled 237 votes against 616 for Dr. John A. Marquis, President of Coe College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, widely esteemed as conciliatory and judicious.

While the batch of overtures was in the hands of the usual Committee, a pamphlet in their support, entitled "Critical Scholarship versus the Bible," was distributed by irresponsible outsiders. Its author, Dr. John Fox, of New York, states the vital question at issue thus: "Is the whole Bible the Word of God? Do we want a new Bible with scholarship?" The present crisis he described as follows: "The U boats of unbelief have fired another torpedo at the Bible, blown the very bottom out of the book of Exodus, the Gospel of St. Matthew, and the Gospel of St. Luke, leaving the hapless men, women, and children of the churches to take to boats, rafts, and wreckage as they struggle on the tossing ocean of doubt and negation."

The Committee, after several days of conference, reported that both parties deprecated continued agitation as bringing reproach upon

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the Church and injury to Christian interests; also that the Presbytery of New York regretted that exaggerated and misleading press reports of their licensing candidates for the ministry whose essential soundness in faith they now reaffirmed had given rise to the drastic proposals of their brethren. The Committee concluded by enjoining on all presbyteries strict conformity to the Declaration of 1910. This, occasioned by a similar case in the New York Presbytery, concurs with Dr. Fox in asserting as the first of truths to be maintained the inerrancy of the Bible. On the other hand, no fault is found with the Presbytery for its recent nonconformity. The apple of discord is cleverly cut and a half awarded to each claimant.

This unanimous report to the Assembly was immediately rushed through to unanimous adoption without discussion. The complainants are theoretically justified, the presbytery is practically vindicated, and both parties express satisfaction!

The case against Union Seminary was disposed of the next day by appointing an investigating committee to report in 1917. A similar expedient was adopted in 1913, but nothing came of it. The case of Auburn Seminary will then also come up. This, distinctively liberal since its foundation by the "new school" Presbyterians in 1820, has given notice of intention to withdraw, like Union, from Assembly control.

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Thus closed a quarter-century of intermittent theological fever, beginning with the prosecution of Professor Briggs in 1891, and soon afterwards of Professors Smith and McGiffert. In 1903 the adoption as the working creed" of the Church of a "Brief Statement of the Reformed faith," notably purged of all points of controversy, was hailed as ending a century of strife. But between those who affirm and those who deny that theology is improvable conflict is inevitable. As one Presbyterian clergyman who attended the General Assembly this year expressed it," the theological constitution of the Presbyterian Church is a rigid thing, and the truth which it attempts to contain is living and growing." The long history of Christian doctrine permits no doubt of the issue in the present case.

It must not be left unsaid that the Church has had a prosperous year in the increase of its membership, the formation of new churches, and large gifts for missions and benevolence.

THE NORTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION

These have been days of denominational meetings. The Methodist General Conference has been holding its sessions since the first of last month in Saratoga Springs. We have given some account of this, and a further report is printed in editorial correspondence on another page. The Northern Presbyterians have been legislating in their General Assembly at Atlantic City, New Jersey, and of this we give some account above. On the day following the close of the Presbyterian Assembly the Northern Baptist Convention began its session at Minneapolis, Minnesota, and continued from the 17th to the 24th of last month.

The Baptist churches are congregational in order. Their National meeting is therefore not an occasion for legislation as are the Methodist Conference and the Presbyterian Assembly. This Convention, however, does have a certain authority in the matter of Baptist National Missionary Societies, and, like the Congregational Council, has been a center of a growing tendency toward organization. The penalty of loose organization is inefficiency and waste. For years,

for example, the American Baptist Publication Society and the American Baptist Home Mission Society have been carrying on home missionary work independently of each other in the same field. The Convention has provided for the unification of the missionary work of these two societies. The probable result will be that the Publication Society will become the exclusive publishing agency of the denomination, taking over all forms of publication now divided between itself, the Home Mission, and the Foreign Mission Societies, leaving the Home Mission Society free to control all the activities that belong to its special field. This adjustment is a part of the process toward economy and efficiency which was begun by the organization of the Convention ten years

ago.

The problems of the Baptists have thus been practical, not theological. The very independent character of the Baptist churches tends to provide for that theological liberty which prevents theological controversy.

The Convention favors a higher standard of education for its ministers, and disapproves of any minister who performs the marriage ceremony in disregard of the principle laid down in the Gospels with regard to divorce.

An interesting feature of the Convention was the rejection of a resolution favoring preparedness, not on the ground of opposition to preparedness, but on the ground that such a resolution might be subject to unfortunate political misinterpretation. The sentiment of the Convention was decidedly in favor of a reasonable preparedness programme.

THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF
CHARITIES AND CORRECTION

The forty-third meeting of the National Conference of Charities and Correction began at Indianapolis on May 10. It presented throughout its sessions at least one characteristic which is significant for all persons interested in substantial social progress. This was the eager attention paid by its members to those discussions of sound methods of work which made up the larger part of the programme as contrasted with purely descriptive or speculative papers. There was sufficient of the latter to give a sweep and a forward look to the meeting. The interest of the more than three thousand social workers in attendance, however, was clearly centered on those studies of successful methods of work in whose development and extension lies the hope of translating our social ideals and theories into solid achievement.

While the Conference has never been given over to generalities, the spirit of speculation in the field of social welfare in this country has been fostered and directed largely by its members and at its meetings. A striking change has come over the Conference during the last decade in this respect. While retaining its leadership in crystallizing unformed social ideals into definite progressive programmes, its published proceedings have included each year more and more practical scientific suggestions. In the fields of social research, community surveying, relief, medico-social work, family care, child-helping, and the correlation of public and private charitable effort alike, the query raised is not more often what to do than how to do it. Any form of organized activity must develop its tools and its technical processes before it can progress. The tools and processes of social work are being standardized and used.

Reflecting the most conspicuous social problem of the previous year, the sessions on unemployment provided some interesting suggestions. Professor William M. Leiserson, of Toledo University, advocated a National reserve board, arguing that what the

Federal Reserve Board had done to mobilize money and credits a labor reserve board, working along similar lines in connection with State and municipal labor exchanges, could do for the labor supply. John R. Shillady, Secretary of the Mayor's Unemployment Committee of New York City, in a carefully prepared paper urged the planning of expenditures for more or less permanent public improvements over a period of ten years as a measure for the absorption of part of the unemployment problem which tends to become abnormal about once each decade. A new section on "The Promotion of Social Programmes " provided further evidence that the Conference members are concerned with ways and means. Lawson Purdy, of New York City, advocated an extension of the policy of special assessments for local improvements to provide for the growing cost of projects for social welfare. The question of the reduction of taxes on buildings and the increase of taxes on land will be included in the programme of next year's Conference at Pittsburgh.

FRANCE'S CRIPPLED SOLDIERS

Some three months ago we reported the formation of the American Committee for Training in Suitable Trades the Maimed Soldiers of France. Awkward though it is, this title is self-explanatory. As the result of that report in The Outlook, we are glad to say, several hundreds of dollars poured into the office of the Committee at Room B, Plaza Hotel, New York City. Each $100 is enough to educate one maimed soldier to an industrial proficiency sufficient to make him self-supporting.

These contributions came from all parts of the United States and from other countries also. One of the most interesting donations, as the result of our editorial article, was a check for $267.24 from the employees of the Cerro de Pasco Mining Company in Peru.

The readers of The Outlook who have shown their interest in this praiseworthy charity will be glad to hear that more than $80,000 has been raised since February 28. Mrs. Edmund Lincoln Baylies, the able and energetic Chairman of the Committee for the United States, tells us that "it costs from $1,500 to $3,500, according to the size, to install a school for these crippled men." The Committee is now supporting five schools and is planning more. The French Government has at least a dozen schools, and it is planned that eventually the Government will

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take over all the schools, but those now maintained by the Committee and the others which it is to establish will have to be supported by private funds until after the war.

The French Government has just given the society two pavilions in the famous Grand Palais, Champs Élysées, Paris. Here several hundred crippled soldiers are now being taught shoemaking, harness-making, locksmithing, carpentry, polishing, tinsmithing, tailoring, wig-making, hair-dressing, industrial designing, bookkeeping, and writing with the left hand for those who have lost the use of the right. This instruction is under the general direction of Dr. G. Borne, for several years the medical examiner of two of the largest accident insurance companies in France, who has devoted years of study to the problem of restoring to self-sufficiency men crippled in accidents.

It will be noticed that all the trades just mentioned are such as will be useful to the men who learn them when they return to their native villages. The Committee believes and the French Government believes that it is best for the nation and for the individual if these rehabilitated cripples can return to the rural homes from which most of them come.

What makes this work supremely valuable is that it will be permanent. The schools

will be continued after the war for those injured in industrial or other accidents. Through the vast practice it has brought them surgeons have learned much of the recuperative possibilities of the human body by this world conflict. Germany, too, has made great strides in this direction. Thus mankind learns even from its greatest folly-war.

LEGALIZING MORALITY

IN ADVERTISING

Unscrupulous advertising is made more. perilous than ever by a recent decision of the United States Supreme Court. In the opinion which accompanies that decision the Court writes another chapter in its record of identifying good law and good morals. Substantial wrong-doing has often escaped punishment by pleading a technical defense. reason why the Supreme Court has grown in popular confidence is that it has repeatedly shattered technical defense by directing against it a common-sense view of justice. This is particularly true of its decision and opinion in this advertising case.

The

A real estate company advertised the sale of lands in Florida by circulating prints,

pamphlets, and other publications, as well as letters, in the United States mails. The corporation and certain individuals connected with it were indicted under United States statutes making it an offense to use the United States mails to defraud or to carry out a scheme to obtain money or property by means of false or fraudulent representations or promises. The grounds on which the allegations in the indictment were made charge the corporation and these individuals with making untrue representations concerning the land. These representations were certainly alluring. They alleged that the farms on this land were fertile, that they were divided into tracts, that roads and school-houses and fences were built, that there were no mosquitoes, that lumber was cheap, that there were telephone connections and hundreds of people had settled there, that prices had increased very greatly, that a family could make enough money on one farm during the first year for self-support besides saving money, and so on.

There was no denial in the indictment that the company owned the land or "that the land was worth fully as much as was to be obtained therefor." The lower court, therefore, held that the business was legitimate and that the Federal statute was not violated by "puffing " the qualities of the article sold. As the lower court expressed it, "raising the expectations of the purchaser, but giving that purchaser value received for his money, but not fulfilling those expectations," was not an offense against the statute.

It is this decision of the lower court that the Supreme Court has reversed.

In contrast to the more technical decision of the lower court, the United States Supreme Court holds that advertisers may be held guilty of fraudulent representation even when the goods that they deliver are worth the money they receive for them. "Mere puffing," says the United States Supreme Court" that is, the mere exaggeration of the qualities which the article has "might not come within the prohibition of the statute, though the Court does not express an opinion on that subject. But the Court adds: "When a proposed seller goes beyond that, assigns to the article qualities which it does not possess, does not simply magnify in opinion the advantages which it has, but invents advantages and falsely asserts their existence, he transcends the limits of puffing and engages in false representations

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