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among the Italians and the Slavs who have come to America. But American workmen know how difficult it is to elevate the standard of living among a million immigrants a year, or the eleven million of foreign birth now living in the United States. It will be still more difficult among four hundred million people, living in their own country, but sending their products to a common world market. Hence every possible agency is needed in the transformation of the Chinese standard of living so that the increase of their wages may keep pace with the advance of their productive power.

One of the unrecognized, but most effective, agents in transforming the civilization of the Orient and saving the world from an industrial crisis is the Christian missionary. The missionaries have opened schools in every province, and thousands of Christian Chinese families are withdrawing their children from competitive labor and placing them in these schools. One church has more than five thousand children in schools this year. Again in the interests of family religion and family purity, the missionaries advise converted families not to continue in the clan house, but build separate houses in which a blessing at the table, family prayers, and family privacy are possible. Once more the new converts are urged to read, and in most cases are not admitted into full membership in the church until they have mastered the New Testament. Reading brings with it countless other demands: kerosene for lamps, board floors for comfort instead of damp clay as cold as our cellar floors, small stoves for heat, the addition of flour and meat to the diet, watches and clocks-for time has now become valuable-and other necessi

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ties and comforts of a Christian home. These changes add many-fold to the cost of living in China, and render impossible the existing wage of thirty or forty dollars a year. Every one must recognize that all these changes not only enlarge the demand for American goods, but are in the interests of a higher civilization in China. If, during the next twenty-five or fifty years, in which the leaders of Western civilization are introducing modern machinery and increasing the productive power of the Chinese, the standard of living remains on the low plane of a bare existence, the Chinese will flood the markets of the world and drive European and American workmen into ruin and possible revolution. But if, during this same period, the leadership of missionaries, contact with Western civilization, and the desires inherent in human nature-all conspire to lift the earnings of the Chinese laborers to a living wage for a human being, the advance in wages will balance the increase in productive power, and the advent of the Chinese into the industrial world will be robbed of its present dangers. Indeed, the four hundred million Chinese may then send five hundred million dollars worth of goods to the markets of the world instead of the one hundred and thirty-eight million which they sent last year, because they will carry back a billion dollars' worth of purchases instead of the two hundred and eleven million dollars' worth which they bought in 1904. Thus the advancement of the Chinese will be accompanied by the enrichment of the world. The evangelization of China will do more than any other single agency to deliver the workingmen of the Western world from the industrial danger of the yellow peril.

ORGANIZATIONS

BY REV. WILLIAM BYRON FORBUSH, PH. D. Author of "The Boy Problem"

That the Young People's Societies of our churches are undergoing changes no one who has an open eye can doubt. In the regions in which the Christian Endeavor movement started it seems to be gaining little new ground. On the outskirts of the world it is still growing. But the chief changes are those of emphasis. The pledge is being abolished or modified in many societies; other than prayer meetings being introduced and the caste distinction between different kinds of membership being abolished. The net result is in the direction of more definite service. The live end of nearly every society is the practical end. Service is what justifies continued existence. The right future of the Endeavor Society is as the practice department of the Sunday-school.

At one end, the increasing average age of members of many young people's societies has created the danger that they become rivals of other adult groups in the church, notably of the church prayer meeting. But this danger has largely been minimized wherever the society had on hand some important missionary activity. At the other end, the failure of the Junior Endeavor Society to justify itself, in some unfortunate attempts to encourage religious testimony and other vocal exhibitions from young children, has caused the leaders to use their common sense in making such organizations chiefly lend-a-hand societies. So, at both ends our young people's movement is becoming one almost solely for service, and the recent mar

velous spread into once heathen fields makes the international fellowship greatly missionary..

We may therefore regard the mission band as the junior end of the Young People's Society, and thus refer to it in this discussion. That both the Young People's Society and its junior department are growing to be, as they ought to be, simply the weekday extension of the Sunday-school, is so desirable, that this article will take it for granted that they are so and the subject of missionary education in the two will be treated as one problem. In the Sunday school formal instruction may be given, with some small opportunity for expression by co-operation and giving. In the week-day session, informal instruction, with a large opportunity for cooperative activity.

Children Under Fourteen

Young children in the Sunday school need to be brought together socially only occasionally. They have not yet come to the gang-period, and the confinement of the school room suggests that they will respond best to some informal and physically active exercises. A half hour of lively play is often the best preparation for the more quiet session for instruction or work.

Even the games may be those of foreign children. Many of them are described in the manuals for juniors mentioned in our last article. No Christian leader, it is to be hoped, will perform the "Japanese wedding" or

other burlesque of customs that are all kinds, wonder bags and scrap books sacred to other peoples. will be found useful.

The element of imaginativeness may be used freely in the meetings of young children. Mrs. J. C. Entwistle, of Salem, brought home once from Burma a little hen, which she had named Koo Koo. The thought occurred to her one day, when asked to make a missionary address to children, to bring in the hen and make believe that she herself was telling, as Koo Koo's interpreter, what Koo Koo had seen in her foreign home. The children were intensely interested, the eggs and chickens of Koo Koo were given away to be raised for missions, New Circles sprang up in many places and Koo Koo herself went everywhere in her basket until she died, and still went, stuffed, to tell her missionary story. This was an ingenious yoking of love for animals and love for strange peoples. A foreign doll could be used in the same way.

The Young People's Missionary Movement has just issued, for mission bands, a most ingenious and delightful toy, called the Japanese Curio Cabinet, which costs $1.25. It consists of a pasteboard base, representing a Japanese garden, a pasteboard house which is to be set up on the grounds, and various small objects, such as dolls, household utensils and the ancestral tablet for representing vividly Japanese domestic and personal life. It is to be hoped that this idea will be carried out for other fields, for it satisfies the children's instinct to touch, handle and build, which they employ in their own play.

Gifts can be made and sent by children. Dolls are greatly prized in every missionary land; toys, Christ

mas tree decorations, picture cards of

So many ingenious ways of working with children have been discovered that it seems best to refer the reader to the many excellent handbooks and helps for detailed advice.

"Over Land and Sea," the missionary paper for children, published by the Presbyterians, has a postage stamp exchange for young stamp collectors; and stamp collecting itself is an excellent way to learn of the ways and work of foreign folks. Several of the children's periodicals and handbooks, as our second article suggests, have a missionary puzzle department.

Miss Katherine R. Crowell finds that a Mission Travel Club is one of the best plans for a mission band. Two "guides" were appointed to conduct the party to each country. Each country was worked up in an entirely different way. In Japan the visit was on "Cherry Festival Day," and in China at the time of the Dragon Feast. Underwood & Underwood, Fifth avenue and Nineteenth street, New York, publish excellent libraries of stereoscopic photographs, accompanied by well written guide books and an ingenious key map system, which are well adapted for this purpose. The tours to India, Japan, and China are the best for mission study.

The imaginative idea has been well worked out for children in the older section of this period by various denominational and undenominational societies with romantic names and ideals The Reformed Church in America, headquarters 25 East Twenty-second street, New York, has "The Crusaders." The Presbyterian Church South, 212-214 North Sixth street, Richmond, Va., has "The Covenan

ters" for boys and "The Miriams" for girls. The Congregationalists, 105 East Twenty-second street, have "The Boys' and Girls' Home Missionary Army." Then there is that great undenominational fraternity for boys, the Knights of King Arthur, of which the Rev. Frank Lincoln Masseck, of Bratleboro, Vt., is the head.

Material to read aloud in the mission band is plentiful. Good books are: "A Junior's Experience in Mission Lands," by Mrs. B. B. Comegys, Jr.; "Twelve Little Girls Who Stayed at Home," by Lucy Jameson Scott; "Child Life in Many Lands," edited by H. Clay Trumbull; all three published by Revell; "Indian Boyhood," by Charles A. Eastman, published by McClure; "Children in Blue" (China), by Florence Codrington, published by the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, London; "Our Little African Cousin," by Mary Hazelton Wade, published by L. C. Page & Co., Boston; "The Fur Seal's Tooth," and its sequel, by Kirk Munroe, published by the Harpers.

The best hand books for leaders of mission bands are "Best Ideas for Mission Bands," by Miss C. M. Cushman, published by the M. E. Board; "The Junior Workers' Quarterly," a magazine, published by the M. E. Book Concern; "Fuel for Missionary Fires," by Belle M. Brain, published by the Christian Endeavor headquarters; "Young Hands on the Ropes" and "Fishers of Boys."

The only text book yet published by the Young People's Missionary Movement for mission bands is "Child Life in Mission Lands," by Ralph E. Diffendorfer. It marks the beginning ' of an effort to make the band more

than real play, while yet retaining the play spirit.

Young People Over Fourteen

This division is an imaginary line. The ideal sub-divisions of the social week day work among the young m the church would seem to be an occasional gathering of the primary children under ten, two mission bands, one of boys and one of girls, from ten to fourteen, and one or more young people's societies for those older. For reasons, twelve and sixteen are often better dividing lines. The class is now the integer and the class or the "gang" is to be considered in all social groupings.

The first essential in work at this age, when friendship is the master passion, is to secure a real fellowship, if it has not been won before, among the young people and with the pastor or other leader. Hence the importance of the church boys' camp in summer, the attractive social in winter. Until there is esprit de corps little work can be accomplished with each other or for others. "The Crusaders" or "The Knights" will therefore often be perpetuated far along into this period.

Work on the museum, map-making and picture work for illustrative purposes will be used in the more lively. early years of the period.

A winter spent in preparing a missionary festival or a missionary entertainment has this advantage, in the years before serious study is possible, that it works toward a climax, makes a consecutive impression, commits even the careless to interest in the cause, interests outsiders and enables the young people by cooperation to

raise considerable money for the work. The best exercise for this purpose that I know of is one which can be prepared in a short time, entitled "How a Missionary Came to Bear's Creek." It is written by Bertha M. Shepard and is published by the Women's Congregational Home Missionary Society, Boston. Dr. Paull's "The Twenty Christian Centuries," 501 Witherspoon Building, Philadelphia, is commended by Miss Rachel Lowrie. "Hiawatha Entertainments," published by Edgar S. Werner, New York, has in itself no missionary material, but it gives an opportunity by handicraft and dramatic exercises to gain a wonderfully vivid knowledge of Indian life.

In the Order of Knights of King Arthur there is a plan of having the boys take the names of missionary heroes as their own, and of supporting a missionary who is regarded as an absent fellow-knight on a quest.

The children are old enough now to be taken to places where they can study missionary matters at close range. A group of New York children can for thirty-five or forty cents each study the problem of the immigrant by going to Ellis Island and watching the landing of the steerage passengers and then following them to their new homes in "Little Italy" or the Ghetto. A visitation can be made to the curio shelves of the board

rooms.

As the children begin to be gathered into the regular young people's society, with its regular missionary meetings and committees, the multiform helps for such work are available. Miss Brain's useful handbooks; "Missionary Methods for Missionary Committees," by David Park, published by

Revell; "Missionary Spokes of the Epworth Wheel," by W. W. Cooper and F. S. Brockman, published by Eaton & Mains, and "Missionary Methods," by James Edward Adams, published by Revell, are all helpful.

The two things to strive for now are personal interest and personal giving.

As to the first, a Christian Endeavor Society simply can not afford to have an uninteresting meeting. The material furnished in the organ of the societies for missionary meetings is so bright that there is no excuse for reading it. Anybody can tell it better. The adoption of a particular mission or station now is of the greatest importance, but no less important is unflagging work to keep close to the man and the field. The work of the Central Presbyterian Church, of New York, is epoch-making in this way, as showing what eager, consecrated energy can do. By photographs, letters to the field as well as from it, and official reports, the foreign representatives of the church are kept as much in mind as is the home pastor. There has even been a visit by the pastor to the home mission station of the church and a visit by a delegated representative to the foreign mission station, the result of which is the charming booklet, "On the Way to Awai Yuen," by John B. Devins, published by the New York Observer for twenty-five cents.

The interest of those who are indifferent may be best gained by putting into circulation books which will win by their own intrinsic charm, and which, while not avowedly of a missionary character, do speak the needs of men. There are a few such. One is Jacob Riis' "Battle with the Slum," published by Macmillan; another is

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