Daily Arizona silver belt., 1907-08-17
THE YOUNG MEMS CHRISTIAN AS
 ISOLATION OF TODAY
What It Is

A generation ago the Young Men s Christian assocation was commonly re- garded as society whose chief pur- poses were preaching and prayer. To day almost everyone knows it better knows it as a powerful organization that works for the good of society in hundred different ways, all of them highly practical. So multiform is the association of today, in so many fields are it's vast energies at work, that it is not easy to define or describe it in sentence. An intelligent foreigner might well inquire, "what species of or ganization is thisf Is it real estate corporation, gymnasium, A university, church, a hotel or a recreation clubfo
 Substantial
 You may call it any one of these and give good reasons. For instance, in North America alone it owns $3l ,O00,- 900 worth of land and buildings. It's yearly income is more than $4,000, ,000. It has more than five hundred club houses, enough to house the whole pop ulation of city like Pittsburg. Every week, on an average, it puts up Il new building
 Helps Head Work
 Look at it from another point of view, and you will find that it has more than thirty three thousand students in its schools, and about as many as the eight biggest universities in America can show. Its diplomas are accepted in hundred colleges. Plainly it should take rank as a university, and a most practical one, for it trains its students in useful trades and finds them employ CTS when they graduate. Last year it gave away to soldiers and sailors sev- enty five tons of books and magazines
 What Yale Man Said
 Give this many-sided institution an other twist, and it becomes the greatest school of physical culture in the world. It operates 570 gymnasiums with a hun dred and thirty-four thousand pupils. It is the foremost promoter of clean sport. When it takes hold of a young man it hardens his backbone and tight ems up his muscles physically as we'll as morally. For scientific body y-build- ing, its instructors are generally ad mitted to be the best. "They are the finest body of specialists in physical training in the world, says no less an authority than Dr. Anderson of Yale.
 Religious, of Course
 Seventy thousand men and boys be- long to its Bible classes, and the annual attendance at religious meetings is over five millions. If the men will not come to it, it goes to the men. It holds short dinner hour meetings for workmen in the quarries of Vermont, in the lumber camps and cotton mills of the south and in the mines and steel plants of Penn sylvania.
 Unique
 Examine this Pooh Bah of institu- tions still further, and you will discover that the railroad departments along fur nish over a million lodgings, like num- Der of baths, and nearly three million meals in the ordinary run of year s work. It owns farms, islands, house. boats, tents and gipsy wagons. Some nine thousand men and boys summered last year in it's country camps. In fact, the association is a young man s world, with almost everything in it that a young man needs from the day that he earns his first dollar until he marries and makes home of his own. Self Governing
 The American spirit of democracy has full swing in the associations. Ev- cry branch is independent and elf-gov- erning. There is no imperialism. There is no cut-and-dried set of rules The only universal order is "keep out of the ruts."