The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1908-02-02
THE
I PUBLIC CONSCIENCE
Such Is Work of Peoples Insti-
tute of New York
"A DOUBTFUL EXPERIMENT"
Which Has Achieved Large Success.
Educating by Means of Low
Priced Drama. Real Peo-
pies Lobby.
"A DOUBTFUL EXPERIMENT"

New York, February 1.-Organizing
the public conscience describes as near
ly as may be unique campaign of
education of the masses carried on by
the Peoples Institute of New York
which in its present state of develop
ment reaches between a million and q
half and two million individuals In
its methods the institute is unlike any
other organization in the world. 1t is
practically vast college without the
formalities and restrictions of the usu-
al institution of learning, and its cur
riculum includes whatever will appeal
TO and exert an uplifting influence
upon the so-called common people,"
The tangible evidences of the insti-
tute's existence and progression are
its central club house facing Stuyve-
SAINT Square in the heart of the East
Side, a chain of smaller clubs in va
rious quarters of the greater city"
and big audiences gathered for nights
in each week in historic Cooper Union
where lectures are given. The late
Abram S. Hewitt secured to the insti
tute the free use of Cooper Union, the
Faneuil Hall of New York, when he,
with others of a little handful of prom
inent men, aided Charles Sprague Smith
in setting the movement on foot de-
cade ago. Then the institute was prac-
tically without funds and was regard
ed as a doubtful though a valuable ex-
pertinent. Only a few hundred people
attended it's first course of lectures
Professor Smith, who has directed the
work since its inception, was formerly
professor of modern languages at CO.
lumbia University. His educational eff
forts along broader lines have resulted
in yearly attendance upon the Cooper
Union lecture courses alone of an es-
timated total of $4,000 persons. Last
year the institute spent about $4,000
ON educational opportunities for the
people.
The idea upon which the work was
founded was that of directing the social
unrest then manifest in New York TO
such an extent that far-seeing men re-
Earded it as menace. The method de-
termned upon for doing this was the In
etruction of those social classes among
which the unrest was most in evidence.
Thus, from the beginning, the institute
has stood for evolution as opposed to rev.
olution in bringing about economic ana
social reforms. The platform adopted at
the start to express the purposes and
principles of the undertaking was this:
1.-THE Peoples Institute, recognizing ira
ternity as the fundamental truth, DEM
ocracy as the highest known form of hui
man government, and national worth as
dependent upon individual worth, seeks
to promote, through education and the
cooperation of good men of all eondi-
tons and occupations, the peaceful evola-
ton of a society based upon the recogni-
tion of the independence of man with
! a." This platform has been found
BROAD enough to appeal to every one who
has evolutionary ideas, but to exclude
those with destructive mental tendencies,
the anarehistie element as such.
One detail of the institutes endeavor TO
further social evolution which has been
extraordinarily successful takes the form
of dramatic entertainment at popular
prices. The dramatic department was in
augurated a year ago and by arrange
ments with the managers seats in all New
York theatres, save those which cater ex-
clusively to the social whirlers," may
be obtained by considerably more than a
million workers at prices ranging from