River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1909-04-15
GEN. BOOTH ON EIGHTIETH
BIRTHDAY STARTS NEW PLAN
Veteran Founder of Salvation Army Launches
Scheme for university of Humanity" in the
United States---All the World Celebrates
Anniversary of His Birth.

ments. With a field as wide as the
world itself the work of the Salvation
Army is only limited by the number
of workers that can be secured and
its effectiveness by the understanding
and earnestness of these workers. AS
uplift work has grown from local eff
forts to help a few into a great in
elusive movement which must miss
none, the problems of organization
have grown greater. Charity has be-
come science and it's application an
art requiring the highest development
of personal qualities of insight and
altruism. There is thus pressing need
for workers of quite exceptional quail
ification. These qualifications must
first of all be inherent and must then
be developed by experience and spe-
cial training.
This is the new work planned by
Gen. Booth. Those women, for in
stance, who are to go among the
Sums of the big cities must not only
have the desire to help but must know
how real helpfulness can best be Sc
cured. They must understand by a
study of practical sociology some
thing of the social forces that create
this poverty and crime and wretched-
ness. They must understand the dan
ger of the unwise charity that merely
increases dependence and understand
the value of better living conditions
In raising the moral courage of those
to whom fate has been unkind. They
must be able not only to correct home
conditions themselves but to impart
their knowledge and to inspire with
desire for betterment.
Value of the Organization.
This will be but small part of the
university's training in social service
as planned by the patriarchal evangel-
1st, but it serves to show of what
value such an organization will be.
Of the generals plan for the uni
versity he himself said recently: 81
want to train men and women to deal
with misfortune. l want them in
structed to combat with the weak
nesses and sins of the drunkard, the
criminal, the pauper and the would-be
suicide"
At 80 years of age the head Of the
Salvation Army, after more than half a
century of almost unceasing activity,
is as vigorous and untiring as at any
time in his career. The inexhaustible
vitality and intellectual and physical
activity Of this social reformer, philan-
thropist, preacher, author and traveller
are marvellous. At fourscore he is
, travelling many thousands of miles
over the world every year, controlling
the destinies of his more than 1000
corps of Salvation soldiery with their
$4,000 commissioned officers, distribu-
ted among every civilized country,
preaching constantly to vast audiences
and doing an amount of literary work
tnat would be a factor to many a
professional author with no other &C.
cupation.
William Booth was born on April
1O, 1879, in Nottingham, England, and
was trained for the Methodist minis
try which he entered and became one
OF the strongest evangelistic forces in
that church. He grew dissatisfied,
however, at reaching only those with
some religious training and convic-
ton. He felt that there were thou
sands whose need was far greater and
ne gravitated to the East end of Lon
don where wretchedness of all kinds
was the rule.
In disused burial ground on Mile
End road he pitched an old tent and
the first Salvationist meeting was
held in that tent in 1861. The fiery
eloquence of the earnest young
preacher caught the attention of a
crowd of poor Whitechapelers and be-
fore that first meeting was over he
had made several conversions, a per-
Torrance that he has been repeating
throughout the world for AZ years.
This first meeting resulted in the