The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-09-07

work. There was nowhere any plan. No society even knew, except by chance gossip, where another ladies' aid was giving financial help to some local case of need.
 The suburbs of Wilkes-Barre are typical, think, of the. industrial hor- oughs of any of the northern states where foreign labor has come in in variety to do the community's rough work. These towns are incredibly rich in church buildings, each edifice proper to a sect of it's own, or to a part of a sect holding its worship in a. foreign tongue. There are too many divisions. Each builds a church too big for it on a mortgage bigger than the congregation, and then makes the paying off of the mortgages it's chief contribution to community life. There is an irrational amount of money put into these factional church buildings in the little towns; and once built they are usually dedicated away from any secular weekday use of even the working reIigionists who built them.
 YOUNG PEOPLE AND
 THE CHURCHES
 The yuothfu1 part of the congrega- ton get no good even of the base ment. Games, and dancing, basket ball. straw-ride parties with a merry supper to come back to, a "somkers debating society for the young men, boy scout campfires for the smaller fry, amateur theatricals, these are the things the youngsters of the con- gregation would like to wiring from the mortgage. As a consequence of the premature independence forced upon many children in their early teens by the fact of their working in mills for wages, there is a, tremendous pressure for evening amusements in compensation. Girl workers and boy workers cannot settle to the treadnin Youth and health call even weary fet out of doors after supper. "We got to go somewhere, ain't we?" as one phrased it. 'tJust setting to home is Iso dul1!''
 So the. women of the little towns, split up into little groups, are so ab- sorbed in the service of the church mortgage or the church deficit that they forget to plan the lives of their sons and daughters.
 In the Wilkes-Barre district, the suburban towns need no one thing so terribly, so dangerously, as amuse- ments. Recreation young people will have, even if they go short of food and fire and sleep to buy it. Espec- ia1ly is there a, demand for five-cent and ten-cent amusernents for even ings, something as democratic as the moving picture shows. but with more air and more chance for visiting, talk, and laughter.
 Community Amusements.
 Amateur theatricals, singing so- cieties, band concerts, midsummer waterside sports with races, outdoor fairs and markets, even by moonlight, any of these the joint efforts of all the women's aid societies of a suburb could push to lively success. Why should not a civic club, for instance, own the best tsnicko1et'' in little town show the best pictures to be had, set a standard of ventilation and clean Illness, and make money on the busi- ness?s
 The most immediate need of all in the district which use by way of il- 1ustratiop is for good cheap dancing places, not for next year, not for somewhere, but definitely here and now in the suburbs. Every little set clement has at least one undesirable dance-hal1, if not actually a bad one. Yet denouncing the bad dance hall achieves precisely nothing but the | waste of valuable "hot air. There | must be competition, competition up 1 ward.
 If what is true of the WiIkes-B Barre district is true of all the industrial towns of the north to-day, wonen's societies. the country over have in un- paralleled opportunity for construc- tive work. The amusements of all the toWns waiting to be energized, contro11ed, made over, multiplied ten foldl With teamwork in poor relief, teamwork in the nursing of the sick, enough, at any. rate, to prevent the waste of effort and rnedd1esone over Tapping from which we suffer now women ought to have a margin of energy lift.
 To use it in intelligent organizing of public amusements would be al peace-time service to the state com parable only to the Red Cross ser vice in time of war
 Farmer Want Ads. One Cent a Word.