Pine Bluff daily graphic. (Pine Bluff, Ark.) 1893-1942, 1916-04-30
PRESSING FIGHT
FOR FREE USE Of
SCHOOL HOUSES
Washington Administration
Holds Public Has Right
to Use Buildings.
by Sidney Estey.)

| j
| Washington, April 29.-Sccretary Of
War Baker made his first public ar-
| pcarance here when he delivered an
| address before the Grover Cleveland
| Community forum at the Public
| library.
! 1t was this forum that has waged
the fight for the use of school build
! lngs for meetings for free discussion
Miss Margaret Wilson, daughter of
the president, has fought as we'll as F..
J. Ward, CT the United States bureau
| of education, who has been threatened
with Legislative investigation be-
| cause of his activities
Professor Ward spent three years in
Rochester, N. Y, where the school
forums, and his work caused Justice
Charles E. Hughes, then governor of
New York, to declare:
III am more interested in what you
are doing and what it stands for than
anything else in the world You are
buttressing the foundations of dem
ocracy"
From Rochester Professor Ward
went to Wisconsin, where on the staff
of the university of that state he pro-
iilo'So VIC VI IlllLdllOli VI CllC pGODlC >
use of the peoples school buildings
throughout the state. Three times
Miss Wilson visited Wisconsin to study
the practical workings of the COM
munity center idea, until it is doubt
full if any other person in the country,
with the exception of Professor Ward,
IS better informed on the subject,
When Professor Ward was called
infO tho
brought to Washington to work in the
national field, he helped to organize
the first community forum. and Miss
Wilson accepted the presidency of the
organization. Then, when the Wash
ington school board excluded the Or
ganlzatlon from meeting in the school
house, Miss Wilson put her whole in
fluence and energy behind the bill
which Representative Johnson Of Ken
lucky introduced into the house, and
Senator Hollis Of New Hampshire into
the senate, which would establish the
rights of the people of the District of
Columbia to use the schoolhouses
when they please.
Meanwhile the trustees of the public
library offered that building for the
meetings of the forum, and it is in
CllSlG UuIluiIlg anu before Cne OfganlZd-
ton Of the people that has been barred
out of the peoples natural meeting
place, the public schoolhouse, that Sec
rotary Baker made his first public APP
pearance since accepting the portfolio
of secretary of war
The administration has definitely
established its position that the Amer
lean people have the right to use the
nations public schoolhouses for all
proper community activities by Great
ing the office Of Community organic
err in the federal bureau of education
and appointing to that office Edward
J. Ward, the man who, in the words
OF Commissioner of immigration at
the Port Of New York Frederick C.
Howe discovered the schoolhouse."
Following his three years in Roches-
ter, Professor Ward spent five years
in Wihconsin, where he continued his
work of organizing the larger civic
and educational resources that were
dormant in every city's unused school
buildings, and in which state there
were 10000 community meetings held
last year in school buildings.