The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-05-10
DR. FELIX ADLER SEES REALIZATION
 OF UPLIFT IDEAS
Forty Years of Progress of Ethical Movement In
 America.
MANUAL TRAINING AND
 KINDERGARTEN SCHOOLS
These Are Small Part of Achievement of the
 General Scheme.

The ethical movement in America will celebrate it's fortfeth anniversary in this city during the present week, says H. J. s. in the New York Even ing Post. The history of the ethical movement is the history of an idea, a conviction which found it's realization iR, works of practical charity and edu- cation, in humanitarian enterprises whose more complete fu1fillment lies far in the future. Many of the insti- tutions of this city whose functions are now unquestioned, such as kin
 dergartens, manual training in schools, owe their hazardous begin nigs to the faith which lived in this group of men.
 The statement of the faith from which this activity proceeded was made forty years ago, on May Is, 1876, in Standard hall, at the corner of 42nd street and Broadway. A group of men and women had invited Felix Adler, then professor of Hebrew liter ature and Oriental languages at Cor
 nell University to draw up a formal statement which might serve as the basis of new religious organization Three years before, some of them had heard him speak ir public. They had teen stirred by. what he said and had kept it in mind. Others had joined their group The address he delivered that night marked the birth of the Ethical Culture Society.
 Sunday meetings of the society, which were held weekly in Standard hall, were later transferred to Chi9k-s ering hall, at 18th street and Fifth avenue, and then to Carnegie hall. where they continued for seventeen years until the building of the present meeting house at 64th street and Gen. tral Park west
 Tenement Commission Started
 pr. Adler's addresses at these meet ings were widely quoted and fully rel ported in the newspapers of the day. One of them. delivered in February 1884, on the into1erable tenement houses in which the poor of New orlxl city were 1fvfngE so moved 8 state senator who was one of the au- d1ence that he introduced hirrlseke Ito Pr. Adler at the close of the Ieetlire and asked what ke could do to rem edy the evil ,che result was the es4 tablishment of State Tenement House Commission to which Dr. Ad- Ter was appo,nted. and on which he served in 1855<and 1886. Dr. Adler was active in mary public movements such as that of he Corlrnittee of Eff teen, of Whic1 he was a leading mem Der. He has been for eleven years chairman of the National Child I.anoI. Committee. sN
 Ethical ekDerience as the founda- ! da1nenta1s of the. society's belief ''The distinctive turn by which we first be- came known said Dr. Adler last year, s was the idea of hon. -credal living. This did not mean that we were suppressed atheists, as ona of tI,at we proposed to dispense with serious and earnestly held beliefs We were not at all rationalists in the II sense of Thomas Paine. We were not wrathfu1 radicals. We were never anti anything. The rejection, such as it was was merely incidental to some thing positive and affirmative. Wha [ we sought was 9 more effectuaI way of worthwhile Iiving.''
 Creeds Rejected as Fetters
 Creeds,, not beliefs, were rejected as letters. Neither the Old nor the New Testament could be held by this group to have spoken the last word in ethics. I've are amazed,,' says Dr. Adler.
 that there may still be found those who think that an elementary rule like the Golden Rule can suffice to straighten out the moral tangIes of a Aconaplex industrial society or that the conception of justice enunctated by Hebrew prophets, among an agri- cultural people twenty-five hundred years ago is calculated to reveal the depth of the meaning of the idoas of Justice as 1t is being brought to light III III 5lne agon1zeo struggles for justice at the present time.'
 Dr. Adler has insisted on the soci ety's lack of dogma in interpreting ethical experience. t'Whether the basic principles shall be found in the sense world or in some supersensfble realities is for the Ethical societies at large still an open question, though for myself personally hold and have ever held to the latter alternative. What as societies we are pledged to is to widen and deepen our ethical ex- perfence. The ultimate principles will be those. that most satsifa ctorIy ac- l count for the eYer-enriching exper- fence And meantime we are chal- 1 lenged, whatever our pfiIosophicaIt 1 standpoint practical rules of conduct which can be submitted to the touch stone of life"
 attitude is that efforts toward it need to be. spiritualized in aim. The man at the bottom is to be looked at ssas an object not primarily of pity, but | rather of respect, resting our earnest | plea for the poor, not only nor chief | ly upon their sufferings-though as-I suredly these do not leave us coId-l yet principally upon the disgrace which is inflicted upon their dignity as human beings by the conditions 1 under which they are living''
 Chicago Society Established.
 These ideas, underlying the work of the Ethical Culture Society, were giv- en currency in various cities of the country by addresses which Dr. Adler was invited to make. He went to | Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, San FrAnciEeo, and other cities, holding meetings and expoundfng his ideas. Among the fruits of this journey was the establishment in 1883 of the Chi cago Ethical Society. A committee waited on pr. Adler at the Palmer House, and the society was formed under the leadership of w M Salter. 1 Henry Booth House, a settlement, 1 stands