sm of women.

Well, in 1892, the Board of Education took the kindergartens over. The
kindergarten system became thoroughly public, civic, collective. The
control of it had lain with women. The control of it now passed to
men. Oh, there's no complaint. It's what the women wanted. They asked
the men to do it. But I say--No, I'll postpone saying it till I've
told you another story or two.

In the late nineties the Chicago Woman's Club took the leading role in
the formation of what was known as the Vacation Schools Committee.
More than sixty woman's organizations finally sent delegates to it.
Its object was to give city-street children, in summer time, some
sort of experience resembling, if not reproducing, the activity and
the knowledge of nature which comes with summer life in the country.

The vacation school, with its play and its nature study, turned out to
be both useful and popular. For a decade or more the Vacation Schools
Committee, composed entirely of women, raised large sums of money and
extended its efforts from school to school till there came to be an
established and recognized vacation schools system. The women whose
energy carried it forward year after year were, in fact, school
directors. Now the vacation schools system has been adopted by the
Board of Education. Those women are school directors no longer. Nor
have they any voice in the _selecting_ of school directors.

Almost immediately the women changed the name of the Vacation Schools
Committee to Permanent School Extension Committee. Its objects now are
to extend the use of school buildings and to extend the educational
system itself. Its work may be seen in many parts of town.

Ten miles to the south, near the mouth of the Calumet River, where
that ore-boat was turning in, the "Johnson Cubs" and the "South
Side Stars" and other organizations of boys, principally from the
Thorp School, have been getting manual training and football and
cross-country hikes and gymnastic skill under the direction of a
salaried representative of the Permanent School Extension Committee,
who has been trying to make their hours out of school count for
something in their development.

[Illustration: INTERESTS OF CHICAGO WOMEN'S CLUB: PARK ATTENDANTS;
MOTHERS' CLUBS; HOSPITAL KINDERGARTENS; VACATION SCHOOLS.]

Southwest of us, far over, back of the Yards, at the Hamline School,
for five years the Committee has maintained a "social worker" who,
through clubs and class