er
since it has been known as the _Tribune_ Fresh Air Fund, and year by year
has grown in extent and importance until at the end of the year 1891 more
than 94,000 children were shown to have been given a two weeks' vacation
in the country in the fifteen summers that had passed. The original 60 of
1877 had grown to an army of holiday-makers numbering 13,568 in 1891. By
this time the hundred thousand mark has long been passed. The total amount
of money expended in sending the children out was $250,633.88, and so well
had the great fund been managed that the average cost per child had fallen
from $3.12 in the first year to $2.07 in the last. Generalship, indeed, of
the highest order was needed at the headquarters of this army. In that
summer there was not a day except Sunday when less than seven companies
were sent out from the city. The little knot of children that hung timidly
to the skirts of the good minister's coat on that memorable first trip to
Pennsylvania had been swelled until special trains, once of as many as
eighteen cars, were in demand to carry those who came after.

The plan of the Fresh Air Fund is practically unchanged from the day it
was first conceived. The neediest and poorest are made welcome. Be they
Protestants, Catholics, Jews, or heathen, it matters not if an invitation
is waiting. The supply is governed entirely by the demands that come from
the country. Sometimes it is a Catholic community that asks for children
of that faith, sometimes prosperous Jews, who would bring sunlight and
hope even to Ludlow Street; rarely yet Italians seeking their own. The cry
of the missionary, from the slums in the hot July days: "How shall we give
those babies the breath of air that means life?--no one asks for Italian
children," has not yet been answered. Prejudice dies slowly. When an end
has been made of this at last, the Fresh Air Fund will receive a new boom.
To my mind there are no more tractable children than the little Italians,
none more grateful for kindness; certainly none more in need of it.
Against colored children there is no prejudice. Sometimes an invitation
comes from Massachusetts or some other New England State for them, and
then the missions and schools of Thompson Street give up their
pickaninnies for a gleeful vacation spell. With the first spring days of
April a canvass of the country within a radius of five hundred miles of
New York has been begun. By the time the local committees send in the