counties in Virginia. The exhibits are largely of an industrial and agricultural character, thus stimulating the introduction and promotion of these subjects in the rural schools, and drawing together annually at each county seat large numbers of people with school interests as their special concern. The directions for the preparation of these exhibits, such as the raising of corn and peas, the making of bread, good butter, or of some well-sewed garment, are minutely prepared, and furnish, when intelligently pursued, a form of systematic instruction of themselves. The contest also includes original compositions on subjects relating to country homes or improvement of country schools, and in this fashion the young people's attention and imagination are focused on the problems at home. The Keystone, the oldest club woman's publication in the United States, is published at Charleston, S. C., by Miss Louisa B. Poppenheim.

In the cities the movement for playgrounds, juvenile courts, reformatories, kindergartens, manual and industrial training, the better organization of charitable effort, and the development of civic health and beauty has been largely the charge of women.

The Southern Association of College Women was organized in 1903, at the University of Tennessee, to promote a better standard of education among the schools and colleges for young women in the South. It aims to encourage a desire for higher education among these women and to furnish them the collated information which shall make them intelligent as to the academic standing-requirements and degrees of the various institutions of learning open to them in the country. The various branches of this association are helping to work out the educational problems in their several states and have undertaken a

Vol. 10-41

careful study of facts and conditions which must form the basis for constructive work. This latter service is especially characteristic of the work of the Georgia branch.

A work for farmers' wives has been undertaken in Georgia and Texas and is being done with some success in North Carolina in connection with the Farmers' Institute Trains.

Some notable contributions to social and educational progress are found at various points in the South. Miss Julia Tutwiler's work for convicts in Alabama, and Mrs. R. D. Johnston's development of the State Reformatory at Birmingham, are worthy of note. Miss Martha Berry's industrial school for boys at Rome, Ga., was undertaken and brought to its present large proportions by her individual efforts. Mrs. Annie C. Peyton of Port Gibson, Miss., furnished the generic idea which created the Mississippi Industrial School and College for white girls, the first institution of its kind in the United States. Miss Pettit's School and Settlement for mountain people at Hindman, Ky., begun in a small way by the Federation of Women's Clubs, and since supported by the Women's Christian Temperance Union, is a type for neighborhood work in sections remote from railroads and outside influence. The North Carolina Booklet is published quarterly by the North Carolina Daughters of the Revolution in the interest of the preservation of the history of that state; and the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, under the leadership of Mrs. Cynthia B. T. Coleman and Mrs. Joseph Bryan, has done very much to preserve and beautify the many spots in Virginia indissolubly linked with the founding of the American nation.

As yet, women in the South have played but a

small part as members of state boards of either charitable or educational purport. A woman is the head of the State Board of Charities in North Carolina, two women in Texas hold positions as regents in the State Industrial School, one woman in Kentucky is a member of the State Educational Commission, and in Mississippi the position of State Librarian has long been held by a woman. This small number arises very largely from the prejudice in the South against women assuming positions of public notice, and the change of sentiment, which is evidenced by their presence in important positions and on boards of independent organizations, has not yet voiced itself in legislation permitting their appointment to similar positions under state control.

The work of the Southern woman for the colored people has generally been of an individual nature. She has been trained to a sense of responsibility and service to them from her childhood, but her ministry has been to the particular man or woman coming under her notice, rather than any well thought out direction of them as a weaker and less developed people, calling for social study and wise guidance. There are signs abroad that this view of the situation is growing in importance, and that her womanly sympathy and understanding of the negroes-the precipitate of a patient guidance of the individual-may prove an effective social force in the uplift of this people.

School Improvement League Work.

The School Improvement League work is perhaps the most widespread and democratic, non-professional movement in the interest of education, at work in the Southern states. It has been organized

and promoted almost entirely by women. It is an attempt to interest the community in the community's school, to fit the school to interpret the life of its own neighborhood to the young citizens and to prepare them for participation in it, and thus to make the schoolhouse the natural centre of social organization. To this end there is now a woman at work as field organizer in each of nine of the Southern states. She has the assistance often of a volunteer body of local county workers. Her work is conducted in close sympathy with and under the prestige of the state department of education. A majority of the numerous counties in each state has been reached, and a beginning made to improve existing conditions and to generate a local feeling of pride in and responsibility for the neighboring school. Prizes have been offered for the greatest relative improvement in school buildings, grounds and interiors. The local communities in their efforts to excel have multiplied these cash prizes many fold, and the money has been expended for improvements ranging in variety from an American flag to an artesian well. Other considerable sums of money have been raised by country people for the upbuilding of their school conditions, and an interest awakened full of meaning for the future.

The enthusiasm and vitality which have characterized this work seem born of the latent consciousness that it is an effort in the direction of a more real democracy. The vision of the inherent worth of every human soul and the value of each man as an end in himself has captivated the imagination of the far-sighted men and women in the South, and the School League Work is the woman's effort to hasten the realization of this vision.

The step from the home to the schoolhouse is a

short and natural one. The Southern woman, like her sisters from Maine to California, has followed the child in his progress thither. Her mind and affections are already busy in making the school an efficient partner of the home in the development of a broader life and a more purposeful citizenship among the children of her several states. With natural endowments for this service, and a knowledge of its abundant meaning, the Southern woman is destined to play an increasingly large part in the rapidly advancing educational progress of the South.

MARY COOKE BRANCH MUNFORD,

President Richmond Education Association, Richmond, Va.

CHAPTER VIII

FRATERNAL ORGANIZATIONS IN THE
SOUTH.

Free Masonry.

F all the fraternal orders now in the South only one, Free Masonry, dates back to colonial times. George Washington, whose birth nearly coincides with its introduction into America, was a Mason, and in his time, as now, in its ranks were found men prominent politically, professionally, in business circles, and in the army and

navy.

When Virginia, in 1777, "being then so circumstanced as to render it impossible to have recourse to the Grand Lodge beyond the sea," was considering organizing a Grand Lodge of her own, a convention, which was not large enough to act, recom