No. 4.] BOYS' AND GIRLS' CLUB WORK. 469 



grants of money for paid supervision during the summer sea- 

 son. This is the crucial point in the entire enterprise. If the 

 public refuses to incorporate the summer work and study of 

 the children into its scheme of public education, the club work 

 will be retarded but cannot fail. The propaganda must go on, 

 evidence of its worth must be piled mountain high, demonstra- 

 tion added to demonstration, proof to proof, repetition upon 

 repetition, until a somewhat patient tolerance becomes an 

 aggressive conviction that in the garden education finds its 

 most instructive book stimulant, and the morals of ovsmership 

 their best means of development. After that it will seem even 

 more rational to pay for the teaching of children in the summer 

 out of doors than it now appears natural to throw them on their 

 own resources during the best learning season of the year. 



Brockton. 

 Some noteworthy cases of public interest are worth mention- 

 ing. The city of Brockton is rapidly becoming noted for the 

 work it has been doing. The report of the supervisor, Annie 

 L. Burke, shows that over 2,500 individual plots have been 

 cultivated during the past summer; that 90 of these com- 

 prised one-twentieth of an acre or more ; that the supervisor 

 was assisted by 8 inspectors, each inspector being in charge 

 of a separate district; that valuable prizes were won at 

 various exhibitions ; that garden crops of large value to the 

 individuals were gathered ; that the local exhibit in the city 

 was visited by thousands of her citizens ; that, best of all, among 

 the moral results were the salvation of a twelve-year-old lad 

 who had become so unruly at school and so incorrigible at 

 home that his father was about to have him sent to a corrective 

 institution. He became interested in a garden. His energy 

 shifted from destructive to productive lines. He won $11.50 

 in a competitive exhibit. He found himself, and the real boy 

 has been found by his friends. It is much easier to imagine 

 than to measure the economic, intellectual and moral values 

 that pass over from the adult to the rising generation when the 

 neighbors and parents join hands with the children in such 

 praiseworthy work. The joy of achievement in this sort of 

 labor makes it play. 



