THE BIENNIAL; THE ART OF THE PEOPLE
The Biennial THE BIENNIAL has come and gone. Some of us attended it and some of us stayed at home. Some of us got the direct inspiration of the speeches and of the coming together of iarge numbers...
...It seemed to me I could read this in the program and also in the reports of the meetings...
...I do not say this to criticize the members of the Federation of Arts for I know that they realize that art for the people must also be of the people...
...Men and women alike go to meetings and get great ideals and, coming home to put them into practice, find themselves thwarted at every turn by those who are banded together for the purpose of making profits and before whose amHtions there is nothing sacred...
...Think of what it means to have these ideals carried to every city and town and village in the country...
...Some of us got the direct inspiration of the speeches and of the coming together of iarge numbers of people with common purposes...
...some of us were obliged to get our inspiration indirectly from published reports...
...Sarah S. Piatt Decker on "Civil Service" which contained an almost heartrending account of the sufferings of people in public institutions owing to control by partisan politics and the consequent waste of money and time...
...I say it merely to emphasize again the fact that we have so few satisfactory public meeting places where we can all get together and talk over matters that concern us all...
...and such subjects as City Planning, Civic Theatres, and Industrial Art are being discussed...
...The Art of the People IN THE inner recesses of the magnificent New Willard Hotel in the city of Washington, there is being held at the time of this writing the first annual convention of the American Federation of Arts...
...In that place, which is remote from the people because they do not feel free to make their way past liveried attendants to the interior of a fashionable hotel, men like George DeForest Brush, the painter, Cass Gilbert, the designer of some of our most beautiful state capitols, Percy MacKaye, the playwright and authority upon pageants, and John Nolen, the landscape architect, are speaking...
...I read it in the report of Mrs...
...In next week's issue I shall have more to say about these meetings which promise very much of interest...
...It is natural that those of us who stayed at home and who were removed from the distractions of the meetings and the social gatherings should have turned our thoughtsto the woman's club movement in general and should have asked ourselves what it means and whither it is tending...
...The tendency in public affairs is toward bringing together the interests of men and of women...
...Those who wish for fuller accounts than can be given here should see the magazine called "Art and Progress," now published by the society at its headquarters in Washington...
...It would in fact be difficult to find an ideal for social regeneration or uplift that did not find expression at the Biennial...
...But there are indications that men and women engaged in public work are finding not only common ideals and purposes but also common impediments...
...Hen-rotin and others on "Social Hygiene and the White Slave Traffic," and by Congressman J. E. Ransdell on "Waterways...
...I read it in the report that in spite of persistent efforts no progress had been made toward improving the literature supplied to children with the Sunday papers...
...I read it in the persistence on the program of the subject "child labor," representing a curse which thoughtful men and women would have wiped from the country years ago if there had not been powerful forces against them...
...He was outlining his plan for a civic theatre, with a great auditorium for popular plays, a small auditorium for plays which attract the few only, and a portico and plaza without for pageants and athletic games...
...Gulick on "Civic Recreation from the Standpoint of Municipal Administration," by Mrs...
...There were speeches by John Mitchell on "The Deathroll of Industry," by Richard Burton on "The Theatre and the People," by Mrs...
...Mead on "International Conciliation," by Dr...
...IfOn the cultivation cf the minds of women depends the wisdom of man.—Sheridan...
...I read it in the very appearance on the program of the word "traffic" in connection with women and girls...
...It looks as if there were needed a new- alignment in social work as well as in political affairs and as if all of those, whether men or women, who believe that there are interests too important to be made the means of private profit would have to range themselves on one side...
...Perhaps I should not have felt so much the lack of harmony between the subjects presented and the meeting place, if I had not entered just as Percy MacKaye was speaking...
...Of late years, too, we have seen this perfected organization turning its efforts toward certain definite forms of work and seeking to bring about definite reforms...
...ASTUDY of the topics discussed shows also that they are very much like those which a body of thoughtful men interested in social welfare would have discussed...
...We have seen the association grow from very small beginnings until it has a membership of nearly a million ; we have seen it perfect the machinery of its organization until with its general federation, its state and district federations, and its separate clubs, it now forms one of the most perfect means of communication in the world,—a means that is sought for the promotion of a great variety of projects other than those which spring up within the organization itself...
...His plans for "redeeming leisure" and "filling it with joyful regenerative influences" seemed so wide, so sympathetic and so all-embracing that I felt as if they ought to be given in some great, free place...
...ASTUDY of the program shows what some of the subjects are in which the federation is interesting itself...
Vol. 2 • May 1910 • No. 21
