Fifty years of association work among young women, 1866-1916

Front matter

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Preface

The purpose of this historical account is to show why and how Young Women's Christian Associations came into being and to indicate that the first half century is but the beginning of the movement.

In order to represent the conditions which called out certain features, the language of old reports, circulars, addresses and correspondence has been freely used; while there has been a wealth of these original sources, in some instances it is undated, or annual and biennial reports have not stated the calendar month or year in which a measure was passed or new ventures undertaken. Some of the attempts to determine these dates through comparison of material will probably prove faulty. I wish to thank all the friends who have assisted in collecting and comparing data and who have described historic work in which they had a part.

It has been impossible to mention as many individual Associations as might have been desired. Emphasis has been laid on the recognition of unusual needs and the invention of successful means of meeting them and upon the development of phases of work rather than upon the consecutive events in given localities.

Elizabeth Wilson.

New York City, 1916.

Part I— Before 1866 Preliminary Organizations In Great Britain And A^ierica

CHAPTER PAGE

I Introduction 3

Status of young women in the United States before the Christian Association. Their work in relation to the home. Higher education,

II United Prayer in the United Kingdom . . 7

George Williams and the Association idea (1844). Miss Robarts and other early members (1855). Prayer Union Branches (1859). First use of the name Young Women's Christian Association.

HI An Open Door in London 13

Women's occupations in Great Britain ( 1851 ) . The Knight of Womanhood, Lord Shaftesbury. The Nurses' Home. The Honorable Mrs. Kinnaird and the North London Home (1855). The Pall Mall Institute (1861).

IV Federation Looking Toward the Future . . 19

The Prayer Union and the Home and Institute Branch united (1877). The United Central Council (1884) leading to founding of the World's Association (1894).

y The Beginnings in America 22

The American Revival of Religion in 1857-58. Mrs. Marshall O. Roberts and the New York ladies (1858). The first factory meeting. The first boarding home (1860).

Contents

LOCAL AND NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES

LOCAL

CHAPTER PAGE

Part Iii— 1906 To 1916 The Young Women's Christian Associa

TIONS OF THE UNITED STATES OF

AMERICA

XVII The Present National Movement .... 233

Adoption of policies. Development of departments: Office; Publication; Field Work; Finance; Conventions and Conferences; Secretarial Training; Home and Foreign. St. Paul Convention (1909). Adoption of constitution. The Portland definition of evangelical churches. The Federal Council of Churches.

XVIII The Young Women of the Christian Associations 260

Zirkus Buseh gathering at Berlin World's Conference (1910). Emphasis on membership at Indianapolis (1911) and Richmond Convention (1913). National Headquarters, San Francisco Exposition,

XIX The Students 269

State universities and other groups. The Studio Club; Central Club for Nurses. Negro - and Indian students. Student activities, religious campaigns, voluntary Bible study, social service, student initiative and cooperation. North American Student Council. Commission on Restatement of Basis. World's Student Christian Federation Conference, Lake Mohonk (1913). Student Volunteer Movement Convention, Kansas City (1913).

XX The City Girls 281

Membership, not buildings. Forms of cooperation. Building campaigns. Community

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAOE

service. Activities inside and outside the building. Summer programs.

XXI The Giels in Industry ....... 289

Statement of field. Industrial clubs and Associations. Federations of industrial clubs. Club Councils at conferences and camps.

XXII The Country Giels 292

County Associations in Illinois and elsewhere. Eight Week Clubs. The county summer conference.

XXIII The Young Giels 297

First branches; their laggard development. Study of adolescence. Camp Fire Girls' Council.

XXIV The Strangers Within Our Gates . . . 300

English classes for foreigners. International Institutes.

XXV Girls in Other Countries 303

Recapitulation of openings in India. American work in China and Japan, South America and Turkey. Foreign students in the United States. American secretaries abroad. Contrasts in World's Conferences (1898-1914),

XXVI The Secretaries 316

Origin of name. Scope and remuneration of office. Association of Employed Officers. System of training.

XXVII A Prophet Among Women . . . . . . 326

Miss Dodge as president. Her colleagues and successors.

XXVIII Mottoes and Spirit 330

Zech. iv, 6 — Prayer Union, American Committee, World's Committee. Gal. v, 13 — British Associates, International Board. John iv, 10 — Young Women's Christian Associations of the United States of America.

Appendix 335 li

LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS

OPPOSITE PAGE

Emma Robarts, Founder of the Prayer Union Branch in

Great Britain 10 e/

Lady Kinnaird, Founder of the Home and Institute

Branch in Great Britain . IQ ^^

Mrs. Marshall O. Roberts, first directress of the Ladies'

Christian Association, New York City . . . . 22 •-"

Congregational House, where the Boston Association first

had rooms 32 '

Sewing Class in New York City Association, 1889 . . 106 ' Founders of the first Student Association . . . . . 116 '^ Ruth Rouse, when representing the Student Volunteer

Movement 148 '^

Women's Christian Association, Hartford, Conn. First

building constructed for Association purposes . .160

Facsimile of autographs of delegates who formed the

"National Association," August, 1886 172 '

Mrs. John V. Farwell, first president of the National Association (later The American Committee) . . . 174 >

Annie M. Reynolds, while visiting Russia as World's Secretary 182

Morse Hall, Headquarters and Hostel of the Association

of Lahore, India 188

Secretaries and Students, Secretaries' Training Institute,

Winter Term, 1904 . .194

South Church, New York City, where present national

movement was formed 226 '

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

OPPOSITE PAGE

The Auditorium, Asilomar Conference Grounds, California 248 Michi Kawai, Secretary of the National Committee of

Japan 262

Delegates to the Fourth Biennial Convention, Richmond,

Virginia, 1913 264

Headquarters Building of the National Board of the

Young Women's Christian Associations .... 266

Young Women's Christian Association, St. Louis, Mo.

Modern type of administration building .... 282

Mary A, Clark Memorial Home, Los Angeles, California . 284

Eastern City Conference, Silver Bay, New York, 1915 . . 288

First County Conference, Conference Point, Lake Geneva,

Wisconsin 294

Ying Mei Chun, directing gymnastic drill in Shanghai,

China 308

Clarissa H. Spencer, General Secretary of the World's

Committee 314

Mabel Cratty, General Secretary of the National Board . 322

Class of 1915, National Training School 324

Letter sent by Miss Dodge to all the National Board staff 326

Part I. Before 1866 Preliminary Organizations In Great Britain And America

FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK AMONG YOUNG WOMEN

Introduction

FIFTY years ago woman's work was in tlie home. And such faculty for organization had the mistress of the home that she could order the tasks of each season and of each day of the week, could assign suitable duties to the elder and younger daughters, and teach them the varied processes until they became in turn as proficient as she.

Up to the middle of the nineteenth century the three chief occupations for women, ^* gainful occupations" they were termed, in spite of the meager remuneration for each, were: domestic service, where an American born girl helped in another person's home; teaching school, where the teacher boarded around from house to house in many country districts ; and sewing, where the seamstress usually came to the house of her employer for a longer or shorter time, or in the case of well to do families was a regular member of the household staff.

Even outside employments such as working in cotton mills were under a semi-domestic regime. The corporations owned boarding houses for the women operatives, and established in each a matron, usually a widow with daughters in the mill. There was little financial risk in conducting this sort of an establishment, for the mill corporation deducted the weeklyboard rate from the wages of each employee and paid the amount directly to the landlady. Such was the position held by Lucy Larcom's mother in Lowell, which fact accounted for the eleven year old child going into the mill.

The hours of labor ran, or dragged, from five in the morning to seven in the evening, which tallied with domestic rather than business working time. The very church attendance was likewise regulated in paternal fashion, for the mill directors charged up **pew rent" to each employee, under their system of paying wages partly in commodities.

Millwork dovetailed also into the public school system, because in those early years, teaching was for many mill hands a ''by employment" for the few months in the year when "school kept.''

"When the weaving and spinning went out of the house, and the weavers and spinners followed on into the mills, there w^as still a link between factory and home in the hand processes of manufacture carried on in the family living rooms. There is an economic basis of fact as well as poetic fancy in the verses containing, "Hannah's at the window binding shoes."

If the situation in the first half of the nineteenth century, with few girls away from home, and a limited range of occupations open to women, did not seem

INTRODUCTION 5

sucli as to require what we are pleased to call Association work in cities, neither were women college students feeling the need of voluntary religious organizations. Most of the seminaries and colleges to which women were admitted were built on Christian foundations by the prayers and labors and sacrifices of godly men and women, and consecrated to the '^ Christian nurture of youth/' Such was Mt. Holyoke Seminary, where Mary Lyon saw visions come true from 1837 to 1849. Such was Oberlin Collegiate Institute, later College, where the influence of Charles G. Finney was felt from 1835 to 1875. Here in 1841 three young ladies graduated from the regular four years' college course, **the first young women in the country to receive a degree in the arts.''

The personal piety of such students and their missionary service here or abroad after graduation, were accepted as a matter of course, by those who arranged the curriculum, prescribed the use of week days and Sundays and rejoiced that the students received inspiration as well as training to carry out the college ideals.

Women had not yet learned to work together in a large way. They were achieving, but by acting as individual forces, not as social elements. Like Lucy Larcom, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Louisa May Alcott, they were writing ; like Maria White Lowell they were stirring others to write ; or like Ann Greene Phillips they were heartening others to efforts on behalf of oppressed humanity. Women came together within parish circles, for ladies' prayer meetings and "Dorcas

Societies" which made coats and garments and did other good works and alms deeds, but these were almost entirely local activities. Even the ** Female Cent" societies did not burgeon into any general foreign missionary society until 1861, when the Women's Union Missionary Society of America for Heathen Lands came into being.

What changed these conditions? Many things; among them stand out three totally unlike factors : the invention of the sewing machine in 1846 ; the great revival of 1857-1858; and the Civil War, from 1861 to 1865.

Chapter II United Prayer In The United Kingdom

IN England the early Victorian situation was not unlike that in America at this same time. Some noted achievements there were, due to the fact of the long established civilization, but on the other hand some social delays were occasioned by the conservatism of that very same settled order of things. There is, thereby, all the more credit to those who had faith enough to regard these mountains as removable, wisdom enough to know where to begin, and grace enough to associate themselves with many others in accomplishing their original purpose or that larger purpose that is sure to develop when like-minded people cooperate.

One such pioneer was George Williams, who came up to London from the provinces in the fall of 1841. That was a noteworthy year in religious history, for the Oxford Movement was at its height ; but the young draper *s assistant found his religious reading not in the polemic pamphlets of the Tractarian leaders, but in two of Charles G. Finney's books, *' Letters to Professing Christians,'' and ^'Lectures on Revivals." His place of employment, Hitchcock and Rogers, in St. Paul's Churchyard, was of the usual type of **living in" drapery establishments, with dormitories on the top floor for assistants and apprentices. These young fellows worked off what spirits were left after their day of fourteen to seventeen hours behind the counter, in a way that left much to be desired. None of George Williams' five roommates professed himself a Christian, but we are told that there was a Christian fellow in the adjoining inner bedroom who had only four roommates, whom he got to leave so that the two like-minded souls might have a place of prayer. Soon others joined them; they read together the Finney books, many were converted, larger rooms were used. Then they interested the head of the firm, who provided a chaplain to conduct daily prayers. Life at Hitchcock and Rogers was changed. Young men in other shops also put these ideas into operation. Finally, or to speak more correctly, as a beginning of the story, on June 6, 1844, twelve young men from four different church connections formed a Young Men's Christian Association with religious and social features, rented rooms, and engaged a salaried organizing secretary and missionary to administer and extend the work.

This was the origin of the Association idea, that is, young men and young women uniting from different Christian churches for higher all-round development and service and using both religious and secular means therefor. The new movement was so timely and its emphasis so distinct that leading clergy and laymen gave their assistance.

His biographer found among George Williams'

UNITED PRAYER 9

papers a circular formulating a scheme for a Young Ladies* Christian Association which seems to have been sent out by him in the '40s. But the time for such an appeal to be listened to was not yet come. In the next decade the Crimean War set in motion waves which permanently affected the thought and the work of British womenkind — girls, young women, ladies, and ladies of title, in country and in city, down in the provinces and up in London.

Barnet stands in English history as a battle field in the Wars of the Roses; in Association history it appears as the residence of the Robarts and the Pennefather families. Rev. William Pennefather, vicar of Christ Church, known as the founder of the Interdenominational Christian Conference and the Mildmay deaconess house and many similar institutions, had been given spiritual charge of hundreds of the orphans of the Crimean War, who had been gathered together by the Patriotic Fund workers; and Mrs. Pennefather was deeply interested in them also. The Robarts family included five unmarried sisters, devoted to works of charity and education. Besides the infant school which their father had built and placed under trustees the daughters supported a school for girls held on their own estate. Many years before Tennyson had said, through King Arthur, **more things are wrought by prayer than the world dreams of,'' Emma Robarts, the youngest sister, was roused by such a realization of the vast possibilities of prayer, that she asked some of her friends in 1855 to pray on Saturday evenings for young women, either for those in their own circle or for young women as a class. **What can we do for them/' she wrote, **how reach and act on them, scattered as they are in every sphere of life ? Look at the young women of our day and remember their number, their present and future influence. Look at the several divisions of the class :

1. Our Princesses and all who are in the glitter of fash-

ionable life

2. Daughters at home of the middle classes

3. Young wives and mothers

4. Governesses in families and teachers in Day and Sun-

day Schools 6. Shop women, Dressmakers, Milliners and Seamstresses

6. Domestic Servants

7. Factory Girls

8. Young Women in our Unions, Hospitals, and Reforma-

tories, the Criminal and the Fallen

9. Those who are enchained by Judaism, Popery and

heathenism

*^What can be done for them? What means can be used to win their souls to Christ?" As her friends, assenting to this request, sent in their names, she copied these in a list.

Heading the first list of twenty-three names in this Prayer Union is that of Mrs. Horatius Bonar of Kelso, Scotland. Each member notes her religious activities and Mrs. Bonar 's record is, *' District and workhouse visiting ; class of girls on Monday at 5 p. m. for Scripture Instruction; Maternal meeting every fortnight; meeting in another district for Mothers every alternate Tuesday at 3.'^ Seven other Scotch names follow, then Mrs. Pennef ather 's and Miss Kobarts' own

Miss Emma Eobarts,

Founder of the Praj'er Union Branch in Great Britain

UNITED PRAYER 11

names. Their reports credit Mrs. Pennefatlier with '^Parish and workhouse visiting, Superintendence of Patriotic Orphan Homes, and of Homes in connection with Society for the Rescue of Young "Women, Scripture Class every Thursday for young ladies,'' and show Miss Robarts' work to be, *' Sunday morning class of servants and dressmakers. Intercourse and correspondence with former scholars." Several of the early members lived in Ireland. A Bradford, England, member reports a class of ' ' adult factory girls. ' ' Classes for ''apprentices," "grown girls," "shop girls, " " milk girls, ' ' appear. George Miiller 's daughter belonged, and Frances Ridley Havergal, who wrote the Young Women's Christian Association hymn, "True Hearted, Whole Hearted."

"In the course of 1859 the first Branch was formed," wrote Miss Robarts; "a band of Christian girls uniting in the name of Jesus for their mutual benefit, and for that of any young women in their respective spheres whom they might be enabled to influence for good." These members were largely girls of leisure and education who wanted to become more efficient workers for God. Miss Robarts also explained in the same circular that "the title of Young Women's Christian Association was assumed simply as the feminine of Young Men's," which had already become known to many of the same friends. The local units, however, were called Branches, not Young Women's Christian Associations. That term was usually reserved for the membership as a whole and the usage is steadily adhered to by many Britisli ladies, among them Miss Lucy M. Moor, the friend of Miss Robarts and Mrs. Pennef ather and the historian of the British movement.

Chapter III An Open Door In London

MISS ROBARTS' classification of young women was no doubt made more from observation than from statistics. However, the British census of 1851 reported 3,000,000 young women in Great Britain (excluding Ireland) engaged in industrial occupations ; of this number 500,000 were wives helping their husbands either behind the counter, at the desk, or in manufacturing processes.

The 39,139 nurses in domestic service largely outnumbered nurses in hospitals and on cases, but the age of those nurses — half of them were from five to twenty years old — helps us to understand that Tilly Slowboy was as true to life as Sairey Gamp or Betsey Prig, who have come to the front as the representative English nurses of that period. As to the living-in system which prevailed for young women shop assistants as well as for youths, it was probably a survival from the time when one extra pair of hands was called in to help the shop keeper, of whose family the owner of the pair of hands then became a part. But the family idea had long since been abandoned. The girl shop assistants spent most of every week-day waking hour in the shop itself. Recesses for meals were of the shortest and even on Sunday the girls were not allowed to stay in their own rooms.

That knight of womanhood, who has been called the most spiritual Christian of his age, Antony Ashley Cooper, later the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, had spoken with alarm a few years before of the displacement of male by the substitution of female labor in industrial occupations at large. Although he had led Parliament to put a stop to the degrading colliery practices where women and girls crawled through dangerous passages, harnessed like beasts of burden, dragging after them heavily loaded carts, yet women were stiU laboring in fields and factories.

Young girls in dressmaking and millinery trades were working from fifteen to eighteen hours per day. There is no hint at this time of those occupations in business houses which were certainly lighter, but which were monopolized by men. In 1854 telegraph clerkships were first opened to women, in 1870 the post office used a mixed staff in its clearing house branch.

Only one occupation was genteel enough to engage the well bom young woman whose need to earn her bread was sometimes as severe as that of a girl in the lower classes. She might be a governess in a home. For this as for the other gainful occupations no professional preparation was required, and what she made of the position depended entirely upon her own personality and the character of the family where she lived.

Ladies as well as hired nurses went out to the Crimean hospitals under the leadership of Florence

AN OPEN DOOR IN LONDON 15

Nightingale, that gentlewoman trained in the best institutions of Europe.

The Honorable Mrs. Arthur Kinnaird, so says her biographer, *^ cooperated with Viscountess Strangford and Miss Nightingale in sending out nurses. ' * Various institutions were recruiting places, among them a home in Fitzroy Square, London, where nurses might board and prepare for sailing.

But the Crimean War had still another effect upon the woman's movement. The Fitzroy Square home suggested to Mrs. Kinnaird a more permanent effort for the benefit of all girls coming up to London from the provinces.

To no avail does one search for minutes of a meeting where a resolution was passed to establish a Young Women's Christian Association. ** Ladies did not do much with making and seconding motions. They had a cup of tea together, talked about things, prayed over them and then did what seemed best, ' ' explained Lady Kinnaird 's daughter, the Hon. Emily Kinnaird, upon whose shoulders her mother's mantle rests. *'You could hardly say when it was organized." But some-*^ time during the year 1855 the decision was reached to enlarge the scope of the Home, and in January of 1856, the Hon. Arthur Kinnaird sent out a circular saying that he had taken over the responsibility of the late *' Nurses Home," although ''as nurses will benefit by it equaUy with other classes, we are still in a condition to carry out the design of the Nurses Association." By implication one learns that Mrs. Kinnaird was the head of this enterprise, but according to the English custom that where gentlemen are contributing funds to women's societies they also administer those funds, the name of the Hon. Arthur Kinnaird is signed as treasurer, with his address and that of his bankers.

So the work was begun. During the first year there entered the home for longer or shorter periods thirtynine persons classified as follows :

21 Governesses, Matrons, etc.

2 School mistresses

3 Matrons of Emigrant ships 9 Nurses from the East

2 Foreigners

1 Yoimg Person in Training for a school mistress

1 Lady in Distress

There was a lady superintendent in residence, but as her services were gratuitous she could hardly be called the first employed officer.

Neither had the name Young Women's Christian Association been officially assumed, for the circular called the place *' North London Home, Late Nurses Home, or General Female Home and Training Institution."

However, the main departments of an Association were already outlined. Besides the boarding home there was an employment bureau for ''Matrons, Protestant Bonnes, etc.'* Intellectual needs were recognized and partly supplied through the lending library. Social features were combined with the religious activities ; tea was always served in the friendly hour which followed the Sunday afternoon Bible class; there was an afternoon missionary meeting each month ; and the lady superintendent was at home every Tuesday and

Lady Kinnaibd, Founder of the Home and Institute Branch in Great Britain

AN OP^N DjOOE in tONDON 17

Friday evening to young women from any part of London.

These departments were emphasized by organizing in the Home a Young Women's Christian Improvement Association in 1858, when the second superintendent, a nurse returned from the East, came into contact with the girls in business houses who needed a *' Sunday Home" and opportunities for recreation, instruction, and Christian companionship. By 1861 there were four homes: one offered full board and lodging for five shillings a week ; two were serving the double purpose of residence and general headquarters. Next came (1861) the Institute at 118 Pall Mall, the first experiment of opening rooms for offices and class rooms independent of any residence. Mr. Kinnaird in a public address made the following distinctions :

In what we simply call an Institute no young persons are boarded and lodged. It would be utterly impossible to provide more than a few homes, however valuable these are, and when established they of course are involving household cares, so that a resident superintendent in a Home must, like a lady in a private household, have less time for aggressive missionary work than the superintendent of an Institute, who has comparatively speaking no home cares and very few household duties involving her energy. The moral machinery, which is the sole machinery of an Institute, is applicable to every part of the metropolis as well as to country towns and to districts where facilities for lodging may not be needed. And we also think that some friends who might shrink from the responsibility of starting new homes might more readily be induced to start Institutes, when the work would solely consist in the loving and patient endeavor to gain access to the hearts of those whom the Association is designed to win. (Cheers.)

People who complain of the length of the name Young Women *s Christian Association may care to know that the general circular sent out in 1861 showed the title ** United Association for the Christian and Domestic Improvement of Young Women." The religious and philanthropic leaders of the day appeared on this directorate, headed by the Earl of Shaftesbury, President.

It was now a metropolitan movement. ** While there are a few leading ideas emanating from the centre, giving harmony to the work, there is a great deal of practical diversity in the way of carrying it on!'' But a larger federation was ahead.

Chapter IV Federation Looking Toward The Future

IN several parts of England the leaders of the Prayer Union branches had been thinking of **a sort of outer circle, or an organization for reaching and keeping an influence over girls not eligible for the Prayer Union." Some of these leaders were interested in the developments which led to the founding of the Girls' Friendly Society in 1875, and thought about an organic connection of the two societies, abandoning the plan, however, because of the Interdenominational basis of the one, and the Church of England basis of the other. The leader of the London Prayer Union branch was also identified with Mrs. Kinnaird's rapidly expanding work, and since Mrs. Kinnaird was projecting a prayer union in connection with that it seemed reasonable to amalgamate the two. The secretary thus relates the action: — ''One day, quite unexpectedly, Mrs. Kinnaird called at 19A (Young Women's Christian Association Prayer Union Office at 19 A Great Portland Street, London, West) and Miss Robarts and she met for the first time. They settled the name and the card then, and the union of the two Associations in London was effected." This

was in January, 1877. In May Miss Robarts died, having willed to Mrs. Pennefather the presidency of the Prayer Unions, which numbered beside the forty-eight branches in London, about fifty elsewhere in England, sixteen in Scotland, twenty in Ireland, with some form of contact also with the continent of Europe and British possessions in America, Asia and Australia. Perhaps 12,000 members in all were enrolled.

Not only had the Prayer Unions increased, but many Homes and Institutes all over England had spontaneously sprung up, as Birmingham (1860), Bristol (1861), Liverpool (1864), Manchester (1866), etc., etc., so that when reorganization was at hand its outlines naturally became, a London division with Mrs. Kinnaird as vice-president, and a country and foreign division with Mrs. Pennefather as vice-president. The Earl of Shaftesbury, who had been president of the Pall Mall Institute, was of course elected president. His autograph letter of acceptance is on file.

St. Gile's House, Cranborne,

Salisbury.

Dear Mrs. Kinnaird:

My services to the Single Association are so small that they will be nothing to the Double one. Nevertheless, if you desire me as President I will accept the honourable office, and give what time I can when you smnmon me to its services.

I urged a similar Institute the other day on the good ladies of Glasgow. They have a Society for young women, but it is a very "wee" insignificant thing.

Yours truly,

( Signed ) Shaftesbury.

November 1, 1877.

LOOKING TOWARD THE FUTURE 21

This combination provided definitely for country and foreign branches. The nearness of Great Britain to the continent, the familiar acquaintance of English women with foreign people and languages, and the Christian responsibility felt for British colonists by the wives of civil and military officials, led on to the Foreign and Continental Division and the Extra European and Colonial Division when the United Cen- v tral Council was formed in 1884, and this was the germ from which the present "World's Young Women's Christian Association developed. Invitations to the April, 1892, meeting of this United Central Council were sent to America, asking representatives skilled in national administration to attend and remain to form, if the time were ripe, a World's Young Women's Christian Association. Further, when in 1894 preliminaries had been arranged and Great Britain, the / United States of America, Norway and Sweden had united as the active members of a World's Association, the chairman of the British Foreign and Continental Division, Mrs. J. Herbert Tritton, was made president.