the business men of the town and said, "It is not enough to adopt this charter. You made the statement in public that you would not run for the office of alderman under the old charter but you would under the new. Now, did you mean it?" And they said, "Yes, that is all right, we will take our medicine," and we picked out five of the biggest and best business men in Stillwater, and there was no opposition, and they were elected without any candidates opposing. And they have been. on the job a year and a half, and it would seem like a nightmare to go back to the days when we had five republicans and four democrats, and when the bridge tender was a Republican and the street commissioner was a Republican and the county attorney was a Republican. Why, I remember when the city attorney, who had been a Republican candidate one of the best attorneys in our city had up against him a Democratic henchman -and that is all you could say for him, a man who was a booze fighter, a man who had no professional practice, and do you know for one hour, because one of the Republicans was a doctor and was called away on case, and there were four Republicans and four Democrat, for a solid hour it was four to four. Now that is the old order of things. And then somebody hurried out and got the doctor in, and then they elected the man they ought to have elected in the first place. It was not that those four Democrats were any worse citizens than the Republicans, because it would have been just the reverse if there had been five Democrats -it always has been, but they had got possessed with the idea that the political party was the great, important insti

tution. And now it is all gone, we have the idea that the community is the one vital, essential thing, and that which has been done in our town under the direction of these five big business men, rivals, in its small way, what is being done at Washington, because you have got the big men on the job and it works just as well in your home town as it works at large. And I want to say that I believe the only reason that our people are not here attending this convention is that these new men are too busy men to have gotten informed or to note what this League means to the state of Minnesota.

A step further on this matter of community efficiency. munity efficiency. We have a better farming association. I guess we have the highest priced farm agent in the state of Minnesota, and we feel, when we get a little chesty and like to boast

we know that Washington county is the best county in Minnestoa. We proved it. We got the silver cup here from the State Fair, and we had a county exhibit there just a few days ago, and visitors said, "That is the finest county exhibit in Minnesota." It is all, in a measure, the final outcome of the spirit of the community organization the community got behind

it.

One day the question came up, “Will the county commissioners vote a thousand dollars to support this county agent?" And one of the county commissioners said, "No, five hundred dollars is enough." He didn't know. We got together. We took the sections. that the comunity is so frequently divided into. Now we are not perfect over there in Stillwater. I told you we learned by our blunders as well as our successes. We had seventeen different

organizations. They all ought to be a part of the community organization but they are not. But we got representatives from the Livestock Shipping Organization, or Market Association, Better Farming Association, and Civic Club, and all these various organizations, and a great bunch of us went up to the county commissioners' office, and we had a spokesman, and told them how many people we represented, and we had talked with our people and they wanted this thousand dollars for the county agent. And do you know that the county commissioner who had said. they would give but five hundred dollars seconded the motion to make it a thousand and the thing passed without a dissenting vote! Now that is what happens. Not when the longhaired reformer comes forward and wants to do something, but when there is really an expression of the sentiment of the community. When the community wants it, there is no board of county commissioners or city council that can stand up against the sentiment of the community.

One thing more and this applies more particularly to the little towns. This matter of the consolidated school comes up, has the same fate that the charter has of the home-rule city. Why? Because it gets to the people. with the idea that this school crank, this long-haired reformer is the fellow that wants to put it over. If you can once get it threshed out in the community organization meeting, and they understand it, there isn't any question about what will be done with the consolidated school proposition in any community.

Again: into the community comes the stranger, the superintendent, the

high-school teacher, and you let him. alone, you don't get acquainted. The community organization should take them in, hold meetings devoted to educational subjects, discuss them, get their point of view, and then you would find it possible to do a great many things for the benefit of our children in the school that the long-haired reformer cannot do acting alone.

Next and there is the biggest thing

and they are all big: Provide Wholesome Recreation for the Youth of the Town. I am going to talk of my own home town, because I know it is no worse than any other town, for ever since I have been in the town, thirtyfive years, we have been in partnership with the saloon business, the meanest kind of partnership. Did you ever stop to think what a despicable way we have of running this saloon business of ours? We say to the fellow that is running the business, "Give us our share of the profits in advance, a thousand dollars, fork it over before you can do business," and then we go away and leave it; it isn't any of our business if they sell liquor to the boys. I had a friend who went out one Saturday night to look for his boy, and he told me how his heart ached when he found that boy in a saloon, and fifty other boys. there that night. Who is to blame for it? You are I am. The long-haired reformer cannot do anything with that proposition. But when the community club says that it is our job to see that the boys and girls of the town have what St. Cloud has provided in this magnificent building here, an opportunity for wholesome recreation, you are doing something practical again. You are going to do something to go up against this fellow. We have the

pool-room. What is it? Is it a clean, wholesome place for your boys? I remember one Sunday night I stopped aghast in front of the windows of a pool-room. A cloud of smoke filled the room, and I counted forty boys there. Sunday night! Whose fault is it? The community's. Now just as with these other matters, let us study the problem of recreation for the youth, let us get informed. There are organizations, playground associations, that are sending out people who understand. the business. Let us arouse public sentiment to such a degree that we are willing to put our hands into our pockets and show them the same principle applies to this proposition as it does to the market, put a man or woman on the job who understands the business; hire a teacher on the force, if you please, to teach the children how to play in the community, get us an expert who can take the Boy Scouts and the Camp Fire Girls and the pageants and all these things that are so interesting for our youth and put it over as a business proposition, and you will make one of the greatest movements forward for the development of the community.

What is next? Publish Town Affairs. Now that is where I hit my newspaper friends. I want them to feel what the merchants will feel, but I do not mean any personal offense. The newspaper men have a rather funny way of coming around to us down there in Stillwater. "Dig up; we want five dollars from you; that is for subscription to the paper." "What for? What am I going to get for it?" "We are going to run a newspaper." "Why, yes, that is all right, we need a newspaper in the town." They get two thousand of us to do that and they

have our money. They said they were going to give us a newspaper. What news do we want? The news about the schools, the news about the council, the news about every activity in the community that goes to the upbuilding and the development of the community. So, I say when we publish town affairs we are publishing all of the activities of the community. But, now, there is a very vital and important element in this team work. There should be some public committee in the community organization whose job it is to see that the editors of the local paper give us full value for that the five dollars that they have from us.

I have not time to go into these things. I have got subjects here for ten lectures, if you please. "Develop Community Consciousness." And

there is a phase of this subject that leads us to that which, after all, is the vital thing. The Scripture says, 'It is the spirit that quickens, and the letter kills.' When you get the spirit of community appreciation, of community understanding, of community comprehension, then you have laid the foundation for successful community activity. Now we have the habit of thinking in the terms of the church that we belong to, of the lodge that we belong to. We are too much elated over the club room that belongs to the order with which we are connected; we are too much elated over the building which represents the church that is our church. Just so long as we persist in that mental attitude, that our individual group interests are more important than the interests of the entire community, we are going to be, in a measure, in the condition of the house

divided against itself, and you know what the scripture says about that "A house divided against itself cannot stand." And there is a great difficulty, as I have found by personal contact, in so many of the communities in the State of Minnesota-that we have split up into too many factions. So, I say a part of the work of the community club is to do those things that will develop the loyalty, the patriotism, and the appreciation of the home town, that we have today manifested so magnificently with regard to the country as a whole.

"Sacrifice for the Community Common Good." "Well, I don't know about that. I am willing to let the other fellow do it." But where is the merchant who, if he thinks he can make a few more dollars by maintaining a delivery system, would give it up? Where is the merchant who, if the fellow that is running a book store down here is just barely getting ahead with the game, would refrain from putting in a line of goods that the fellow in the book store carries, in developing his general store? Why, right over in our home town the druggist who happens to be on the corner convenient to the car line, carries all the magazines and all the papers that the book store three doors up the street carries. Now that is not drug business That man, like all the rest of them, thinking of number one, does that which injures another. Now the minute that book store goes to the wall we have a vacant store in the town, and the town suffers. We are vitally interested in the success of our neighbor, and if you are going to develop community consciousness you have absolutely got to adopt the slogan that

Northfield claims they have a copyright on, "Get acquainted with your neighbor. You might like him and he might like you." And when you like each other there is no limit to what you can do. Now this community consciousness is developed more by people's getting together in these community meetings and getting acquainted with the other fellow than by any other activity.

Now one thing more, and I will have to credit Mr. Farrington with this idea the vicious practice in every community is to get on the street corner and in the cigar stores and other places and talk about what they do and they don't do, when as a matter of fact it is a question of what we do. and when you get the community to forget the pronoun "they" in talking. about what is being done instead of what we ought to do, you will develop community consciousness and you will then be willing to sacrifice that which you think is for your own individual good, appreciating the fact that your neighbor deserves consideration at your hand as well as your own selfinterest.

We

Now in conclusion, what is the sum of this whole thing? I have expressed it in the phrase "Build the Town Beautiful." Do you know, there are only two nations that I know of, China and Turkey, that can compete with the United States in the hideous ugliness of their villages and their towns. are just waking up to it. A movement has started all over the United States. We are now dreaming and planning for parks for the "town beautiful." But there is a beauty that is far beyond beauty of mere paint and decoration and things of that kind. As I said before, it is the spirit that you get abroad

in the comunity, and the most beautiful thing in this world is that mother-love that makes the home in a measure a community institution. And when we can look upon our home town in the same spirit that we look upon the home, and we can bring to the home town that feeling that we have in the home, you have got that which makes. the town lovely and beautiful. And the community club must have as its ideal, as the great aim for which it aspires, to make the town not only beautiful in its external expression, but beautiful, in that internal spirit that makes us feel kindly, I may almost say feel lovingly, toward our fellow men in the same community.

Now may I not in couclusion say to you that if this ideal of community

organization and community activity can be caried out, you and I will bring down on this earth a little bit of that heaven that, if there be any significance in the story of Matthew, when all the nations of the world were gathered together there was no word said about how many dollars in dues each contributed to the commercial club, or how much money each had put into it, but the test was "inasmuch as ye fed the hungry and clothed the naked ye did it to me." And that is the test, and that is the test for your community organization. If it is doing the thing that makes life more worth the living, that makes it easier for the people to get a living in the community, you are in a practical way feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting the sick. (Applause.)

(The following clippings are from the Yorkton Press, marked copies of which have been received.)

Fire Waste and Prevention

In 1916 the fire insurance companies doing business in Saskatchewan collected no less than $2,246,606 in premiums, while they paid out in losses only $899,854, the balance being retained to defray expenses and for profits. About seventy per cent of fire losses are due to individual carelessness and the balance to poor structural conditions and arsons.

To-night the Town Council will deal with a motion to request the Convention of Urban Municipalities to ask the Legislative Assembly to initiate. legislation whereby cities or towns.

can establish mutual municipal insurance within their own municipalities.

This would mean that instead of all the money being paid for premiums. to outside companies the various corporations, with the backing of their Provincial Governments, would use the premium income for improving water supply and fire fighting appliances. These bodies would also have much greater interest in reducing waste than the line companies which merely impose premiums to meet all losses and make no attempt to enforce personal liability on property owners who are not sufficiently influenced by their own interests to use effective