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In the center is Mr. J. C. Van Marcken, the proprietor of Agneta Park, in Delft-an industrial commonwealth of 1,500 employees. At his right and standing at the left are Mr. Eringaard and Mr. Willink, his assistants. Mrs. Van Marcken is at his left. Dr. Tolman, of New York, the author of this article, is the other standing figure.

certain amount of truth in the cynicism of a director of one of the approaching Expositions, who said: "Fifteen per cent. of the visitors will go to be amused, and the rest will go to criticise." Business men strive to make their exhibits attractive and interesting, well knowing the advertising value of these characteristics. In the same way, similar care should be shown in the Department of Social Economy, because each visitor whose attention is attracted and held means additional currency for a new idea or the adaptation of an old one, both large factors in social progress.

Ideas are always more important than things. The Palace of Social Economy was a storehouse of things as exhibited by the various nations in the lower part of the building, but upstairs were three large audience-halls for the sessions of the various congresses where ideas were exhibited and discussed. The personal contact with people from the very ends of

the earth, who had come to attend these conferences, was a source of great inspiration and profit. There were upwards of one hundred and twenty-five of these congresses, dealing with Workmen's Insurance, Accident Prevention, Profit-Sharing, Co-operation, Workmen's Dwellings, Woman's Work, Colonization, Public and Private Charity, Commerce and Industry, etc. These conferences attracted the leading specialists of the world, and in themselves were almost worth the labor and expense of the Exposition.

Each international exhibition is a colossal undertaking in itself, but, once installed, it should be utilized to the utmost, and its influence should by no means terminate with the closing of the exhibition in question. It should constitute a working capital of experience that can be utilized by those that are to follow; thus there is every reason why the experience of Paris should be utilized by Glasgow, Buffalo, St. Petersburg, and St. Louis,

and, best of all, improved on, because adapted to local conditions. At St. Louis there is a superb opportunity to give the world an object-lesson that shall make a large place for social economy.

While in Paris the writer was asked how a department of Social Economy could be made of concrete value and human interest for an International Exposition like that of St. Louis in 1903. He replied that such a task should be comparatively easy, with the experience of the Paris Exposition to follow. Each last Exposition ought to be the best, because showing the latest advances in social and industrial progress. From this view-point the Exposition is practically a school or text-book. In the first place, an exhibit in Social Economy should be one of careful exclusion, to include only such features as will prove of human interest and objectlesson value. Movements for industrial betterment that have outgrown the experimental stage and have become application stations should be selected as types. Each firm should be asked to furnish photographs of its distinctive features, models of its workingmen's houses, and certain

definite statistical facts regarding the origin, growth, and development of the respective industries.

There should be one head to the department, and he should be unrestricted in the choice of his staff, who should be appointed for their knowledge of the subject and not for their politics. The director of the department should be a kind of editor-that is, he should determine the amount of explanatory material and not leave it to the individual exhibitor. For instance, to a large manufacturer who has made notable provisions for improved dwellings for his workmen, he would say: "Your work is of real value and fills an important place in our Exposition. By way of further interpretation, the department wishes, say, 750 words of descriptive matter. This description will be printed in pages of prescribed form, grade of paper, and type, for the sake of uniformity. This circular of your exhibit can be printed in editions of hundreds of thousands, if you desire, for each one will be in the nature of an advertisement." This individual description, when printed with the others, will form a catalogue of the entire exhibit.

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For the foundation of the exhibit, reports, circulars of information, pamphlets, will be collected; these in turn will be interpreted by photographs, sufficiently labeled to tell their own story to the visitor but at the same time form a part of the exhibit as a whole. After the exhibit has been duly installed, this same material will afford opportunity for additional interpretation by means of lantern slides.

I feel quite certain that individual firms would supply these statistics, but in case of any unwillingness to do this, the Department of Social Economy should be in a position to pay for this material. If there could be an agreement among the various foreign representatives that such volumes should be prepared of uniform size and printing, they would have great value in showing scholars and students of the world at the close of the Exposition the sum total of industrial progress up to date. In this way the good to be accomplished by a great Exposition like that proposed at St. Louis would not terminate at its close, but would continue in its effect through the coming years.

How can the best results of an Exhibition be made permanent, so that its influence may continue? In Paris the Musée Social became the residuary legatee of the Social Economy of the exhibit of 1889, and because of this fact the Musée was the guiding spirit of the great Department of Social Economy at the Exposition of 1900. Jules Siegfried, the President of the Committee of Direction of the Musée, was the President of the section, while Messrs. Georges S. Picot, Emile Cheysson, Léon de Seilhac, le Comte de Rocquigny, André Lichtenberger, and Leopold Mobilleau took a prominent part.

Two years ago, in New York, the League for Social Service, under the presidency of Dr. Josiah Strong, taking the Musée Social as its model, but adapting its work to local needs, was organized with the object of social and industrial betterment. When, therefore, the United States Commission to the Paris Exposition was try ing to secure material for an exhibit in Social Economy, it asked the League if it would undertake the collection and interpretation of such an exhibit. Its President and Secretary were made special agents. This recognition of the work of

the League-only eight months old-was extremely gratifying, and it began at once. to add to its store of material already in hand.

The League sent to Paris a type exhibit of what employers were doing to improve the conditions of their employees; the work of the institutional church, or religion at work; the Salvation Army, the Young Men's Christian Association, denominational work among the negroes, and municipal betterment. All this material will be returned to the League for Social Service, and will constitute the nucleus for its Museum of Social Economy. In addition, while the writer was in Paris he secured the promise of material from the representatives of Italy, Germany, Russia, and Roumania. He is returning to Paris in October, for the closing weeks of the Exposition, in order to secure the material from those countries, and supplement it by others.

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The results of a great Exposition can be made permanent through a Museum of Social Economy, which will be closely analogous to the work of a commercial museum like that of Philadelphia. Museum of Social Economy will be a new thing for the United States. One illustration: An employer is desirous of building one or more improved dwellings for his workmen. At such a museum as the League has already started, he can see photographs, plans, drawings, models, statistics of every phase of the subject as it has been worked out in the leading cities of the world, and the Director of the Museum can answer any question and support it by tangible proof. From such a storehouse of fact an employer can secure the very best results in the world, and then all he will need will be their adaptation to local conditions. This can be done for any other department of industrial betterment.

The League received the award of a grand prix at the Exposition, and this recognition by the International Jury places it in the front rank of institutions of public utility. From the practical character of its work in the United States, and with the start already made, there is no reason why the idea of a central bureau of information, with working models-in other words, the Social Museum-cannot be made of great value for this country.

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