"Knowledge is power."

"Loyalty, sociability, progress."

"Our Aim, to educate and brighten."

"We all meet on one common level, our neighbors as ourselves, with one object in view-to raise the standard of health and morals of our people.”

"Frugality makes an easy chair for old age."

"We pass through this world but once, and any good that we can do will be a willing service."

"If you have a little kindness, pass it on."

"The road to happiness lies over small stepping stones."

"The life of each day would be pleasanter if we would permit ourselves to enjoy the work in hand."

It is indeed encouraging and most gratifying to receive words of approval from Institute officers and members regarding services of delegates who have been sent throughout the Province from time to time. While we have endeavored to furnish the Institutes with speakers qualified along a variety of lines, we have always aimed to take up work which is of special interest and value to the mother

in the home.

You have a most valuable co-worker, I should say leader, in Miss Watson of Guelph. She is untiring in her efforts to assist you and her capabilities are apparently unlimited. The Department has a high appreciation of the work which she is doing and the increasing requests made of her by the Institutes throughout the whole Province is the strongest tribute to her work.

Our official organ continues to support the Institute work and we believe you are the best friend that Journal has. We are indebted to the local

press throughout the whole Province, and especially the Agricultural Journals, which have so nobly supported you in your efforts.

I cannot close without expressing hearty appreciation on the part of the Department for the continued co-operation of the large band of Institute officers who have assisted us in making the work such a success up to the present. We have every reason to believe that this assistance will continue. We are always ready for suggestions. If you have anything which you think will be of benefit to Institutes in other localities, do not fail to write the Department regarding While we learn through the monthly reports much which is of interest and value from a Departmental standpoint, we are confident that many organizations are carrying on aggressive work along lines which might be made generally helpful, but which have not been reported to the Department.

and

This meeting has a greater significance than the summing up of our accom plishments during the past year or a review of lost opportunities for doing good: it is an occasion for putting new life into our work with its possibilities responsibilities of the individual women to accomplish some work yet unattempted or undone in her home, in her town, in her country, in her Province, in her nation, the or in her Empire. Let us have a passion for carrying from one end of society to other the best knowledge, the best ideas of our time.

DR. HELEN MACMURCHY of Toronto gave an illustrated address on Social Service, showing some fifty lantern views. She referred first to the great awakening in these days of the twentieth century, making us think whether we will or no, of the larger world, and the great opportunities of modern life, illustrating this

by references to the vast emigration Canada is receiving, thirty-fold as great as the United States received when its population was 7,000,000. The pietures, each of which told its own story, were housing problems, milk problems, children's problems, and the efforts of the school, the church, the city and the individual, to meet these.

EVENING SESSION.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 15TH, 1911.

There was a very large attendance at the evening session held at Convocation Hall. Mrs. E. G. Graham of Brampton occupied the chair in a very acceptable manner, and in her opening remarks said:

I was a proud woman the day a gentleman in our County said to me, "I consider the most potent force for good in Ontario is the Women's Institutes." (Applause.) I do not wonder that you feel complimented, I assure you that I did. Some years ago, when the Institute was in its infancy, two farmers were discussing it and one said to the other: "What is the good of these Women's Institutes anyhow?" and the other said: "Well, I do not know particularly, but I do know that my wife meets the finest women in the County." We have all fine women in our Institutes and we want the others to come and help us and we want to help them.

We must be enthusiastic in our Institutes in order to make them a success. We must apply business principles and business activity. I overheard two men discussing a business failure of a mutual friend, and one thought he had failed in business because he had inherited the business. There seemed to be no reason why he should have failed; and one said to the other: "I believe John failed because he did not put himself into his business." Now, we know that we must put ourselves into our Institutes in order to make them a success. I wonder if we realize to-day that Ontario women are helping to make Conadian history. History is full of the things that people do, there is no mention of the things that people do not do. We want to do whatever we can to help on the good work that the Institutes are doing to-day.

I must say one real nice word for the husbands of the women who are here as delegates-they must be nice men or they would not allow their wives to come. here to this Convention. They will love you all the better when you go back home and you will be all the better for being able to tell the children and your friends of the splendid Convention we had this year in Toronto, and you must try to have more of your friends come next year. Last year in one of the morning papers there was a little wish written and I thought it so beautiful that I will repeat it to you this evening:

"To wish may be to attain, and for what do I wish: that we Canadian women may have more courage to learn to drive away care; more courage to meet the many temptations, to kill the wrong desire; courage to take a generous view of the words and acts of others-we do not know the motive; courage to sacrifice some part of our time and our means for the less fortunate; courage never to be bitter no matter how many and deep the disappointments." And I wish that love, great love, may crown this courage with happiness.

I will now call on Mrs. W. Dawson of Park Hill to tell us what her Institute is doing.

MRS. W. DAWSON, PARKHILL.

In

about

Madam Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: Special feature work in any stitute should be a gradual growth, arising out of the needs of the community in which your Institute is situated, and no special feature should be adopted simply because some other Institute has made it a success; so, while I shall tell yon one or two special features with which we have had some success, it is not that you may go and do likewise, but merely that it may suggest to some one an idea of looking about her in her own community to see what there is to do that no one is doing and that the Women's Institute can do very nicely. It is a trite saying: "Blessed is the man who has found his job," and it would be equally trite to say. "Blessed is the Institute which has found its job" if we are going to continue as a progressive association, and very often a special feature will supply that need.

The first special feature which we adopted in Parkhill was local improvement. We appointed a committee in the fall, and during the winter held a most delightful series of meetings and planned out our work for the following year. There were six vacant lots facing on our front street and adjoining our high school ground. For a number of years the school board had been trying to buy these lots, but the price was $800, which they considered exorbitant. Our Committee visited each owner of the lots separately and asked him the lowest possible price he would take for his lot and asked him to sign a paper giving us an option, and the combined price of the lots was found to be $160. We offered them to the school board, and they were very glad to get them. Then the Town Council, which was somewhat antagonistic to this movement, because they did not consider it proper work for women, discovered that the school board had an overdraft of $600, which they insisted on being paid at once, and the school board paid it. Then they had not any money to buy the lots. Sooner or later you must come to that stage, if you adopt special feature work. Some women would say, "That is the last thing I will every try to do for this town, they do not appreciate it." And "You will lose the woman whose husband is afraid it will injure his business." For a week we were in that state of despondency. Then some of our members canvassed the town and in three days they raised the $160, and three days before the option expired

the property was purchased by the Women's Institute.

them and

These lots were in terrible condition. They had been vacant for some time and there had been stores on some of them which had burned, leaving nothing but the holes where the cellars had been. The ground was covered with an accumu lation of old tins, etc. The Committee had to level these lots up, and we asked every farmer we could get hold of to come in and give us a day with his team. We got up a play and other entertainments and raised money, and then we had large trees transplanted on the lots, and these trees were kept alive by watering every night. The second summer the grass had grown to luxuriant growth the trees also. While the men worked the lawnmower, the women worked with spuds on the weeds. Then we had the opening on Coronation Day, and this little park "Coronation Park." We hired a man to cut the grass for the rest of the season and all through the dry spell we had this summer we had to fight for the life of our flowers and trees by carrying every night forty or fifty pails of water, sometimes carrying them a block. That work was mostly done by women. You cannot get all your members into special feature work and be thankful if you have one or two who will take hold and give you help.

we

called

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had band concerts in this little park-the bandstand was moved and the citizens have had a very pleasant time.

Another special feature, from which troubles arose, was our Vacuum Cleaner Club. We had a vacuum cleaner which we rented out at a dollar a day. This year we sold it and we got up a club in the Institute and each woman that joined that club paid one dollar, and then has the use of the vacuum cleaner as long as it lasts, once a month. If it lasts a year, she gets it twelve times at a cost of eight and a half cents a day. We appointed a committee to get up the club, and they came to the President and said: "Will it matter very much if a woman who is not a member of the Institute gets the use of the vacuum cleaner?" The President was a little tired, which no president should ever be, and she said, "Well, I guess not," and thought no more about it. The President was delighted when she asked how many members they had in the club and they said twenty-two. She said, "Is that all the members who would take advantage?" They said they supposed more would take advantage, but they had their club, and they could not work any more. She asked to see the list of names; her own name was on as President, her Secretary's name was on, and two members of the Institute were on, and the other names were women who had never been interested in the Institute in their lives, and they also told people that this had nothing to do with the Institute. You will find women on every committee who cannot realize that the committee is responsible to the body that appointed them, and it took a good deal of persuasion to get these women to understand that they were appointed by the Institute, and that they were doing this work for the Women's Institute. The result was that we had to buy three vacuum cleaners and each is sent out Monday morning to one home and then passed on to another, going back to the committee woman's house every Saturday night. The mayor of the town is at the head of that Vacuum Cleaner Club, and, if the Women's Institute did nothing else but institute that club, it has justified its existence. The mayor is one of the men in the town who, once a week, has the privilege of working the pump end of that vacuum cleaner.

You should always keep in mind, first, to benefit your community; second, to give the women an idea of their duty as citizens and to cultivate in your Institute that spirit which men mean when they say, "He is one of Nature's gentlemen." To be one of Nature's gentlewomen should be the aim of every Institute worker, and if you cultivate that feeling, you lose the woman who states that you are encroaching on her aristocratic tendencies, but you must be satisfied to see a woman fall out here and there. Try to take her along, if you can, and, if not, go along without her; if she is worthy, she will run and catch up to you. (Applause.)

THE CHAIRMAN.-We have some Toronto friends here with us, and I wonder if they know what the Women's Institutes are doing throughout Ontario? They are establishing libraries, beautifying the town and country places, establishing rest rooms and planting trees and all that sort of thing. I felt this afternoon while the Superintendent was reading his report, that I could say once again, "The most potent force for good throughout Ontario is the 'Women's Institute."

I will now ask Mrs. Dorrington, of Alton, to tell what their Institute is doing. I am the mother of the Peel County Institutes, and this is one of them.

Mrs. W. DORRINGTON, Alton.-Dear Mother, Ladies and Gentlemen: We are very proud of our mother. We have been proud of our mothers from the time our Institute was started, and I am very thankful to say that I have been a member ever since the Institute in our community was organized ten or eleven years ago. We were one of the first in the District, and I hope I shall always be a member as long as the Women's Institutes are in existence.

I am here to tell you to-night what we have done in our little burg. In the first place you must understand that ours is a manufacturing village. We have two woollen mills which employ about fifty hands each, and of these one hundred people, most are boys and girls-mostly girls. You can understand that boys and girls working from seven or eight o'clock in the morning until six at night need some recreation; and as the old Hindoo philosopher said, "a healthy body needs recreation," so it is that a boy or girl who has healthy exercise will not go down the track. We were interested in getting something for them to do after their working hours, and we took up the idea of getting them an open-air rink. At the time we thought of it we had only $20 in the treasury. We had an ice cream and cake social, and offered prizes for the six best cakes, three to be made by girls from twelve to fourteen, and three by girls from fourteen up. None of our members competed, because we were all supposed to be good cooks. These prize cakes were served with the ice cream.

We have a Scout organization in the town, and they gave us a small donation. Our girls' club gave us a donation. We went among the townspeople, and that is where our good husbands came in, and we got quite a nice subscription from them. When we had a little money at our back, we bought ten thousand feet of lumber for the building of a rink. (We had three thousand feet left over, and we sold it to one of our member's husband, who keeps a planing mill.) We bought the land for $50, and we paid $65 for levelling, and the lumber cost $129. Some of the work was given us. When we got the rink in shape we rented it for a small sum, and made a little in that way. We gave the boys and girls good skating.

When spring arrived, we came to the conclusion it was an elephant on our hands, because we had levelling to do and a pump to put in, so we sold it for $100. We have all this money in our treasury, and do you know what the townsmen say? "If you want to put a business transaction through and make money on your hand it over to the Women's Institute."

deal.

After we sold our rink, we wondered what we were going to do with the money. We said we would all take a trip to Europe-forty-three members on $400. (Laughter.) We decided we would buy a park. We have a park in our town, but it is up on the top of the hill and a number of the people did not like climbing so high. We bought a plot near the school house, so that children could have it as a play ground. Our town fathers tried to buy this lot two years ago, but they could not. The Women's Institute went after the gentleman who owned this four and a half acres, and we bought it and we planted maple trees all around it at intervals. and we got the whole thing for $427; so you see we can get snaps around there. Then we found we were a little shy of funds, and we put on a Scotch concert which was very successful. We made a clear profit of $45. We had a good Scotch dinner.

too. We all worked with a will; there are no drones in our Institute.

MISS M. U. WATSON, MACDONALD INSTITUTE, Guelph, Ont.

Madam Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,-There are three or four questions that I am asked to answer. First: "Is it worth while for me to go to Macdonald Institute just for my own benefit in private housekeeping, taking the social side into consideration ?" I shall answer that in two sections. As to the first part, you may ask the various young men who have married Macdonald Institute girls. You might also make private inquiries of the girls whom you know to be engaged before they come to Macdonald Institute. You would be rather surprised to know how