ganization started with twenty-four members and now has i86 members, owes
no debts and expects a large increase in membership this year.
The Neighborhood House is not in the narrow sense a charity. No alms are doled out, no beggar crosses the threshold, but men and women eager to become an intelligent part of this great commonwealth, thirsting for the power to speak the language of their adopted country, children seeking the rudimentary knowl- edge that is essential to home, neatness and happiness, boys craving the power to use their hands in useful trades, girls learning the art of sewing, mothers or- ganized to discuss matters of importance, young men and boys trying to develop their bodies heretofore denied the expanding influence of proper exercise. A kindergarten school is maintained which is in a very flourishing condition. And all sorts of children may go to it. While the school is made up mostly of foreign Jewish children, there are a few non-Jewish children, including a couple of little Chinese. This is the most expensive department of the work, costing from $90 to $100 a month.
The sewing school continues to be the most largely attended single class, averaging 75 girls. The attendance of larger girls, the increased number of Jewish girls, all give the only reward sought for by the faithful volunteer teachers.
The cooking school has come to be one of the most important classes. Through these classes, many of the children are able to assist their parents in much of the household work. It is wonderful to think how much a child of ten or twelve can accomplish when it is obliged to be helpful. At this school, girls are taught the elementary part of cooking; that is, to cook simple food, such as they could afford in their own home.
A free library is maintained and five hundred books suitable for the young circulated each month. Also a night school is carried on by volunteer teachers, with regular attendance of classes. At present three classes — mostly Russian and Roumanian Jews and a group of non-Jewish foreigners, who come all the way from Montavilla ; all of whom come to us after a hard day's work, and who are too diffident to seek the work of the public night schools.
The Neighborhood House is in a large sense a public institution for it is open at all times to any man, woman or child who feels drawn to it. Its doors are closed to no one. In a larger sense than that, it is open to all shades of opinion and no man is frowned down upon because his social views are different from those of the teachers or managers.
THE FLOWER MISSION.
The Portland Fruit and Flower mission is an organization of young ladies in the city to minister to the poor, the sick, and the distressed. It is not con- nected with any church, it does not profess any creed except the gospel of doing good ; and it does not recognize any nationality, age, sex or color in its true catholic work of benevolence and friendliness. Without .the dole of formal charity, it took up, and is doing a work no other organization had attempted and it is doing much good in an unostentatious way.
Among the first members of the society were Mrs. Genevieve Schuyler Alvord, Mrs. Dorothea Eliot Wilbur, Miss Clara Teal, Mrs. Lucy Schuyler Wheeler, Miss Frances Warren, Mrs. Ellen Burrell Vorhees, Miss Antoinette Montgomery, Miss Alice Robbins Cole, Miss Edith Chittenden, Misses Lena and Louise Bickel.
The activities of the society is manifested through the "Day Nursery," which is conducted at Ninth and Burnside streets. Here the mothers who are compelled to go out in the work-a-day world to wholly earn or assist in earning a livelihood, can leave their little ones, knowing that they are well cared for during the day.
To relieve it from being absolute charity, to which many independent women object, a nominal sum of ten cents a day is charged to a working woman. Where both parents work, 25 cents per day is charged for a child. At 7 o'c
