The American Woman and Her Neighbour To the foreign visitor to America it may seem that pioneering—which is an essential characteristic of any mew civilization—is somewhat overdone. Yet it has certain advant ages, important among which is the development of a community spirit. In America it obtains largely among men, but to a far greater: extent among women, and it) is significant that settlement work, with all it implies of the community spirit,, is organized and directed chiefly by women.
It is, therefore, interesting to read in the Man x "Guardian" the observations of a woman—u1iss "Muriel barris—on the American community spirit from her English point of view. She believes that the extreme kindness of neighbours to each other, which strikes the foreigner as one of the characteristics of America, is based on the interdependence of one family upon another. In America, in short, the tradition of equality holds, and while there is little real equality among pevpie—i mean that castes and classes, while aufterent, exist in America as elsownere—there yet more than in burope. £ilgrim Hathers' wives had to do their own work and help each other in time of need. In their successors in a strange land the same obligation is recognized in the "community spirit."
Enotanp asp America ConTRASTED.
Of recent years the community; spirit has been definitely fostered and encouraged—particularly in the big cities. The settlement is in, PULL Wiss, ald 1b Is a Very much More living concern than is we case in bugiand. he settiement/ itself is 1m theory, and quite often in practice, reatuy run by 1ts miei bers. here are the same university young men and women as settlement workers, and they give 2 general direction to anairs, but the settlement itself really is the people, and in some cases we border-line between the ministering and the ministorees completely disappears and the settlement is the neighbourhood centre just as a community church might be a religious centre. But the settlement is, of course, based on something fundamental in the people. It works so much better in America. just for that reason. It is simply cultivating something which has always existed, and is carrying it little farther in the babel -waich constitutes the great eastern cities of America.
In the smal] towns and villages
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.