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MOOSEHEART MAGAZINE
Child Welfare:	“Our Debt to Mooseheart”
One of Dr. Hart’s 66Conversations With Six Hundred Thousand’*
some outdoor small cottage life as that which is the pride of Moose-heart.
Aid to Our Schools
In just the same way, you are in debt to Moose-heart for its methods in education. Of course, the_ daily life of the children is part of their education just as it was in the family at home. The cottage life, the responsibility for meals and for the ligjht work of keeping up the place are educating. Still all children need in addition the formal discipline of the school; and Mooseheart intends to make its teaching and the work of its pupils as good as there is, and if possible to improve on all models.
There is nothing novel or revolutionary in the Mooseheart school except perhaps its forty-seven weeks of school per year. The best educational authorities^ throughout the country are pleading for more time in the public schools. They ask for longer terms and for vacation schools. Farmers’ children aljvays find something to do in vacations; but in the cities, millions of children are harmed by the violent breaks in their school life.
Partly because of the longer term and partly because the children are under the same control day and night throughout the year, Mooseheart is able to provide a rich list of studies, as is set forth in the recent Mooseheart Course of Academic Study. This course is intended to fit children to understand the_ life of the community in which they live and which they are to help carry on, to make the children understanding citizens of their little republic of Mooseheart as well as the vast Republic of the United States.
A part of this system is the reverenced Mooseheart assembly which is perhaps the most successful forrii of self-government used in any American school. This does not mean complete self-government, which is no more possible for school children than for other citizens of the United States. Everybody has to give way on many matters of condutrt. A man cannot decide for himself how fast his automobile shall run through a crowded street, any more than a child can make up his mind just when he should get up and go to bed.
To the three Assemblies to which the Mooseheart children are divided according to age, is committed the right to make rules on many affairs of child life; and they give the opportunity of discussing things and stating the reasons for action, a process that helps to train the future man and woman. The community owes much to Mooseheart for showing the possibility of such responsible government aijiong children.
Support of Our Country
In this age of great duties, the world needs men and women who are able to think things out and then to put them into form. This is no time for amateurs and apprentices at the head of affairs. Many critics think that the American public schools, while working hard to teach children to know things, are not so successful in training them to do things. _ This is a period also of machinery and laboratories and factories and highly skilled workmen and workwomen. The supply of people who know how to do things and can go ahead and take responsibility is always below the demand. Our cities and towns are full of boys and girls who mean well enough and are willing to work after a fashion, but have no skill in any particular calling and no habit of doing their best.
The United States of America, therefore, owes a debt to Mooseheart for its determined attempt to give its young people an education that will fit them to take their place in the world. To this end, besides _ the varied program of the Academic school, it has added a system of vocational education. Every boy and girl is expected to get a “pre-vocational training,” which will fit them to understand what the world is made of and how to do the everyday tasks of life. Every boy and girl also gets a special vocational training, intended to prepare for skill in a pursuit that will bring self-support and open up a life work.
Mooseheart’s idea of education goes still further. The aim is not only to train each boy and girl to act for himself and to work out his own problems, but also to train all the boys and girls to catch up with other people. Team work is what the world needs, just as much as brilliant individuals. Mooseheart practices team work every day of the year, in the whole institution. It is part of the spirit of Mooseheart that the children shall feel a strong sense of dependence on each other. Mooseheart is not simply a school, it is a community, in which the members live “each for all and ali for each”- That is why MOOSEHEART has chosen *for its watchword. The School that Trains for Life.
By PROFESSOR ALBERT BUSHNELL HART Harvard University--------Mooseheart Governor
States of America, everybody is a member of a strong, vital, go-ahead concern. The cap-stone of Moosedom is Mooseheart.
Assistance to Other Institutions
In another direction, both members of the Moose and the public at large owe a steady debt of gratitude to Mooseheart. The country is full of orphan asylums, children’s homes and juvenile reformatories, which have to deal with the great problem of bringing up other people’s children in a healthy, sane and useful way.
About a century ago began the old fashioned orphan asylums, usually in a big building in the heart of a town or city, where children too often had the discipline and routine of a jail. Mooseheart is a leader among the modern institutions which treat dependent children like other children, which give them the atmosphere of home, and treat them as_ human beings and not as “inmates”.
The aim of Mooseheart from the beginning has been to build on the welfare of the child. It believes that the first requirement of child care is to make the children happy. That means that they shall be well housed, well clothed and well fed— not so easy, in these days of “H. C. of L,” who sits up aloft like a monkey in a cocoanut tree grinning at the people who throw stones at him and bid him “come down”.
Mooseheart has adopted the cottage system, the only method of housing and caring for children which resembles family life and prepares children to live in families of their own. This plan was not invented by Mooseheart; but it has been applied to a larger number of children than in any other institution in the country. You only need to set foot on the grounds to be satisfied that the Mooseheart youngsters are healthy and strong and comfortable, are ga'thered in small groups where they can have a sense of brotherhood, and that they have that full, delightful, health-giving outdoor life that is the best protector against bickerings and vice.
If Mooseheart can do this, a hundred other institutions can do it also. You are all in debt to Mooseheart for this share in leadership. You can help to put your own local orphanage or reformatory on the right track. Mooseheart fortunately has not the task of dealing with children who are held by judges and other authorities to be unfit to associate with other children. Mooseheart takes fair average groups of children as they come; but half the difficulties of the reformatories would disappear if they could give the same whole-
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| Great Dramatist Writes j
I	MIAMI UNIVERSITY
|	Oxford, Ohio
December 12,	1920.	1
| Dear Mr. Davis:	g
= My recent visit to Mooseheart with Prof. § | Albert Bushnell Hart is one which I shall | | always cherish in memory; for I found g = there a town which is one great home, a | S home which is a many sided school, a | | school which is itself an organism of co- S | operative life.	1
״ And I found this School-Home-Town in- | | fused with a youthful spirit of happiness = ! so contagious that it radiated from the face | n of every scholar-citizen, of every kinsmanly § | teacher, of every parent-governor whom I s | met there in that charmed oasis of educa- § g tion.	|
|	In a world of wrangling antagonisms, =
| you have boldly dared to build a temple to j¡ S tolerance, dedicated to fraternal gladness, = | and you have peopled your temple with an s | ardent young army of peace.
= Allow me, therefore, to express to you, |
| one and all at Mooseheart, my unfeigned |
= admiration and my heartiest congratula- a | tions on the deep-founded success of your § = noble endeavor.	jg
§	Yours very sincerely,	5
=	PERCY MAC KAYE. I
|	To James J. Davis, Director General, 1
i Mooseheart, Illinois.	g
Debts to Mooseheart ? Certainly not. Our dues are paid up to next collection day and fifteen minutes beyond. Our lodge has never been behind since Mooseheart was established. We have paid the dollar and the war dollar, the building dollar and the regular dollar, and our locomotive has settled down to steady express speed of two dollars a year and no questions asked. Likewise Christmas gifts, and we are joining in with the other Lodges of our State to build a state dormitory that will leave all the other dormitories in their own shadow. Mexican opal front steps, blister pearl doors, acquamarine windows, silver mantels, Japanese golden lacquer furniture, superheated and cold storage water in every room. We do not owe you a cent and if Rodney Brandon or any of those other high-brow steam money-pumps expect to tap us-----!
No, no, friend and brother and legionaire sister, you get me wrong. You must be reading the other side of the paper. Nobody that knows the Order of Moose can fail to realize the fullness of its generosity to Mooseheart. Whatever the bookkeeping of the Supreme Lodge, nobody can keep exact accounts of the affection and generosity of the members. The story of the last seven years is the story of millions poured out ungrudgingly in order that the orphans of the Order may be cared for and prepared to take their part in the world. No intention to measure a debt in money, but to call to mind that Mooseheart is not all a charge ag’ainst those who have received the benefits.
Care of Our Children
First of all, the millions have not been spent for a place but for the dependent children of the Order.- That is a good word, that “dependent”. All children are dependent on somebody. You owe a debt to Mooseheart because it carries your responsibility. It is not too much to say that no orphans in the country have a more hopeful outlook than those of the Moose. If you pay your two dollars a year and then, in spite of the best you can do, you leave little children without father or mother, you know they will be cared for; and nobody will reckon how many dollars you have paid in. Nor charge the expenditure on your children, be it ten or a hundred or a thousand times more than you have paid.
If you send your ^children to a private school, you get bills for their tuition and are in debt for it until they are paid. If your home is broken up and you board your children, you are in debt for the board bills, till somebody clears them up. If a kinsman or a friend takes your orphan children and brings them up in the fear of the Lord, you owe a debt of gratitude though it will never be put in the hands of a collector. So it is with Mooseheart: it is not an insurance company which pays over the funds under its contract and straightway forgets what kind of a man you are. Mooseheart strives to keep alive your memory and make your children realize that their success in life can be traced back to their father’s desire to make sure of the future of his children.
Aid to our Order
“Do unto others,” is the spirit of the school and of the Order—a glorious motto; but really wise aid to others comes back to the givers and aiders. That helped to make England a better and safer country for Robert Raikes’ family and neighbors. Our fathers founded free public schools; and the children in those schools became the better informed and better trained fathers and mothers of the next generation. So it is with the Loyal Order of Moose. Mooseheart is not only its creation but its best asset, its friend, its instructor.
For the spirit of every order that deserves to live is mutual aid, brotherhood, sense of interest in each other. In spreading these generous, helpful ideas, Mooseheart is a standing help. It makes a feeling of love and care for others a part of the whole Order and every lodge.
Everybody likes a genuinely Big Thing, and wherever you go, throughout the land Mooseheart is known. Nothing in the Order does so much to steady the membership and to keep the lodges intact as this sense of being responsible. Every Moose is a stockholder in Moosebeart. Every Lodge has a present or future stake in its success through the children that come through that lodge. Being a Moose is like being a citizen of the United