s are passing away, and new
ones taking their place. The subject of modern giving is one of immense
importance.

Clubs should introduce the study with a resume of benevolences in the
past; gifts to hospitals, asylums, colleges, libraries, art galleries,
museums, missions and other institutions; then take up more recent
giving to such things as model tenements, homes for tubercular,
settlements, institutional churches, homes for working women, the Mills
hotels, trade and technical schools, homes for convalescents, seaside
homes for children, pensions for professors; modern schools for the
blind, the crippled, the orphan, teaching self support. Notice that the
trend of giving to-day is toward prevention of suffering as well as its
cure.

Great gifts to-day are largely in favor of science. Note the great
medical research laboratories in New York, and what they already
accomplished; also the endowment for individuals on special lines in
which they show marked ability. Study what is being done by
legislatures in establishing laws about bequests, their trusteeship, and
time limitations, and the new theory that no gift should be bestowed
without the possibility of change, since in twenty years conditions
alter. What of making and breaking wills? of funds left for institutions
which may not be always needed? of protection to society through state
boards, etc.?

Read the article on Giving in _The Survey_, December 28, 1912, which
discusses the various phases of modern giving.

IX--MODERN DEVELOPMENT OF COUNTRY LIFE

Clubs may divide this subject into two heads, and have several programs
on each.

1. The farmer. After years of obscurity, the life of the farmer has
suddenly become of immense importance to society. To-day the Bureau of
Agriculture and other forces are rapidly changing its future. State
fairs, granges, courses of instruction for men and women in
school-houses, and "farmer's bulletins" give instruction; experiment
stations deal with such difficulties as weeds, soils, drainage, and
pests, and teach scientifically about cattle, poultry, bee keeping,
crops, and the dairy. Public and high schools, colleges and
universities have courses in agriculture, which teach beside the
ordinary farm work, forestry, how to have good roads, how to take up
unusual work.

The telephone, the automobile and the parcel post all bring the farmer
nearer town. Speak also of the Commission on Country Life, and its work;
of abandon