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The College News





VoutumeE III. No. 23

BRYN MAWR, PA., APRIL 18, 1917

Price 5 Cents





DR. DAVIS TELLS OF WORK
ON PAROLE COMMISSION



Opportunity for Preventive Work in
Lower School Grades



WOMAN CRIMINAL A PROBLEM



Dr. Katherine Bement Davis, Chairman
of the Parole Commission of New York
City and for many years Superintendent
of the New York State Reformatory for
Women at Bedford Hills, addressing Miss
Kingsbury’s Social Study Class Saturday
night on the problem of the woman crim-
inal, made the startling announcement
that she had never found college women
in prison.

No College Women in Prison

“In all my experience I have never come
across a college woman in prison”, Dr.
Davis declared. Most of the women have
never been above the elementary school
grades. Some are so ignorant they do not
even know a war is going on. Very few
are ever skilled workers. The per cent
of delinquents is greatest among Ameri-
can born children of foreign parents, who
look down upon their mother and home
as un-American. “I knew I mustn’t steal
in Russia, but I thought this was a free
country”, one girl explained.

Her appeal was for sympathetic teach-
ers, to ylo preventive work in the lower
grades of the public schools; and for more
widespread industrial training, to enable
girls to earn honestly such material com-
forts as they may crave.

One-third May Be Reformed

Excluding those mentally deficient, Dr.
Davis believes that with careful super-
vision one-third of the women brought in
can be permanently reformed and another
third at least noticeably improved.

The Parole Commission, which Dr. Da-
vis created and of which she is the
present chairman, watches each case and
decides when a prisoner is ready to go on
parole. To secure its highest efficiency
Dr. Davis is now working for an indefi-
nite sentence to replace the present maxi-
mum one of three years.



MR. G. B. BARR WILL
HEAD B. M. BELGIAN
RELIEF COMMITTEE

ACCEPTS HONORARY CHAIRMANSHIP





Mr. George Barr Baker, head of the Spe-
cial Appeals Committee of the Commis-
sion for Relief in Belgium, who spoke
here in February, has consented to be-
come the honorary chairman of the Bryn
Mawr Committee for Belgian Relief. His
letter to the chairman, E. Granger ’17,
reads:

“My dear Miss Granger:

Your letter of March 27th has just been
handed to me on my return from a short
trip to Illinois.

I am afraid you are conferring upon me
an honor to which I am not entitled. I
happen to be merely the instrument or
means of bringing to you a few facts con-
cerning the great work in which we are
laboring. However, I shall be delighted
to accept the honorary chairmanship of
the Bryn Mawr committee, a committee
in which all of us are unusually inter-
ested.

I feel very grateful to you personally
for this honor and wish you would convey
to the members of the committee my deep
appreciation.

Sincerely yours,
George Barr Baker’,

EMINENT SCIENTIST
DESCRIBES PLANT GROWTH



Regeneration, Not a Feeling for Form



NEW THEORIES DISCLOSED

Dr. Jacques Loeb, of the Rockefeller
Institute, “the man of the fatherless frog”,
spoke in Taylor on Saturday night on the
regeneration of plants. His lecture was
illustrated with slides made from draw-
ings and with specimens of the plants
discussed, which were passed around the
audience in watch-glasses.

One of the interesting points brought
up in the course of the speech was that
regeneration is not a feeling for form or
Morphesthesia. It has been a mystery in
the healing of a wound why the cells
should stop their rebuilding of tissue at a
certain point, and this was explained as
recently as twenty years ago as a feeling
for symmetry and form in the cells. If
the horizontal branches of the top of a
pine tree are cut off, the new branches
grow up vertically and this was thought
to be due to an appropriate tendency on
the part of the cells to correct the sym-
metry of the top of the tree.

Bermuda Life Plant Used as Experiment

Dr. Loeb explained the interesting
growth of the so-called Bermuda life-
plant, or Bryophyllum, a creeping plant
with notched leaves. He told how, out
of the notches in these leaves, sprang new
stems and roots, forming another genera-
tion. The most curious thing about this
regeneration, however, is that there is
more growth of the new roots if the
parent leaf is not attached to its stem.
The stem seems to take the nutriment

(Continued on Page 6)

EDITH WYNNE MATTHISON
HAS REMARKABLE PROGRAM

Proceeds of Recital Next Saturday Will Go
to 1919’s Endowment Fund

Edith Wynne Matthison will give a dra-
matic recital in the gymnasium on Satur-
day evening, April the 21st, at eight
o’clock, for 1919’s Endowment Fund. Her
program will be:





A Carol of the Tenth Century..... Anonymous
A CHIUGS Grave 8 6s 6s Pa we aS Herrick
The Salutation... 22.3355 Thomas Traherne
My: Garden 385 85 Thomas Edward Brown
THE) TOYS veer he reve res Coventry Patmore
THE: SKY LSE 6 es eee oe Ves le bal eeer Shelley
Balcony Scene from “Romeo and Juliet’,
Shakespeare

Three Sonnets from the Portuguese
Inclusions
A Musical Instrument
Meee eles 8 Mrs. Browning
The West: Winds oi 2024 ci. 3... John Masefield
Selections from “The Gardener”
Rabindrahath Tagore
Selections from ‘The Gitanjali’’
Rabindranath Tagore
What the Bullet Sang ............ Bret Harte
Selections from “The Servant in the House”,
Charles Rann Kennedy

The last is from a play written by her
husband. Miss Matthison began her ca-
reer in musical comedy, then worked on
Greek plays. Later she starred in “The
Piper”, and two years ago played Andro-
mache in the “Trojan Women”, presented
by Granville Barker at the stadium of the
New York City College, at the University
of Pennsylvania and various other places.
Last year she was with Sir Herbert Beer-
bohm Tree as Queen Catherine in “Henry
VIII”. In the spring she took the part of
Miranda in the masque, “Caliban’’. She
has acted also for the movies in “The
Governor’s Lady”.

The reserved seats for Saturday night
will be $1.50 for outsiders and $.75 for
those connected with the college. Unre-
served seats will be $1 for outsiders and



$.50 for those connected with the college.

Rica

Stay at Studies Till June
Advises President Lowell
President Lowell of Harvard, ad-
dressing a meeting of 700 law stu-
dents, told them they would show the
truest patriotism by staying at their
studies till June. As it is, he said,
many are rushing into preparedness
work as if it were a football game.







PREPAREDNESS COURSES
NOW IN FULL SWING

Work Arranged Over Vacation and
Started Monday

The preparedness classes planned by
the Undergraduate Association commit-
tee under the chairmanship of E. Hough-
ton ’18, began Monday. Most of the
courses proposed and accepted at the
meeting of the Association the Tuesday
before vacation are now in full swing.
The course in farming is still under in-
vestigation and will be given if possible.
A course in typewriting is also being ar-
ranged.

The schedule of classes is:

Accounting and Bookkeeping: Mr.
Hurst—Room A, 8.00-9.00 a. m. every day.

Emergency Aid: Miss Kingsbury—
Room H, Mon., Wed., and Thurs., 7.45-
8.45 a. m,

Business Methods: Mrs. Smith—Room
C, Mon. and Wed., 7.45-8.45 a. m.

Colloquial French: Dean Schenck and
Miss Thayer—Room E, Tues. and Fri.,
7.45-8.45 a. m.

Motor Repairing: Spring Garden Street
Institute, Philadelphia, Tues. and Wed.,
8.30-5.00 p. m., and Sat., 10.00-12.00 a. m.

Home Care of the Sick: Members will
be notified as to time and place.

Ninety students attended the first ses-
sion of the three preparedness courses
that met on Monday.

Dr. Marion Parris Smith began her
course, which will be divided into five
different topics, by taking up accounting
and explaining the debit and credit sys-
tem. Dr. Kingsbury said that the prob-
lems that would have to be met would be
the result of military movements, indus-
trial changes and disaster. She outlined
the work and suggested trips to factories
and charity administration offices to see
the changes and the efforts to meet them.

Mr. Hurst’s class also held its first
meeting.

C. A. ELECT M. BACON PRESIDENT

FORMER TREASURER IN FIRST OFFICE











M. Bacon ’18 was elected president of
the Christian Association for the year
1917-18, at a meeting on April 3d. An en-
thusiastic vote of thanks was given to
N. McFaden, the retiring officer. M.
Stair 18 was elected vice-president; BE.
Biddle ’19, treasurer, and M. Hardy ’20,
secretary.

Miss Bacon has for the past year been
treasurer of the Association and chairman
of the Finance Committee, and was head
of the Wednesday Evenings Committee
before that. Miss Bacon instituted the
change in the constitution, accomplished
in 1915-16, by which the members of the
board were to be elected from the differ-
ent classes instead of being appointed by
the president as formerly. Miss Stair
has been chairman of the Membership
Committee during the past year, and Miss
Biddle was this year secretary of the As-
sociation and Assistant Treasurer the
second semester of last year. Miss Hardy
was this year’s asistant treasurer.





“PREPARE” IN
OWN WORK

Canteens and Day Nurseries
Described

Industrial Service Registered



That each woman should train herself
very intensively for the one line of war
service for which she is best fitted, Miss
Simpson, the organizer of college work
of the National League for Women’s
Service, emphasized in speaking Monday
afternoon in Taylor on preparedness lines
now open to college students. Mrs. Lewis
Martin, chairman of the Bureau for Reg-
istration and Information of the League,
speaking after Miss Simpson, urged that
all students who come from Pennsylvania
should send in their names as ready for
industrial service, since Pennsylvania
will be the first State in which the women
will be fully organized.

“Pull up your petunias and roses and
plant beans and potatoes”, said Miss
Simpson, “for one thing almost everyone
can do is to join in the crusade for agri-
cultural conservation”. Women will be
more efficient if they stick to the job at

hand, Miss Simpson went on, whether it’s
a farm or only a back yard, or a motor
car. If a girl has the opportunity of
keeping house this summer she can even
be patriotic there by buying intelligently
and economically.

New Lines of Preparedness Suggested

Social and welfare work were two kinds
of service outlined by Miss Simpson,
which come as new suggestions to most.
Suppose a mobilization camp is pitched
at the edge of one’s town, then with hun-
dreds of men having nothing to do in
their recreation hours, new social condi-
tions arise, and women can be of the ut-
most good in organizing “recreation
groups”. The same plan applies, Miss
Simpson said, to towns where munitions
factories will be started, bringing with
them hundreds of girl employees who will
need the help of organization which col-
lege students will know how to supply.
Day Nurseries, relieving the soldiers’
wives of the care of their children and
leaving them free to earn a living, will
be a very valuable kind of war service.

Canteen work is of two sorts, explained
Miss Simpson, that for the troops and in-
dustrial work for the factory hands. In
towns where the great munitions plants
are established women will be called on
to provide “lunch counters” for the work-
ers.

Every kind of job at the “industrial
front” may be obtained through the Bu-
reau of Registration and Information in
Philadelphia, Mrs. Martin explained. Al-
ready more than 150 women have, from
patriotic reasons, sought and secured work
at the Arsenal, she said, where uniforms,
bed clothes and all sorts of equipment for
the troops is being manufactured. Any-
one living in Pennsylvania was urged to
send in her name and summer address to
Mrs. John C. Groom, 1426 Walnut Street,
to register for industrial service, which
would range in variety from sitting in an
office and registering other applicants to
hunting out boarding houses for factory
girls arriving for munitions factories and
meeting the girls at the station.



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