Page:History of American Journalism.djvu/398

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ning Post, but


taken over by The New York Tribune in 1881. This movement was a practical application of the text from which the Reverend Willard Parsons, a young clergyman, preached at Sherman, Pennsylvania, on June 3, 1877: "Inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these, my brethren, you have done it unto me." In the course of his sermon he outlined the distress which pre- vailed in that section of New York where he once had a mission church and urged that his parishioners alleviate such suffering by taking into their homes for brief periods during the summer some of the children from the tenements. From the time that The Tribune became interested, it worked along two lines: first, it provided outings for children in private families in the country; second, it provided outings for children in so-called fresh-air homes and camps maintained by the Fund annually raised by the paper. Except in rare instances no organization except The Tribune has attempted to provide outings in the first of these two ways. Later, many organizations started sending children to institutional homes and camps for brief rests during the summer. The Tribune, in connection with this Fund, now maintains some ten homes and camps. It utilizes these primarily for special classes of children for whom it is either unwise or impossible to secure the hospitality of private families such as negro children, under-nourished children, tubercular children, etc. In 1881 The Tribune sent thirty-two hundred to the country for two weeks, and in 1900, the year in which the period closed, it sent seven thousand, four hundred and thirty-one. The maximum number was in 1892, when fifteen thousand, two hundred and sixty-seven were sent. The price of board in the country, the amount of annual subscriptions, etc., are factors which determine the num- ber which can be helped. The Tribune has aided in establishing a similar movement in other countries: in England it is known as "The Country Fortnight" and in France, as "Les (Euvres du Grand Air."

Special attention has been given the enterprises just mentioned because they were pioneer humanitarian enterprises of the press. Other papers, however, have attended to other things than put- ting ink on paper. The Press, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, started a subscription which raised forty thousand dollars to build a