Child Life in Seattle

• Other Authors: University of Washington Libraries. Special Collections Division.
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Subjects: Children > Washington (State) > Seattle > Social conditions > 20th century; Children > Services for > Washington (State) > Seattle; Hastings; Pacific; Yukon; Alaska
• Online Access: http://cdm16786.contentdm.oclc.org:80/cdm/ref/collection/pioneerlife/id/8492

This brochure advertises the 1910 "Know Your City" civic institute for Seattle, which was held from May 11th through May 20th, "under the Auspices of the Social Service Club". The year's theme was "Child-Life in Seattle". Meetings were held in the Y.M.C.A. building, and admission was free to all. The brochure describes the institute's purpose as "the study of the conditions affecting Child-life, the agencies actually at work, and to spread information to the end that conditions may be improved and evils averted". The keynote address delivered on the first night of the institute was given by Dr. Hastings H. Hart, director of the Department of Child-helping for the Russell Sage Foundation, N.Y., on the topic of "Conserving Childhood". The daily topics for the rest of the institute consisted of "Child Labor in Seattle", "Education", "Child Play", "Religious Education", "Child Health", "Remedial Agencies", "Destructive Agencies", and "Some Agencies Worth Considering". Sydney Strong is identified as the chairman of the committee that organized the institute. The "Know-Your-City" movement began in 1909 when Anna Louise Strong, a resident of Seattle, visited the Schools of Civics and Philanthropy in New York and Chicago. She resolved to adapt their concept of the "summer institute" for the city of Seattle, making the classes open to all citizens (not limited to tuition-paying students, as in the cities she'd visited), and worked with her father, Sydney Strong, to plan the first institute for May, 1909, immediately before the opening of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. The Strongs secured the support of many prominent citizens and local newspapers in the creation of the institute. Its success led to the organization of similar conferences in other cities around the Pacific Northwest, including a "Know Your City" institute in Portland, Oregon in November of 1909, as well as leading the Strongs to continue organizing Seattle's "Know Your City" institutes on an annual basis for several years thereafter.