Two Birthdays

The Young Men's Christian Association, world's biggest international religious society for laymen, this week celebrates its 100th birthday. A fortnight earlier, the Y.M.C.A.'s grand old man had celebrated his 79th. John Raleigh Mott, during 56 years of intensive Y.M.C.A. activity, has become almost as much a symbol as the Y's red triangle.

The Y, one of humanitarianism's most heartening success stories, got started because high-strung, pint-sized George Williams was no help to his stern English farmer-father. When he upset aj load of hay, his disgusted family apprenticed him to a small-town draper (drygoods merchant). A natural salesman, George Williams finally rose to ownership of his own draper's shop.

Faith in a Hall Bedroom. The industrial revolution was booming. Hours were long, wages low. Dry-goods clerks sometimes worked 14 to 17 hours a day. For recreation in their brief free time they were offered only gambling, drunkenness, lechery.

Twenty-two-year-old George Williams felt the call to do something about it. On June 6, 1844 he summoned into his cheap London bedroom eleven dry-goods clerks. With these apostles, he set about organizing a society for "the improvement of the spiritual condition of young men engaged in the drapery and other trades, by the introduction of religious services among them." Thus theY.M.C.A. was born.

The idea worked, and spread. Within six months 70 members were conducting religious services in 14 business houses, and the work demanded a full-time paid executive. Before a year was out, the Y broadened its program, gave courses and lectures on science, history, archeology. Today the Y.M.C.A.:

>> Operates in the U.S. alone 21 degree-granting colleges with a total enrollment of 50,000 students, 137 other vocational schools, thousands of informal educational groups.

>> Operates 850 gymnasiums and 600 swimming pools in the U.S. (Basketball and volleyball are Y.M.C.A.-invented games.)

>> Dispenses food, clothing, education and personal counsel to millions of Chinese. It also nurtures native industries, health, physical education in India.

>> Has opened its doors to every creed and color. Complete racial equality has not yet been achieved, but there are 71 Y.M.C.A.S in the U.S. for Negroes, and many white Ys take in Negroes.

Aid to War Prisoners. Most impressive is the Y's war work. In World War I, 14 Y.M.C.A. workers were killed in action or died of wounds, 133 were wounded or gassed, 67 died in accidents. According to General Pershing, the 25,000 Y workers who operated 1,675 huts did 90% of the welfare work for doughboys.

In this war the American Y, under the able leadership of its genial National Secretary Eugene E. Barnett, operates some 450 USO clubs for servicemen, 60 for industrial workers. But most important is the Y.M.C.A.'s War Prisoners Aid, begun during the Civil War. In World War I this work helped 6,000,000 captives in 28 countries. Now, with World Committee General Secretary Tracy Strong as director (TIME, Oct. 19, 1942), the Y is doing better than ever among U.S. prisoners.

When captured by the Germans, each American is given a kit containing a combination diary and photograph album, notebooks, pocket Testament, athletic equipment, pencils, checkers or chess, a mouth organ, etc. He also gets a German-English dictionary, a book of light reading, and a letter explaining educational courses he can take through the Y. The Y sponsors trade schools for prisoners (instructors are captured Americans), supplies the textbooks.

Work among prisoners in the Far East is not so thorough. But since Pearl Harbor the Y has given limited relief to Americans in 70 camps or sub-camps in Japan. And recently it won Jap consent to purchase in the Philippines $25,000 worth of supplies monthly for American prisoners there.

Great Layman. Chairman of the War Prisoners Aid Committee is John R. Mott, who at 79 is still the Y's most inspiring member. Last week, his physical vigor far from exhausted, strapping, square-jawed Dr. Mott was pursuing his favorite sports of boating and fishing in the Laurentian backwoods of Quebec.

At 13, John R. Mott was converted to the gospel according to George Williams in his home town, Postville, Iowa, where his father was a lumber merchant. By the time he graduated from Cornell University (1888), he had become student secretary of the Association's International Committee, soon became its U.S. general secretary. In 1926 he was made chairman of the Y.M.C.A.'s World Committee. Outside the Y, Dr. Mott organized the International Missionary Council and was its chairman from 1921 to 1942.

The source of Mott's success in spreading the Y around the world is twofold: 1) an indefatigable energy that has taken him 2,000,000 miles in 80 countries (he toured Latin America five times in one two-year period); 2) an organizing ability that enabled him to whip up other men's enthusiasm, made them give their time and money (he has raised $300,000,000 for his causes).

In Asia and South America Dr. Mott pioneered in training native-born Y workers, saw them strengthen the Y's influence in countries like China, where seven of the ten members of one Chiang Kai-shek cabinet were former Y workers.

Woodrow Wilson thrice offered Dr. Mott the post of U.S. Minister to China. Thrice Mott declined. Religion was his life, the world his field.

Dr. Mott's favorite maxim: "Let us turn stumbling blocks into steppingstones." Another Motto: "Pessimists never are in demand and never become great leaders or servants of humanity."

"There is something like the mountains and the sea in John R. Mott," Professor Henry Nelson Wieman once wrote of him. "He will always be the same, very simple and a bit sublime."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.