The museum is indebted to Dr. A. H. Cordier for several beautiful specimens of mounted elk, caribou and moose heads.

Mrs. Chester A. Snider has also given a very desirable collection of mounted animal heads and birds.

The Kansas City Stock Yards Company presented a mounted buffalo, one of the largest and finest specimens.

The museum is indebted to so large a number of people that it will be impossible in this connection to give all credit by personal mention.

Here are found clews to lost ages, relics of unknown races, specimens from the Mound builders, strange tablets, hieroglyphics, phehistoric pottery, garments, clothing, blankets, skins, war bonnets, moccasins, bows and arrows, war clubs, boats, hunting and fishing implements, pipes, ancient utensils, presenting the primitive beginning of man and of races long since forgotten. Persons interested in the early history of America find here an opportunity to examine a great mass of valuable material; sufficient for a liberal education if they will but successfully master the objects before them.

The student finds many examples of the rude arts and customs and traces the development from aboriginal life in a low state of barbarism to a primitive and semi-civilized people. Although in some cases all efforts of the scientist to solve the use to which certain objects were put, has been in vain.

Several enthusiastic experts and collectors of note, who have visited this museum pronounce it for size and variety one of the best to illustrate the object for which museums are maintained.

A museum is designed as a record of the progress of the ages; and to show the people who live, what and who were their predecessors. No problem connected with one's education is of deeper interest and as communities recognize this fact, public museums are established.

The Daniel B. Dyer Museum needs a new and more commodious habitation; there is not space to properly display the objects now in the building, to say nothing of the future growth of the institution.

The museum is under the control of the Board of Education, with Mrs. Amelia Jacobs, as curator.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

WOMEN'S CLUBS.

The first clubs were women's clubs, so the sociologists tell us. Away

back there in the "dim, red dawn of man"

T NEW YORK JBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX

ILDEN FOUNDATIONS

66*

when the Prehistoric spring

Made the piled Biscayan ice-pack split and shove;

And the troll and gnome and dwerg, and the Gods of Cliff and Berg
Were about me and beneath me and above,"

the women folks first foregathered into what the sociologists call "groups," the original nuclei of social order and control. It fell to their lot to do this because the men were too busy fighting with one another. Here in these prehistoric "groups" were crudely germinated Sympathy, Sociability and Justice the three fundamentals of social order; and the first work of the first woman's club, or group, was to win over to their cause the more peaceful and home loving men, not necessarily, we may suppose, the "mollycoddles," but the sensible ones who the soonest found out that there was more in life than fighting.

Times have changed since the Neolithic age, but human nature is the same old human nature, and while splendid sky-scraping clubhouses have displaced the caves, and while the primitive elements of Sympathy, Sociability and Justice, have expanded into the beautiful domains of Art and Ethics and Government, women's clubs are still doing the work of their earlier sisters,-projecting their group-forces into the struggle for existence and seeking by their influences to make the men do less fighting for that existence and to work in harmony with the ideals of the "good, the true, and the beautiful." This may sound a little fanciful and fairy-story-like, but in its just analysis it will be found to be a fact, just the same.

Kansas City, in its marvelous development as a social center, owes much to its women and to the work of her organizations. A history of Kansas City would indeed be a barren chronicle without an account of the splendid spirit with which its women have, from the earliest period of its development, taken up their share in the establishment and expansion of its social and govern

mental activities.

The municipal household is the true unit in the solution of the problem of municipal government which in the last decade has received such a wonderful impulse of thought and action, and great things are to-day being accomplished in the art of city building. The house beautiful and the city beautiful, the house cleanly and the city cleanly go hand in hand in their development. The credit for the unceasing and intelligent effort that has made Kansas City world-famous as a commercial center belongs primarily to the progressive business men who have wrought with splendid spirit for this result. But side by side with its commercial development, not lagging a pace, the ethical, the philanthropic, the artistic functioning of the municipal development of Kansas City has moved to results no less wonderful than

those achieved in the commercial line, and in this work the women of Kansas City, through their various organizations, have been pre-eminent factors.

The first woman's club, so far as the public records disclose, organized by Kansas City women, was the Women's Christian Association. This was in the year 1870. Of course, long before and continuing up to that time, there were many literary and social groupings which, no doubt, made an impress upon the social life of their day, but which have left no records by which their history and purposes may be traced. Their seed, however, we may be sure, was not lost in air, but found lodgment and flower and fruitage in the hearts of the mothers of early days-some of them still remaining, the grandmothers of to-day-sweetening their lives and the lives of others through associations that must make the tenderest pictures memory weaves for them.

The organization of this first Women's Christian Association was primarily the result of the efforts of two devout Quaker women who came over the line from Kansas and interested Mrs. J. W. L. Slavens in the philanthropic questions of the day. A meeting was called at the Christian church and Mrs. Mary Branham becoming greatly interested talked the matter over earnestly with her friends and decided to form a society for the good work. In January, 1870, the organization was perfected, Mrs. E. E. Branham was elected president; Mrs. St. Clair, treasurer; Mrs. Kersey Coates, secretary; Mrs. John Doggett, corresponding secretary. The charter states that the purpose of the organization was purely philanthropic.

At an early date the association rented the building at the corner of Eleventh and McGee streets and opened a home for unfortunate women and young children. Quoting from the journal of Mrs. Coates: "Relying upon faith in the virtue of our cause and believing that those who trust in the Lord and invoke His aid in every good word and work will be sustained, we went forth with bold hearts and willing hands to carry out our ideas of practical Christianity. Our home became the recipient of all classes of distressed humanity, especially did unfortunate children pour in upon us." It was thus

that the Children's Home came into existence.

The work was carried on for ten years in rented quarters, when it became evident that a permanent home might be effected, the association then agitated the needs of this home. Mrs. Coates was made chairman of a purchasing committee, who finally settled upon a site at 1115 Charlotte street. The home was opened in April, 1883. It was the aim and ambition of the association to make it, indeed, a home for orphan children, many of these noble workers have passed on but the fruits of their labors still remain, a greater monument than chiseled marble.