A few years later a period of decline set in. Membership fell off, for the older turners began to discontinue their gymnastic practice and the young German-Americans, trained in this country, did not always sympathize with the ideals of their parents. _Turnen_ in Germany was suffering from the reactionary measures which followed the events of 1848-1849, so that good gymnasts were less numerous among recent immigrants, and this continued to be the case until the marked revival of interest in the sixties. The Executive Committee was absorbed in politics and aside from offering prizes to the victors in _Turnfest_ competitions did little or nothing to make physical training other than a subordinate phase of society life. The same retrogression was manifest in the pages of the _Turnzeitung_ and the proceedings of the national Conventions. Only the larger societies employed professional teachers of gymnastics, and nothing was done to recruit their ranks or to provide well trained assistants. An attempt was made to remedy the latter condition in 1858 by establishing _Vorturner_ schools in various cities, but it met with slight success. By this time, as a result of dissensions, the _Bund_ was divided into two mutually suspicious and unfriendly groups of societies, an Eastern and a Western, each with its own Executive Committee. One noteworthy feature of the report of the Western Committee, presented at a Convention in Indianapolis (September 4-8, 1858), was the statement that fifteen gymnastic societies had been organized by native Americans (in Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Louisville, and New Orleans, for example) after the German model and were in flourishing condition, and that these had held their first _Turnfest_, with competition for prizes, in Oxford, Ohio (June 29, 1858. See p. 267). A list of national _Turnfeste_ held by the societies of the _Turnerbund_ between 1851 and 1860 is added here, as a matter of record: I. 1851, September 29 and 30 Philadelphia. II. 1852, September 11-14 Baltimore (Eastern societies). III. 1852, September 26-28 Cincinnati (Western societies). IV. 1853, May 30 and 31 Louisville (Western societies). V. 1853, September 3-7 New York (Eastern societies). VI. 1854, September 2-7 Philadelphia. VII. 1855, September 15-18 Cincinnati. VIII. 1856, August 26-29 Pittsburgh. IX. 1857, August 29-September 2 New York (Eastern societies). X. 1857, August 29-September 2 Milwaukee (Western societies). XI. 1858, August 30-September 2 Belleville, Illinois. XII. 1859, August 20-23 Williamsburg, N. Y. (Eastern societies). XIII. 1859, August 27-30 Baltimore (Western societies). XIV. 1860, June 30-July 5 St Louis.