That women have helped to secure better buildings and equipment, abundant testimony, not only from their own reports but from public men, shows. For a single example, under the leadership of Mrs. B. B. Mumford of Richmond, Virginia, former president of the Richmond Education Association, a magnificent high school building costing $500,000 was secured. In innumerable letters comes the modest word that “we worked hard until we got a high school in our town” or “we secured a much needed addition to the school building” or “we are trying to raise the money for a new building.” In one instance a high school was only made possible by the offer of the women to buy the furniture and other needed equipment if the town would erect the building. In order to maintain high standards of physical equipment in their schools club women have often acted as school inspectors. Mrs. George Steinmetz of Pekin, Illinois, is one of these and of her election she writes: “At our last election for school inspectors two club women were nominated on an independent ticket. I was elected, and I am the first woman in our town to fill that position, but I hope others will be elected next year. The ticket brought out a large vote, and resulted in a majority vote for the building of a new high school and a new grade school and the remodeling of ten others.”[8] EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATIONS In addition to their service along many special lines of educational development, women are actively interested in the various societies which concern themselves with the advancement of education. Schools have been for a long time the object of civic interest among women partly because of their intimate family relation through little children and partly because of the fact that women teachers formed an easy bond for coöperation. Today there exists an incredible number of organizations whose main purpose is coöperation with the schools in one way or another. A study of these organizations and their aims justifies the belief that many of the very best features of the present educational system owe their existence to private suggestion and assistance and experimentation. Miss Elsa Denison in a book called “Helping School Children” has studied the range of private enterprise in education and throws an interesting light on the part played by women in that form of social service. Settlements have demonstrated the need of: recreation; child welfare; instruction of mothers in the physical basis of well-being and morals; possible coöperation of home and school; and the need of industrial training. Miss Denison in the study to which we have referred, by means of the following table, illustrates the tendency toward the absorption of these settlement features by the school: SETTLEMENT SCHOOL Study Rooms Study-recreation-rooms Clubs Clubs Entertainments Social Center Parties Kindergartens Public Kindergartens