Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/819

Rh 2. The coöperating churches will become agents to extend attendance upon the public schools. For this reason they will enter homes where the families already have a church home. They will inquire whether the children are attending school as the law suggests. If not, they will urge compliance with it in the interest of the children, and if compliance is impossible for economic reasons, communication will be had with the charities of the city which exists for the purpose of assisting such cases.

3. Coöperating churches will advance the interests of the Sunday school throughout the district. If children are not in Sunday school, their attendance at some Sunday school of the locality will be urged. The visitation being coöperative, an invitation can be extended in the name of all the Sunday schools in the locality. The state has its attendance officers to compel the attendance of all children of legal public school age; the church, through a coöperative parish system, will have its attendance officers to invite the children in every assigned area to avail themselves of ethical and spiritual education. It is only through some such plan as this that the church can hope to do as good a business in education as the state.

4. The coöperating churches will urge families to avail themselves of neighborhood libraries, industrial classes—such as cooking classes, sewing schools, etc.—and the penny provident banks. The churches should be familiar with the plans for evening schools in the neighborhood, and acquaint the people with them. Every agency of social uplift in the immediate locality should be known to the churches that enter into a coöperative parish plan, and should be brought to the acquaintance of the families. The agencies that afford relief should not be advertised from house to house, for this would undoubtedly create extra pauperism. Far from increasing the pauperism of their special parishes, coöperating churches should endeavor to diminish it by interchanging a list of their beneficiaries and communicating with the Charity Organization Society if they discover duplication of alms. The “statistical showing” weakness of churches is still sometimes apparent in the records of their