Page:This side the trenches, with the American Red cross (IA thissidetrenches00desc).pdf/37

 concert. The incomes of thousands of households are so small that they cannot afford to go to a moving picture show. Five cents for the movies means five cents less for bread. Many families, indeed, stay away from church for the lack of a nickel to put into the collection box, or from inability to make a subscription, if hey were to become members.

The oldest son of a widow, whose life had been lived in just this meagre way, enlisted. The family now was obliged to economize still more. There was nothing left after the meals and the rent were paid for, and the mother became sickly more through weariness of the monotony of the struggle to make ends meet, than through actual lack of food or clothing. One of the first things that the Red Cross did after making the acquaintance of this woman was to arrange to have the oldest of her three children take her to a moving picture show and treat her to ice cream afterwards. The experience was so unusual that the woman and her son talked about it for days. The Red Cross now sees to it that this family has some kind of recreation every few weeks. There has, as a result, been a remarkable improvement in the health of the household.

Where do the children play? what friends have they? These are questions which the Home Service worker frequently asks of the mother. Whenever opportunity offers she encourages the children to become Boy Scouts or Camp Fire Girls and to join the Junior Red Cross and such organizations as the agricultural and home-making clubs conducted by the United States Department of Agriculture. She interests the older girls in entering sewing and reading circles and the boys in