THE OUTLOOK FROM THE PLAINFIELD OFFICE.
He must be a very indifferent man, indeed, who does not feel the quick flush of pride at the growth and success of the institutions with which he is connected. Doubly glad will he be if it be one for whose enlargement he has labored.
We surmise that there are very few of our readers—many of whom are more than members of the C. L. S. C., being actual workers for its interests—but that will be eager to know the present outlook for our work from the Plainfield office, anxious to know what are the prospects for 1884-’85.
Nowhere excepting at the central office is it possible to sound our work, to know its breadth, its depth, the permanency of its interest among our members, and its growth among the people. Here we can gauge its dimensions. And, perhaps, the first sign, and certainly it is a most significant one, is that which every casual visitor at our business headquarters must observe at once, as he looks in upon the busy workers of the office; the work is too big for its quarters. The mammoth mails are swelling beyond the prescribed boundaries. The office must grow with the C. L. S. C., and next spring it is decreed that there shall be a Chautauqua floor at Plainfield instead of an office, and that there, side by side, shall be found the business centers of the two great divisions of the “new education”—the C. L. S. C. and the Chautauqua University.
Of equal import is the work that the office secretary and her associates are being called upon to do this fall. Much work is always the sign of growth. It proves a demand for that which you are able to supply. It shows that you are filling a needed place. The C. L. S. C. never made more work than it does now—the most conclusive proof that the cause is prospering. The mails have become enormous. The average number of letters daily received through September and up to this date was over six hundred. These letters are the pulses of public feeling toward this work. They contain queries of all kinds respecting the methods of the Circle; they ask for circulars in great quantities, saying that there are everywhere people waiting to receive them; they proclaim enlarged boundaries and steadily increasing strength.
In many towns where the membership has always been large it has been doubled this fall. On October 4th the class of ’88 numbered over 3,000 members, a much larger number than the class of ’87 had at the same time last year.
One particularly encouraging feature is the vigor of the work. The C. L. S. C. grows up strong. There are records innumerable in those Cyclopean books at the Secretary’s office of readers who have caught the true idea, that education is life work, and they have joined the C. L. S. C. to stay. There are numbers of established circles, and this fall’s records are increasing the number of post-graduate readers, and the list of circles which have become fixed institutions.
There are, too, some interesting facts to be gleaned from a careful study of these records. We like to know where lie the strongholds of our work, among what kind of people are its rank and file, and here are the answers to our queries. The outlook for the present year shows that, as has been true heretofore, the leaders in the C. L. S. C. are the states of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, California and New England, that close in their train follow Illinois, Iowa and Indiana; that the class of people taking up the work is now, as always, the busy class, whose lives are full of thought and work and plans; that their ages, on an average, lie between twenty and forty years.
The outlook from the Plainfield office is to-day upon an ever growing band of earnest hearted men and women, gathered from all the states and territories of the Union, and from over the seas; it is upon an enthusiasm never before surpassed by any body of students in any land, and it presages, beyond doubting, the largest, grandest year in the history of the movement.