The next move was to New York City, wher_A guide to the history of physical education

a private gymnasium on the site afterwards occupied by the Madison

Square Theatre Company. “I elaborated my old system of measurements,”

he says, referring to this period, “and had the first patterns of my

long-contemplated developing appliances constructed. These consist

of what are familiarly known as chest-weights, chest-expanders and

developers, quarter-circles, leg-machines, finger-machines, etc., to

the number of forty different pieces....[261] The attempt was made to

ascertain the strength and physical condition of the individual by

dynamometers, and other testing and measuring appliances, and then to

adapt the apparatus by means of pulleys, levers, adjustable weights,

etc., to the strength or weakness of the person as determined by the

physical examination.”

[Illustration: FIG. 78.—Frontispiece to Captain Chiosso’s “The Gymnastic

Polymachinon” (1855).]

Meanwhile the Hemenway Gymnasium was nearing completion, and the

attention of the Harvard authorities, in search of a man able to insure

the best use of such splendid facilities for physical training, was

turned to Dr. Sargent by alumni living in New York, and especially by

William Blaikie (1843-1904), whose “How to Get Strong and How to Stay

So” had just been published (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1879). In the

chapter on “What a Gymnasium Might Be and Do” he sets forth Harvard’s

opportunity in language that now sounds prophetic, and here and elsewhere

in the book makes repeated mention of Dr. Sargent’s work at Bowdoin and

Yale and of the new apparatus which he was then introducing. On September

22, 1879, the Corporation appointed him assistant professor of physical

training and director of the Hemenway Gymnasium.[262] His first task

was to determine the equipment and to superintend its construction

and installation, and the building, therefore, was not ready for use

until the following January. In the _Harvard Register_ a month later

he explains that the older gymnasia were “filled with crude appliances

that have been handed down in stereotyped forms for several centuries

(!). To use this apparatus with benefit, it is necessary for one to have

more strength at the outset than the average man possesses.... When it

is considered that only one man out of five can raise his own weight

with ease, the need of introductory apparatus to prepare one for the

beneficial use of the heavy appliances becomes quite apparent. It was

the realization of this need that led to the invention of the numerous

contrivances that have been introduced into the Hemenway Gymnasium; the

desire to strengthen certain muscles, in order to accomplish particular

feats on the higher apparatus, was the original motive.... The results

which followed were so satisfactory that the same appliances were

afterwards used as a means of attaining a harmonious development. For

this last-named purpose each machine has its own use. Each is designed to

bring into action one or more sets of muscles, and all can be adjusted to

the capacity of a child or of an athlete....”

[Illustration: FIG. 79.—Harvard University: Hemenway Gymnasium (1885).]

According to the university catalogue published in 1880, “The attendance

is voluntary, and the system adopted is one designed to meet the special

wants of each individual. Realizing the great diversity in age, size,

and strength, as well as in health, of the students who attend the

University, the Director makes no attempt to group them into classes

which pursue the same course of exercises. Upon entering the University,

each student is entitled to an examination by the Director, in which

his physical proportions are measured, his strength tested, his heart

and lungs examined, and information is solicited concerning his general

health and inherited tendencies. From the data thus procured, a special

order of appropriate exercises is made out for each student, with

specifications of the movements and apparatus which he may best use.

After working on this prescription for three to six months, the student

is entitled to another examination, by which the results of his work are

ascertained, and the Director (is) enabled to make a further prescription

for his individual case.”[263]

[Illustration: FIG. 80.—Harvard University: Hemenway Gymnasium (1885).]

A “Handbook of Developing Exercises” was printed in 1882, and a revised

and enlarged edition, with illustrations, in 1889. The skeleton

Anthropometric Chart (percentile) described in _Scribner’s Magazine_ for

July, 1887 (II: 3-17), had been issued the year before, and in 1893 table

charts were ready, “designed to show the distribution of any American

community as to physical power and proportions,” and ranging “from ten

to twenty-six years of age for either sex, there being one for each

age, except that the ages from twenty-two to twenty-six for men, and

from eighteen to twenty-six for women are combined.” In this same year

the life-size statues of typical American students, man and woman, were

exhibited at the World’s Fair in Chicago.

As early as 1881 Dr. Sargent had begun to train teachers, in the

“Sanatory Gymnasium” opened in Cambridge that year, primarily to meet

the needs of young women studying in the “Harvard Annex,” now known as

Radcliffe College. In 1883 accommodations were secured at 20 Church

Street, and here during the next two decades more than two hundred and

fifty women completed the prescribed two years’ normal course of theory

and practice. The commodious new building on Everett Street was ready for

use in the school year 1904-1905, and the course, now extended to cover

three years, was thrown open to men also. Summer courses in physical

training, lasting five weeks and given in Hemenway Gymnasium under the

auspices of Harvard University, have been offered since 1887. The annual

attendance in the first twenty-five years averaged over one hundred

students, of whom nearly one third were men.[264]

The continuous and rapid development of physical education in American

colleges and universities which has taken place in recent years may

be dated from the opening of the new Hemenway Gymnasium at Harvard

University, with Dr. Sargent’s novel equipment and methods, in January

of 1880, and the publication of Dr. Hartwell’s report by the Bureau of

Education in 1886. First came an era of gymnasium building. In the brief

interval between the two events just named the list of institutions

includes Smith College (1880, $4000), Lehigh University (1882, $40,000),

Cornell University (1882-83, $40,000), Tufts College (1882-83, $10,000),

University of Wooster (1882-83, $4200), Johns Hopkins University (1883,

$10,000), Amherst College (1883-84, $65,000), Bryn Mawr College (1884,

$18,000), Dickinson College (1884, $8000), Lafayette College (1884,

$15,000), and University of Minnesota (1884, $34,000). Twenty-five years

later 114 institutions reported gymnasia, and in 1920 the number had

increased to 209.[265]

Next came the organization of departments of physical education. By 1909

at least 111 institutions were giving regular instruction in gymnastics,

and in 1920 such departments existed in 199 colleges and universities.

In 187 of them the head of the department had a seat in the faculty,

and in 157 the rank of a full professor. It must be recalled in this

connection that postgraduate courses like those offered in theology,

medicine, law, and general education have not hitherto been available

for men and women looking forward to a career in physical education, so

that not many candidates have been able to measure up to the standards

of general and special preparation which have determined appointment to

other college professorships. A course in medicine, which has seemed to

many the natural portal of entry to the new profession, cannot be viewed

as anything but a makeshift solution of the problem, and until this need

is met in some more adequate way it must be difficult for the department

of physical education to win and hold a status equal to that of others

long established. A national Society of (men) Directors of Physical

Education in Colleges was organized in New York City December 31, 1897,

and has held annual meetings during the Christmas holidays ever since. A

corresponding Association of Directors of Physical Education for Women

has been in existence since 1910, but until 1915 it included only the New

England colleges.

It early became the practice to prescribe courses in physical education

for students as a part of their required work. This was the case at

95 institutions in 1909, and at 180 in 1920. Freshmen were included

in the requirement at 157 colleges in the latter year, sophomores at

137, juniors at 44, and seniors at 29. The next step was the giving of

positive credit toward graduation for courses in physical education.

By 1909, 60 colleges were doing this, and in 1920 there were 139.

More recently the department has begun to take over the control and

administration of intercollegiate athletics,[266] to develop recreational

activities for the entire undergraduate body of students on a large

scale, and to offer both theoretical and practical courses of instruction

and training open to students who intend themselves to teach the subject

later on. These courses are sometimes grouped into a major, like those

offered in other departments of the college or university, and may

be considered the first step toward regularly organized professional

courses for graduate students. The relation of a department of physical

education to instruction in hygiene, the care of student health, and the

sanitation of the college community varies in different institutions. In

some a part or all of the latter functions are entrusted to a separate

“students’ health service.”[267]

Perhaps present-day tendencies can be best indicated by printing here in

full the report of a special committee appointed in 1919 by the Society

of Directors of Physical Education in Colleges to formulate the aims and

scope of physical education. It was published in the _American Physical

Education Review_ for June, 1920, and adopted by the Society without

change at the annual meeting in Chicago, December 30, 1920, as expressing

its attitude in general on the various questions involved. After an

introductory paragraph the report proceeds as follows:

“DEFINITION. The term physical education is sometimes regarded as

identical with the hygiene of childhood and youth. Others would limit

it to more or less systematic exercise of the neuromuscular apparatus

in order to promote and conserve the perfect functioning of the entire

human mechanism, to make it what Huxley called ‘the ready servant of the

will,’ and to develop correct motor habits. A usage more in conformity

with the present conception of man’s nature as a unit is that which sees

in measures insuring bodily health and the right kind and amount of motor

activity an avenue of approach through which the whole individual may be

influenced for good, in mind and character as well as in body; it employs

the word physical to denote the means, and not the end. Probably no one

would contend that education in general is identical with hygiene in its

broader meaning, which takes account of mental and moral soundness, and

there seems no better warrant for making physical education synonymous

with hygiene in the narrower sense. Obviously something more than health

is in the mind of one who adopts the newer definition proposed above, and

improved coördination is not the only goal in sight.

“AIMS. 1. If we conceive the perfecting of the individual in his social

relations to be of greater importance than more purely personal values

we may well begin our list of aims with certain qualities developed by

appropriate group activities, particularly games and athletic sports,

practised under favorable conditions. It is through these agencies

that the child and youth most readily and naturally acquire habits of

obedience, subordination, self-sacrifice, coöperation and friendliness,

loyalty, capacity for leadership, ability to lose without sulking and win

without boasting, a spirit of fair play, and all that is implied in the

word sportsmanship.

“2. Other qualities of marked, though indirect, significance to the

community are self-confidence and self-control, mental and moral poise,

good spirits, alertness, resourcefulness, decision and perseverance,

courage, aggressiveness, initiative. These traits, developed by the farm

life and varied home activities of an earlier age, must now be insured

through other means than those which the average family can itself supply.

“3. Underlying such aims must be the purpose to promote the normal growth

and organic development of the individual, conserve his health and

provide a fair degree of strength and endurance, and to secure an erect

and self-respecting carriage of the body and the neuromuscular control

required for prompt and accurate response and graceful and effective

movements. Emergencies should be anticipated by training in exercises of

which swimming may be taken as a type, and by others which accustom one

to bear physical punishment coolly and to defend himself successfully.

“4. But the teacher’s vision should not be bounded by the limits of

the school or college or university period. To engender in youth an

intelligent and healthful interest that shall lead to lifelong practice

of forms of active exercise which favor not only a continued high level

of physical efficiency but also mental sanity and stimulating social

contact is certainly not the least service he may seek to render.

“SCOPE. 1. The scope or range of physical education is suggested by what

has already been said. Physical examinations intended to reveal the

condition and needs of the individual and to allow the application of

various tests constitute a necessary introduction and accompaniment. The

educational procedure itself involves _two related lines_ of work: (1)

an orderly and progressive program of _activities_ designed specifically

to develop the qualities listed above, including regular and frequent

exercise of the fundamental muscle groups, and suitable employment of

corrective exercises in cases of faulty posture and other remediable

defects reached through such agencies; and (2) _instruction_ in personal

hygiene and public sanitation, and inculcation of health habits, together

with advice and suggestions to students confronted by individual health

problems. Special courses in school hygiene and in the theory of physical

education should be added in normal schools, colleges, and universities,

in order that students preparing for the teaching profession may be

adequately trained under the most favorable conditions.

“2. _Vocational training_ and industrial occupations supply a certain

amount of motor activity for a large part of the population, it is true,

but in forms which are in general too one-sided and too much limited

to the accessory mechanisms of the hand and fingers to be of serious

hygienic value, and too often they are practised under insanitary

conditions. The isolated exercises of _formal gymnastics_, if wisely

chosen, are serviceable for corrective purposes, and may be utilized

for bringing into play the fundamental muscle groups, and securing

erect posture and a good degree of neuromuscular control. They permit a

maximum economy of time and space and offer the advantages of skilled

supervision, and they may be made to yield a foundation of strength

and skill without which interest and success in games are likely to

be lacking. Carefully selected and arranged exercises in _hanging and

climbing_ and in _jumping and vaulting_ are especially valuable as

supplying elementary training in self-confidence, alertness, decision,

and courage, in addition to their hygienic and corrective uses and the

advanced training in coördination which they furnish. _Combat exercises_

make their unique contribution in the form of capacity for self-defense

and ability to take punishment coolly. Folk, esthetic, and athletic

_dancing_ have an obvious place with relation to fundamental muscle

groups and graceful control of the body as a whole. _Group games_, which

are lacking in corrective value and compare unfavorably with formal

exercises as a school of good posture and general coördination, may give

excellent results in the way of improved health, and their special field

is the development of sturdy character and right ethical standards.

“3. The _relative importance_ to be assigned to the different aims and

means of physical education mentioned varies, of course, with the age,

sex, environment, and other conditions of life and work. The teaching of

hygiene and the health habits emphasized must be related to the grade

of intelligence and the special needs and interests of the individual

at each stage, from early childhood to full maturity. The activities

of the _kindergarten_ and the _lower school grades_ should be directed

chiefly toward promotion of normal growth and organic development, by

exercise of the fundamental muscle groups, and particularly through the

agency of simple games, which also furnish a valuable social training

at this period. In the _upper grades_ and the _high school_ training

in coördination, with suitable attention to posture, should become a

prominent feature. Too often, nowadays, the _college or university_

department of physical education is called upon to adopt measures which

would be quite unnecessary with an adequate system in the elementary

and secondary schools, and to remedy conditions of malgrowth and

maldevelopment which ought never to have been allowed to develop. After

the high school period conservation of health and the higher social

values would normally become the dominant objectives. Outside the limits

of school life, _i.e._, in dealing with _industrial or professional

groups_, conditions of occupation and environment must determine the aim

and content of whatever plan is adopted.

“RELATIONS. 1. Closely associated with the purposes of physical

education are _other procedures_ which any complete health program in a

school, college, university, or system of schools will include. These

are measures intended to secure (1) prompt _detection of illness_ and

physical defects, through preliminary and periodic medical inspection

and physical examinations, and (2) _adequate treatment_, by means of

hospital, dispensary, or private service; and (3) to provide _sanitary

safeguards_, such as attention to food and water supplies, sewage

disposal, light and ventilation, rooming conditions, and the early

recognition and isolation of cases of communicable disease. Such measures

call for the employment of a practising physician and health officer,

whose services might also be utilized in the examinations given by the

department of physical education and in the instruction in personal

hygiene and public sanitation. For all other purposes mentioned in this

report the oversight of a specially trained educator is required.

“2. The influence of a well-organized department of physical education

ought to be felt in every phase of school work, through _coöperation_ in

attempts to promote mental hygiene and to follow hygienic principles in

the choice of methods of instruction and management. Teachers in other

departments may be stimulated and helped to maintain themselves in a

condition which renders their own work more effective.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

The portions of this chapter which have to do with the life and work of

Dr. Edward Hitchcock and Dr. Dudley Allen Sargent have already appeared

in print, as Chapters XIII and XIV in the writer’s “Pioneers of Modern

Physical Training” (New York, The Association Press, 1915). Other

references are given in the text and footnotes.

FOOTNOTES:

[239] Mrs. J. H. McCurdy, “The History of Physical Training at Mount

Holyoke College,” in the _American Physical Education Review_ for March,

1909.

[240] See “Instructions in Gymnastics, containing a full description

of more than eight hundred exercises, and illustrated by five hundred

engravings. By J. E. D’Alfonce, late Professor in the Military School in

St. Petersburgh, and in Paris.” New York, George F. Nesbitt & Co., 1951.

The author speaks in the preface of “seven years’ practice with pupils

of all ages,” and of “the debt which I owe to America for the freedom I

enjoy, and for the hospitality and friendship I have received from her

citizens....”

[241] Page 60 of “The University of Virginia: Glimpses of Its Past and

Present,” by John S. Patton and Sallie J. Doswell (Lynchburg, Va., 1900).

See also a letter (“Due Tribute”) published in _The Outlook_ for May 18,

1907 (=85=, p. 122).

[242] In Bartlett and Gifford’s “Dartmouth Athletics” (Concord, N. H.,

1893).

[243] The Princeton Book. A Series of Sketches Pertaining to the History,

Organization and Present Condition of the College of New Jersey. By

Officers and Graduates of the College. Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Co.,

1879. See p. 268.

[244] It was opened for use December 8, 1857, according to an item in the

_Deutsche Turn-Zeitung_ for 1858, p. 44.

[245] This is the date given in _Jahrbücher der Deutsch-Amerikanischen

Turnerei_ (New York), =3=, 55 (December, 1893). See also a reference in

=2=, 267 (July, 1893).

[246] For references in the University catalogue and the records of the

Board of Trustees, and for a copy of the report in the _Cincinnati Daily

Gazette_ I am indebted to the kindness of Professor J. E. Bradford, of

the department of history at Miami. The first hint of any such episode

as the above was gained from the _Jahrbücher_ mentioned in the footnote

preceding this one.

[247] The donor was Henry Bromfield Rogers, Harvard 1822.

[248] The _Yale Literary Magazine_ of March, 1860 (=25=, 230).

[249] Follansbee Goodrich Welch was born at Concord, N. H., June 8, 1843,

and graduated from Dio Lewis’s Normal Institute for Physical Education.

In addition to his duties at Yale he served as “Instructor in Physical

Culture” at Dartmouth College from the spring of 1867 through the year

1867-68, and instructor in gymnastics at Wesleyan University 1868-69,

besides conducting for a number of years an eight weeks summer “Normal

Institute for the Training of Teachers in Dio Lewis’s New Gymnastics,”

at the Glenwood Ladies’ Seminary, West Brattleboro, Vermont. In 1869 he

published “Moral, Intellectual, and Physical Culture; or the Philosophy

of True Living” (New York, Wood & Holbrook), Part I of which deals with

“The Gymnasium,” and Part II with “the Dio Lewis System of Gymnastics.”

The New York Homeopathic Medical College conferred on him the degree of

M.D. in 1870, and he afterwards practised medicine in New York City.

[250] See “Four Years at Yale,” by a Graduate of ’69 (Lyman H. Bagg) (New

Haven, Charles C. Chatfield & Co., 1871), pp. 31 and 402-405; and Dudley

A. Sargent in “Yale College: A Sketch of Its History....” (New York,

Henry Holt & Co., 1879), =2=, pp. 458 and 459.

[251] He had been a student in Harvard College at the time when Follen

introduced the Jahn gymnastics there, and was in Andover Theological

Seminary while the “Mechanical Association” was still flourishing.

[252] It was 72 by 50 feet and two stories high, with walls of Pelham

gneiss or granite. The first floor contained an office, dressing rooms,

and bowling alleys, and above this was the main hall for gymnastic

exercises. The architect was Charles E. Parkes of Boston, and the total

cost of the building and fixtures amounted to $15,000.

[253] He was born May 23, 1828, at Amherst, Massachusetts, where his

father had been appointed professor of chemistry and natural history in

the college three years before and was afterwards to become its third

president (1845-1854). Upon completing his preparatory studies at Amherst

Academy, and at Williston Seminary, in Easthampton, eleven miles to

the southwest, he entered Amherst College and graduated with the class

of 1849. Then from 1850 to 1861, with the exception of a single year

(1852-53), he was teacher of elocution and natural science at Williston

Seminary, and early in this period obtained the degree of doctor of

medicine from the Harvard Medical School (1853).

[254] See the “Manual of Gymnastic Exercises, Arranged on Hygienic

Principles and Adapted to Music. Compiled by E. H. Barlow, Captain of

the Class of ’66, Barrett Gymnasium, Amherst College” (Amherst, 1863).

A second edition was published in 1866, and a third in 1875. It will be

recalled that in 1864 Amherst College conferred on Dio Lewis the honorary

degree of Master of Arts.

[255] The gift of a new gymnasium to Amherst College in 1884, by C. M.

Pratt of the class of ’79, brought new and much-needed facilities, to

which important additions have been made during more recent years; but

the unique contribution of the College, and of Dr. Hitchcock, himself,

to the advancement of physical training in America was made in the

two decades which succeeded the trustee meeting of August, 1859. Dr.

Hitchcock was chairman of the meeting in Brooklyn at which the American

Association for the Advancement of Physical Education was organized

(November 27, 1885). He was also its first president, a member of the

committee on statistics and measurements, and a frequent contributor to

the early programs.

[256] Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, 1841, March 16; removed to New York

City at the age of thirteen, and in 1861 became a professional gymnast;

as a member of the New York Caledonian Club was a leading figure in

its annual games, and at national Caledonian meets he twice won the

championship medal. He died at Princeton February 23, 1920.

[257] See Dr. E. M. Hartwell, “Physical Training in American Colleges and

Universities” (Bureau of Education, Circular of Information No. 5, 1885.

Washington, 1886), pp. 39, 60-67. It is possible that Cornell University

and Hamilton, Union, and Wabash Colleges should be added to the list.

[258] See “The Life of Daniel Coit Gilman,” by Fabian Franklin (New York:

Dodd, Mead & Co., 1910), pp. 70-73.

[259] See Bulletin 1918, No. 13 of the United States Bureau of Education

(Benjamin F. Andrews, “The Land-Grant of 1862 and the Land-Grant

Colleges”), and an article by Herman Balson in _The Outlook_ for May 4,

1901 (pp. 81-85).

[260] See “Rowing and Track Athletics: Rowing by Samuel Crowther, Track

Athletics by Arthur Ruhl” (New York, The Macmillan Co., 1905); and

“Football, the American Intercollegiate Game,” by Parke H. Davis (New

York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911).

[261] The idea of the pulley weight is an old one. See an illustrated

article in the _Deutsche Turnzeitung_, 1902, pp. 289-292, and Captain

Chiosso’s “The Gymnastic Polymachinon” (London, Walton & Maberly; Paris

and New York, H. Ballière, 1855).

[262] The appointment as assistant professor was for the usual term of

five years. After that period, and until his retirement in September of

1919, his title was simply “Director of the Hemenway Gymnasium.”

[263] See Dr. Hartwell’s Report on “Physical Training in American

Colleges and Universities” (Washington, 1886), pp. 41-59.

[264] At the meeting in Brooklyn which resulted in the organization of

the American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education, in

1885, Dr. Sargent was elected one of three vice-presidents. In 1890 he

was chosen president, and held the same office again in the years 1892-94

and 1899-1901. He was also an active member of the Society of Directors

of Physical Education in Colleges from the time of its organization

in 1897, serving as president in 1899. Outside of these professional

associations he has been busy with voice and pen in the interest of

wholesome and nationwide physical training, and against excesses in

athletics, the abuse of military drill in the public schools, and other

unwise measures. A list of his more important papers and addresses

would include no less than forty titles (see pp. 9-22 in the “Fiftieth

Anniversary” volume prepared in 1919 and presented to Dr. Sargent at a

dinner given in his honor at Hotel Vendome, Boston, on the evening of

December 27th of that year). Twelve papers and essays were collected

into a volume under the title “Physical Education” and published in

1906 (Boston, etc., Ginn & Co.), and two years earlier another volume,

“Health, Strength and Power,” had appeared (New York and Boston, H. M.

Caldwell Co. Reissued in 1914 by the Dodge Publishing Co., New York).

[265] See the reports of a standing committee of the Society of Directors

of Physical Education in Colleges, based on questionnaires sent out in

1909, 1915, and 1920, and published in the _American Physical Education

Review_ for February, 1912, March, 1916 and November, 1921. These reports

supply the other figures quoted in succeeding paragraphs.

[266] An important step looking toward effective faculty control of

intercollegiate athletics was taken when the Intercollegiate Athletic

Association of the United States was formed in 1906. Four years later the

name was changed to “National Collegiate Athletic Association.” Annual

conventions have been held during the Christmas holidays since 1906.

[267] An “American Students Health Association” was organized in Chicago

March 4, 1920, and held its first annual meeting in that city on December

31st of the same year.

CHAPTER XXIV.

GERMAN-AMERICAN GYMNASTIC SOCIETIES AND THE NORTH AMERICAN TURNERBUND.

The first introduction of the Jahn gymnastics into the United States,

in the years 1825-1828, we owe to Follen, Beck, Lieber, and Völker, men

who had been associated with the German _Turnvater_ or had come under

his influence during their university days in Europe and who fled from

their native land to America or England in consequence of the reactionary

measures adopted by the Holy Alliance after the murder of Kotzebue by

Karl Sand in 1819. Although Prussia’s example in suppressing public

_Turnen_ was followed by other German states, the procedure was by no

means universal, so that between 1820 and 1840 not only did the old

organizations continue without interruption in certain cities, but a

number of new societies of older boys or young men, who met regularly for

exercise, were formed here and there. One sign of the quickened political

life which followed the accession of Frederick-William IV to the Prussian

throne in 1840 was a general revival of the Jahn gymnastics, we have seen

(p. 102). New societies sprang up everywhere, until at the close of the

decade they numbered nearly three hundred. The desire for union which

early showed itself was met by holding district conventions (_Turntage_)

and gatherings for gymnastic exercises (_Turnfeste_). Agitation for

reform in state and nation found many bold and able adherents among these

later disciples of Jahn, and Saxon and South German turners, especially,

took an active part in the revolutionary movements of 1848 and 1849. The

prompt suppression of all such popular outbreaks and the new reactionary

policy pursued by the various governments led to an exodus of thousands

of disappointed patriots to the United States, and these brought with

them, together with other institutions and customs of the fatherland, the

German _Turnen_.

The Cincinnati _Turngemeinde_, the oldest German-American gymnastic

society in this country, was organized November 21, 1848, at the

temporary home and with the coöperation of Friedrich Hecker, now an

exile, but the popular hero of a republican uprising in South Germany

earlier in the same year. He had been one of the foremost leaders of the

advanced revolutionary party. A week later another group of men, most of

them turners before their migration and former followers of Hecker and

Struve, met in Hoboken and organized the New York _Turngemeinde_. Other

societies followed in rapid succession, so that within three years there

were 25 or more in existence, with an aggregate membership of nearly

2000. These were scattered all the way from _New England_ (Boston), _New

York_ (New York, Brooklyn, Poughkeepsie, Utica, and Rochester), _New

Jersey_ (Newark), _Pennsylvania_ (Philadelphia, Reading, Pittsburgh, and

Allegheny), and _Maryland_ (Baltimore), to _Ohio_ (Cincinnati, Columbus,

and Cleveland), _Kentucky_ (Louisville), _Indiana_ (Indianapolis),

_Illinois_ (Peoria), and _Missouri_ (St. Louis) in the west, and as

far as New Orleans in the southwest. Four societies, in New York,

Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Cincinnati, contained about half of the

total membership.

The first steps looking toward union through the formation of a national

_Turnerbund_ were taken in New York as early as July of 1850, and at

Philadelphia on the 5th of the following October delegates from Boston,

New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and Baltimore effected a provisional

organization, under the name of the “United _Turnvereine_ of North

America.” The next August (1851) the Philadelphia _Turngemeinde_ invited

all the societies in the country to join in a general _Turnfest_ (the

first) in that city on September 29 and 30. Between six and seven

hundred turners responded, and at a second convention held on October 1

and 2 delegates from nine societies completed the details of permanent

organization. The name was now changed to the “_Socialistic Turnerbund_.”

New York was made the headquarters of the Executive Committee (_Vorort_),

the members of which were to be chosen by the New York _Socialistischer

Turnverein_. The first number of the monthly _Turnzeitung_, the official

organ of the _Bund_, was issued November 15, 1851, and reported that 11

societies, with 1072 members, had already joined.

By October of 1853, when Philadelphia became the seat of the Executive

Committee, the number of societies had increased to about 60, and 10

others, recently organized, were expected to announce their accession

shortly. Seven years later there were altogether above 150 societies,

and the total membership had risen to between 9000 and 10,000. A list of

all those in existence at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 reveals

the following distribution: Massachusetts (4 societies), Connecticut

(5), Rhode Island (1), New York (12), New Jersey (13), Pennsylvania (7),

Delaware (1), Maryland (1), District of Columbia (2), Virginia (1),

West Virginia (1), Ohio (11), Indiana (8), Michigan (3), Illinois (29),

Wisconsin (13), Minnesota (7), Iowa (11), Missouri (6), Kansas (5),

Kentucky (4), Tennessee (2), South Carolina (1), Alabama (2), Louisiana

(2), Texas (1), and California (4)—a total of 157 societies in 27 states

of the Union.

These early societies, most of whose members had been profoundly

stirred by the popular uprising in Germany, did not confine their

activity to the practise of gymnastic exercises. On the other hand,

leavened by men of education, character, and superior ability, they

were centers of agitation for a great variety of reforms. American

socialism, for example, found here its first home. The “Statutes”

adopted by the Convention in Philadelphia October 5, 1850, announce

that the organization aims to secure the most complete independence of

the individual, along with his physical development, and declare the

promotion of socialism and the efforts of the Social-democratic Party

a matter of supreme importance. The _Turnerbund_ sought to assist each

member to a clear understanding of proposed political, social, and

religious reforms, to the end that in a spirit of radical progress he

might lend them effective aid, either individually or through the agency

of the _Bund_. The shadow of approaching Civil War helped to give to

love of freedom immediate objects of thought and endeavor. The Buffalo

Convention of 1855 (September 24-27) put itself on record as opposed

to slavery, and especially to its extension into free territories; to

the so-called American Party or Know-nothings, and to any other body

of similar spirit; and to all temperance legislation, which was deemed

undemocratic in principle and unjust and unpractical in operation.

In view of this multiplicity of interests it is not strange that the

history of physical training in the early societies was a checkered

one. For a time the official _Turnzeitung_ contained excellent articles

on gymnastics by Magnus Gross and Eduard Müller. The first Executive

Committee of the _Turnerbund_ distributed drawings of pyramids, and

employed Louis Winter, an expert turner from Leipzig, to visit the

smaller societies as itinerant teacher and to assist them in fitting up

outdoor gymnasia. Among the members of the larger societies were usually

to be found men able to direct the exercises of adults and older boys.

At the Cincinnati Convention of 1852 the Committee was asked to arrange

for the preparation of a suitable manual of gymnastics. The task was

committed to Eduard Müller (1803-1886), who completed it before the end

of the year.[268] Müller was born in Mainz, and becoming acquainted with

the Jahn _Turnen_ while a student of drawing and painting at the Munich

Academy organized a _Turnverein_ in his native city, and later became

its leader, city teacher of gymnastics, and editor and publisher of the

_Mainzer Turnzeitung_ (p. 103). When the disturbances of 1848 drove him

to America he continued his activity in the New York _Turnverein_, and

until 1858 was teacher of gymnastics in its school. His manual of nearly

350 pages was illustrated with numerous lithographed plates. It did not

prove as satisfactory a guide as had been hoped, partly on account of the

clumsy terminology adopted, and not half of the thousand copies printed

were sold at the published price (seventy-five cents).

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.

As early as 1851, at the Philadelphia Convention, the _Turnerbund_

had announced itself in favor of the Free-soil party platform. The

delegates to the Pittsburgh Convention in September of 1856 announced

their adhesion to the platform of the new Republican party and to

its candidates, Fremont and Dayton. In October of 1860 the Executive

Committee, now located in Baltimore, sent out letters calling upon

societies everywhere to support the Republican platform and vote for

Lincoln in the coming election. This advice was generally followed, even

in the slave states. The next spring, during the riot of April 19 and 20,

a mob sacked the hall of the Baltimore society when their demand that the

national flag floating above it be replaced by the state one was refused,

and on the 22nd the office of the _Turnzeitung_ met a like fate. The

editor and most of the members of the _Turnverein_ were forced to flee

from the city. The _Turnerbund_ was therefore left without headquarters

or official organ, and since no attempt at recovery could prove effective

in the face of the approaching struggle, which engrossed all attention,

each society was left to shift for itself throughout the years of Civil

War as best it could.

President Lincoln’s call for volunteers, issued just before these events

in Baltimore, met with an immediate response among the German-Americans,

whose actions at this time demonstrate beyond question the sincerity

of their enthusiasm for freedom and human rights. Exact figures are

not available, but it seems tolerably certain that out of the total

membership of nine or ten thousand at the outbreak of the war between

five and six thousand turners joined the Union army, and to this number

should be added about two thousand more who had formerly belonged to

societies and now fought side by side with their old comrades. In the

St. Louis _Turnverein_ three full companies, well drilled and completely

equipped, were ready to take the field at once. The Seventeenth Missouri

Regiment was made up chiefly of members of societies in the Southwest

and was therefore known as the Western _Turnregiment_. The Twentieth New

York State Volunteer Regiment, twelve hundred strong, contained three

companies of New York turners, two from Williamsburg, one from Newark,

and others from societies along the Hudson and in the interior of the

state, with some men from Boston and Philadelphia. More than half the

membership of the Cincinnati _Turngemeinde_ enlisted at the first call,

and these and other turners from neighboring cities composed a large

part of the Ninth Ohio Volunteer Infantry. On the evening that the

Philadelphia _Turngemeinde_ decided to raise a battalion of volunteers

86 men out of a membership of about 260 signed their names to the roll,

and within eight days four companies were formed. These were attached to

the Twenty-ninth New York or Astor Regiment. The Chicago _Turngemeinde_

met in extra session the day following Lincoln’s summons to hear the

excuses of such members as were unable to enlist, and had a company of

105 men ready to march by the night of April 17. A second company was

organized immediately afterwards. Turners from the Milwaukee and other

Wisconsin societies were incorporated in the Fifth Wisconsin Regiment as

Company C, known as the “Turner Rifles.” Many societies were so reduced

in numbers by enlistment that they found it necessary to disband, and

effort was everywhere centered on the support of those who were hastening

to the field, or had already gone. The roll of turner dead is a long and

honorable one.

During the years of the Civil War the _Turnerbund_ retained only a

nominal existence. The old Executive Committee remained in office, but

few societies kept up their connection with this central body and it

received no financial support. Immigration from Germany, where _Turnen_

was now making rapid strides forward, had given an impetus to gymnastics

in the larger societies meanwhile, and _Turnvereine_ in and near New

York City had effected a district organization, with monthly conventions

and _Turnfeste_. At their suggestion the New York _Turnverein_ undertook

to manage a general _Turnfest_, in which societies all over the country

were invited to share, and after which the matter of reorganizing the

_Bund_ was to be discussed. On September 14, 1864, accordingly, delegates

from twenty-two societies outside the New York district met with their

hosts in a sort of improvised national convention, which reaffirmed the

former platform and appointed a provisional central committee. In less

than five months six other district organizations, after the New York

plan, had reported their existence. The next spring at Washington (1865,

April 3-5) fifty-eight societies were represented by delegates in regular

convention, and on the first day the details of reorganization were

completed under the name _Nordamerikanischer Turnerbund_ (North American

Gymnastic Union).[269] The headquarters of the Executive Committee were

established in New York, and its members were to be chosen by the New

York district (_Turnbezirk_). Physical training was declared to be the

first object of the societies. All active members were to take part in

the gymnastic exercises up to their thirtieth year, after a uniform

system based on the Jahn-Eiselen model and the “free exercises” of

Spiess, and suitable classes for boys and girls were also to be provided.

The following table reveals the progress made in the next two decades:

------+----------+------------+---------+----------------+----------

| | | members.+--------+-------+ employed.

------+----------+------------+---------+--------+-------+----------

1866 | 96 | 6,320 | 3,240 | 3,317 | 120 |

1868 | 148 | 10,200 | | | |

1872 | 187 | 9,920 | 4,500 | 4,770 | 394 |

1877 | 167 | 11,653 | 3,906 | 6,318 | 1,069 |

1878 | 162 | 11,313 | 3,799 | 7,307 | 1,795 |

1879 | 178 | 12,376 | 3,044 | 6,972 | 2,083 |

1880 | 186 | 13,387 | 4,199 | 8,337 | 2,388 |

1881 | 188 | 14,885 | 5,586 | 9,286 | 2,701 |

1882 | 183 | 16,349 | 7,357 | 10,141 | 3,040 | 97

1883 | 187 | 17,537 | 7,372 | 10,312 | 3,186 | 111

1884 | 199 | 19,713 | 8,439 | 11,392 | 3,572 | 106

1885 | 213 | 21,809 | 5,117 | 12,228 | 4,005 | 98

1886 | 231 | 23,823 | 5,562 | 13,161 | 3,888 | 95

------+----------+------------+---------+--------+-------+----------

During the same period national _Turnfeste_ were held as follows:

XV. 1865, September 2-6 Cincinnati.

XVI. 1867, June 10-13 Baltimore.

XVII. 1869, August 7-11 Chicago.

XVIII. 1871, August 5-10 Williamsburg (now Brooklyn, E. D.).

XIX. 1873, June 26-29 Cincinnati.

XX. 1875, New York.

XXI. 1877, July 18-23 Milwaukee.

XXII. 1879, August 2-6 Philadelphia.

XXIII. 1881, June 4-7 St. Louis.

XXIV. 1885, June 20-24 Newark, N. J.

A paragraph added to the by-laws of the _Turnerbund_ at the Convention

held in Pittsburgh September 1-5, 1856, provided that a school for the

complete preparation of teachers in the theory and practice of physical

training should be established in the city where the Executive Committee

was located. This was almost five years before Dio Lewis opened his

Normal Institute for Physical Education in Boston. The next September the

Executive Committee, whose headquarters at that time were in Cincinnati,

reported to the Detroit Convention that lack of means had prevented the

carrying out of the provision. At the Rochester Convention in 1860 (July

30 to August 2) the Committee reaffirmed the necessity of establishing

a central normal school, at the same time that it acknowledged the want

of success which had hitherto attended its efforts. Soon after the

reorganization of the _Turnerbund_ in 1865 the new Executive Committee,

in New York City, took up the matter again, and worked out a plan to

be laid before the next national convention. Resolutions adopted by a

conference of teachers of gymnastics which followed the Cincinnati

_Turnfest_ of 1865 also recommended that the step be taken. Both actions

were reported to the St. Louis Convention of 1866 (April 1-4), and

it was decided to open such an institution at once, with a one-year

course which should include lectures on the history and aims of German

_Turnen_, anatomy and aesthetics in their relation to gymnastics, and

first aid, together with gymnastic nomenclature, the theory of the

different systems, and practical instruction with special regard to

the training of boys and girls. Only persons whose qualifications as

teachers were attested by some _Turnverein_ were to be admitted, and

certificates of attendance and proficiency were to be awarded to pupils

who were successful in examinations given at the close of the course. The

direction of instruction was entrusted to three persons to be appointed

by the Executive Committee.

In accordance with this decision the normal school was opened in _New

York City_, November 22, 1866, ten years after the original proposal,

with an attendance of nineteen men from different parts of the country.

The practical instruction was given by Wilhelm Heeseler, formerly a pupil

at Hermann Otto Kluge’s gymnasium in Berlin, and the lecturers were Dr.

H. Balser, Dr. Julius Hofmann, Eduard Müller, and Heinrich Metzner. Nine

men remained for the final examinations, on February 13, 1867, and five

of these received diplomas. The second course was opened in New York

January 3, 1869, and at its close on July 2 of the same year diplomas

of the first grade were granted to five pupils and those of the second

grade to three. At the Pittsburgh Convention of 1870 (May 29 to June 1)

it was voted to move the normal school from New York to _Chicago_. The

third course (six months, beginning in January, 1871), conducted in that

city under the direction of August Lang, John Gloy, and George Brosius,

fell short of expectations, although there were ten participants, of whom

four obtained diplomas as teachers and two as _Vorturner_. The great fire

of October 8-10, 1871, made another change necessary, and the fourth

course was therefore held in _New York City_ again, from October 27,

1872, to the end of May, 1873. Seven diplomas of the first grade and four

of the second were granted, and three pupils received certificates as

_Vorturner_. The Rochester Convention of 1874 (May 24-27) transferred the

school to _Milwaukee_, and there in the years 1875-1888 ten courses were

completed.

The technical director of the Normal School during all these years in

Milwaukee was George Brosius, who becomes therefore the most important

single figure in the earlier history of _Turnvereine_ of the German type

in America. His father was born in Hesse-Darmstadt in 1815 and his mother

near Leipsic in 1818, but both came to this country with their parents in

the early thirties, and settled in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Here they met

and married, and here the boy was born, September 9, 1839. In 1842 the

family moved to Milwaukee, which was thenceforward to be his home except

for a few brief intervals. He was educated first in the public schools

and afterwards in the Engelmann School, now known as the German-English

Academy. Eduard Schulz, a political fugitive from Berlin, was conducting

a private gymnasium in the city, and this the boy attended. When the

_Turnverein_ “Milwaukee” opened its classes for children in 1854 he

joined one of them, becoming a junior member (_Zögling_) of the society

soon after and entering into full membership in 1858. Already he had

developed such great ability as a gymnast that he was able to win the

first prize for juniors at the _Turnfest_ of the Western societies held

in Milwaukee in 1857. In that year he was also admitted to the militia

company commanded by his father. After the latter’s death (1859) he moved

to St. Louis, and was following there the trade of painter and decorator

at the outbreak of the Civil War. Although married only a few months

before, he immediately returned to Milwaukee, enlisted as a volunteer

for the three-year term, and was made sergeant in Company E of the Ninth

Wisconsin Regiment, later receiving a commission as second lieutenant in

the Thirty-fifth Regiment of Wisconsin Volunteers.

[Illustration: FIG. 81.—George Brosius (1839-1920).]

The career of Brosius as a teacher of gymnastics, which was to continue

without interruption for fifty fruitful years, began in the autumn

of 1864, when he undertook the direction of the various classes of

_Turnverein_ “Milwaukee.” The regular exercise soon restored his

former degree of strength and skill, and a long list of successful

appearances in local, district, and national _Turnfeste_ gave evidence

of his own merit as a practical gymnast and of his gift for developing a

corresponding proficiency in his pupils. In 1866 the Engelmann School,

one of the first to introduce physical training into its curriculum,

secured a part of his time as teacher, and during the same period he was

also conducting the exercises at the Milwaukee Gymnasium, frequented

chiefly by native Americans. Then followed a year in Chicago (1870-1871),

in the service of the “Aurora” and Scandinavian societies. When the third

course of the _Turnerbund’s_ Normal School was opened there, in January

of 1871, he became one of the three teachers who directed it. But the

great fire of October sent him back to Milwaukee, to open a private

gymnasium and take up again his work at the Engelmann School, and in 1873

to resume his former position at _Turnverein_ “Milwaukee.”

The next period of his life, and the most fruitful one, opens in

1875, with the transfer of the Normal School of the _Turnerbund_ to

_Turnverein_ “Milwaukee.” Brosius became its technical director, as we

have seen, and in the ten courses held between 1875 and 1888 more than

a hundred teachers of gymnastics were graduated from the institution,

to become leaders in _Turnvereine_ all over the country, and many of

them to undertake the direction of physical training in important city

school systems or in other positions of large influence. From 1875 to

1883 Brosius himself served as superintendent of physical training in

the public schools of Milwaukee, and after 1878 as instructor in the

National German-American Teachers College (_Lehrerseminar_), which had

been established there.[270] The rules in force at the time the ninth

course was given in Milwaukee (1885-1886) required that it should last

not less than ten months, and should include systematic instruction in

the following subjects: Practical gymnastics, gymnastic nomenclature,

the value and uses of the different pieces of apparatus, the preparation

of series of graded lessons in gymnastics; the history and literature of

physical training, including systems and methods, with special attention

to modern times; the history of civilization, in connection with the

preceding course; the essentials of anatomy and physiology; hygiene,

medical gymnastics, and first aid; the principles of education, and

practical hints derived from them; the German and English languages and

literature; simple popular and _Turner_ songs; foil, sabre, and bayonet

fencing; swimming. There was also to be frequent observation of classes

in gymnastics, for adults and for school children, and practice in

conducting them. It was deemed desirable that every graduate should be

able to use the English language in his teaching.

[Illustration: FIG. 82.—Gymnasium of the Milwaukee _Bundesturnhalle_.]

Some idea of the organization and activities of the _Turnerbund_ as

it was in January of 1886 may be gathered from the annual statistical

summary published by the Executive Committee in that year. This shows 231

societies, grouped in 30 districts (_Turnbezirke_). The total membership

reported was 23,823, of which number 18,164 were citizens of the United

States, 5562 were on the list of active turners, and 3201 actually took

part in the gymnastic exercises. Ninety-five professional teachers of

gymnastics were employed. There were 1028 members in the junior societies

(_Zöglingsvereine_), and 587 had passed from these into the regular

_Turnvereine_ during the preceding year; 13,161 boys and 3888 girls were

enrolled in the classes for children; 436 members took part in fencing,

and 399 in rifle-shooting; 1722 belonged to singing sections. The society

libraries contained 44,139 volumes; 224 lectures had been delivered

and 283 debates conducted, and during a single month 109 meetings for

intellectual improvement were held. The attendance at day schools

supported by the societies was 1921, at night schools 428, and at Sunday

schools 1482. One hundred and forty-four societies occupied buildings of

their own, and the total value of society property was $2,556,018, of

which amount $1,662,583 was free from debt.

The year 1886 may be regarded as a turning point in the history of the

German-American gymnastic societies, and there is some reason for calling

the period which precedes this date the German one, and that which

follows the American. The immigrants not unnaturally gravitated toward

cities or sections where communities of fellow-countrymen were already

established. They continued to use the mother-tongue among themselves,

and the consequent imperfect command of English, together with certain

continental customs which they retained, serve to explain the fact

that few Americans outside of their own ranks appreciated the aims of

the _Turnvereine_ or knew how much they were doing to provide physical

training for children and adults. For example, Dr. E. M. Hartwell, for

two years a resident of Cincinnati, and director of the gymnasium at

Johns Hopkins University at the time he was asked to prepare for the

Bureau of Education a report on physical training in American colleges

and universities, had travelled widely in states east of the Mississippi

before completing his manuscript in the spring of 1885, and yet did not

learn of the existence of _Turnvereine_ in the United States until his

visit to Germany that summer. Two pages of the appendix to the report,

added after his return, are devoted to the North American _Turnerbund_.

At its national convention in Boston in the summer of 1886 the

_Turnerbund_ authorized its executive committee to appoint delegates to

the second annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement

of Physical Education, and before this body, in Brooklyn on the 26th of

November following, three papers were accordingly read by representatives

thus named, and an exhibition of German gymnastics was given by classes

from New York and Brooklyn societies. This was the beginning of a

systematic campaign undertaken to acquaint American educators and the

public in general with the claims and merits of the German system.

Representation by delegates at the annual meetings of the American

Association for the Advancement of Physical Education was continued, and

at Philadelphia in 1892 a paper by William A. Stecher made an especially

favorable impression; a special committee of well-known men (Doctors

Hitchcock, Sargent, and Hartwell) was invited to attend the national

_Turnfest_ in Milwaukee in 1893 as guests of the _Turnerbund_, and other

similar committees were appointed at several succeeding _Turnfeste_;

there were demonstrations and exhibits at the World’s Fair in Chicago

(1893), together with the distribution of great quantities of printed

matter; a monthly periodical, _Mind and Body_, started in March, 1894,

has been issued regularly ever since;[271] a summer school was held at

Milwaukee under the auspices of the _Turnerbund_ in 1895 and the three

years following; and a “Text-book of German-American Gymnastics” was

published in 1896.[272]

For years the _Turnvereine_ had provided classes for children of school

age, directed by their own teachers of gymnastics and held in their own

gymnasia. These enrolled 13,161 boys and 3888 girls in January of 1886,

and ten years later the numbers had risen to 18,582 boys and 10,274

girls. But within the same decade of expansion (1886-1896) falls the

introduction of physical training into the public school systems of many

cities under the supervision of graduates from the Normal School of the

_Turnerbund_. Among the very first to take such a step was Kansas City,

Missouri, in 1885, and the career of Carl Betz, the man who proposed the

action and himself directed the work during the next thirteen years, may

be taken as typical of this phase of the second period in the history of

German-American gymnastics.

His father and mother, both natives of Bavaria, came to America in 1843

and 1844, and were married at Baltimore in the latter year. Their second

home was Belleville, Illinois, where the boy was born June 1, 1854.

Two years afterwards they moved again, to St. Paul, and in this young

capital the father’s social and political activity made him member of

the common council and of the school-board, United States assessor,

one of Minnesota’s Presidential electors, and a speaker (in German) in

the Greeley campaign of 1872. Carl was educated in the public schools,

and took one year of the high school course, but then discontinued

his studies to enter a bank as office boy. Four years later he had

advanced to the position of general bookkeeper and assistant teller.

In April of 1875 he was employed as teacher of gymnastics by the St.

Paul _Turnverein_, and the next autumn decided to fit himself further

for the work by attending the Normal School of the _Turnerbund_, which

had just been transferred to Milwaukee. The four-months’ course there

was completed early in 1876, and for most of the decade following he

was actively engaged in the practice of his new profession in various

western societies—at South Bend, Indiana (1876-1877), Louisville,

Kentucky (1877-1882), Terre Haute, Indiana (1882-1883), St. Paul again

(1883-1884), and finally in the _Socialer Turnverein_ of Kansas City,

Missouri, beginning in January of 1885.

[Illustration: FIG. 83.—Carl Betz (1854-1898).]

At a meeting of the Kansas City Teachers’ Institute on May 2, 1885, Mr.

Betz was present with a class of a dozen girls and led them in a series

of exercises with wands and Indian clubs which excited much interest. In

the discussion that followed, the need of some sort of physical education

in the schools was generally recognized. He assured the teachers that

he could work out a plan which might be successfully introduced, and

a motion was carried requesting him to do so. The result was a little

pamphlet of eighteen pages, published by the _Socialer Turnverein_. The

next October the School Board accepted his proposal to conduct gymnastic

exercises in the public schools for three months without pay. Before the

end of that period, however, on December 5, 1885, they appointed him

director of physical training, and thus he was launched upon the career

which ended only with his death, on April 28, 1898. During the last two

years of his life he was also supervisor of music in the city schools.

The executive committee of the _Turnerbund_ made him a member of the

committee which represented the German-American gymnastic societies at

the second meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of

Physical Education (November 26, 1886, in Brooklyn), but the paper which

he presented there, on the introduction of gymnastics into the public

schools, does not appear in the published _Proceedings_ of that year.

Another, read at the sixth annual meeting (April 4, 1891, in Boston)

describes the system and methods employed in Kansas City, and will be

found, much abridged, in the corresponding volume of _Proceedings_. Mr.

Betz was also director of the first summer school conducted under the

auspices of the national _Turnerbund_, at its Normal School in Milwaukee

(July 1 to August 10, 1895).

[Illustration: FIG. 84.—Gymnasium of the Washburn School, Cincinnati.

(From a photograph loaned by Dr. Robert Nohr).]

[Illustration: FIG. 85.—Gymnasium of the Westwood School, Cincinnati.

(From a photograph loaned by Dr. Robert Nohr).]

A letter written in 1887 explains his plan of instruction as follows: “On

every Saturday the director of physical training drills the principals

of the different ward schools. These in turn drill their assistants, the

regular teachers, on every Monday. The assistants take up the new drill

for the week on every Tuesday. The drill is obligatory, and is taken as

any of the other studies. At ten o’clock all principals strike a gong,

and at this signal all teachers take up the drill at once (daily). Thus

at the same time all school children throughout the city have the same

exercise. Each teacher is furnished with a manual of instruction, which

clearly marks the work to be accomplished. The scholars, of course, do

not leave the schoolroom.... As yet we have only free gymnastics, but

as soon as possible dumb-bells, wands, poles, rings, and clubs will

follow. Then gymnastic games and popular gymnastics will be taken up, and

lastly heavy gymnastics on apparatus.” The little manual of instruction

to which he refers was afterwards expanded into a _System of Physical

Culture in a Series of Four Books, i.e., Free Gymnastics_ (Kansas City,

1887), _Gymnastic Tactics_ (1887), _Light Gymnastics_ (1887), and

_Popular Gymnastics: Athletics and Sports of the Playground_ (1893).

Later editions of these books, all more or less revised, were published

in Chicago (A. Flanagan Co.). Additional volumes were planned, and even

announced as “in preparation,” but never completed. The ones named were

adopted as guides in the schools of numerous other cities, and also

served as models for similar works prepared by fellow-graduates of the

Normal School who occupied corresponding positions elsewhere.

Among the considerable number of cities which soon followed the example

of Kansas City in introducing systematic instruction in gymnastics into

the public schools under the direction of graduates from the Normal

School of the _Turnerbund_ were Chicago, in 1886, under Henry Suder

(class of ’75); Davenport, Iowa, 1887, under William Reuter (’78);

Cleveland, Ohio, 1887, under Karl Zapp (’75); St. Louis, 1890, under

George Wittich (’82); Sandusky, Ohio, 1890, under Hans Ballin (’90);

Columbus, Ohio, 1892, under Anton Leibold (’77); Cincinnati, Ohio, 1892,

under Carl Ziegler (’86); Milwaukee, 1892, under Hans Rasmussen (’88);

and Dayton, Ohio, 1892, under Robert Nohr (’90). Schoolroom manuals like

those of Betz were published by Ballin, Leibold, and Rasmussen.[273]

Karl Kroh (’79) was head of the department of physical training in the

Cook County, Illinois, Normal School 1891-1899, and in the University of

Chicago School of Education 1901-1907. William A. Stecher (’81), after

three years as supervisor of physical training in the public schools of

Indianapolis (1904-1906), was appointed director of physical education in

the Philadelphia schools in January of 1907; and in the same year George

Wittich (’82), who had been successor to Brosius at the Normal School of

the _Turnerbund_, became supervisor of physical training in the Milwaukee

schools. Reports from societies to the National Executive Committee under

date of January 1, 1920, show that in 51 cities 171 men and 91 women

graduated from the Normal School of the _Turnerbund_ (now known as the

Normal College of the American Gymnastic Union) were employed as teachers

in the public schools.

The varying fortunes of the _Turnerbund_ since 1886 are suggested by

the following table, compiled from statistical reports which reveal

conditions in the constituent societies on January 1 of the year

mentioned.

-----+----------+-----------+--------+----------------+---------

| | |members.+-------+--------+employed.

-----+----------+-----------+--------+-------+--------+---------

1887 | 237 | 26,722 | 5704 |14,123 | 4,765 | 104

1890 | 277 | 35,912 | 7337 |17,145 | 7,735 | 148

1893 | 316 | 41,877 | 7604 |17,389 | 8,702 | 172

1895 | 314 | 39,870 | 7647 |18,879 | 9,992 | 180

1900 | 258 | 33,964 | 5675 |17,252 | 9,756 | 166

1905 | 244 | 37,090 | 5843 |18,033 |10,823 | 167

1910 | 234 | 39,207 | 5134 |12,870 | 7,897 | 146

1915 | 218 | 37,941 | 4989 | 9,264 | 7,958 | 165

1920 | 186 | 33,853 | 4135 | 6,782 | 6,958 | 125

-----+----------+-----------+--------+-------+--------+---------

On January 1, 1920, there were also 2760 juniors (boys fourteen to

eighteen years of age), 1904 older men, and 6565 women enrolled

in classes; 123 in fencing, 971 in singing, and 283 in dramatic

sections; and 6404 in the Women’s Auxiliary, organized at the time of

the Twenty-seventh National Convention of the _Turnerbund_, held in

Louisville, Kentucky, June 22-24, 1919, and intended to “unify as much

as possible the efforts of the women’s societies connected with the

gymnastic societies, and to increase their efficiency.” One hundred and

forty-two societies owned their gymnasia, and the total value of the

property of all societies was $6,842,224, of which amount $4,995,718 was

free from debt.

[Illustration: FIG. 86.—Kansas City Turners at the Thirty-first

_Bundesturnfest_, Denver, 1913 (From a photograph loaned by Dr. Robert

Nohr).]

To the list of national _Turnfeste_ given on p. 296 the following have

been added:

XXV. 1889, June 22-25 Cincinnati.

XXVI. 1893, July 21-25 Milwaukee.

XXVII. 1897, May 6-10 St. Louis.

XXVIII. 1900, June 18-23 Philadelphia.

XXIX. 1905, June 21-25 Indianapolis.

XXX. 1909, June 23-27 Cincinnati.

XXXI. 1913, June 25-29 Denver.

XXXII. 1921, June 29-July 3 Chicago.

We have seen (p. 299) that in the years 1889-1891, while Brosius was

in New York City and the new gymnasium of the _Turnerbund_ was being

built in Milwaukee, its Normal School occupied temporary quarters in

Indianapolis, with the _Socialer Turnverein_ and under the direction

of William Fleck (class of ’81). Two courses were given here, and 32

men and 1 woman were graduated. The last three courses under Brosius

(1895-1899) covered two years each. Upon his retirement George Wittich

(class of ’82) was called from St. Louis to serve as technical director,

the scope of the school was broadened, and in the years 1902-1907 five

more courses, each of one year’s duration, were held in the Milwaukee

_Bundesturnhalle_, graduating a total of 36 men and 23 women. At the

close of that period the building was sold, and on September 23, 1907,

the newly christened “Normal College of the North American Gymnastic

Union,” incorporated under the laws of Indiana and authorized to confer

academic titles and degrees, was opened in the German House of the

Indianapolis _Socialer Turnverein_. The name was changed to “Normal

College of the American Gymnastic Union” in June of 1919. Karl Kroh

(class of ’79) was the technical head for two years (1907-1909), and

since that time the position has been held by Emil Rath (’98).

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Jahrbücher der Deutsch-Amerikanischen Turnerei. Dem gesammten Turnwesen

mit besonderer Berüchsichtigung der Geschichte des Nordamerikanischen

Turnerbundes gewidmet. Herausgegeben und redigirt von Heinrich Metzner.

Three volumes of six numbers each, published in New York from November,

1890, through October, 1894.

Jahresberichte des Vororts des Nordamerikanischen Turnerbundes. In 1920

the English language was substituted for the German in these and the

title now reads “Annual Report of the National Executive Committee,

American Gymnastic Union.” Each report covers a period extending from

April 1 to April 1.

The _Amerikanische Turnzeitung_ (weekly), the official organ of the

_Turnerbund_ since January 1, 1885.

Proceedings of national conventions, reports of national _Turnfeste_,

catalogues of the Normal College, and numerous other occasional

publications issued by the National Executive Committee.

The “Brosius 1864-1914” illustrated souvenir.

I am indebted to Mrs. Carl Betz for material relating to her husband’s

life and work. Most of what is said of Brosius and Betz has already

appeared in print, as Chapters XV and XVI in the author’s “Pioneers of

Modern Physical Training” (New York, 1915).

FOOTNOTES:

[268] “_Das Turnen. Ein Leitfaden für die Mitglieder des Sozialistischen

Turnerbundes und alle Freunde der Leibesübung. Im Auftrage des

Vororts dargestellt von Eduard Müller, Turnlehrer. Mit erläuternden

Zeichnungen._” New York, Buchdruckerei von John Weber, 58 Chatham St.,

1853.

[269] The name was changed to _American Gymnastic Union_ June 24, 1919.

[270] The “Central _Turnverein_” of New York City drew him away for two

years (1889-1891) with its $800,000 building and its membership of 3000,

to take charge of classes which soon enrolled 160 actives, 100 older men,

150 women, and from 1400 to 1500 children. Meanwhile the Normal School

of the _Turnerbund_ had been moved to Indianapolis, but a building of

its own was now ready in Milwaukee, connected with the new home of the

Teachers College and the German-American Academy (the model school of

the College), and in these commodious quarters Brosius took up again the

task of training teachers. Seven courses were held and 59 more men were

graduated under him between 1891 and 1899. In the latter year he retired

permanently from the Normal School, but took up his earlier position in

_Turnverein_ “Milwaukee,” to continue there his active teaching until

in June of 1914 he had rounded out a full half-century of professional

achievement. He died in Milwaukee March 17, 1920.

No account of his career would be complete without mention of the

famous “Frankfort Squad” of 1880. The fifth general German _Turnfest_

was to be held at Frankfort-on-the-Main on July 25-28 of that year, and

_Turnverein_ “Milwaukee” decided to send a team of seven members, under

their teacher Brosius, to take part in the exercises and compete for

prizes. To the amazement of everyone, at home and abroad, they succeeded

in winning second, third, fifth, sixth, thirteenth and twenty-first place

in the competitions. Herman Koehler, whose mother was the oldest sister

of Brosius, carried off the second prize. He afterwards completed the

course at the Normal School (1882) under his uncle, and since 1885 has

been Master of the Sword and director of physical training at the West

Point Military Academy, with the present rank of Colonel.

[271] The editors have been Hans Ballin (March, 1894—June, 1896), Franz

Pfister (August, 1896—December, 1906), and William A. Stecher (since

January, 1907).

[272] A Text-book of the German-American System of Gymnastics, Specially

Adapted to the Use of Teachers and Pupils in Public and Private Schools

and Gymnasiums. Edited by W. A. Stecher, Secretary of the Committee on

Physical Training of the North American Gymnastic Union. Boston, Lee and

Shepard.

[273] Gymnastics in the School Room: A Manual for the Use of Teachers. By

Hans Ballin. Erie, Pa., Herald Printing and Publishing Co., 1891.

Manual of Physical Culture for Public Schools, by Anton Leibold.

Columbus, Ohio, Journal-Gazette Press, 1892.

Physical Culture for Public Schools: A Manual for the Use of Teachers. By

Hans Rasmussen. Chicago, Geo. Sherwood & Co., 1893.

CHAPTER XXV.

PHYSICAL TRAINING IN THE YOUNG MEN’S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS.

In 1869, eighteen years after the introduction of the Young Men’s

Christian Association into America, the first Association buildings to

contain gymnasia were dedicated, in San Francisco and New York, and in

the latter city William Wood took up his duties as the first director

of an Association gymnasium. By the close of another eighteen years,

when the number of gymnasia reported had increased to 168, and the paid

directors to 50, it had become apparent that steps must be taken to

provide adequately trained leaders for this phase of work in individual

Associations and some sort of general oversight for the whole country.

Accordingly in 1887 a department of physical training was added to

the Young Men’s Christian Association Training School in Springfield,

Massachusetts, a summer school for gymnasium directors was opened at that

institution, and the International Committee established a department for

supervision of the physical work with a special secretary at its head.

Luther H. Gulick, a young student who had just finished his first year

in the medical department of New York University, was chosen to fill the

office thus created, and was also made one of two instructors in the

new department at the Springfield Training School. The other, Robert

Jeffries Roberts, was a veteran of twelve years’ experience as director

of the gymnasium at the Boston Young Men’s Christian Association, and at

that period the most influential and widely known teacher of gymnastics

engaged in Association work.

His colleagues in the earlier days had been drawn in many cases from the

ranks of professional gymnasts, trained in difficult and showy feats

of strength and skill. William Wood, an Englishman born in December,

1819, had conducted a private gymnasium in New York for thirty years

before he was called upon to superintend the equipment and exercises

in the new Twenty-third Street building (1869-1889).[274] At the

Brooklyn Association in the eighties was James Douglas Andrews, born in

Kilmarnock, Scotland, July 25, 1839, who became proficient in gymnastics

and athletics under the tuition of the Huguenins in London, and for

nearly a score of years had been in charge of private and other gymnasia

in Glasgow, Belfast, Ottawa, Toronto, and at various points on the

Pacific coast. John C. Doldt, of the Providence Association, was the

first manager and instructor at the Tremont Gymnasium, on the corner of

Eliot and Tremont Streets in Boston (opened in 1859), and afterwards

travelled about the country as a professional athlete. Roberts himself

had come under the influence of Doldt and of Dr. George Barker Winship,

a graduate of Harvard College and Medical School, who went about

lecturing on physical culture and giving exhibitions of heavy lifting

in the sixties, and whose interesting “Autobiographical Sketches of a

Strength-Seeker,” published in the _Atlantic Monthly_ in 1862, have

already been mentioned (p. 258).

[Illustration: FIG. 87.—Robert Jeffries Roberts (1849-1920).]

It was such models as these that Roberts sought to copy during his own

years of apprenticeship. Born in England June 29, 1849, he was brought

to America in early infancy, and thereafter resided in Boston with the

exception of three years in Springfield and Utica (1887-1890). He nearly

completed the course of study at the Phillips Street Grammar School,

at fifteen entered the service of the Western Union Telegraph Company,

first as messenger boy and afterwards as delivery clerk, and finally

gave up this position to earn his living by the wood-turner’s trade.

Primarily to escape from the evil influences of the streets, he joined

the Tremont Gymnasium in 1864, and a few years later was both exercising

and giving instruction at the Union Gymnasium, 300 Washington Street,

and also visiting Dr. Winship’s gymnasium across the way, next door to

the Boston Theater. When the Young Men’s Christian Association bought

out the Tremont Gymnasium, in 1872, he continued his membership there,

and now made it his practice to go two nights a week each, in regular

rotation, to the Union, Association, and Winship gymnasia. In 1875,

having determined to devote himself to the new calling, he asked to be

made superintendent of the Association gymnasium, and on the first of

July began to discharge the duties of that position.

A list of his best performances at about this time will serve to show

the aims and results of the strenuous course of discipline to which

Roberts had subjected himself hitherto. Although only five feet five

inches high, he weighed 145 pounds and had a 43-inch chest, 32-inch

waist, 23-inch thigh, 14½-inch calf, and 15-inch upper arm. With a

yoke on his shoulders he lifted 2200 pounds, could rise from a lying to a

sitting posture while holding a 100-pound weight back of his neck, push

up a 120-pound dumb-bell with each hand, pull himself up to the chin 3

times with either hand and 35 times with both, had covered more than 12

feet in one broad jump and 35 feet in three, cleared 4 feet 6 inches in

a standing high jump from either side, 5 feet 4 inches in a leap with

running start, and 9 feet with the pole, put the 16-pound shot 35 feet

right and left, threw the 16-pound hammer 70 feet, walked a mile in less

than eight minutes and 6 miles an hour, ran 100 yards in eleven seconds

and 5 miles in thirty minutes, had learned to box and wrestle, and was a

good swimmer and oarsman.

But this is not the type of work which Roberts advocated in 1887, when

he was called from Boston to Springfield, or for which he is remembered

in Association circles today. After a few years of experience, he says,

it began to dawn upon him that health did not necessarily improve as

strength increased, and that the Winship plan of heavy lifting was not

calculated to yield “the greatest good to the greatest number, physically

speaking,” any more than the Dio Lewis exercises, which he considered

too light and easy. “I noticed when I taught slow, heavy, fancy, and

more advanced work in acrobatics, gymnastics, athletics, etc.,” he

writes,[275] “that I would have a very large membership at the first of

the year, but that they would soon drop out because they could not do

the work, and ... the weak members would not renew the next season.... I

give most of my attention to those who need it most, the beginners and

those who cannot for various reasons do the more advanced work. By ...

pushing simple work I can get more men to go into it, and find it easier

to find leaders to teach it, and also can run more classes in a day....

In competitive work and the harder kind of safe exercises ... the men

leave the classes and become spectators, but when I teach easier work

the crowd do the work and the few look on.” He was also led to emphasize

trunk exercises rather than those of the legs and arms, in order to

influence respiration and circulation favorably and keep the abdominal

organs in a condition of healthy activity; and special attention was

given to those muscles which expand the chest, draw back the head and

shoulders, and hold the body erect.

According to the Roberts “platform,” as it came to be known, all

exercises should be “safe, short, easy, beneficial, and pleasing.” They

must be safe for the man who does them, _i.e._, well within the limits

of his capacity at the time. When apparatus is employed such work must

be selected that the members of the squad or class follow each other

rapidly, without tedious waits. No exercise must represent more than

a slight advance over others which have preceded it. Each “must serve

some definite and useful end,” instead of being chosen at random and

with nothing in mind beyond the mere desire to keep the class busy. It

must give pleasure if it is to exert its full effect and not degenerate

into a sort of monotonous and mechanical “grind.” These principles found

illustration in the _Roberts Dumb-bell Drill_, the _Home Dumb-bell

Drill_, and the little volume of _Classified Gymnasium Exercises, with

Notes_,[276] which were very generally used in Association gymnasia

thirty years ago.

While he was still in Boston Roberts had been conducting a sort of

training school, and during the years 1885-1887 25 or 30 men went out

from his gymnasium to become instructors. At Springfield the summer

session of 1887 (six weeks) was attended by 24 men, or 48 per cent of

the whole number then engaged in Association work; that of 1888 (July 17

to August 21) by 50 men; and the third, in 1889 (June 30 to July 31),

by 57 men. At the regular sessions of the Training School there were 5

juniors and 1 senior in the Gymnasium Department in the year 1887-1888,

and 6 juniors and 2 seniors in 1888-1889. After two years in Springfield

Roberts resigned to take charge of a new Association gymnasium in Utica,

New York, but the next year (1890) accepted an invitation to return to

his old position in Boston, where he continued his activities as teacher

almost to the day of his death, December 22, 1920. Together with several

assistants he conducted four-weeks summer courses there in July of 1893

and 1894, himself giving instruction in the system of floor work which he

had made so widely popular.[277]

[Illustration: FIG. 88.—Luther Halsey Gulick (1865-1918).]

Luther Halsey Gulick, associated with Roberts at the Springfield

Training School in 1887-1889, was superintendent of its physical

department for twelve years (1889-1900), and for sixteen years special

secretary charged with supervision of the physical work in the Young

Men’s Christian Associations of North America, under the International

Committee—the first man to be appointed to such a position. He was the

third son and fifth child of Dr. Luther Halsey Gulick, a missionary

located for a time in the Hawaiian Islands, and was born in Honolulu

December 4, 1865.[278] The first fifteen years of the boy’s life were

far from monotonous. In 1870 the father was called to New England, to

act as a temporary district secretary of the American Board, and here

his family soon joined him. Late in 1871, upon the Board’s decision

to undertake missionary work in Roman Catholic countries, they sailed

for Spain, to make their home in Barcelona for two years and a half.

August of 1873 found them settled in Florence, but the closing of the

mission in Italy the next year was followed by Dr. Gulick’s return to the

United States, and in 1875 he accepted a call to become the agent of the

American Bible Society in China and Japan, with headquarters in Yokohama.

Meanwhile the family had remained in Europe for six months after his own

departure for America, and now Mrs. Gulick and four of the children were

left behind in California, and did not follow him to Japan until 1877.

Three years later Luther Halsey, Jr., again crossed the Pacific, to make

his home for a time with an older sister whose husband had just been

appointed to a professorship in Oberlin College.

Two uncles had graduated from Williams College, and his two older

brothers, Sidney Lewis and Edward Leeds, completed the course at

Dartmouth in 1883, but his own desire for a college education was not to

be gratified. Although he was enrolled in the preparatory department of

Oberlin College during a part, at least, of the school years 1880-1882

and 1883-1884, severe headaches which now made their appearance rendered

continuous application to study impossible and finally compelled a change

of plan. He had entered the middle preparatory class in the fall of 1885,

but was taking some work in the college department and rooming with a

sophomore, Thomas D. Wood, now Dr. Wood of Teachers College, Columbia

University. What happened just at this time may be told in his own

words.[279] “The advent of one of Dr. Sargent’s graduates, Miss Delphine

Hanna, now Dr. Hanna, had brought to our minds in a more vivid way then

ever before, that there was really such a thing as scientific teaching

of gymnastics, genuine body building. We had both of us been very much

interested in the gymnastics and athletics of the college, had identified

ourselves thoroughly with all the work that was going on in these lines,

and had read as far as we were able what had been written on the subject

at that time. Blaikie’s _How to Get Strong_, particularly the chapter

entitled ‘What a Gymnasium Might Be and Do,’ filled us with enthusiasm.

One Sunday afternoon we took a long walk out into the woods, and sitting

beside a rail fence (I can picture the situation even now), we looked

forward to the future of physical training. We spoke of the relation

of good bodies to good morals, we thought of the relation of bodily

training to mental training.... The glimpse which we secured that day of

the future has remained ... a prophecy of the work which each of us was

to do....”

His own course thus determined upon, Gulick at once left Oberlin for

Cambridge, Mass., to spend the winter in Dr. Sargent’s Normal School

of Physical Training. On April first following (1886) he began his

professional career, as superintendent of the gymnasium with the Young

Men’s Christian Association of Jackson, Michigan; but withdrew from this

position the next fall in order to take up the study of medicine at the

University of New York, from which his father had graduated thirty-six

years before. For six weeks in July and August of 1887, together with

Robert J. Roberts, he conducted the first summer school for directors

of Association gymnasia, at the Springfield, Massachusetts, Training

School, and these two men constituted the special teaching staff of

the department of physical training which was added to the school at

this time and opened its first regular session on Armory Hill early in

September of the same year. The next month the International Committee

secured a part of his time for the task of supervising the physical

side of Association work in the country at large. Meanwhile his medical

studies in New York were continued, and completed in 1889. He also served

in 1887-1888 as medical examiner at the Twenty-third Street Association,

where William Wood was still superintendent of the gymnasium, and during

a part of the New York period was in charge of the physical training at a

girls’ school in Harlem.

For thirteen years, until the close of the school year 1899-1900, Dr.

Gulick retained his position at the International Young Men’s Christian

Association Training School in Springfield, after 1888 as superintendent

of the physical department and during most of the time as instructor

in the history and philosophy of physical training. The service under

the International Committee was continuous from October of 1887 until

his appointment as director of physical training in the public schools

of Greater New York, in 1903. The problem that confronted him was

twofold—first to find and train new men for the physical directorship and

to unite and guide and stimulate those already in the field; and second

to develop a type and methods of work suited to Association conditions.

In 1887 there were only 50 “superintendents” and 3 assistants employed

in the 168 gymnasia reported by American Associations. By 1900 the

number had increased to 244 physical directors and 22 assistants, in

491 gymnasia, and nearly 80,000 men and 20,000 boys were being reached

by physical agencies. The regular course at the Springfield Training

School covered two years until 1895, when it was extended to three, and

meanwhile, in 1890, a second and independent institution of similar

sort had been incorporated in Chicago. For five years, from 1887 through

1891, summer courses, lasting from four to six weeks, were given at the

Training School, and attended, respectively, by 25, 50, 57, 33, and 23

men. A western section, at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, in July of 1890, had

an attendance of 16. These were succeeded by summer “conferences,” more

informal and intended for directors already in the work, which met for a

week or ten days each year from 1892 through 1895. In 1896 and thereafter

the conferences were held under the auspices of the International

Committee. Additional educative means were the correspondence courses

for physical directors, first offered by the Training School in the fall

of 1891 and continued for four years, and the monthly Athletic League

Letter, beginning in November of 1898. The Physical Directors’ Society

of the Young Men’s Christian Associations of North America was organized

during a conference held at Lakewood, on Chautauqua Lake, New York, June

16-18, 1903.

The relation of physical training to Association work as a whole, and

the type and methods suited to Association conditions, Dr. Gulick

considered in a paper on “Our New Gymnastics,” read at the Twenty-eighth

International Convention (Philadelphia, May 11, 1889), and one on “The

Distinctive Features of the Physical Work in the Association” at the

Twenty-ninth Convention (Kansas City, May 9, 1891). He urged that man is

a unit, that the Associations “are working for _young men_, not simply

for their bodies, minds and souls, but for the salvation, development and

training of the whole man complete as God made him,” and that physical

education therefore forms a vital part of the Association program.

The objects of exercise and the sorts needed in Association gymnasia

were discussed at the first and second summer conferences of physical

directors (1892 and 1893) and in the columns of _Physical Education_ for

May, 1892, and January and October, 1893. He furnished the chapter on the

Physical Department for a “Hand-Book of the History, Organization and

Methods of Work of Young Men’s Christian Associations,” issued by the

International Committee in 1892 (pp. 297-339), and presented the claims

of “The Physical Directorship of the Young Men’s Christian Association as

a Life Work” in a pamphlet published by that body in 1890.

A desire to render anthropometric methods uniform and useful resulted

in a “Manual for Physical Measurements in connection with Association

Gymnasium Records,” which was ready in 1892. An anthropometric chart was

also compiled and published. He read a paper on “The Value of Percentile

Grades” before the American Statistical Association February 10, 1893,

and for Volumes II and III of _Physical Education_ (November, 1893, to

January 1895), prepared a series of articles on “Physical Measurements

and How They Are Studied.” In connection with the summer conferences

various “hygienic drills” and lists of exercises on apparatus suitable

for Association use were elaborated. James Naismith, an instructor

at the Training School, invented basket ball in the autumn of 1891

to meet the need of a good indoor game, and it was described in the

_Triangle_, the school paper, for January 15, 1892. To promote all-around

development a _Pentathlon_, comprising the hundred-yard dash, throwing

the twelve-pound hammer, the running high jump, the pole vault, and the

mile run, was recommended, with a scheme for uniform scoring. Some years

of agitation and discussion led in 1895 to the formation of the Athletic

League of Young Men’s Christian Associations of North America, designed

primarily “to band together those who feel that athletics are often large

elements in the formation of character, and to arrange for them lines of

coöperation;” and “to foster a better spirit of manliness in connection

with these activities that will banish from them the discourtesy and

dishonesty by which they have been too often disgraced.” The first

official handbook of the League was issued in 1897.

Gymnastic therapeutics formed the subject of a course of lectures given

at the Thousand Islands Conference in 1900, and a series of articles

published in Volumes I and II of _Physical Training_ (November, 1901,

to April, 1903); and material prepared originally for classes at the

Training School and for the Athletic League Letter appeared later

under the title “Physical Education by Muscular Exercise” as Part II

of the seventh volume (“Mechanotherapy”) in _A System of Physiologic

Therapeutics_, edited by Dr. S. S. Cohen (Philadelphia, 1904). The duty

and opportunity of the Association in its relation to boys was emphasized

at the Mobile, Alabama, Convention in 1897, in Volumes VII and VIII of

the _Association Outlook_ (1897-1899), and before the Physical Directors’

Conference at Dayton, Ohio, in June of 1899. Other studies led to papers

on “Some Psychical Aspects of Muscular Exercise” (Appleton’s _Popular

Science Monthly_, October, 1898) and “Psychological, Pedagogical, and

Religious Aspects of Group Games” (_Pedagogical Seminary_, March,

1899). How indefatigable was Dr. Gulick’s pen may be gathered from the

bare enumeration of the periodicals which he employed successively as

a regular means of expression: The Physical Department of the _Young

Men’s Era_ (1890, to September 1), the _Triangle_ (February, 1891, to

January 15, 1892), _Physical Education_ (March, 1892, to July, 1896),

_International Training School Notes and Association Outlook_ (January

to July, 1897), the _Association Outlook and Training School Notes_

(October, 1898, to July, 1900, two volumes), and _Physical Training_

(November, 1901, to June, 1903, two volumes). He was also editor of the

_American Physical Education Review_ from June of 1901 through 1903.[280]

In the summer of 1890 the Springfield Training School, hitherto a

department of Rev. David Allen Reed’s “School for Christian Workers,” was

separately incorporated under the name “Young Men’s Christian Association

Training School,” changed early the next year to “International Young

Men’s Christian Association Training School,” and in the spring of 1891

thirty acres of land bordering on Massasoit Lake, on the outskirts of

Springfield, were secured as a site for future buildings. A gymnasium,

the first structure erected on the new grounds, was completed in the

summer of 1894 and formally opened October 26, a dormitory and recitation

hall was added in 1896, Woods Hall, a social center, in 1904, Pratt Field

in 1910, the west gymnasium in 1911, and a library and a natatorium in

1913. Dr. James Huff McCurdy, who was to become Gulick’s successor as

director of the physical course, joined the staff in the fall of 1895,

and at that time the course of study and practice was extended to cover

three years. In 1905 the Massachusetts Legislature authorized the school

to confer the degrees bachelor and master of physical education (B.P.E.

and M.P.E.), and in April, 1912, its name was changed to “International

Young Men’s Christian Association College.” Three years later the

trustees voted to make the course for physical directors a four-year one,

beginning in September of 1916.

At a secretaries’ conference held in Montreal in June of 1884 the plan

of a permanent summer camp and “institute” was proposed, and in August,

while a number of Association men were together at Camp Collie, Lake

Geneva, Wisconsin, a committee settled upon that lake as the site of

such a camp, adopting the name “Western Secretarial Institute.” Land was

purchased in the spring of 1886 and on the 6th of October the institute

was incorporated under the laws of Wisconsin. July 1-29, 1890, a summer

school for physical directors was held on the camp grounds, under the

auspices of the Springfield, Massachusetts, Training School and the

direction of Dr. Luther H. Gulick. Meanwhile, on June 28 of the same

year, the “Young Men’s Christian Association Training School” (Chicago)

had been incorporated, with the object of training young men for the

duties of general secretary, physical director, and other Association

officers. It opened its first two-year course September 10th, in rooms of

the Central Young Men’s Christian Association, 148 Madison Street, with

Dr. E. L. Hayford “principal of the physical department,” and in 1891 and

following summers conducted at Lake Geneva courses similar to those given

there in July of 1890. In May of 1896 the Chicago school and the Lake

Geneva Institute were consolidated under the title “Secretarial Institute

and Training School of Young Men’s Christian Associations,” changed to

“Institute and Training School of Young Men’s Christian Associations” in

1903, and ten years later to “Young Men’s Christian Association College.”

The summer school at Lake Geneva was made an integral part of the

Training School, _i.e._, a required summer term, in 1901, and the course

for physical directors became a three-year one in the fall of 1908. The

purchase of a block of land lying between Fifty-third and Fifty-fourth

Streets and Drexel and Ingleside Avenues, as a site for an independent

College home, was announced early in 1912, and the new building erected

there (5315 Drexel Avenue) was formally dedicated November 30, 1915.

George W. Ehler was principal of the physical department 1892-1897,

John W. Shaw 1897-1900, and Dr. Winfield S. Hall 1900-1903. Dr. Henry

F. Kallenberg, who had been assistant principal since 1896, then became

director of the department of physical training, and retained the

position until the fall of 1917, when he was succeeded by Martin I. Foss.

January 1, 1898, the International Committee added to the part-time

services of Dr. Gulick as secretary for the Physical Department the whole

time of George T. Hepbron, whose chief task was to promote the Athletic

League. Hepbron resigned in 1905, and the next year Dr. George J.

Fisher was called to the position from the physical directorship of the

Brooklyn, New York, Association. He was already serving as president of

the Physical Directors’ Society of the Young Men’s Christian Associations

of North America and editor of its official organ, _Physical Training_,

which had resumed publication under the new auspices in November of

1905 (Volume III. Volumes I and II had been published by Dr. Gulick at

Springfield between November, 1901, and June, 1903). A second secretary,

Dr. John Brown, Jr., was added to the department in June of 1910, and

a third, William H. Ball, in November of the same year. Dr. Fisher

resigned November 1, 1919, to become Deputy Scout Executive of the Boy

Scouts of America, and Dr. Brown then became senior secretary. The years

since 1900 have seen the influence of the Associations reaching beyond

the bounds of their own membership into the community at large. Work

for boys, as well as young men, has been organized, and leadership has

been furnished to a great variety of social agencies providing physical

training and working for health betterment—to playgrounds, Sunday-school

athletic leagues, swimming campaigns, summer camps, etc., etc. A handbook

of “Physical Work: Management and Methods” was compiled by a special

committee of the Physical Directors’ Society and published in 1913 (New

York, Association Press). This served as the basis of discussion at an

eight-day conference held early in the following year, out of which

grew a new volume, “Physical Education in the Young Men’s Christian

Associations of North America,” issued in 1914 (New York, Association

Press), and revised and republished under the same title in 1920 (New

York, Association Press). Chapter ten in the latest revision describes

briefly the very great service rendered by the physical department of

the Young Men’s Christian Associations in organizing recreative work

during the Great War, in army camps and naval stations at home and among

the allied troops in Europe.[281] The Physical Directors’ Society has

held annual conferences since 1903 (except in 1917 and 1920), and has

continued the publication of _Physical Training_ (monthly, except July

and August) since November of 1905.

The number of Associations reporting attention to physical training,

through gymnasia or other means, the number of members participating, and

the number of physical directors and assistants employed, as reported in

the _Year-Books_, have been as follows:

----+-------------+----------+-------------+---------------+-----------

----+-------------+----------+-------------+---------------+-----------

1885| 131 | 101 | 54 | | 35

1890| 466 | 407 | 262 | | 151

1895| 559 | 495 | 355 | | 227

1900| 556 | 507 | 357 | 80,433 | 294

1905| 673 | 571 | | 133,627 | 342

1910| 724 | 658 | | 271,506 | 495

1915| 1112 | 728 | | 447,351 | 650

1920| 899 | 838 | | 488,478 | 663

----+-------------+----------+-------------+---------------+-----------

The number of swimming pools increased from 151 in 1905 to 293 in 1910

and 610 in 1920; and the number of athletic fields from 143 in 1905 to

205 in 1920. The _Year-Book_ covering the period from May 1, 1919, to

April 30, 1920 reports 151,209 men and 157,772 boys enrolled in regular

classes at the Association gymnasia, 2927 men and 6469 boys in leaders’

clubs, 916 leaders in community service, and 107,580 persons aided by

this community service. Nine summer schools for physical directors were

held in 1920, attended as follows: Springfield, Mass. (86 men); Silver

Bay, N. Y. (101); Blue Ridge, N. C. (45); Lake Geneva, Wis. (100);

Hollister, Mo. (14); Estes Park, Colo. (20); Asilomar, Calif. (34);

Seabeck, Wash. (16); and Lake Couchiching, Ontario (43).

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Catalogues of the Springfield and Chicago colleges and the Springfield

periodicals mentioned on page 317, official Handbooks of the Athletic

League of the Young Men’s Christian Associations of North America,

_Physical Training_, and the Year-books and other publications of the

International Committee. The biographical sketches of Roberts and Gulick

have already appeared in print, as Chapters XVII and XVIII in the

author’s “Pioneers of Modern Physical Training” (New York, 1915).

FOOTNOTES:

[274] See his “Manual of Physical Exercises: Comprising Gymnastics,

Calisthenics, Rowing, Sailing, Skating, Swimming, Fencing, Sparring,

Cricket, Baseball. Together with Rules for Training and Sanitary

Suggestions.” New York, Harper & Brothers, 1867. Second edition,

enlarged, in 1870.

[275] Quoted by Dr. Gulick in the _Association Seminar_ for May, 1908, in

the course of an authoritative and exhaustive paper on Roberts and his

work.

[276] Compiled by A. K. Jones. Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1889. Other editions

later.

[277] See “The Body Builder, Robert J. Roberts,” by B. Deane Brink. New

York and London, Association Press, 1916.

[278] Some knowledge of Dr. Gulick’s ancestry is required if one seeks

to explain the work he accomplished with such limited preparation of a

formal sort. Peter Johnson Gulick (1797-1877), the third of seven sons

of a New Jersey farmer, and a descendant of Hendrick Gulick, who came to

this country from the Netherlands in 1653, was graduated from Princeton

College in 1825, studied afterwards in Princeton Theological Seminary,

married Fanny Hinckley Thomas, of English ancestry, and in November of

1827 sailed with her from Boston under appointment as a missionary of the

American Board. The following March, only eight years after the opening

of the mission to the Hawaiian Islands, they reached Honolulu by way of

Cape Horn, and in this field he remained in active service for forty-six

years. Of his eight children one died during student days in America,

and all the rest became missionaries. Luther Halsey, the oldest son

(1828-1891), came to the United States and entered an academy in Auburn,

New York, in the fall of 1841, and after further study with a physician

in Amboy, New Jersey, went to New York City for three years in medicine,

first in the College of Physicians and Surgeons and then in the medical

department of the University of New York, from which he was graduated

in the spring of 1850. The next year he was ordained as a missionary,

married Louisa Lewis, daughter of a New York merchant, and started back

on the long journey around Cape Horn. For eight years (1852-1860) he was

stationed at Ponape and Ebon Islands, in Micronesia. At the end of that

time, broken in health, he returned to Honolulu. Several years of public

speaking on missionary topics in the United States followed, and then

from January of 1864 till February of 1870 he was secretary of the Board

of the Hawaiian Evangelical Association, the agent of the American Board

on the Hawaiian Islands and in Micronesia. See “Luther Halsey Gulick,

Missionary in Hawaii, Micronesia, Japan, and China,” by Frances Gulick

Jewett (Boston and Chicago, Congregational Sunday School and Publishing

Society, 1895).

[279] _Physical Education_ =1=, 25 (April, 1892).

[280] In 1900, not yet thirty-five years old, Dr. Gulick resigned his

position at the Springfield Training School in order to become principal

of the Pratt Institute High School, in Brooklyn. Three years later he was

appointed director of physical training in the public schools of greater

New York, but retained this office only until 1908, and then accepted the

directorship of the department of child hygiene under the Russell Sage

Foundation. In 1913 he became president of the “Camp Fire Girls.” A study

of his labors since 1900, in these new fields, in organizations like the

American Physical Education Association and the Playground Association of

America, and as an advocate of the Efficient Life by spoken and written

words which reached an ever-growing audience would carry us beyond

the immediate object of this sketch, which is to suggest the place he

has filled in the evolution of ideals, means, and methods of physical

training in the Young Men’s Christian Associations of North America.

He died at Camp Gulick, on Sebago Lake, Maine, August 13, 1918. The

following books suggest his later interests: “The Efficient Life” (1907);

“Mind and Work” (1908), “Medical Inspection of Schools” (with Leonard P.

Ayres, 1909), “The Healthful Art of Dancing” (1910), “The Dynamics of

Manhood” (1917), and “A Philosophy of Play” (1920).

[281] See the “Army and Navy Athletic Handbook,” New York, Association

Press, 1919.

CHAPTER XXVI.

SWEDISH SCHOOL GYMNASTICS IN THE UNITED STATES.

The next move was to New York City, where for a year he conducted