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VERLOOK," the new Masonic Home crowning the hills of Charlton, was dedicated May 25 with impressive ceremonies conducted by the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts.

The concourse of Masons from far and near was one of the largest that ever gathered together in the East, and great interest in the home was shown by the thirtyfive hundred people who visited it during the day.

Worcester is fast becoming noted as a centre of activity for social and secret orders as well as an industrial and educational centre. Blessed with unexcelled advantages, the "Heart of the Commonwealth " with its outlying suburbs offers ideal sites for homes such as the Odd Fellows and Masons now have here.

The building itself and the story of its purchase have been told before in these columns. It suffices now to say that the remodeled building met only praise from the thousands who roamed through its halls and rooms on the day of its dedication.

The ceremonies of the day took place in the open air. Shortly after one o'clock, the sixty officers charged with the dedication ceremonies marched down the steps to a platform erected in front of the main entrance.

Past Grand Master John Albert Blake of Malden, who was largely instrumental in crystallizing into action. the sentiment for such a home, addressed Grand Master Dana J. Flanders and asked for the dedication. Previously the assemblage, led by a double quartette and a portion of the Orient Band of Lynn, had sung a Masonic hymn. During other portions of the dedicatory exercises the quartette sang effectively.

Following a responsive service led by the chaplain of the Grand Lodge and the offering of prayer, Grand Master Flanders gave a short historical sketch of the efforts which had resulted in the purchase and furnishing of the splendid home at a cost of $78,000. He announced that there had been paid and pledged to date $179,127.

Past Senior Grand Warden Melvin M. Johnson delivered the address of the day. Eloquently he drew from the establishment of this home the great lessons which all the world should heed and which Freemasonry is teaching to generation after generation of members in every portion of the civilized world. The lesson of service, the foundation of all enduring human achievement, was forcibly told in these sterling sentences:

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There can be but one philosophy for the civilization of the millennium; there can be but one principle upon which any country can stand if it is to be successful unto the end.

"The world must stop making declarations of independence and must declare for dependence of man upon his fellowman. It must cease to include the idea of unconfined immunity in its definition of liberty, and must define liberty as the right to do what one pleases, so far and only so far as it does not interfere with the rights of others to do the same thing. In short, we must cease asserting our rights as against each other, and declare our duties toward each other.

"It is for us to take part in the ceremony of initiating mankind to the degree of good Samaritan, passing it to the degree of neighbor and raising it to the degree of service.

"Service is the issue of the commandment that 'thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself;' to serve and to help others brings the greatest joy and satisfaction which life contains.

"That nation whose unity of principle is service will have no Gibbon as its historian, the great reaper will never witness its decline and fall, the sands of its hourglass will never waste nor be exhausted, but its prosperity and progress will be triumphant and perennial.

The arrangement of details for the dedication was in the hands of a committee of seven from the Grand Lodge: W. H. Odell, Boston, chairman; William M. Belcher, Winchester; Charles S. Proctor, Lowell; Homer S. Joslin, Oxford; Charles A. Harrington and Arthur L. Burton, Worcester; E. L. Miller, Springfield.

PERHAPS the greatest membership campaign ever inaugurated by the Worcester Board of Trade went into effect Thursday morning, June 1st, when five squads in charge respectively of Michael W. Donahue, J. Harvey Curtis, Julian F. Bigelow, Burt W. Greenwood and James F. Healy began a thirty-day canvass of this city for new members. The membership of this organization at the time of the annual meeting was 855, a gain of 320 men in the past two years.

It is now felt that the stride forward toward the 1000 mark should be made, and it is believed that this number can be secured in thirty days without the slightest. difficulty.

The inspiration for this latest attack on the citadel of apathy by the members of this organization banded together for civic development sprang from a letter sent out by the new President, Edward M. Woodward, on May 22d, to the members of every committee that the Board comprises. This letter read:

Dear Sir:

The watchword of the Worcester Board of Trade for this year is to be "Service." With this in mind, you are, as a member of an important committee from this Board, most earnestly and urgently requested to be present at a joint meeting of all committees in our hall next Wednesday evening, May 24, at 8 o'clock.

It is our intent to make this joint meeting mark an epoch in the history of this organization. We have a threefold object in calling a meeting of this unusual character at this particular time: first, to give you an opportunity to voice the needs of this city as you see them; second, to state the projects upon which think you your committee can work this year with profit; and third, to allow us to place before you a plan now being formulated which, with your co-operation, we believe will result in bringing the membership of this organization up to 1000 men.

I shall deem it a personal favor if you will attend this meeting. Yours very truly,

EDWARD M. WOODWARD,

President.

On the night in question, nearly one hundred of the leading business men of the city gathered in Board of Trade Hall and Mr. J. Lewis Ellsworth, secretary of our State Board of Agriculture, set the ball in motion by telling what this Board could do for the cause of agriculture and incidentally increase the interest in the work of the Worcester Agricultural Society and Worcester County Horticultural Society.

Dr. Melvin G. Overlock then gave a most interesting résumé of the growth of the anti-tuberculosis crusade he is carrying on. Clerk of the Board Dana M. Dustan recapitulated the work of the School Committee, with which he is identified. Ex-secretary John L. Sewall told of the necessity of the creation of public sentiment here in favor of a house that should be a home and not simply a dwelling place, anent the work of the new Committee on Housing, of which he is a member.

Arthur C. Comins, chairman of the special committee. that has in charge the agitation for redesigning Washington Square so as to secure a fitting approach to the new Union Station, detailed what his committee had done in support of the parking plan of Frederick Law Olmsted at that point.

Senator Daniel E. Denny of our Committee on Legislation depicted the various bills advocated by this Board, all of which, with one conspicuous exception, have passed

both branches, and Mr. Denny told why that one-the Henebery bill-did not also pass.

Mr. Earle Brown, chairman of the Committee on Municipal Affairs, was unable to be present, but made a valuable contribution by letter.

Mr. Henry A. Macgowan, chairman of the Committee on Meetings and Receptions, and himself a most conspicuous example of his subject, gave a superb talk on "Service," and the exercises were brought to a close by the Chairman of the Membership Committee, Mr. Donahue, in an address that bristled with enthusiasm.

It is said that "good wine needs no bush." However that may be, when it was announced, as a climax to the speechmaking, by President Woodward that David H. Fanning, the President of the Royal Worcester Corset Co., had announced his intention of giving to the group of men among the committees obtaining the most members in thirty days a magnificent loving-cup costing $125, the enthusiasm came pretty near being boundless.

After a buffet lunch had been served those present, the Secretary laid out the plan of campaign for the month. This in brief is to the effect that each member of the Membership Committee shall take charge of one squad or group of men in the organization and shall act as their captain while they strive to swell the membership rolls. This means that five groups of energetic Worcester men will in this most beautiful month of the year bend every energy they possess in every moment that they can snatch outside of their usual vocations to the rather unusual, but intensely enjoyable, avocation of corraling new members for the Worcester Board of Trade.

These loyal and enthusiastic workers and their captains

are:

Michael W. Donahue (captain), George A. Bigelow, Daniel P. Callahan, Albert B. Fritts, Arthur R. Haven, Franklin B. Durfee, J. Lewis Ellsworth, William W. Johnson, Walter M. Spaulding, Gilbert G. Davis, Frank B. Hall, Dana M. Dustan, Edwin H. Marble, Melvin G. Overlock.

J. Harvey Curtis (captain), Clarence J. Abbott, Evan F. Jones, Timothy J. Hurley, Thomas T. Schouler, John L. Sewall, Henry P. Savory, Henry F. Blanchard, Harry W. Goddard, Edward P. Ingraham, George H. Coates, James P. Hamilton, Gustaf A. Berg.

Burt W. Greenwood (captain), Luther C. Brown, S. Hamilton Coe, Arthur C. Comins, Benjamin F. Curtis, Edwin P. Curtis, U. Waldo Cutler, Charles Greenwood, George W. King, George C. Moore, Eugene C. L. Morse, Frank E. Williamson, William Woodward.

James F. Healy (captain), Harry R. Sinclair, Freeman Brown, William H. Sawyer, William D. Chenery, Alfred J. Cumming, H. Lennox Bray, Walter D. Ross, Arthur W. French, Winfred A. Woodis, Henry A. Macgowan, Albert E. Newton, Charles H. Ellsworth, G. Stanley Hall. Julian F. Bigelow (chairman), Frank A. Bancroft, Peter B. Moriarty, Albert H. Mirick, Walker Armington, Jr., Archibald McCullagh, S. Foster H. Goodwin, Malcolm M. Grant, William E. Oliver, Louis N. Wilson, Daniel W. Lincoln, Charles Case, Arthur J. Marble, Burton C. Fiske.

On the next page appears the membership blank that promises in the next thirty days to be the most signed paper in Worcester.

better than is produced anywhere else on earth. The measure of success is shown by the tremendous growth of our industries and by the world-wide fame of their products.

In these days of increasing cost of raw materials, the tendency to use poorer grades is marked. Worcester, however, has become pre-eminent in the world of industry by the superior excellence of its products, and its manufacturers have wisely chosen to maintain the same high standard as is shown by the average of cost of materials, which in Worcester is $73,450 per establishment, while in the whole state it is $71,531.

The comparison of salaries and wages is particularly favorable to Worcester. It will be noticed that in both city and state the average number of employees per establishment is fifty-four, but here the total number shows one more on the salary list and one less wage earner than the average for the state. This would seem to indicate that the proportion of brain workers over manual workers is greater in this city than in its sister cities in Massachusetts. The greater degree of skill of employees is emphatically exemplified in the total per establishment of $33,559 in Worcester against $31,192 in the state, with the average number of employees in each instance the This is truly a wonderful showing for Worcester when one considers the high standing of the state as a whole in the payment of its wage earners.

Miscellaneous expenses in Worcester average $1,155 more than in the state. In this item are included rent of factory, taxes, office and other expenses not otherwise classified. A point worthy of attention in this connection -one which has been commented upon by many industrial leaders who have visited our industrial plants-is the fact that a large measure of this increased expense is due to the many factories which maintain laboratories and testing rooms where are gathered groups of men whose scientific attainments and inventive genius are mighty factors in our wonderful industrial growth and in that supreme excellence of products which has carried the name and fame of Worcester into every mart in the world.

In the value of its manufactures per establishment, Worcester shows a considerably larger average than the state as a whole. This point, however, is involved with two others: the cost of materials and the value added by manufacture. Whatever the process of analysis, the results are practically the same. They indisputably demonstrate that Worcester retains the front rank in the march of progress and that in its manufactures it combines elements that are essential to great industrial achievement; high quality of material, skill of workmen, scientific training of executives, financial ability of offi cials and inventive genius of experts are bonded together by the common purpose to make every Worcester product

The diversity of Worcester manufactures is forcibly shown by this comparative table. The averages per establishment so closely approximate those for the entire state that they leave no room for doubt that practically everything made in Massachusetts is produced in Wor

ures. This diversity of product means success for the "Heart of the Commonwealth," and furnishes a standing invitation to industries elsewhere to come to an ideal industrial city where skilled labor of every kind abounds

and where hard times are unknown.

A Beautiful Tribute to Worcester

I do not think the editor of the Worcester Magazine can write a better editorial and pay a more graceful and loving tribute to Worcester than is contained in the following beautiful letter, which he received in the closing days of the month of May, from one of our distinguished sons, who is sojourning temporarily away from us in the world's capital-Mr. Andrew O'Connor, Sr., of Paris. The letter reads:

3 rue Vercingetorix, Paris, May 23rd, 1911.

Mr. Davison, Secretary, Worcester Board of Trade. Dear Sir: I received and examined with great interest the Worcester Magazine which you so kindly sent me.

I could not but admire the beauty of design and perfection of workmanship of the book itself. The design of the cover, the quality of the paper, the precision of the type, the clearness of the printing are equal to the best done here in Paris.

And these are not the only things in which the skill of Worcester rivals the best in the world's capital.

For interior architecture, that of the Worcester National Bank is a model that I have not seen equaled in any bank in Paris, and I've been in some of the most important.

The manufacturing buildings of Worcester, as a rule, are much superior to those in Paris from every point of view, including that of sanitary consideration for those who labor in them.

The products of its manufactories are equal to the best here, and in certain lines much superior. Worcester Co. shoes may be seen any fine day on the boulevards on the feet of thousands of young French men and women, and I've been told that it is the ambition of every French woman to be the possessor of a Worcester corset. A multitude of other things originating in Worcester and vicinity, may be seen in the principal shop windows of Paris, if one takes time to examine them. I might specify some more of them, but you may take my word that from what I've seen, Worcester has within it all the elements of commanding ability, and in due time will be one of the famous cities of the world, not for size and grossness, but for brains and character.

Forty years ago, I married a Worcester girl and settled in her city. I have seen it grow from rudimentary beginnings to its present eminence, as a fountain head from which flow waters of life in the form of religion, science, art and mechanics, and so may, with a basis of reason, assume to be a prophet of the future of the city. I love the place where I was married, my children born and their mother buried, and where the hundreds of companions of my youth sank down to rise no more to the call of the workman's bell. With sincere wishes for the prosperity of Worcester, I will conclude by again thanking you for the Worcester Magazine. Truly yours,

Andrew O'Connor, Sr.