REPORT

OF COMMITTEE OF RECORDS AND CHANGES IN MEMBER

SHIP.

To the Representative Meeting:

The usual reports as to changes of membership have been received and summarized. The total membership reported for Twelfth Month 1, 1918, was 4,474. For the following year the changes were as follows:

157

Net loss for the year, 23. Reported membership, Twelfth Month 1, 1919, 4,451.

The usual tabular statement accompanies this report. Signed on behalf and by direction of the Committee on Records and Changes in Membership.

WATSON W. DEWEES,

Clerk.

PHILADELPHIA, Third Month 3, 1920.

TABULATED STATEMENT showing the changes in membership in the different
Monthly Meetings for the year ending Twelfth Month 1, 1919:

Burlington

Concord
Quarter

Caln
Quar.

Western
Quarter

and Bucks

and Salem

||4474|29|60| 45|| 80|61|12| 4|| 46|69|4451|1547|1878|1026

Net loss for the year, 23. Membership Twelfth Month 1, 1919, 4451.

REPORT

OF THE BOOK COMMITTEE.

To the Representative Meeting:—

The Book Committee has carried on its general work during the past year much as heretofore, endeavoring also to meet such special needs and opportunities as arose.

Early in the year there was an opening for a brief Quaker Tract to be given to the hundreds of visitors who came to the Arch Street Meeting House on the weekly pilgrimages under the guidance of Albert Cook Myers, and an attractive booklet on "William Penn, the Founder of Pennsylvania" with the text from Quaker Biographies was issued. Two thousand five hundred copies were distributed in this way, carrying the story of Penn's personal religious life as a Friend and the application of his religious principles to the practical problems of the creative statesman, to hundreds of soldiers and others from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Copies have also been put into the hands of the children of our Friends' schools, and more than 100 of the public schools of Philadelphia have ordered them in small quantities. Nearly 4,000 copies went to the schools and 1,000 were given to the public school teachers of the State at their annual meeting in Philadelphia about the first of the year, so that nearly 7,500 copies in all have been distributed.

Donations of small lots of books, many of them our own publications, have been made to Barnesville School, Nebraska College, the Friends' Meeting at "The Ridge," Ohio, to a number of Western Friends' "pastors", to the Tecumseh (Mich.) Library. Also more than 50 Quaker and similar books have been presented to several young Friends for their newly established homes, thus carrying out the wishes of the late Elisha Roberts, who desired that his legacy be used especially for the benefit of the younger members.

For two or three years past the Committee has been preparing religious tracts for use in Germany as soon as the situation should permit. Eight tracts were written in English and most of these were translated into German. There have been printed in German seven of the above, "Waiting on God," by J. E. Southall, "His Inward Appearing," by Max 1. Reich, "The Conversion of Kothen," "Turn Inward," by Max I. Reich, "Early Christians and War," by Jonathan Dymond, "Worship and Ministry," by Alfred C. Garrett, and the "Inward Light," by Mary Ward, a chapter in "Principles of Quakerism." These are being distributed by Max 1. Reich, as he finds place for them in his religious labors in Germany, and Alfred Lowry and Carolena Wood are also planning to make use of them. Fifty thousand or more have been sent to Germany and a number of letters have been received speaking appreciatively of their value. Five or six hundred copies were sent to England at the request of the Literature Board of the Council for International Service of London Yearly Meeting.

A translation into German has been made of Rufus M. Jones's Swarthmore Lecture, "Quakerism, a Religion of Life," and at the request of Alfred G. Scattergood, the manuscript has been sent to Germany to be printed there.

The circulation of Peace Literature has been left largely to the Peace Committee, though the Book Store has made a number of additions to its stock of Peace books and it is carrying the reports of the various Peace Commissions of English and American Friends which it is encouraging all Friends to read with care, so as to clarify their ideas on Peace and War, and to conserve the gains of the serious thinking of the past five years.

In the conviction that there was need for new editions of some standard Quaker works and for modern presentations of the truths of Quakerism, our late Friend Isaac Sharpless brought forward a concern which resulted in the publication of the Pennsbury Series of Modern Quaker Books edited by Isaac Sharpless and financed by specially contributed funds. Four volumes of the series have appeared, viz.: "Political Leaders of Provincial Pennsyl

vania," by Isaac Sharpless; "George Fox: an Autobiography," by Rufus M. Jones; "Man's Relation to God," by John Wilhelm Rowntree and "A History of the Society of Friends in America," by Allen C. Thomas. The first of these is an entirely new book, as is also the fifth volume, now almost ready for publication, "A Service of Love in WarTime," by Rufus M. Jones. Approximately 350 volumes of the series have been sold thus far, and it is probable that the volume soon to appear, the account of the work of the Friends in Europe from 1917 to 1919, will be the most popular of all.

During the past year the total output of the Book Store has been 2156 books and 2991 pamphlets, valued at $1,871.03, of which $298.42 worth were donated. The increase in the number of Quaker and other solid books and tracts that have gone into Friends' families through the Book Store, is a satisfaction to us, and it is our strong hope that the Book Store may materially assist Friends to get hold of the best Quaker and other books and may encourage them to read them with care and thought. The education of our entire membership in the knowledge of inward religion and of its outward application to all the problems of life cannot be accomplished by books alone but, as in our entire history, books have no small part to play in the work.

It is our hope that the Book Store may become increasingly valuable to Friends in three ways: 1st, in circulating Friends' books, old and new, English and American, among our members and among others desirous of knowing about Friends' understanding of truth; 2nd, in bringing to the notice of our members other religious books embodying ideals similar to our own, and also selected books on Bible Study, peace, education, industry and the social order; 3rd, in furnishing a book store where Friends in the country or in the city may do their general book buying and where information about books, Quaker and general, will become more and more available as time goes on. We do not aim to develop a large city book store with thousands of volumes in stock, but for the present to have on hand a selection of such books as are of especial interest to Friends