The University is well represented in the campaign to raise $350,000 for the Y. M. C. A. building in Charlestown. This citizens' campaign, which is expected to be completed in the week beginning February 5 is under the general direction of Col. William A. Gaston '80, Grafton D. Cushing '85, Charles K. Cummings '93, Harold J. Coolidge '92 and N. S. Simpkins, Jr., '09. Of the ten team captains eight are University men. The list is as follows: Robert W. Emmons 2d, '95, George von L. Meyer, Jr., '13, John H. Parker '93, Gaspar G. Bacon '08, Richard Lawrence '02, Edward M. Pickman '08, William P. Homans '08 and Charles Amory '12.
Organization of National Scope
The Navy Y. M. C. A. is an organization of national scope, maintaining adequate buildings adapted to its important work in the neighborhood of the larger navy yards in the country. Although the Third Division of the Atlantic Fleet has Boston for a home port, it is alone in being entirely insufficiently equipped in this respect. Over 10,000 different bluejackets and marines come here every year for a period varying from a few days to several months and in many respects the Boston Yard is the second in size in the United States. The present move on foot is to raise funds for the erection of a building similar to those in Norfolk, Va., and Newport, R. I., which have in the neighborhood of from 150 to 225 separate bedrooms. It is estimated that if such a building were available in Boston at least 40,000 sailors would sleep in it each year. In Brooklyn, where the building is about twice the size of the one needed in Boston, the sailors themselves pay 80 per cent of the cost of operation and over 100,000 men slept in it during 1914. Nearly 300 men are turned away nightly while the fleet is in port.
These Navy Y. M. C. A. houses do not compete with or overlap other charitable activities in behalf of sailors, for this work for men in the navy is of special character, differing entirely from that which is done for sailors in the merchant marine or for young men in civil life. It is a work organized exclusively for sailors and marines and in some cases soldiers in the United States service, and when it has adequate buildings and equipment at its disposal it provides an open door 24 hours in the day. In addition to beds, lockers, gymnasium, restaurant, classrooms, baths, swimming pools, reading and writing rooms, billiards, bowling alleys and other opportunities for exercise and amusement, such an establishment offers to every enlisted man a general clearing house for the care of his personal business, the receiving and shipping and general distribution of his personal effects.
Contributions to the sum needed for the construction of an adequate building in Boston should be sent to Francis Henry Appleton, treasurer, 33 Congress street, Boston.
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