EDITOR’S PREFACE
In the endeavor to spread information widely and well a multitude of ventures have been carried on in recent years. Interesting among these has been the combining of educational material and activities on the one hand with modern facilities for transportation on the other—the putting of exhibits, demonstrations, motion pictures, and other campaigning equipment on railroad trains, trolley cars, and motor trucks so that they may tour a whole city, a county, or cross a continent.
A glance at the appendix to this volume will show how extensive this form of educational effort has become. Beginning a dozen or more years ago with trains which showed improved methods of farming the list includes trains for teaching health, sanitation, safety, and food saving; trolley cars carrying exhibits on child welfare; and automobile trucks equipped to give motion picture shows on health and other subjects. Recently some of the trucks have also carried equipment for demonstrating methods of food canning, or for dispensary service. While the traveling campaign centering in the railroad car has had the longer history, developments in the educational use of the motor truck have been of such number and variety as to indicate, if one may venture in probabilities, relatively greater future activity for it.
The extensive use of this method of disseminating knowledge in the past, and the probable continuation and extension of it in some form, have made it seem desirable to bring together as much as possible of the working knowledge which has been gained in planning and conducting these campaigns, and to put it at the disposal of those interested in popular forms of educational work. The material here presented is thus not so much an evaluation of the traveling campaign method of spreading information as a review, or perhaps better, an anthology of practical experience thus far formulated, plus the observations of the author of the volume. The practice of those who have had first-hand contact with the problems and possibilities involved will undoubtedly have value for future planning. It is hoped, however, that the experience here set down, instead of forming a sole reliance or boundary to effort, may become a stimulus to the play of fresh ingenuity in creating new forms of illustrative material.
But as to the question of evaluation, until more data on these campaigns are recorded, that will still need to be done by those responsible for each particular tour and conversant with the particular conditions and requirements of the case. It is a familiar and not unnatural tendency, in selecting an avenue by which to reach the public, to adopt a method already used by someone else without waiting to get full information on its advantages and limitations. This happens in large part no doubt because the information desired is often hard to get without extensive inquiry. A second purpose of this volume is to bring together in brief compass the available data on traveling campaigns and thus to lessen the burden of extended inquiry for those who will need to make practical decisions.
In addition to a pooling of the facts gained through the practical conduct of traveling publicity campaigns it is further hoped that the material here assembled may provide a sort of nucleus or center of gravity which will attract criticisms and further data. The criticisms, in the course of time, may lead to a fuller treatment of the subject, and afford a better basis for determining whether the advantages of campaigns set upon wheels outweigh their inherent disadvantages when viewed in relation to particular projects or other campaign possibilities.
In the meantime grateful acknowledgment is made to the many who have already been generous in answering inquiries and furnishing information gained from their daily contact with traveling campaigns, and to those who have furnished photographs and offered many helpful suggestions.
Shelby M. Harrison.