Typing Class (Chennai, India)

This lantern slide, “Typing Class (Chennai, India),” shows a group of eleven young men attending a typing class offered by the Y.M.C.A. in Chennai (formerly Madras), India. The men are arranged in a circle and sharing six typewriters. The Chennai Y.M.C.A. hostel, which opened in 1900, accommodated forty-six men, and became the Y.M.C.A. School of Physical Education in 1920. The Chennai Y.M.C.A. offered classes six days a week on banking, bookkeeping, commercial correspondence, commercial geography, shorthand, typewriting, and the Bible.In 1889, the Y.M.C.A. International Committee sent a young American named David McConaughy to India to serve as the first foreign secretary in India. McConaughy encouraged the development of pre-existing Associations and held the first National Convention in 1891, resulting in the formation of the National Council of India, Burma, and Ceylon. The Association’s most notable contribution in India was their rural development work, first begun by K. T. Paul in 1913. Paul established microloan programs that freed the rural poor from the grip of moneylenders and won many converts among India's lower classes. Joseph Hawkes, the slide’s creator, spent much of his life producing and coloring lantern slides from his home in New York. This slide is part of Springfield College’s lantern slide series depicting Y.M.C.A. work in India, Ceylon, and Burma in the early twentieth century. The series was prepared by the Foreign Division of the American and Canadian Y.M.C.A’s, which established self-sustaining associations staffed by trained secretaries in foreign lands.Text on border reads, "22; India Madras Typing Class; Made by Joseph Hawkes; New York City