Center, The.
Harmony Club Monthly.
1909--1911? Monthly
New York,NY. Publisher: Harmony Club of America. Editor: Edward Earle Purington.
Corporate author: Harmony Club of America
1/1, August 1909-December 1911(?). 16-32 pp., 50 cents-$1.00 a year (25-75 cents to members).

This was the organ of the Harmony Club of America that had been started in New York City in 1909. It was, as it advertised, "an independent organization of earnest people everywhere, who want to make the most of life and to be happy while doing it. The aim is: To harmonize people with themselves, their surroundings and each other; to prove the efficient value of a smile and song in everyday life; to establish the perfect unity of body, mind, heart, and spirit; to investigate, formulate, and demonstrate the scientific laws of Happiness; to enunciate the principles of wholesome, triumphant, sincere living; to maintain a brotherhood of individuals, where sympathy is the only bond; to promote free discussion of every subject that makes for clear understanding of life." In the halcyon days before World War I, the Club and its journal pointed hopefully to the inexorable progress of therapeutics ("Osteopathy, Hydrotherapy, Food Science, The Rest- Cure, The Fasting-Cure, Open-Air Sleeping, Deep Breathing, Auto-suggestion") and philosophy and religion ("Socialism, Pragmatism, Mental Science, Christian Science, New Thought, Roycroftism, Psychic Research, The Emmanuel Movement") and sought to inculcate in its members the power of harmonizing these developments as the path to health, happiness and wealth. After its first four months, the Club was claiming 2,500 members, 600 in New York alone. Dues for the club were twenty-five cents a year (rising to 75 cents); Club pins 50 cents-$2.00. The Club was still active in 1914 and the journal may have lasted until then, as well. The founder of the movement was Edward H. Fallows, the first president. He was a lawyer in New York and the son of the Right Rev. Samuel Fallows of Chicago, a frequent contributor to the journal. Purinton (1878-1945) was the editor of the journal. He was a college-educated proponent of what he dubbed "Healthology" and "Auto-Nutrition" (which consisted primarily in fasting -- his Philosophy of Fasting (1907) describes his cure by a 31-day fast): "Health is a radiation of inner affluence. To be strong you must shine as the sun." Purinton wrote the Club’s manual "How to Be Happy," which came free to subscribers, and most of the content: "The Moral Force of Money," "Thank You, Pain," "Freedom the Goal of Life," etc., and seems to have written the responses to members’ questions in The Question Box and to have handled Club News as well. The journal increasingly came to have lead articles by others (Bruce Calvert, editor of Open Road, on a "Sane Christmas"; W.J. Colville on "The Powers of the Soul: Clairvoyance," and H.H. Brown, "Living as a Fine Art") and promised contributions by Elvira Adams Atwood, Hereward Carrington, Lida A. Churchill, Alice B. Stockham, and others. The journal carried no advertisements, although a reader in the business wrote to suggest that the money in such ventures lay in the advertising. LOC; NY State Library; Yale University.

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