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SALVATION ARMY BANDS
How They Began
… Soon after the founder, William Booth, had got his struggling little organisation going in London, said the speaker, an ardent worker named Fry, a resident of Salisbury, in the south of England, took his family of boys into the streets to play music as an aid to their work in spreading the influence of the Army, and about the same time a party of miners followed the same practice in the north of England. General Booth, ever watchful for a chance to increase the popularity of the Army and to attract the poor, Godless classes, saw a way in this idea to come in contact with the very people he was out to reform. Thus the Army bands began, and although they had improved greatly since those days, and were worthy of representation in musical festivals,
