izations for the befriending of young women and girls (helping hands, girls' friendly societies, church societies in great numbers, etc., etc.) which have the same limitation, but there are still others intended to receive all who will join them.

The "Women's Educational and Industrial Unions," existing in thirteen cities of the United States, have for their objects "increasing fellowship among women, in order to promote the best practical methods for securing their educational, industrial, and social advancement.'

The following are extracts from a circular issued by the original Union, founded in Boston, in 1877:

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This institution may be regarded as a social centre, a place of welcome. Any woman, resident or stranger, by coming to the Union will find herself among friends. Its placards in railway stations often bring to us strangers from various parts of the country and from abroad. It invites all women to its reading-room and parlors. It provides lectures, classes, and entertainments. Some of the classes are industrial. It has Mother's Meetings' and "Talks with Young Girls" from women with high reputation. It affords opportunities for interchange of thought upon the vital questions of the day. It receives and preserves reports of women's associations both near and distant. It is a centre of local information. It gathers in the best ideas and suggestions, and weaves them into plans for the benefit of humanity. It befriends the friendless. It is a tower of strength for the helpless. It secures dues unjustly withheld from working women. It investigates fraudulent advertisements, and publicly warns women against them. So far as practicable, it secures situations for the unemployed. In its salesrooms are found the products of women's industries.. Wise thinkers have the opinion that for removing the ills of humanity primary work is better than after work. The methods of the latter are charities, reformatory crusades, and penal enactments. The evils contended with,-pauperism, drunkenness, vice, crime,--are simply inward conditions becoming apparent in conduct. These conditions are ignorance, selfishness, undeveloped faculties, false rating of values, lack of self-respect and of self-restraint. The effective work is to change such conditions by a kind of education that shall develop the highest and best, thus enabling the individual to stand upright of himself, instead of being held in position by charities, reforms, or penalties.

In New York, in 1879, 'was founded a Girls' Club, which consisted of the founder, a woman of education and wealth, and ten or twelve factory and shop girls, who met in an upper room in a Tenth Avenue tenement house. During the past ten years, that club has increased to a membership of several hundred, and twenty-two kindred clubs have been formed in New York, eleven in Brooklyn, and eight in Boston and in other cities. These clubs are mainly self-supporting, and their work is the education and elevation of the members in every pos

* See chapter, Woman in Industry.--ED.

sible direction-physical, industrial, mental, and moral. They supply a common ground of meeting for young women who have had the privileges of education, money and leisure, with those who have had the privileges of self-denying, hard-working lives, and the benefits are mutual.*

Women have, in various cities, opened restaurants where good food is provided at moderate prices, for the purpose not only of saving money to those who patronize them, but to give decent and attractive surroundings and a freedom from temptation to drink. In some of these restaurants are rooms where working-girls may eat lunch which they bring from their own homes, and in some the decent toilet provision is spoken of as a great boon to these girls, who work in shops and factories where every requirement of decency is neglected or violated in that particular.

In New York City a small band of educated women have jointly hired a tenement house in the very worst district of the city, politically and morally, and there they intend to live, for the purpose of doing what they can to elevate the tone of the neighborhood. Most of them have their daily avocations, but in the evenings they will give their time to such efforts as they find best suited to attain their end.† Some of them have already taken part in the work of the "Neighborhood Guild,"

* The Association of Working Girls' Societies was formed February, 1884. with the following objects:

I. To strengthen, to knit together, and to protect the interests of the several societies.

2. To hold meetings, when reports of the societies shall be presented, and to make more generally known their aims and advantages.

3. To promote the general adoption of the principles upon which the societies have been formed.

4. To secure the services, by co-operation, of good teachers, lady physicians, and lecturers.

5. To keep the several societies informed of such classes and schemes as are proved valuable.

6. To encourage and assist in the establishment of new societies.

In April, 1890, a convention was held under the auspices of the New York, Boston, and Brooklyn Associations of Working Girls' Societies, and the Philadelphia New Century Working Women's Guild. Two hundred and twenty-five delegates, representing ninety-six clubs, and from thirty-eight different cities and towns, were present.-ED.

The effort above referred to has during the year taken shape as the 'College Settlement," and on September 1, 1890, its first annual report closes with the following words :

"What are the results?' Certainly the residents are recognized as the friends of those about them. The children turn to them with the joy of every acquisition and the grief of every loss. The club boys of sixteen

the spirit of which is thus described in its last published circular:

We do not look upon our work as done by one class of society for another class of society; not as up-town residents, nor from the height of proud superiority to our fellow-men in any regard do we go down to labor in the tenement-house district. All sorts and conditions of men are brought into contact in the Neighborhood Guild. All both give and receive; all are both teachers and taught; and the lesson for all is the brotherhood of man. The Guild is not connected with any church or society, whatsoever.

But persons

of various beliefs are connected with the Guild, and the sense of the brotherhood of all men is their bond of union. The work of the Guild, except in the kindergarten, is done by faithful volunteers, several of whom have resided for many months in the tenement-house district. The spirit of the Guild is against unnecessary absenteeism in good works. It would bring all sorts of men together close enough to feel one another's heart-throbs. It believes in a communism of mental and spiritual possessions.

A somewhat similar society, established both by men and women, in Philadelphia, gives the following account of itself:

The object of this unsectarian association is to establish, in localities most needing them, and chiefly for the benefit of workingmen and their families, convenient centers for social intercourse, amusement, reading, study, restaurant accommodation, etc., without the accompaniment of any demoralizing features.

Our first experiment was to open, on Saturday evenings, the hall on the corner of Twenty-third and Hamilton streets, which seats nearly three hundred people. This was furnished with tables for refreshments, and here we gave a series of light entertainments, sometimes for five cents, sometimes ten cents admission. The next step was to open the house at 2134 Vine street, and start a neighborhood society under the title of Family Guild, No. 1. order to secure to the house at the start the character desired, we admitted to its privileges, under proper conditions, men, women, and children, and in

In

and seventeen years are proud of their connection with the house and eager rivals in its good opinion. Even some of the older women turn to the residents as friends upon whom they can rely. Those who know the work best do not look for results other than this friendly relation in any near future. The work, if it is anything, is a process of education. Character is not formed in a year. In all the club work the object constantly sought is helpful, personal contact. All methods are simply a means to this end. For this reason the number of members in each club is limited. If the higher is ever to give an uplift to the lower, must it not be through this method of friendship? Such a relation implies giving and taking on both sides, and the workers at the Settlement find one of the strongest points gained by residence to be, that their neighbors have a chance to do something for them, a chance which is often improved. The Settlement is one of the influences which go to form the lives of the people in Rivington Street. If it shall create any higher ideals or quicken any aspirations, if it shall awaken one soul to any sense of its own nature, the object of the College Settlement will surely be attained,”

stead of separating families, offered special inducements to father, mother, and children to come together.

The advantages of membership are a library, reading-room (with magazines, weekly and daily papers), rooms for games, music classes, accommodations for business and social meetings, etc. The price is one dollar a year for adults, fifty cents for those under seventeen, while a family ticket including father, mother, and all children under seventeen, is one dollar and fifty cents. Class instruction is extra, five and ten cents a lesson, except the manual training, which is free, and the dancing, which is fifteen

cents.

The most popular classes last year were cooking, singing, and dressmaking. The cooking class numbered sixteen, dressmaking ten, singing thirty. The number of members enrolled last winter was one hundred and fifty. This does not include all attending classes, some of whom were not members of the Guild.

The experiment of associating the sexes both in study and recreation has proved a success. The class in manual training, which now numbers forty, is composed about equally of young men and women, and the teachers say it is much easier with such a class to keep order and to secure attention to work.

Besides the regular social evenings devoted to plays, singing, dancing, etc., it is not unusual for the members of the evening classes which close at nine to adjourn to the play-room and take a little time for amusement. The managers have naturally kept an anxious watch over these occasions and have found nothing to complain of in the conduct of the young people.

There will be certain hours of each afternoon devoted to the children of the neighborhood, with the object of teaching them quieter and less brutal ways of playing than they learn on the streets. We also hope to establish a day nursery, which shall obviate the dreadful necessity among working women of locking their children alone in a room for the day.

In Illinois, women have organized associations for the protection of women and children which seem to be more far-reaching than any such in other States.

The second article of "The Protective Agency for Women and Children of Chicago" reads as follows :

Its objects are to secure protection from all offenses and crimes against the purity and virtue of women and children; protection against any injustice to women or children of a financial character, such as withholding of wages, exacting of exorbitant interest, violation of contract, or fraudulent advertisements of any kind; enforcement of existing laws, and efforts toward the enactment of better ones, for the protection of women and children against wrongs and abuses, of whatever nature; the extension of a wholesome moral support to women and children who have been wronged, discriminating wisely between misfortune and guilt.

For three years the agency has fulfilled its objects and has carried out the wish expressed in its first annual report in the following words: "Justice is better than charity, and we wish to be a terror to evil-doers as well as a good Samaritan to the unfortunate."

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The Agency is carried on by a governing board consisting of delegates from sixteen different associations of women in Chicago, and it has taken its stand by the side of the poor and oppressed and demanded and obtained justice for them in the courts. In its third annual report it publishes the following extracts from a letter of John P. Altgelt, Judge of Superior Court of Cook County: . . . I wish to express my high appreciation of the work the Agency is doing. . . You have rendered a double service to the courts and have materially aided in the administration of justice." In Peoria, Ill., there is also such an Agency, and a National Association has been formed "for the purpose of establishing, or helping to establish, similar societies in different parts of the country.

Another important woman's society is the "Illinois Woman's Alliance," which declares its objects to be: “1. To agitate for the enforcement of all existing laws and ordinances that have been enacted for the protection of women and children, as the factory ordinances and the compulsory education law. 2. To secure the enactment of such laws as shall be found necessary.

To investigate all business establishments and factories where women and children are employed, and public institutions where women and children are maintained. 4. To procure the appointment of women as inspectors and as members of boards of education and to serve on boards of management of public institutions."

The Woman's Alliance has already been "largely instrumental in procuring the passage of a compulsory education law, and has secured the appointment of women factory inspectors."

Another branch of work taken up by women in some of our cities is the owning and hiring of tenement houses, for the purpose of improving the houses and thereby serving the tenants and the public. This is done both by individuals, who undertake the oversight of the houses and the collecting of rents themselves (following the example of Miss Octavia Hill in London), and by associations such as the Co-operative Building Association of Boston, which is a joint stock company of men and women, who buy and build houses and oversee their property by means of committees of their own number. The object is to raise the standard of the houses for working people in any given locality, and also to show that such houses, when managed for the benefit of the tenants, may be made to pay a fair return to the owners. This work seems peculiarly fitting for women, who carry sympathy and conscience into their business relations.