In the days of militancy the troubadour sang of the warrior, and the monk chanted of the devotee. In the literary Renaissance the laurel was given to the poet, but the genius of our industrial era is the man of business. In him are united the creative imagination of the poet, the faith of the religeuse and the courage and organizing power of the chieftain. He must watch the harvests of the world. He must write by telegraph and arrange and rearrange his campaigns in accordance with near and remote tidings. He must lay his railroads toward the strategetic point, where he foresees the future metropolis. He must believe in himself even if all men laugh at him, and he must have the nerve to take great risks, endure defeat and conquer success. His work is to civilize by commerce, and to promote the federation of man by international trade. He has set free nature's latent forces, and combined man and machinery to subdue the earth. A great business enterprise works mathematically with cosmic rhythm. The old regime of plunder has been succeeded by that of supplying the world's demands. A business man is common sense incarnate, and his advice on practical questions is shrewder than that of specialists, and in congress they could settle, in a few moments, points over which the lawyers debate for days. They are not sentimental philanthropists, but they quickly relieve distress, whether it be individual want, or the fire, flood or famine of cities or provinces. While Chicago was burning they saw her already risen from her ashes in dauntless majesty. Before the Anti-Poverty Society was dreamed of, business men were almoners of great charities, giving millions for schools, collegies, art galleries, the advancement of science, improved tenements, hospitals, asylums and libraries. We can safely leave to the hearts and brains of our business men the problem how to minimize poverty and to foster and stimulate the independence of the well to do.

The business man will not shed tears over the "poor drunkard," but he will tell him that if he wastes his earnings and destroys his working capital in drink, society is not responsible for his selfmade poverty. He will say to the young working man or woman, learn to do something that the world wants and where it wants it, for supply and demand rule in the business world. Be your own master and seek your work wherever it is most advantageous to you, and by your faithfulness bridge over the class animosities which the labor agitator has excited. When labor realizes the toil it requires to obtain a profession or to organize and direct great industries,

it will acknowledge the justice of their higher wage. When capital understands the degradation of the crowded tenement and the bitterness of drudgery for mere existence, it will see its duty to its humbler partner whose ignorance makes him helpless. When labor and capital join hands fraternally, we will have the only Anti-Poverty war which will ever succeed. The class of toilers who especially appeal to us are the working women. Walter Besant says the life of all women could be summed in the sentence "It is a shame." American women feel that theirs is the happiest of destinies, but we can understand a noble man's quarrel with those who make heavier, nature's discriminations against the weaker sex. The workingman's better pay, less hours and occasional recreation, make his lot a paradise compared with the cheerless and hopeless toil of many women who must sew or starve. Whether it is the excuse of some economist that they must be constrained to marry, or whether it is the avarice of employers and the brutality of workingmen who rebel against equal pay to women for equal work, or whether in most industries, they are not as thorough as men, the result is that the condition of many working women is so pitiful that their cry for help is heard by all who have hearts to listen. It comes to us with the laughter of happy homes, through the absorption of study, in the acclaim of success, above the music of pleasure, and through all the curtains of luxury. Nothing is so mercilessly unsheltered as the working girl, who goes from squalor and misery to the street for amusement. With some men chivalry is but a ball-room pastime, and these women know them only as taking advantage of their necessities in business, and in the temptations to which their wretchedness expose them.

The report of the State Charity Aid Association and Working Girls' Guilds chronicle in a small space the encouraging success of the work which is now being done morally and educationally, for the rescue of those of our sex whom Mrs. Campbell calls "prisoners of poverty." Under the auspices of the Women's Christian Association, in over thirty cities there are boarding houses, libraries, evening classes for industrial instruction, reading rooms, and employment bureaus. Over 17,000 volumes circulated here in New York in one year among self-supporting women; employment was found for over 1200, and sewing was supplied many who work in their homes. The second annual report of the Temporary Home for Woman says that 9,705 lodgings have been given and 2,112 meals provided at 9 cents a meal. The object of the Girls Friendly Society is to bind together in

the Episcopal Church, ladies as associates and working-girls and young women as members. It is a very important agent in emigration as it affords introductions and secures kindly offices.

The working girls' societies or clubs are partly governed by the girls, who suggest plans and the expenses are met by fees and dues. The first New York club was the outgrowth of a conversation between a factory girl and a lady concerning evening recreation for working women. As soon as a number of girls unite in wishing instructions upon any subject, a class is formed and a teacher procured. During 1887 there was an attendance of 8,585, an average of 165 weekly at the West Thirty-eight street branch, of which Miss. Dodge is president. There were classes in embroidery, millinery, dress-making, cooking, and first aid to the injured, and a vacation society enabled 170 of their members to go away during the summer. The girls have a savings bank whose deposit is used for vacation. expenses. In Chicago there is a home for self-supporting women, No. 221 Illinois street, incorporated under the law of Illinois. Cot bedsteads rent for 15 cents a night or 90 cents a week, and private rooms for two girls at $150 a week. The Chicago Women's and Children's Protective Agency is a branch of the Women's Club. Its object is to protect against every kind of abuse, and when necessary to seek legal redress. Defrauding employers understand that they must settle for wages kept back when the agent of this society calls upon them. Thus in various ways woman is accepting her mission to help woman, and the humble toilers have a future in which they will be given the weapons of knowledge, the strength of organization, the stimulus of recreation and the certainty of protection of rich and able women. The work is all laid out before us but there is no place for those who wish to use their influence for revolt against society. Those who become so breathlessly excited over social questions that they have no strength for practical suggestions are not called by economic science. It is useless to blame an employer who could not pay sewing women higher prices, unless all others in the same trade agree to raise their wages. It is better to educate her to do the work that commands better compensation. If she is to compete with man she must be prepared by an equal training. She must be encouraged to lay down the needle and go into the household, and to leave the tenement and seek the green fields. There is a constant demand for those who can supply the growing wants of our progressive age, and women ought to reap the advantages of these needs. I believe that the women who

have saved that missionaries might be sent elsewhere, and who have labored that cathedrals should be erected, will now feel that it is an equally consecrated duty to build Industrial colleges for women. Mrs. Charlotte Smith tells us that in France there are 150.

Those who desire the advancement of women must see to it that the way is clear for all who seek self-support; but let us cheerfully discriminate between the labor question politically and ethically. It is a social and economic problem which demands for its solution all the potencies of education and brotherhood and the heroic patience of the charity which is justice. How to help the poor the church has asked since the Christian Era, and this is the inquiry of those who call their creed the religion of humanity. In far off ages the princely Buddha made the great renunciation. For centuries the rich have given according to their light, and the English factory acts were due to a peer of the realm, Lord Ashley. There is no excuse for dividing society into labor and anti-labor factions. Labor has no lawful grievance which the best elements of our people will not unite to alleviate. Great fortunes and great talents are always exceptional, but no avenue to a competence is closed to any man in the United States except by his limitations of character and ability. It is superfluous ow to make a declaration of the rights of man. Our ancestors did that in 1776, and it has been ratified on our battle fields from Lexington to Gettysburg. Lincoln reaffirmed it in the emancipation proclamation, and it is crystalized into the organic law of our land. There is no necessity of reminding us of the injunctions of the decalogue, "Thou shalt not steal." We are not living under the black flag piracy and our starry banner promises and gives us the liberty of law and justice. It is an unpardonable sin against society to inflame the poor and illiterate with the sophistry that labor gives all value, and that the rich are growing richer by robbing the poor, who are growing poorer, and that drunkenness is the result of a poverty for which property is responsible. These are lies thrown in the face of civilization, and the present crisis is not the result of governmental or capitalistic tyranny. It is forced by secret organizations and the political aspirations of agitators. Plutocrat and Proletariat are ever on the lips of those who are organizing the discontented to march to the polls with hate for capital in their hearts. Their success would precipitate a revolution which could only be suppressed by the sword of imperialism, and the government for the people, and by the

people, would be impossible for generations. Leckey says that even late in the reign of Louis XVI, France could have been saved her riot of anarchy, if she had had a leader sagacious enough to restore order out of her sentimental theories, her wretched finances and her oppressive taxation; and historians are now emphasizing taxation as a potent cause of the disaster. We are suffering to-day from an over-production of self-elected reformers. We need only the conservatism of common sense and the modest triumphs of a statesmanship which will protect us from the invasion of the pauper and the anarchist, guard us from treachery at the ballot box and enforce our constitutional guarantees to property and persons. The only ism that recommends itself to Americans is patriotism, and it should be the adornment of the women of an Association whose president gave our soldiers their Battle Hymn of the Republic.