stolen money; find fraudulent officials; find politicians dishonorably scheming for their own advancement. These and others of like stamp get social position and respect, and get a show of respect even from the worthy. We find also cruel mothers, leaving their children to the care of aliens, weakening them by indulgence, and then cruelly sending them forth into the world lacking the self-restraint needed to withstand the world's temptations; find women devoted to trifling aims, absorbed in selfhood, selling themselves in wicked marriage And, in the lives of such women, what waste! Oh, the sadness of such, waste, waste of time, of ability, of energy, of opportunity! Consider also the improvidence of the rich in bringing up their daughters to no money-winning occupation; and here is cause why we hear from so many genteel impoverished women that familiar cry: "I must do something! I don't know how to do anything!" The idea prevails that out of kindness to the poor woman the richer woman must withhold her labor from the market; but it should be considered that the probably better work of the richer woman helps to educate the poorer woman, and that the richer woman in placing her work on sale does that much to make labor honorable and to remove dividing lines. And no greater service can be rendered to the poor or to the rich than to make labor honorable and remove dividing lines. Were labor made honorable, fewer would seek dishonorable escape from it.

And, among our findings, we find an incorrect standard of values, as, for instance, that wealth, position, gentility, scholarship, talent, get more consideration than character. I dwell on all this because, being asked so often the question, Do you reach the class you want to help? I wish to combat the implied idea, the low and material idea, that money places its possessors beyond the scope of philan

thropic effort, an idea we do not get from the New Testament; and it is to show the falsity of this assumption that I call your attention to the fact that among the wealthy and respectable are found improvidence, waste, idleness, false estimates of values, meanness, dishonor, fraud, theft, sensuality, contempt for honest labor, cruelty to children; and that among them, as elsewhere, are women whose low mentality and narrow range of thought make you shudder when you remember the saying of Emerson, "In the dwellinghouse must the true character and hope of the time be consulted." And of another: "Woman forms the citizen, guides the family." I wish to point out, moreover, that the badness of the respectable works, greater harm than that of the degraded, because the former are the influential class. Influence works down, not up. Also, by making badness respectable, they help to lower the standard of morality, while the others only commit offences against morality. From which comes the greater danger? We may well imagine some of the more thoughtful of these others, perceiving that this descent of badness helps to fill their ranks,— sending missionaries to the upper classes with the appeal, "O ye upper classes, if you will only be wise, noble, trustworthy, self-renouncing, temperate, chaste; if you will only help establish just ideas of values; if you will only believe in and feel the oneness of humanity; if you will only live the religion you pay so vast sums to support, you might soon stop building jails for burglars, gutter drunkards, and outcast women! Why don't you apply your Christianity?"

The work of our Union, concisely expressed, is applied Christianity. The foundation principles of this religion are kinship with all, love for all, equal opportunities for all, the distribution of benefits. Our reports will tell you how the Union helps effect this last. Intellectual culture is a benefit.

This is afforded by our lectures, classes, and free readingroom. Social intercourse is a benefit, which is promoted at our rooms in various ways; and it has proved a special blessing to women who have come strangers to the city, or who have cheerless homes or no homes. Justice to defrauded working-women is a benefit. Our protective department procures this. Avenues for women's industries are a benefit. These are opened by means of our industrial and employment departments, and by some of our class instruction. Information on hygiene and physiology is a benefit, gained from our free talks given by women physicians. Moral and spiritual growth is a benefit; and, that this is advanced by our Sunday meetings, numbers have borne witKindnesses, sympathy, encouragement, are benefits which have been mutually interchanged. To renounce selfhood and labor for others is a greater benefit than all, as many have learned, who, supposing themselves to be working for the good of others merely, have got the highest conceivable good for themselves.

ness.

And, while trying to apply Christianity by equalizing opportunities, our Union is at the same time working for the elevation of mankind by elevating woman, she having an acknowledged control over the springs of character. It does this by developing in her, thought power. Thought is life, and life is irrepressible. Make women think, and they will think themselves up to higher conditions. Make women think, and they will arrive at true ideas of values. Make women think, and we shall have an enlightened motherhood. Make women think, and they will awake to such a sense of their responsibilities and possibilities that their ignoble aims will be crushed out of existence.

The Union will not do its best work now, nor for a long time. We are only builders, and even as builders only working at the foundation, and even there inexperienced.

Mistakes and failures are inevitable. The corners of the bricks will crumble, and the mortar will not stick, and dust will get in our eyes, and nothing will seem plumb; but we can keep the plan of the temple in sight,—the grand ideal, —and work on and on and on, and future years will show an institution equipped for all good service, an institution to which the women of that future may come with their needs, their warm impulses, their best thought, their high purpose, their plans for the uplifting of all women. We hope, even in our day, to devise wise methods by which to extend sympathy and help to women behind prison bars; and especially do we hope to draw very near to those of our sisters toward whom our hearts yearn, those called abandoned women,abandoned, indeed, in this Christian community.

Can a single institution do so very much? This is a pioneer, making smooth the way for others. We hope for similar ones in all our towns and cities. Letters of inquiry are coming to us from various parts of the country and from abroad. Is it not good to think of the wide spreading of influences so desirable? That such good may come in the future, we of the present must work hard. An institution of this kind cannot be built up, unless the best of somebody, the best of many somebodies, be used to cement the very underpinning of it. Time, thought, money, pride of opinion, ease, whatever self most values, must be freely given up. Do you remember the story of the Oriental monarch who could not build his tower to stand, and who was told it never could be built to stand until a woman's heart should be buried underneath, and who, acting on that suggestion, did build his tower to stand?

Perhaps the hardest self-sacrifice of all will be to ask for money. I do not see how even this cup can pass from us. More room we must have for our lectures and classes. Our industrial department is crowded. With a competent, well

paid superintendent, and a ground floor for the display of goods would come vast opportunities for helping women to help themselves. Even the sale of home-made food would become an extensive business, and we hope to open new avenues for the industries of women. We shall have to ask for money, for much money. And why not? Why should not money pour in upon us, as it does upon the two other similar institutions of this city, since it must be granted that women, even more than men, even for men's sake as well as for their own, need equal privileges with men? have heard this equal need denied, on the ground that “men are going into business life, and women are only (?) going into family life." Think of that "only"! A keener insight would assert the need, and change the place of the "only" to that part of the sentence to which it so justly belongs. We must remember, too, that many young women go "into business life" in our cities, and need every protection that can be thrown around them.

Boston should think it no hardship to support an institution of this kind. It ought to feel thankful for the establishment here of such a centre of enlightenment, and of so many good works. Instead of begging for money, we ought to be begged to continue our work. All here present can aid in some way; can become annual members, if not such already, or life members or subscription members. We are trying to get a long list of these latter, who will give annually $5 or more. We have as yet only one who gives a hundred. Those who have no money can aid by their work and by spreading a knowledge of the Union among such as need its help. Will you give of your best? The Jews, you remember, brought to the service of God their best, their first-fruits. Much more should we, claiming superiority to the Jews, bring of our best to this divine service,- divine because it is for the good of humanity.