Address of the President.

AT THE ANNUAL MEETING, MAY 2, 1882.

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THE great need of humanity is that people should do what is right. Proof of this comes to us through the columns of our daily papers, from the experiences of our daily lives. On what may we depend as a sure means of causing people to do what is right? On legal restraints, penal restraints, social restraints, family restraints, church restraints? We see that not one of them is sure. outward restraint can be sure. A man, like a watch, is controlled by an inside force. In the watch, we call it mainspring; in the man, character. And pulpit, press, and platform continually assert that the influence which most helps to determine character is woman's influence, as that more than any other impresses character while it is forming.

Here, then, we have our chain, our logic. The country is ruled by individuals, character rules the individual, and character is to a very great degree determined by woman.

Is there nothing more to follow? It would seem that so think the oracles. These assert, “It is woman's vocation to train up her children," with a tone of satisfaction, as if this were the end of the matter, whereas it is only the beginning. What does follow? Why, if so tremendous a responsibility rests with woman, prepare her to meet it. Educate her, enlighten her, bring her up to the highest possible plane morally, intellectually, spiritually, and, by

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opening to her many avenues of industry, give her the strength which comes of self-helpfulness. The best a woman has at its highest development is none too good nor too high for the training of an immortal soul. And such, my friends, are the aims which inspire the work of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union. Those who recognize the broad scope of our work will never ask that often-asked question, Do you reach the class you want to help? referring to the lower classes, so called. To that question, we answer, Yes; for, while there are reasons for taking special pains to reach those who have few social and educational privileges, we want to help all. Do you know of any class of women, even of the well-to-do, who have attained the high standard just mentioned? Do even well-to-do women feel their responsibilities in this matter of character? And do they so train their children as to make them strong in the power of an inside force compelling to righteousness? they feel that for their daughters, as well as for their sons, life means development? Our pity and condemnation go easily forth to the degraded classes, so called, whose weaknesses and wickednesses are covered by no glamour of respectability. These, we say, are the low classes, the dangerous classes. But we can find in the ranks of the respectable, wide scope for pity and condemnation, and a great deal of lowness, and a great deal of danger. Also that these respectable even help to make the degraded classes. We find, for instance, respectable liquor-dealers, whose business helps very much to furnish occupants for our jails and poor-houses; find owners of gambling hells and of houses of ill-fame; find those whose wealth came by extracting from their workpeople the maximum of work for the minimum of pay; find men who failed in order to escape the payment of debts, and whose luxuries are bought with