The Boston system was fully described in a pamphlet entitled "Origin and System of the Workingmen's Loan Association," presented to the International Congress of Charities at Chicago in 1893. In response to an inquiry addressed to some sixty persons, asking what results had sprung from their applying for files of the reports of the Workingmen's Loan Association of Boston, I learn of three or four similar corporations.

1. The excellent movement in New York, organized by Rev. David H. Greer, D.D., the Loan Bureau with a capital recently raised from $30,000 to $45,000 for lending on chattel mortgages.

2. The Provident Loan Society of New York, with a capital of $100,000 for lending on pledge, of which Robert W. De Forest is president.

3. Providence has just started a corporation with a small capital of $10,000, to be raised to $50,000.

Strangely enough, the general laws of New York did not permit such loans. Hon. Ansley Wilcox, of Buffalo, whose presence the Conference of Charities enjoyed so much at Chicago, writes me that a general law has recently been passed in New York, permitting the organization of these loan companies in counties of between 300,000 and 600,000 population; and probably next year the law will be made operative through the whole State. Mr. Wilcox calls the attention of this Conference to the need of securing proper legislation where it does not already exist, so that the movement may spread to create these agencies for loaning money to meet the needs of plain people. A similar law is in process of being passed in Minnesota.

Civilization seems to me to deserve severe indictment when it devotes its brains to building up banks of England, France, and Germany, our own banking system, and all the admirable facilities for business men to obtain instantly and easily credit almost carte blanche, and rests in supreme apathy while the millions of plain people suffer under a system of cruel neglect and outrage, which either provides no credit for their casual necessities, or where the results of credit are distress, wrong, torture, ruin, impoverishment, discouragement, and pauperism.

Is not charity exerting a yet wider range of sweeter and more pervasive influence by the creation of a certain atmosphere Even where divisions of profits are not open to change, she has a counsel

gentle yet potent to whisper in the ear of angry disputants. If bitter words create bad blood, who can foresee how things would mend if charity could teach both sides in a business struggle to deal with mutual respect, and eschew that angry scorn which often creates and always imbitters the dispute?

This is no childish dream. Charity and solid sense unite to condemn the unutterable folly of present American methods of bitter, wordy war. England is a score of years ahead of America. Selfrestraint of speech obviates half the evils of labor conflicts, and enables an early settlement to restore, not merely peace, but sincere good will. Distinguish between the assumed necessities of business and the manner in which they are urged. Terrible examples are fresh in all our memories. The bloody Chicago strike burst into flame, not so much because bad times did not allow the Pullman Company to pay a better wage as because a curt reply of "nothing to arbitrate" inflamed anger. A few hours of considerate discussion would have spared that city and the land the shame and loss and woe of all that tragedy of business and of life.

Is not the same true of the electric railway strike at Brooklyn, deranging the business of that great city a whole month at a vast loss to all concerned? True also of the Haverhill shoe strike of last winter?

Do not let me seem to exaggerate. Of course, I do not mean that labor disputes would not occur if sweet counsels of charity were heard. What I do mean is- and who will be so hardy as to deny that an increasing share of labor wars can be escaped if the kindly, persuasive influence of considerate charity tempers controversies from long before they begin till long after they end.

The sweetest and most potent word spoken thus far in 1895 is that word "pleasure" in the voluntary notice of the Carnegie Company this month, that they had the pleasure of raising the wages of their help.

Take another illustration from the reformatories of Concord, Sherborn, or Elmira. Does not a large part of their influence for good come from a certain prevailing atmosphere of healthy hope and expected reformation, just as the malignant effect of bad prisons grows out of the opposite atmosphere of hopeless and brutal defiance?

The struggle between altruism and pure self-seeking is so far set

tled that the best thought of to-day admits and knows that personal service is the corner-stone of the world's progress and a necessary part of inevitable evolution. Personal service underlies God's universe. Personal service brought our Saviour to his mission and sacrifice for men. Kidd's "Social Evolution" has stimulated this most exalted movement of our times, shaping thought into conscious definite shape of noblest altruism. We know now better than ever before that the cause we serve summons, not in feeble tones of dubious supplication, but as with a voice from Sinai, our noblest sons and most consecrated daughters to the most glorious tasks and cares of life, personal service for every suffering need.

The responsibilities of wealth, what are they? What question just now burns more keenly in the minds and hearts of the rich and of all thoughtful persons? What bright vista, sparkling with sunshine, opens on the eyes of to-day and the imagination of the future? Attacks of envy, ignorance, or anarchy, or even of unjust law, only hinder the world's advance. Wealth began with Adam's spade, and will endure till spades are gone. Slowly, but surely, the thought of the world learns that wealth of gold, or faculties, or character, is not a selfish possession, but is charged with splendid trusts. Co-operation was born at Bethlehem, if not before, and was clinched on Calvary.

Let me indulge in paradox, and proclaim the impotence of mere philanthropy. Is not Miss Dudley, the head of the Denison House College Settlement in Boston, right when she asserts, as a result of her experience, that the working classes "cannot be helped fundamentally or primarily by charity or philanthropy, but by co-operation with them in directions which they themselves think will aid them"?

I am a socialist; but I insist on my right to define this word wisely, not in any exaggerated or extreme sense, surely not with any gross materialistic meaning. Is not its noblest meaning that the strength of the strong and the wisdom of the wise must by the laws of nature and of nature's God be used to help the weak and the foolish? Social progress and the glories of great cities are superb. But the struggle up leaves a submerged tenth.

Socialism to me means that the mighty powers of the State, the city, and of social organization shall be judiciously and nobly used to help the submerged tenth up into fuller life, and also to give justice in full measure and equal opportunities to rise to the solid ranks

of worthy working men and women, who are the great proportion of our population, and are the strength and hope and glory of the new civilization. Socialism means that the forces of society shall unite and delight to remove hard and unjust conditions, and give just opportunities of life to all men.

Who also will not say with me, I am an individualist, conscious of an inexorable law of his being? Only in just union of these two not inconsistent forces, one making for social union, the other for individual life, can the units of the social organism attain their full glory.

So much for what charity in certain large ways is doing: limiting greed by principles of Christian business, and also creating a pervasive atmosphere of Christian charity, often obviating and always tempering disputes, prompting men of noble soul to the service of mankind.

Think next of a few of the unsolved problems in charity. Unemployment, first and chiefest source of many other woes, rises in our country a vast, unwelcome spectre. Who knows how to treat it best in years of especial depression? By labor or gratuitous relief?

New York, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Boston, Lynn, invented work at low wages. Dr. Stanton Coit says no more food, clothing, and coal should have been distributed in New York than in ordinary years, preferring relief by work. Yet C. S. Loch, secretary of the Charity Organization Society of London, condemns relief by special work, and strongly favors reliance on the usual methods of poor-law relief or charity.

Whence this difference of judgment? Is it because in London unemployment has grown chronic, and chronic relief-works would only aggravate the evils, while in the United States it is not and ought not to be chronic, and can be far more judiciously treated as a temporary problem? These are questions of grave importance, wherein decisions may work for weal or woe. No wonder London is appalled at the magnitude of the problem, when the numbers of the unemployed rise into tens of thousands, and life among them has settled down into apathy. Assisted emigration is slow, costly, and ineffectual. Conditions do not improve. The problem in England grows more insoluble.

Who that has thought and observed is not profoundly perplexed when he finds results just the opposite of what were hoped; that

relief, given in love, begets a degenerate craving for more; that "shelters" in cities gather crowds of vagrants, where cheap rates tempt them to live in prolonged and increasing degradation, begging easily from a half-educated public the meagre means for this wretched life?

Does not the variety of proposed remedies prove that not much progress has been made toward any adequate solution? Singletaxers and radical socialists each are sure their own remedy will work and that of their opponents fail. The intelligent community sees no possibility that either remedy can come or would prove efficacious. Does not the magnitude of this problem of the unemployed in its varied phases deserve anxious study of ablest statesmen? Surely, then, of charity at its best.

Tramps also offer a problem as yet unsolved, at least till we hear the results of Professor J. J. McCook's study and thought. Present evils are flagrant and admitted. I can think of no remedy but a reasonable stent of well-devised work ready for their hand in every city and town across the land, so that they may not be forced to steal or beg, and the charm of their free and easy life may be somewhat abated.

The wage question of poorly paid male labor in large cities, and especially of working-girls, is also insoluble. Can we wonder at their war-cry, "Justice, not charity," when we know as well as they do that four or five dollars a week will not give a shop-girl fit food, raiment, and bed, and we, as well as they, observe health fading and virtue yielding? Can we wonder that labor leaders refuse in their wrath to be satisfied when, out of the big gains men make in business by hiring girls at low wages, their wives devote trifles for convalescent hospitals or midnight missions for the victims of such a system? Salves for sin and suffering will no longer suffice. The complex problem of wages and population in great cities challenges supreme wisdom, energy, and devotion. Must not charity accept the challenge?

Two other things I rank among unsolved problems, the liquor nuisance and foul homes. We know well enough what ought to be done these nuisances should be abated. But we do not yet know how to secure these results. Our large cities are almost apathetic about the evils of groggeries, perhaps in despair, but are devoting keener interest to the housing question.