uch conditions as are here specified have been in
practical operation for many years. The homes in which they have ruled
have had the unfailing devotion of those who served, and the experiment
has ceased to come under that head, and demonstrated that order and
peace and quiet mastery of the day's work may still be American
possessions. Count this imperfect presentation then as established fact
for a few, and ask why it is not possible to make it so for the many.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST.

END AND BEGINNING.

The long quest is over. It ends; and I turn at last from those women,
whose eyes still follow me, filled with mute question of what good may
come. Of all ages and nations and creeds, all degrees of ignorance and
prejudice and stupidity; hampered by every condition of birth and
training; powerless to rise beyond them till obstacles are removed,--the
great city holds them all, and in pain and want and sorrow they are one.
The best things of life are impossible to them. What is worse, they are
unknown as well as unattainable. If the real good of life must be
measured by the final worth of the thing we make or get by it, what
worth is there for or in them? The city holds them all,--"the great foul
city,--rattling, growling, smoking, stinking,--a ghastly heap of
fermenting brickwork, pouring out poison at every pore."

The prosperous have no such definition, nor do they admit that it can be
true. For the poor, it is the only one that can have place. We pack them
away in tenements crowded and foul beyond anything known even to
London, whose "Bitter Cry" had less reason than ours; and we have taken
excellent care that no foot of ground shall remain that might mean
breathing-space, or free sport of child, or any green growing thing.
Grass pushes its way here and there, but for this army it is only
something that at last they may lie under, never upon. There is no pause
in the march, where as one and another drops out the gap fills
instantly, every alley and by-way holding unending substitutes. It is
not labor that profiteth, for body and soul are alike starved. It is
labor in its basest, most degrading form; labor that is curse and never
blessing, as true work may be and is. It blinds the eyes. It steals away
joy. It blunts all power whether of hope or faith. It wrecks the body
and it starves the soul. It is waste and only waste; nor can it, below
ground or above, hold fructifying power for any human soul.

Here t