roblems is more grave or urgent than the one affecting
the economic condition of the wage-earning woman. It is curious that the
church, in this age, should choose to regard its primary function with
such evident apathy. The first business of the church in the past was
the adjustment of social difficulties. The gospel of Jesus Christ was
preeminently a social gospel, and when the church ceases to be a social
force it will have outlived its usefulness.

There are those who believe that the church _has_ outlived that primal
usefulness. I do not believe so. For men, perhaps, it has; but not for
women--certainly not for working women. We do not as a sex, we do not as
a class, flatter ourselves that we have got along so far in race
development that we have no further need of organized religion. In all
my experience of meeting and talking, often becoming intimately
acquainted, with girls and women of all sorts, I have never known one,
however questionable, to whom the church was not, after all, held in
respect as the one all-powerful human institution.

And yet, unless they were Catholics, mighty few went to church at all,
and most of them were resentful, often bitter, toward the church and
hostile toward all kinds of organized religion. They accused the church
of not doing its duty toward them, and they declared that organized
religion was a sham and a hypocrisy.

The only activity exerted by the church in the direction indicated
partakes too strongly of the eleemosynary nature to make it acceptable
to any save the most degraded--the weak-chinned, flabby-natured horde of
men and women who rally instinctively to the drum-taps of the
street-corner Salvationist, or seek warmth and cheer on cold winter
nights, and if possible more substantial benefits, from the missions and
"church houses."

I have no quarrel to pick with the Salvation Army, nor with the city
missions, as institutions. Both have done too much good for that "ninety
and nine" which the church forgets. But it is a pity that the work of
the Salvation Army and of the city missions is sometimes relegated to
the control of such incompetent and unworthy persons as Henrietta
Manners and "Brother" Mason. Since my brief acquaintance with those
aspiring reformers, I have investigated and found that both were
prominent workers and "guides" in the respective religious movements to
which they claimed allegiance; I also found that there were other
Henrietta Mannerses and not