s mind, there is still the underlying sense of the essential
injustice of withholding with one hand just pay, and with the other
proffering a substitute, in a charity which is to reflect credit on the
giver and demand gratitude from the receiver. Here and there this is
recognized, and within a short time has been emphasized by a woman whose
name is associated with the work of organized charities throughout the
country,--Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell. It is doubtful if there is any
woman in the country better fitted, by long experience and almost
matchless common-sense, to speak authoritatively. She writes:--

"So far from assuming that the well-to-do portion of society have
discharged all their obligations to men and God by supporting
charitable institutions, I regard just this expenditure as one of
the prime causes of the suffering and crime that exist in our
midst.... I am inclined, in general, to look upon what is called
charity as the insult added to the injury done to the mass of the
people, by insufficient payment for work."

Just pay, then, heads the list of remedies. The difficulty of fixing
this is necessarily enormous, nor can it come at once; since education
for not only the employer but the public as a whole is demanded. To
bring this about is a slow process. It is a transition period in which
we live. Material conditions born of phenomenal material progress have
deadened the sense as to what constitutes real progress; and the
working-woman of to-day contends not only with visible but invisible
obstacles, the nature of which we are but just beginning to discern.
Twenty years ago M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu wrote of women wage-earners:--

"From the economic point of view, woman, who has next to no
material force, and whose arms are advantageously replaced by the
least machine, can have useful place and obtain a fair remuneration
only by the development of the best qualities of her intelligence.
It is the inexorable law of our civilization,--the principle and
formula even of social progress,--that mechanical engines are to
perform every operation of human labor which does not proceed
directly from the mind. The hand of man is each day deprived of a
portion of its original task; but this general gain is a loss for
the particular, and for the classes whose only instrument of labor
is a pair of feeble arms."

Take the fact here s