e.

"Each man to himself and each woman to herself, such is the word of
the past and the present, and the true word of immortality."

"No one can acquire for another, not one;
No one can grow for another, not one."

Despair might easily be the outcome of a first glance at these
conditions; but the stir at all points is assurance of a better day to
come.

Legislation can do much. The appointment of women inspectors, lately
brought about for New York, is imperative at all points, since women
will tell women the evils they would never mention to men. Law can also
demand decent sanitary conditions, and affix a penalty for every
violation. Beyond this, and the awakening of the public conscience as to
what is owed the honest worker, little can be said. Enlightenment, a
better chance at every point for the struggling mass,--that is the work
for each and all of them, and for those who would aid the constant
demand, and labor for justice in its largest sense and its most rigorous
application. With justice on both sides, abuses die of pure inanition.
The tenement-house system, every evil that hedges about special trades,
every wrong born of cupidity and ignorance, and all base features of
trade at its worst, end once for all, and we see the end and aim of the
social life, whether for employer or employed.

A generation ago Mazzini wrote:--

"The human soul, not the body, should be the starting-point of all
our efforts, since the body without the soul is only a carcass,
whilst the soul, wherever it is found free and holy, is sure to
mould for itself such a body as its wants and vocation require."

It is this soul-moulding that is given chiefly into the hands of women.
It is through them that the higher ideal of life, its purpose and its
demands, is to be made known. No present scheme of general philanthropy
can touch this need. It is growth in the human soul itself that will
mean justice from the employer to each and every worker, and from the
worker in equal measure to the employer; and this justice can be
implanted in the child as certainly as many another virtue, into the
knowledge and love of which we grow but slowly.

Never has deeper interest followed every movement for the understanding
and bettering of conditions. Never was there stronger ground for hope
that, in spite of the worst abuses existing, man's will is to join hands
at last with natural evolution toward hi