of New York; and one mayor said frankly to us--to the
Consumers' League: "Ladies, why do you keep on coming? You know you
will never get anything--there isn't a voter among you!..." Mrs.
Kelley said the Consumers' League had been investigating the condition
of girls working in stores, away from home, and she gave a
heartbreaking account of their destitution and semi-starvation. "Only
nineteen States protect grown women at all," she said. "I am very
tired of 'persuasion' and from this time on I mean to try other
methods."

Intense interest was manifested in the address entitled Noblesse
Oblige by Miss Jean Gordon, factory inspector for New Orleans, in
which she said in part:

One of the strongest and truest criticisms brought against our
American leisure class is that they are absolutely devoid of a
proper appreciation of what is conveyed in the expression,
"Noblesse Oblige." In no country in the world are there so many
young women of education, wealth and leisure, free as the winds
of heaven to do as they wish. In no country are there more
interesting problems to be solved and one would think such work
would appeal to this very class, especially as most of them are
the daughters of men who by their large constructive minds have
created conditions and opportunities and developed them into the
great industries for which America is justly famous; and it would
seem by the law of cross inheritance that these daughters would
inherit some of the great creative ability of their fathers and
fairly burn to apply their leisure and education to working out
the social problems which are besetting more and more this great
country. But unfortunately, with a few exceptions, they rest
contented with playing the Lady Bountiful and their only
appreciation of the spirit of Noblesse Oblige has been the old,
aristocratic idea of charity....

Think what it would mean to bring their trained minds and great
wealth and leisure to the study of the economic conditions which
are represented in the underpaid services and long hours of their
less fortunate sisters in the mills and factories throughout this
broad land! Think what it would mean if from the protection with
which their wealth and position surround them they took their
stand on the great question of the dual code of morality! Think
what it would mean t