es, were entirely bare of community ideals or any
social theory. When they found themselves in need of a social theory it
was only natural that they should choose the most modern, the most
progressive, the most idealistic. They made their choice unconsciously,
and they began the application of their new-found theory almost
automatically. The machinery they employed was the long derided,
misconceived, and unappreciated Women's Club.

CHAPTER II

FROM CULTURE CLUBS TO SOCIAL SERVICE

Unless you have lived in a live town in the Middle West--say in
Michigan, or Indiana, or Nebraska--you cannot have a very adequate idea
of how ugly, and dirty, and neglected, and disreputable a town can be
when nobody loves it. The railway station is a long, low, rakish thing
of boards, painted a muddy maroon color. Around it is a stretch of bare
ground strewn with ashes. Beyond lies the main street, with some good
business blocks,--a First National Bank in imposing granite, and a
Masonic Temple in pressed brick. The high school occupies a treeless,
grassless, windswept block by itself.

In the center of the residential section of the town is a big,
unsightly, hummocky vacant place, vaguely known as the park--or the
place where they are going to have a park, when the city gets around to
it. At present it is a convenient spot wherein to dump tin cans, empty
bottles, broken crockery, old shoes, and other residue. When the wind
blows, in the spring and fall, a fine assortment of desiccated rubbish
is wafted up and down, and into the neighbors' dooryards.

Everybody is busy in these live towns. Everybody is prosperous, and
patriotic, and law-abiding, and respectable. The business of "getting
on" absorbs the entire time and attention of the men. They "get on" so
well, for the most part, that their wives have plenty of leisure on
their hands, and the latter occupy a portion of their leisure by
belonging to a club, organized for the study of the art of the
Renaissance, Chinese religions before Confucius, or the mystery of
Browning. The club meets every second Wednesday, and the members read
papers, after which there is tea and a social hour. The papers vary in
degree alone, as the writer happens to be a skimmer, a wader, or a
deep-sea diver in standard editions of the encyclopedias. The social
hour, however, occasionally develops in a direction quite away from the
realms of pure culture.

Such a town, with such a woman's club, was L