to do here. And by missionaries I do not mean
gentlemen and ladies who distribute tracts or quote Scripture to
people out of work. If we are to better the condition of men and
women we must change their surroundings. The tenement house breeds
a moral pestilence. There can be in these houses no home, no
fireside, no family, for the reason that there is no privacy, no
walls between them and the rest of the world. There is no sacredness,
no feeling, "this is ours."

_Question_. Might not the rich do much?

_Answer_. It would be hard to overestimate the good that might be
done by the millionaires if they would turn their attention to
sending thousands and thousands into the country or to building
them homes miles from the city, where they could have something
like privacy, where the family relations could be kept with some
sacredness. Think of the "homes" in which thousands and thousands
of young girls are reared in our large cities. Think of what they
see and what they hear; of what they come in contact with. How is
it possible for the virtues to grow in the damp and darkened
basements? Can we expect that love and chastity and all that is
sweet and gentle will be produced in these surroundings, in cellars
and garrets, in poverty and dirt? The surroundings must be changed.

_Question_. Are the fathers and brothers blameless who allow young
girls to make coats, cloaks and vests in an atmosphere poisoned by
the ignorant and low-bred?

_Answer_. The same causes now brutalizing girls brutalize their
fathers and brothers, and the same causes brutalize the ignorant
and low-lived that poison the air in which these girls are made to
work. It is hard to pick out one man and say that he is to blame,
or one woman and say that the fault is hers. We must go back of
all this. In my opinion, society raises its own failures, its own
criminals, its own wretches of every sort and kind. Great pains
are taken to raise these crops. The seeds, it may be, were sown
thousands of years ago, but they were sown, and the present is the
necessary child of all the past. If the future is to differ from
the present, the seeds must now be sown. It is not simply a question
of charity, or a question of good nature, or a question of what we
call justice--it is a question of intelligence. In the first place,
I suppose that it is the duty of every human being to support
himself--first, that he may not become a burden upon others, and