Another organization of the unpaid service of private Christians is the Young Men's Christian Association. Beginning in London in 1844, it had so far demonstrated its usefulness in 1851 as to attract favorable attention from visitors to the first of the World's Fairs. In the end of that year the Association in Boston was formed, and this was rapidly followed by others in the principal cities. It met a growing exigency in American society. In the organization of commerce and manufacture in larger establishments than formerly, the apprenticeship system had necessarily lapsed, and nothing had taken its place. Of old, young men put to the learning of any business were "articled" or "indentured" as apprentices to the head of the concern, who was placed in loco parentis, being invested both with the authority and with the responsibility of a father. Often the apprentices were received into the house of the master as their home, and according to legend and romance it was in order for the industrious and virtuous apprentice to marry the old man's daughter and succeed to the business. After the employees of a store came to be numbered by scores and the employees of a factory by hundreds, the word "apprentice" became obsolete in the American language. The employee was only a "hand," and there was danger that employers would forget that he was also a heart and a soul. This was the exigency that the Young Men's Christian Association came to supply. Men of conscience among employers and corporations recognized their opportunity and their duty. The new societies did not lack encouragement and financial aid from those to whom the character of the young men was not only a matter of Christian concern, but also a matter of business interest. In every considerable town the Association organized itself, and the work of equipment, and soon of building, went on apace. In 1887 the Association buildings in the United States and Canada were valued at three and a half millions. In 1896 there were in North America 1429 Associations, with about a quarter of a million of members, employing 1251 paid officers, and holding buildings and other real estate to the amount of nearly $20,000,000.
The work has not been without its vicissitudes. The wonderful revival of 1857, preëminently a laymen's movement, in many instances found its nidus in the rooms of the Associations; and their work was expanded and invigorated as a result of the revival. In 1861 came on the war. It broke up for the time the continental confederacy of Associations. Many of the local Associations were dissolved by the enlistment of their members. But out of the inspiring exigencies of the time grew up in the heart of the Associations the organization and work of the Christian Commission, coöperating with the Sanitary Commission for the bodily and spiritual comfort of the armies in the field. The two organizations expended upward of eleven millions of dollars, the free gift of the people at home. After the war the survivors of those who had enlisted from the Associations came back to their home duties, in most cases, better men for all good service in consequence of their experience of military discipline.
A natural sequel to the organization and success of the Young Men's Christian Association is the institution of the Young Women's Christian Association, having like objects and methods in its proper sphere. This institution, too, owes the reason of its existence to changed social conditions. The plausible arguments of some earnest reformers in favor of opening careers of independent self-support to women, and the unquestionable and pathetic instances by which these arguments are enforced, are liable to some most serious and weighty offsets. Doubtless many and many a case of hardship has been relieved by the general introduction of this reform. But the result has been the gathering in large towns of populations of unmarried, self-supporting young women, severed from home duties and influences, and, out of business hours, under no effective restraints of rule. There is a rush from the country into the city of applicants for employment, and wages sink to less than a living rate. We are confronted with an artificial and perilous condition for the church to deal with, especially in the largest cities. And of the various instrumentalities to this end, the Young Women's Christian Association is one of the most effective.
The development of organized activity among women has been a conspicuous characteristic of this period. From the beginning of our churches the charitable sewing-circle or "Dorcas Society" has been known as a center both of prayer and of labor. But in this period the organization of women for charitable service has been on a continental scale.
In 1874, in an outburst of zeal, "women's crusades" were undertaken, especially in some western towns, in which bands of singing and praying women went in person to tippling-houses and even worse resorts, to assail them, visibly and audibly, with these spiritual weapons. The crusades, so long as they were a novelty, were not without result. Spectacular prayers, offered with one eye on the heavens and the other eye watching the impressions made on the human auditor, are not in vain; they have their reward. But the really important result of the "crusades" was the organization of the "Women's Christian Temperance Union," which has extended in all directions to the utmost bounds of the country, and has accomplished work of undoubted value, while attempting other work the value of which is open to debate.
The separate organization of women for the support and management of missions began on an extensive scale, in 1868, with the Women's Board of Missions, instituted in alliance with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions of the Congregationalist churches. The example at once commended itself to the imitation of all, so that all the principal mission boards of the Protestant churches are in alliance with actively working women's boards.
The training acquired in these and other organizations by many women of exceptional taste and talent for the conduct of large affairs has tended still further to widen the field of their activity. The ends of the earth, as well as the dark places nearer home, have felt the salutary results of it.[367:1]