The club found out that there were people it was impossible to help, do what the world would.
This little girl during this period of struggle with this woman was met one Sunday afternoon. She carried a doll to which she was devoted, and for which she made a cloak that Sunday morning. "Isn't she pretty?" she said, holding up the doll. "I often wish I could see her when I'm working." What a combination of child and woman! As the years have passed, this little girl has paid the penalty of shop life. She has grown hard, aggressive, self-assertive, untruthful. If only her environment could have been different, she would have made a magnificent woman. The world of struggle has been too much for her; it has strangled the spirit of helpfulness.
The lessons of that winter have been well learned. Every mother in the club wants a trade for her child; something learned that has in it wage-earning promise because the worker has special knowledge.
The time came when it was possible to turn the attention of these mothers to the administration of those city departments that make the environment of their homes. The streets naturally claimed first attention. They learned to take the numbers of the street sweepers who failed to do their work; to take the numbers of the carts improperly and carelessly filled, and report them at the club meeting. Leaking roofs, broken stairways, unlighted halls, contagious diseases were reported, and conditions in the stores and factories where their daughters worked.
The criminality of concealing dangers that threatened many to protect one was comprehended. The club motto became "A helping hand to all."
The club members felt that it was possible for them to give special help to little children. In a thousand ways the women in the house of many families find the opportunity to help children; often through the children they helped the mothers. Sometimes through personal influence they secured the regular attendance of children at school; sometimes it meant calling in the aid of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children to secure the rights of children, to protect them from evils in their own homes.
One day a wealthy woman who had lost a little girl told the president of this club this incident, which, she said, changed the course of her life. For months she had shut out the world. God and man were cruel. Nothing interested her; life was empty. She sat by the window in her home one November afternoon. It was drizzling and blowing. A little girl without hat or coat stood shivering and crying against the church railing opposite. As she watched the child her mind reverted to the clothes she handled so constantly, because they had been worn by her child. She sent for the little stranger, and when she went on the street again she was warm, tidy and comfortable. Then came the thought, "God never meant a woman should be a mother just to one little girl. She must be a mother to every child who needs her." From that day this woman has given her life and service to children. The story was told to the club.
One of the members, after the meeting had adjourned and while the refreshments were being served, was overheard saying: "Why, certainly it would change everything if every woman would live in that way. Think how many times you could save children, how many times you could help them, if you were their mother just for the time they needed you—often only a few minutes."
Months after a member reported: "Well, I don't know what you'll all think when I tell you what I did last week. I've been bothered because such a nice-looking little girl came every morning about school time and went upstairs in the house opposite. She carried a lunch-box and books. I would see her with a baby at the window, and see her in the morning run on errands. At three o'clock she went away in the direction from which she came. That child is playing 'hookey.' That woman is to blame, I said to myself. One morning last week I saw the child go to the corner grocery. I went after her.
