In the year 1883 was incorporated the Baltimore Young Women’s Christian Association, “having in view the improvement of the condition of the working women of Baltimore by providing for them a reading-room, and such other departments as may be found necessary.”

I quote from a description, lately written, some account of the work of this association:

“The educating influences of the Young Women’s Christian Association has been chiefly social and practical.... Classes in reading, writing, book-keeping, and singing were early instituted.... English literature has been taught in simple and effective ways by reading aloud from good authors to appreciative groups of young women, and also by introducing the co-operative method of reading, one girl taking one book by a given author, another girl another, and all reporting on their individual readings to the assembled class....

“Another excellent branch of committee work is to see that girls who come to the lunch-rooms have proper boarding places. Ladies visit girls in their lodgings. A female physician has lent her services in caring for the sick, and has made herself very useful by keeping a careful watch upon the sanitary condition of shops where girls are employed....”

Several of the Women’s Christian Associations have under their care other branches of charitable work than those above enumerated, and as a rule their benefits seem to be confined more or less strictly to Protestants. There are other organizations for the befriending of young women and girls (helping hands, girls’ friendly societies, church societies in great numbers, etc., etc.) which have the same limitation, but there are still others intended to receive all who will join them.

The “Women’s Educational and Industrial Unions,” existing in thirteen cities of the United States, have for their objects “increasing fellowship among women, in order to promote the best practical methods for securing their educational, industrial, and social advancement.”[[194]]

The following are extracts from a circular issued by the original Union, founded in Boston, in 1877:

This institution may be regarded as a social centre, a place of welcome. Any woman, resident or stranger, by coming to the Union will find herself among friends. Its placards in railway stations often bring to us strangers from various parts of the country and from abroad. It invites all women to its reading-room and parlors. It provides lectures, classes, and entertainments. Some of the classes are industrial. It has “Mother’s Meetings” and “Talks with Young Girls” from women with high reputation. It affords opportunities for interchange of thought upon the vital questions of the day. It receives and preserves reports of women’s associations both near and distant. It is a centre of local information. It gathers in the best ideas and suggestions, and weaves them into plans for the benefit of humanity. It befriends the friendless. It is a tower of strength for the helpless. It secures dues unjustly withheld from working women. It investigates fraudulent advertisements, and publicly warns women against them. So far as practicable, it secures situations for the unemployed. In its salesrooms are found the products of women’s industries.... Wise thinkers have the opinion that for removing the ills of humanity primary work is better than after work. The methods of the latter are charities, reformatory crusades, and penal enactments. The evils contended with,—pauperism, drunkenness, vice, crime,—are simply inward conditions becoming apparent in conduct. These conditions are ignorance, selfishness, undeveloped faculties, false rating of values, lack of self-respect and of self-restraint. The effective work is to change such conditions by a kind of education that shall develop the highest and best, thus enabling the individual to stand upright of himself, instead of being held in position by charities, reforms, or penalties.

In New York, in 1879, was founded a Girls’ Club, which consisted of the founder, a woman of education and wealth, and ten or twelve factory and shop girls, who met in an upper room in a Tenth Avenue tenement house. During the past ten years, that club has increased to a membership of several hundred, and twenty-two kindred clubs have been formed in New York, eleven in Brooklyn, and eight in Boston and in other cities. These clubs are mainly self-supporting, and their work is the education and elevation of the members in every possible direction—physical, industrial, mental, and moral. They supply a common ground of meeting for young women who have had the privileges of education, money and leisure, with those who have had the privileges of self-denying, hard-working lives, and the benefits are mutual.[[195]]

Women have, in various cities, opened restaurants where good food is provided at moderate prices, for the purpose not only of saving money to those who patronize them, but to give decent and attractive surroundings and a freedom from temptation to drink. In some of these restaurants are rooms where working-girls may eat lunch which they bring from their own homes, and in some the decent toilet provision is spoken of as a great boon to these girls, who work in shops and factories where every requirement of decency is neglected or violated in that particular.