Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/553

Rh the test of usefulness and are worthy of imitation. They are being used in four different lines—namely, protection, education, domestic training, and employment.

—The first protective agency was organized in New York city in 1864; it is truly an American idea, and before that date no organization of its kind had been known in England or on the European continent.

As a result of the civil war many women were thrown upon their own resources, with children to support, and much suffering was endured in the effort to obtain adequate compensation for labor performed. The objects of the parent protective association—"to secure justice for women and children, to give legal advice free of charge, and to extend moral support to the wronged and helpless"—appealed forcibly to practical philanthropists, and there now exist similar agencies in many other large cities in America, such as Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Buffalo, and San Francisco. The women's educational and industrial unions, which work "to increase fellowship among women in order to promote the best practical methods for securing their educational, industrial, and social advancement," have all adopted the protective work as an important branch of their endeavor. To give detailed statistics of all that has been accomplished in this line since 1864 would be impossible; indeed, so much of the work is of a private nature which can never be revealed that one must "read between the lines" of the annual reports; suffice it to say that by the protective department of one women's union during a period of fourteen years more than twelve thousand dollars unjustly withheld from working women (mostly in small sums) has been collected, police matrons appointed in three local stations, women given places on public boards, a law passed compelling the appointment of women physicians in all the State insane hospitals, and a law making the guardianship of the mother equal to that of the father (passed by the State Legislature without a single negative vote). All this has been done with little expenditure of money, but through the wise effort of courageous men and women whose service has been rendered not for charity alone, but in the cause of justice, "that each should have what he has justly earned is the first necessity of social life."

One province of the protective work is to endeavor to make more clear the obligation of the employer and employee, and especially in the domain of household service to place the relation on a commercial basis. The problem of unskilled labor in the home is the principal difficulty in the way of such reform, and until the household economic and kindred associations shall bear more fruit it may prove an insurmountable barrier to complete success.