eautiful work or dares hint that under this fair surface rottenness and
all foulness still seethe and simmer!"

It is not easy in the face of such feeling to affirm that, perfect as
the modern system may be, beautiful as is much of the work accomplished,
it still is wanting in one element, the lack of which has power to
vitiate the whole. No good-will, no charity, however splendid, fills or
can fill the place owned by that need which is forever first and most
vital between man and man,--justice. No love, no labor, no
self-sacrifice even, can balance that scale in which justice has no
place. No knowledge nor wisdom nor any understanding that can come to
man counts as force in the universe of God till that one word heads the
list of all that must be known and loved and lived before ever the
kingdom of heaven can begin upon earth.

It is because this is felt and believed by a few as a compelling power,
by many as a dimly comprehended need, so far in the shadow that its form
is still unknown, that I begin to-day the search for the real presence.
What I write will be no fanciful picture of the hedged-in lives the
conditions of which I began, many years ago, to study. If names are
withheld, and localities not always indicated, it is not because they
are not recorded in full, ready for reference or any required
corroboration. Where the facts make against the worker, they are given
with as minute detail as where they make against the employer. The one
aim in the investigation has been and is to tell the truth simply,
directly, and in full, leaving it for the reader to determine what share
is his or hers in the evil or in the good that the methods of to-day may
hold. That our system of charities and corrections is unsurpassable does
not touch the case of the worker who wants no charity and needs no
correction. It is something beyond either that must be understood. Till
the methods of the day are analyzed, till one has defined justice, asked
what claim it makes upon the personal life of man and woman, and
mastered every detail that render definition more possible, the
questions that perplex even the most conservative can have no solution
for this generation or for any generation to come. To help toward such
solution is the one purpose of all that will follow.

In the admirable report of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor for 1885,
made under the direction of Mr. Charles Peck, whose name is already the
synonyme for careful and in