," 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, preeminently 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, cooeperating 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