blows struck that tell. They augur
victory, for we have cut off the enemy's supplies and turned his flank. As
I showed in the case of the immigrant Jews and the Italians, we have
captured his recruits. With a firm grip on these, we may hope to win, for
the rest of the problem ought to be and _can_ be solved. With our own we
should be able to settle, if there is any virtue in our school and our
system of government. In this, as in all things, the public conscience
must be stirred before the community's machinery for securing justice can
move. That it has been stirred, profoundly and to useful purpose, the
multiplication in our day of charities for attaining the ends the law has
failed to reach, gives evidence. Their number is so great that mention can
be made here merely of a few of the most important and typical efforts
along the line. A register of all those that deal with the children
especially, as compiled by the Charity Organization Society, will be found
in an appendix to this book. Before we proceed to look at the results
achieved through endeavors to stop the waste down at the bottom by private
reinforcement of the public school, we will glance briefly at two of the
charities that have a plainer purpose--if I may so put it without
disparagement to the rest--that look upon the child merely as a child
worth saving for its own sake, because it is helpless and poor and
wretched. Both of them represent distinct departures in charitable work.
Both, to the everlasting credit of our city be it said, had their birth
here, and in this generation, and from New York their blessings have been
carried to the farthest lands. One is the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children, known far and near now as the Children's Society,
whose strong and beneficent plan has been embodied in the structure of law
of half the civilized nations of the world. The other, always spoken of as
the "Fresh Air Fund," never had law or structural organization of any
kind, save the law of love, laid down on the Mount for all time; but the
life of that divine command throbs in it and has touched the heart of
mankind wherever its story has been told.

CHAPTER IX.

LITTLE MARY ELLEN'S LEGACY

On a thriving farm up in Central New York a happy young wife goes singing
about her household work to-day who once as a helpless, wretched waif in
the great city through her very helplessness and misery stirred up a
social revolution whose waves b