shortcomings and weaknesses of various sorts, but we shall do our best
to anticipate and provide for them? We are sure there will be
difficulties and disappointments to encounter, but we shall meet them in
the confidence that God is on our side, that He is intensely interested
in the efforts which He Himself has inspired us to undertake and that
ultimate victory is bound to crown our efforts.

And now I would give a brief description of this great City Dredger,
explaining its component parts in the chapters that are to follow. We
cannot promise that the entire machine will get into working order at
once. We are anxious to start it immediately and to complete it as soon
as possible. But on the public will largely depend the question as to
how long it will take us to get it afloat and finished. Its simplicity,
practicability, and universality are to me at the same time its chief
charms, and its credentials to success. It is only part of a larger
scheme with which it is entwined. But it is an important, perhaps the
most important part and will continue to exercise over the entire effort
the controlling head and the inspiring heart without which the whole
apparatus will be as motionless as a machine without steam, or a body
without life.

The following are the various branches of the City Colony--

(1) The Regimentation of Labor.

(2) Food for all--Food Depots.

(3) Work for all--Labor yards.

(4) Shelter for all.

(5) The household Salvage Corps.

(6) The Prison Gate Brigade.

(7) The Drunkard's Home.

(8) The Rescue Home for fallen women.

(9) The poor man's Metropole.

(10) The Emigration Bureau.

To these no doubt will in course of time be added many other branches.
In the meantime this is in itself a sufficiently extensive programme for
some years to come. How we propose to elaborate each of the above, will
be found in the following pages.

CHAPTER IV.

THE LABOR BUREAU.

One of the most painful sights with which modern civilisation presents
us is the enormous and increasing wastage of valuable human labor. The
first step towards remedying this gigantic and alarming evil will be to
ascertain its extent. This we propose to do by means of our Labor
Bureau. Here all classes of out-of-works will be welcomed, from the
respectable well educated intelligent youths, who are being poured out
of our colleges by thousands, to the most squalid specimen of a Laz