“So far from assuming that the well-to-do portion of society have discharged all their obligations to men and God by supporting charitable institutions, I regard just this expenditure as one of the prime causes of the suffering and crime that exist in our midst....  I am inclined, in general, to look upon what is called charity as the insult added to the injury done to the mass of the people, by insufficient payment for work.”

Just pay, then, heads the list of remedies.  The difficulty of fixing this is necessarily enormous, nor can it come at once; since education for not only the employer but the public as a whole is demanded.  To bring this about is a slow process.  It is a transition period in which we live.  Material conditions born of phenomenal material progress have deadened the sense as to what constitutes real progress; and the working-woman of to-day contends not only with visible but invisible obstacles, the nature of which we are but just beginning to discern.  Twenty years ago M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu wrote of women wage-earners:—­

“From the economic point of view, woman, who has next to no material force, and whose arms are advantageously replaced by the least machine, can have useful place and obtain a fair remuneration only by the development of the best qualities of her intelligence.  It is the inexorable law of our civilization,—­the principle and formula even of social progress,—­that mechanical engines are to perform every operation of human labor which does not proceed directly from the mind.  The hand of man is each day deprived of a portion of its original task; but this general gain is a loss for the particular, and for the classes whose only instrument of labor is a pair of feeble arms.”

Take the fact here stated, and add to it all that is implied in modern competitive conditions, and we see the true nature of the task that awaits us.  To do away with this competition would not accomplish the end desired.  To guide it and bring it into intelligent lines is part of the general education.  Profit-sharing is an indispensable portion of the justice to be done; and this, too, implies education for both sides, and would go far toward lessening burdens.  We cannot abolish the factory, but hours can be shortened; the labor of married women with young children forbidden, as well as that of children below a fixed age.  Industrial education will prevent the possibility of another generation owning so many incompetent and untrained workers, and technical schools in general are already raising the standard and helping to secure the same end.

Our present methods mean waste in every direction, and trusts and syndicates have already demonstrated how much may be saved to the producer if intelligent combination can be brought about.  Competition can never wholly be set aside, since within reasonable limits it is the spur of invention and a part of evolution itself.  But if wise co-operation be once adopted, the enormous friction and waste of present methods ceases,—­the waste of human life as well as of material.