and democratic.

The Young Women's Christian Association has had an industrial
department, which up to a recent period concerned itself merely with the
spiritual welfare of working girls. Prayer meetings in factories, clubs,
and classes in the Association headquarters, working-girls' boarding
homes, and other philanthropic efforts were the limits of the
Association's activities. The entire policy has changed of late, and
under the capable direction of Miss Annie Marian MacLean, of Brooklyn,
New York, the industrial department of the Association is doing
scientific investigation of labor conditions of women.

In a cracker factory I once saw a paid worker in the Young Women's
Christian Association pause above a young girl lying on the floor,
crimson with fever, and apparently in the throes of a serious illness.
With angelic pity on her face the Association worker stooped and
slipped a tract into the sick girl's hand. The kind of industrial
secretary the Association now employs would send for an ambulance and
see that the girl had the best of hospital care. She would inquire
whether the girl's illness was caused by the conditions under which she
worked, and she would know if it were possible to have those conditions
changed.

WOMEN'S CLUBS STUDYING LABOR PROBLEMS Nearly every state federation of
women's clubs has its industrial committee, and many large clubs have a
corresponding department. It is these industrial sections of the women's
clubs which are such a thorn in the flesh of Mr. John Kirby, Jr., the
new president of the National Manufacturers' Association. In his
inaugural address Mr. Kirby warned his colleagues that women's clubs
were not the ladylike, innocuous institutions that too-confiding man