The Colony Club members, and the women who form the Auxiliary to the
National Civic Federation, have for their object improvement in the
working and living conditions of wage earners in industries and in
governmental institutions. A few conscientious employers have spent a
part of their profits to make their employees comfortable. They have
given them the best sanitary conditions, good air, strong light, and
comfortable seats. They have provided rest rooms, lunch rooms, vacation
houses, and the like.

No one should belittle such efforts on the part of employers. Equally,
no one should regard them as a solution of the industrial problem. Nor
should they be used as a substitute for justice.

Too often this so-called welfare work has been clumsily managed,
untactfully administered. Too often it has been instituted, not to
benefit the workers, but to advertise the business. Too often its real
object was a desire to play the philanthropist's role, to exact
obsequience from the wage earner.

[Illustration: MRS. J. BORDEN HARRIMAN President of the Colony Club, New
York, the most exclusive Women's Club in the country]

I know a corset factory which makes a feature in its advertising of the
perfect sanitary condition of its works; when visitors are expected, the
girls are required to stop work and clean the rooms. Since they work on
a piece-work scale, the "perfect sanitary conditions" exist at their
expense. In a department store I know, employees are required to sign a
printed expression of gratitude for overtime pay or an extra holiday.
This kind of welfare work simply alienates employees from their
employers. It always fails.