PHASES OF PRACTICAL PHILANTHROPY. 535 



the test of usefulness and are worthy of imitation. They are being 

 used in four different lines — namely, protection, education, domes- 

 tic training, and employment. 



Peotection. — The first protective agency was organized in Kew 

 York city in 1864; it is truly an American idea, and before that 

 date no organization of its kind had been knoANoi in England or on 

 the European continent. 



As a result of the civil war many women were thro^^m upon 

 their own resources, with children to support, and much suffering 

 vvas endured in the effort to obtain adequate compensation for labor 

 performed. The objects of the parent protective association — " to 

 secure justice for women and children, to give legal advice free of 

 charge, and to extend moral support to the wronged and helpless " — ■ 

 appealed forcibly to practical philanthropists, and there now exist 

 similar agencies in many other large cities in America, such as 

 Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Buffalo, and San Francisco. The 

 women's educational and industrial unions, which work " to in- 

 crease fellowship among women in order to promote the best prac- 

 tical methods for securing their, educational, industrial, and social 

 advancement," have all adopted the protective work as an important 

 branch of their endeavor. To give detailed statistics of all that , 

 has been accomplished in this line since 1864 would be impossible; 

 indeed, so much of the work is of a private nature which can never 

 be revealed that one must " read between the lines " of the annual 

 reports; suffice it to say that by the protective department of one 

 women's union during a period of fourteen years more than twelve 

 thousand dollars unjustly withheld from working women (most- 

 / ly in small sums) has been collected, police matrons appointed 

 in three local stations, women given places on public boards, a 

 law passed compelling the appointment of women physicians in all 

 the State insane hospitals, and a law making the guardianship of 

 the mother equal to that of the father (passed by the State Legis- 

 lature without a single negative vote). All this has been done with 

 little expenditure of money, but through the wise effort of cour- 

 ageous men and women whose service has been rendered not for 

 charity alone, but in the cause of justice, " that each should have 

 what he has justly earned is the first necessity of social life." 



One province of the protective work is to endeavor to make 

 more clear the obligation of the employer and employee, and espe- 

 cially in the domain of household service to place the relation on 

 a commercial basis. The problem of unskilled labor in the home 

 is the principal difficulty in the way of such reform, and until the 

 household economic and kindred associations shall bear more fruit 

 it may prove an insurmountable barrier to complete success. Dur- 



