AMERICAN WOMEN IN PHILANTHROPY 219 



sets in motion machinery which goes on and on turning out 

 wiser, or better, or healthier men and women. An act of 

 charity ends with the deed. It may or may not bring forth 

 the fruit of gratitude and higher endeavor, and is only pro- 

 gressive in its results when its magnitude merges it into the 

 domain which the world terms philanthropy. As an illustra- 

 tion: the thousands of dollars contributed by Miss Helen 

 Gould to the hospitals might be termed a charity; her check of 

 $100,000 to the government was an act of philanthropy — it 

 went to help free a people and immediately better their physi- 

 cal and moral conditions. This country contains millions of 

 notably charitable women, because women b}^ reason of their 

 nature and occupation can best swell the roll of charity. 



With ver}^ few exceptions the work of women in New York 

 has been the inspiration of those in other cities, and its results 

 models for others to imitate. The first sustained effort made 

 in New York by a woman to enable other women to help them- 

 selves was the establishment, by the late Mrs. Marshall O. 

 Roberts, of the Ladies' Christian Union home, on Washington 

 Square, in 1858. This house lodged girls who were strangers 

 in the city, and helped them to find employment. As the work 

 grew, instruction of various sorts was added until, in its ripe 

 age, the Young Woman's Christian association spread butter- 

 fly wings from the chrysalis of the old house in Washington 

 Square, and took the industrial and educational work into a 

 new sphere of activity. Thousands of women have reaped its 

 benefits who had no means to secure instruction elsewhere, nor 

 ability to obtain the employment which such an education fits 

 them for. 



Mrs. W. B. Skidmore tells of the beginning of the Ladies' 

 Church Union. In those early days the ladies had no pattern 

 to follow, and "w^e had to devise everything for ourselves," she 

 says. The work was begun and continued in prayer before 

 definite action was decided upon ; and so unused were they to 

 vocal prayer that Mrs. Skidmore says, 'T well remember halting 

 in a corner lest I be asked to pray." The little band of women 

 began by visiting factory girls and women in tenement houses, 

 and then opened their home on Amity Place. ^'At first it was 

 hard to find a person to manage such a household," said Mrs. 



