In startling contrast there exists almost under the very eaves of the roofs which shelter them a vast and pitiful group of friendless children,--the deserted babe, the "little mother," the boys and girls running wild on side streets in every village in our land and in every slum in the cities, the factory child, the shop girl who has no home.

Let us remember that a goodly percentage of those at work have homes and that they are engaged in a stimulating, if hard, effort to "help," that they have the steadying consciousness that they are needed.

Nevertheless, this mass of youth is on the whole in an unnatural position--an antisocial relation.
Society can never run rightfully until all its members are performing their natural functions.

No woman, whatever her condition, can escape her obligation to youth without youth suffering, and without suffering herself.

One of the crying needs of to-day is a crusade, a jar, which will force upon our free women the friendless children of the country, give them some sense of the undeniable relation they bear to them, show them that they are in a sense the cause of this pathetic group and that it is their work to relieve it.
True, for a woman there is nothing more painful than putting herself face to face with the suffering of children.