The porter had given me a pillow, and while we were sliding smoothly down that great tongue of land between the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers, where in 1754 stood an old French fort, and where to-day stands Pittsburg, the greatest industrial city of our nation with its population of 750,000 souls, I fell into a half wakeful reverie. I was thinking of its steel, and its iron, its glass, its coal, and its oil, of the mighty fortunes created there by the sweat of the working masses; of the few who had made those great fortunes, of the struggle, the worry, until the treasures of the earth were theirs, until they possessed gold and silver, and houses and lands, through the exploitation of those who must toil. We think or used to think of men who from poverty had achieved great wealth, that they were self-made and worthy of great honor, but that idea seems to be growing less significant nowadays. I thought of the scandals that are rife, and that have come to us from time to time from the great Iron City, and I saw that achievement had left in many cases, indelible marks in a wreckage of mutilated homes and lives. Then my dream changed to the blue jeans, to the great industrial army of bread winners who filled just as great a place of import in the building up of the city, and of its great fortunes, as did the few who exploit them. I thought, too, of their battles of the past for equity and justice, and of the one at that time going on at McKee's Rocks; I thought of the lives sacrificed in such battles, of the contention and agony, of the suffering of body and mind for life's simple necessities, and all to keep together humble homes, to protect the manhood of honorable American citizens, and to insure the safety of little children, to make a living wage possible. We were nearing the city. Surely, I thought, this great city, with its vast wealth, must abound in privileges to labor. I have heard that people who achieve great wealth do not always forget. My first impulse was to pass right through without trying to investigate conditions in Pittsburg, for I had received many wounds of late from those in charge of "charitable" institutions. I had been misunderstood and severely criticised, called a seeker after notoriety, and my motives had been questioned. All because I dared to prove to the world that the institution maintained and assisted by private charity, especially the methods of the charity organization society, cannot stand the test of an honest and impartial investigation. I was weary in mind and body, and had almost lost sight of what had stood out before me as duty. The silent voice which had been leading me on was scarcely perceptible. I had been reading Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables," and I held in my hand this great masterpiece. Aroused from my lethargy I opened the volume and read, "A man should not recoil from the good he may be able to do." I looked, and my wounds were healed, and thus I stopped in Pittsburg.