The many philanthropic efforts that have been made in the last few years to render less intolerable the lot of the tenants in the homes where many of them must continue to live, have undoubtedly had their effect in creating a disposition to accept better things, that will make plainer sailing for future builders of model tenements. In many ways, as in the "College Settlement" of courageous girls, the Neighborhood Guilds, through the efforts of the King's Daughters, and numerous other schemes of practical mission work, the poor and the well-to-do have been brought closer together, in an every-day companionship that cannot but be productive of the best results, to the one who gives no less than to the one who receives. And thus, as a good lady wrote to me once, though the problem stands yet unsolved, more perplexing than ever; though the bright spots in the dreary picture be too often bright only by comparison, and many of the expedients hit upon for relief sad makeshifts, we can dimly discern behind it all that good is somehow working out of even this slough of despond the while it is deepening and widening in our sight, and in His own good season, if we labor on with courage and patience, will bear fruit sixty and a hundred fold. CHAPTER XXV. HOW THE CASE STANDS. What, then, are the bald facts with which we have to deal in New York? I. That we have a tremendous, ever swelling crowd of wage-earners which it is our business to house decently. II. That it is not housed decently. III. That it must be so housed _here_ for the present, and for a long time to come, all schemes of suburban relief being as yet utopian, impracticable. IV. That it pays high enough rents to entitle it to be so housed, as a right. V. That nothing but our own slothfulness is in the way of so housing it, since "the condition of the tenants is in advance of the condition of the houses which they occupy" (Report of Tenement-house Commission). VI. That the security of the one no less than of the other half demands, on sanitary, moral, and economic grounds, that it be decently housed. VII. That it will pay to do it. As an investment, I mean, and in hard cash. This I shall immediately proceed to prove. VIII. That the tenement has come to stay, and must itself be the solution of the problem with which it confronts us.