It is another grand sign of universal progress that the owners and landlords of vile tenement houses, of the horrible kennels in which human beings in the past used to be penned as in pigsties, are no longer allowed to reap monetary rewards from such abominable and cursed holes. Boards of health, civic improvement bodies, tenement reform associations are taking upon themselves the work of protecting the poor, helpless, and often unfortunate dwellers in these plague spots and compelling that they be made decent, healthful, and sanitary--often seeing that they are razed and entirely removed. What though oftentimes the people who dwell in these places are brought thither by their own misconduct? Are men, women, and innocent children to be "damned" on this earth--as well as in the future--because morally they have been weak and unfortunate? The greater the weakness and the lower the fall, the greater the cry and need for help. Jacob Riis was a brave and heroic leader in New York, William Booth and his gallant army in London and the thousand and one other cities of the world, and the day is dawning when there will be no "slums" in any decent, self-respecting city, when such books as _How the Other Half Lives_, _The Submerged Tenth_, _If Christ Came to Chicago_, and _The People of the Abyss_ can no longer be written, for the true-hearted, loving, brotherly, and sisterly, will have been aroused to do their plain, simple, and manifest duty and "slums," "abysses," and "plague spots" will cease to exist. There are many other excellent things I might comment upon that help bring content to the soul. They betoken a glorious and blessed improvement upon the "days of things as they were" and they should lead every man to get into line, to find the step and keep it, marching on with this vanguard of human progress, which seeks the best possible condition of body, mind, and soul for all men.