The observer who seeks to discern and estimate the forces working for good or evil that mark the spirit and tendencies of an age, finds it easiest to do this by noting the changes which have occurred within his own memory. To-day everyone seems to dwell upon the growth not only of luxury, but of the passion for amusement, and most of those who can look back thirty or forty years find in this growth grounds for discouragement. I deny neither the fact nor the significance of the auguries that it suggests. But let us also note a hopeful sign manifest during the last twenty years both here and in England. It is the diffusion among the educated and richer classes of a warmer feeling of sympathy and a stronger feeling of responsibility for the less fortunate sections of the community. There is more of a sense of brotherhood, more of a desire to help, more of a discontent with those arrangements of society which press hardly on the common man than there was forty years ago. This altruistic spirit which is now everywhere visible in the field of private philanthropic work, seems likely to spread into the field of civic action also, and may there become a new motive power. It has already become a more efficient force in legislation than it ever was before. We may well hope that it will draw more and more of those who love and seek to help their fellow-men into that legislative and administrative work whose opportunities for grappling with economic and social problems become every day greater.