[8] The extent and character of this work will be more readily
understood by noting the labor accomplished by the Bethel
Mission in the North End, which is doing more than any
other single organization in that section of the city for
the dwellers of the slums. Here under the efficient
management of the Rev. Walter Swaffield, assisted by Rev.
W. J. English, work is intelligently pushed with untiring
zeal, and in a perfectly systematic manner. From a social
and humanitarian point of view, their work may be
principally summed up in the following classifications:
[1.] _Looking after the temporal and immediate wants of
those who are really suffering._ Here cases are quietly and
sympathetically investigated. Food is often purchased; the
rents are sometimes paid; old clothes are distributed where
they are most needed, and in many ways the temporal wants
are looked after while kind, friendly visitation of between
one and two hundred very needy families comprise a portion
of each month's work. [2]. _The sailors' boarding house._ A
large, clean, homelike building is fitted up for sailors.
Every American vessel that comes into port is visited by a
member of the Mission, who invites the sailors to remain at
this model home for seamen. In this way hundreds yearly
escape the dreadful atmosphere of the wretched sailors'
boarding houses of this part of the city, or, what is still
more important, avoid undreamed-of vice, degradation, and
disease by going with companions to vile dens of infamy.
[3]. _Securing comfortable homes and good positions for the
young who are thus enabled to rise out of the night and
oppression of this terrible existence._ This, it is
needless to add, is a very difficult task, owing to the
fact that society shrinks from its exiles; few persons will
give any one a chance who is known to have belonged to the
slums. Nevertheless good positions are yearly secured for
several of these children of adversity. [4]. _The
children's free industrial school in which the young are
taught useful trades, occupations, and means of
employment._ In this training school the little girls are
taught to make themselves garments. The material is
furnished them free and when they have completed the
garment it is given them. [5]. _Summer vacations in the
country for the little ones_ are provided for several
hundred children; some for a day, some a week, some two
weeks as the exigencies of the case require and the limited
funds permit. These little oases in the children's dreary
routine life are looked forward to with even greater
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