In the field of social effort Chicago has long stood at the fore, and the experiments have continued until a good many debatable points as to method have been determined. Hull House and Miss Jane Addams are a part of American history. There are those in Chicago who are skeptical as to the value of much of the machinery employed in social betterment, but they may be silenced effectively by a question as to just what the plight of the two and a half million would be if so many high-minded people had not consecrated themselves to the task of translating America into terms of service for the guidance and encouragement of the poor and ignorant. The spirit of this endeavor is that expressed in Arnold’s lines on Goethe: “He took the suffering human race, He read each wound, each weakness clear; And struck his finger on the place And said: Thou ailest here and here!” And when the diagnosis has been made some one in this city of hope is ready with a remedy. When I remarked to a Chicago alderman upon the great number of agencies at work in Chicago for social betterment, he said, with manifest pride: “This town is full of idealists!” What strikes the visitor is that so many of these idealists are practical-minded men and women who devote a prodigious amount of time, energy, and money to the promotion of social welfare. It is impossible to examine a cross-section anywhere without finding vestigia of welfare effort, or traces of the movements for political reform represented in the Municipal Voters’ League, the Legislative League, or the City Club. It is admitted (grudgingly in some quarters) that the strengthening of the social fabric has carried with it an appreciable elevation of political ideals, though the proof of this is less impressive than we should like to have it. It is unfortunately true that an individual may be subjected to all possible saving influences--transformed into a clean, reputable being, yet continue to view his political obligations as through a glass darkly. Nor is the average citizen of old American stock, who is satisfied, very often, to accept any kind of local government so long as he is not personally annoyed about it, a wholly inspiring example to the foreign-born. The reformer finds it necessary to work coincidentally at both ends of the social scale. The preservation of race groups in Chicago’s big wards (the vote in these political units ranges from eight to thirty-six thousand), is essential to safe manipulation. The bosses are not interested in the successful operation of the melting-pot. It is much easier for them to buy votes collectively from a padrone than to negotiate with individuals whose minds have been “corrupted” by the teachers of political honesty in settlements and neighborhood houses. However, the Chicago bosses enjoy little tranquillity; some agency is constantly on their heels with an impudent investigation that endangers their best-laid devices for “protection.”