One has but to ask in Chicago whether some particular philanthropic or welfare work has been undertaken to be borne away at once to observe that very thing in successful operation. It is a fair statement that no one need walk the streets of the city hungry. Many doors stand ajar for the despairing. A common indictment of the churches, that they have neglected the practical application of Christianity to humanity’s needs, hardly holds against Chicago’s churches. The Protestant Episcopal Church has long been zealous in philanthropic and welfare work, and Methodists, Presbyterians and Baptists are conspicuously active in these fields. The Catholic Church in Chicago extends a helping hand through forty-five alert and well-managed agencies. The total disbursement of the Associated Jewish Charities for the year ending May, 1916, was $593,466, and the Jewish people of Chicago contribute generously to social-welfare efforts outside their fold. The Young Men’s Christian Association conducts a great number of enterprises, including a nineteen-story hotel, built at a cost of $1,350,000, which affords temporary homes to the thousands of young men who every year seek employment in Chicago. This huge structure contains 1,821 well-ventilated rooms that are rented at from thirty to fifty cents a day. The Chicago Association has twenty-nine widely distributed branches, offering recreation, vocational instruction, and spiritual guidance. The Salvation Army addresses itself tirelessly to Chicago’s human problem. Colonel Carbaugh thus summarizes the army’s work for the year ending in September, 1916: “At the various institutions for poor men and women 151,501 beds and meals were worked for; besides which $38,779.98 in cash was paid to the inmates for work done. To persons who were not in a position to work, or whom it was impossible to supply with work, 111,354 beds and meals, 11,330 garments and pairs of shoes, and 123 tons of coal were given without charge.” The jaunty inquirer for historical evidences--hoary ruins “out of fashion, like a rusty mail in monumental mockery”--is silenced by the multiplicity of sentry-houses that mark the line of social regeneration and security. Chicago is carving her destiny and in no small degree moulding the future of America by these laborious processes brought to bear upon humanity itself. Perhaps the seeker in quest of the spirit of Chicago better serves himself by sitting for an hour in a community centre, in a field-house, in the juvenile court, in one of the hundreds of places where the human problem is met and dealt with hourly than in perusing tables of statistics.