Besides schools such as the Cooper and the Woman’s Christian Union, that were specially designed for educating women in industrial trades, so many other ways were thought out for bettering their condition, that one might well call the years from 1868 on, the philanthropic era for women. So numerous were the societies started for their relief that scarcely a need existed that an organization of some kind did not attempt to fill, and each in its particular way emphasized Emerson’s truth, “there is more kindness in the world than ever was spoken.” Through the efforts of a few liberal-minded, energetic men and women, there was established in New York, in 1868, a society called the “Working Woman’s Protective Union,” that purposed to provide “women with legal protection against the frauds and impositions of unscrupulous employers, to assist them in procuring employment, and to secure them such suitable departments of labor as are not occupied by them.” From the start, the novel work done by this society was appreciated by the class it was intended to help. Perfectly unsectarian, with all its services _gratis_, the rooms, first on Bleecker Street, and for the past twenty years on Clinton Place, were thronged by women in distress desirous of legal counsel, matronly advice, or help to better work. At all times chance visitors could see women waiting in the front room, while the superintendent gave sympathetic ear in the rear apartment to some earlier comer. One day in each week was known as “complaint day.” On that day the legal representative of the Union received and examined the complaints that the superintendent deemed worthy of prosecution. What the society has done in the twenty-five years of its existence is summed up in the statement that on an annual outlay of $5000 it has fought and won the legal battles of 12,000 women, who would otherwise have been defrauded of their hard-earned wages by unscrupulous employers. It has collected by legal processes $41,000, in sums averaging $4 each, and supplied in twenty-five years more than 300,000 applicants with employment, advice, or relief. As many of these applications were made by the same person three or four different times, there were represented, perhaps, 10,000 applicants annually. It was of this society that Henry Ward Beecher said the Union’s greatest and best work was “the mere fact of its existence,” as this fact made employers more careful in withholding from the working-woman her just dues.