When a plan to redress a wrong succeeds, it is sure to have imitators. Societies in other cities followed the example of the Woman’s Protective Union, and some of these branched out in directions unthought of by the founders of the parent institution. The Woman’s Educational and Industrial Union, in Boston, besides securing wages unjustly withheld from working-women, added the task of investigating advertisements for work to be done at home, and, if found fraudulent, warning women against them. It procured situations for the unemployed; sold on commission the fruits of woman’s work; opened a lunch-room where women could have varied bills of fare at moderate prices, or where they could sit and eat the luncheons brought from home. It included in its scope the instruction of women in various points of law, such as those regarding the relations between employer and employed, the hiring of rooms, and the detention of property. It detailed agents to look up titles to furniture that, by means of mortgage or insufficient payment of the installments, might not belong to the seller. A feature was made of holding lectures and mothers’ meetings, the purpose of the talks being to lead women into higher planes of thought and action. One of the most active endeavors was made in the line of securing the appointment of police matrons in large cities.[176] The honor of originating the parent Woman’s Protective Union in New York belongs to men; but the establishment of both similar and widely different societies in the United States is due to the zealous energy of women themselves. The Woman’s Club in Chicago instituted, in 1866, a Protective Agency that had for its objects the protection of woman’s purity and honor, and her deliverance from swindlers and extortionists. In the first year of its existence, it examined 156 complaints, fifty-one of which were claims for money,—chiefly wages. These aggregated $992.89. It is said to be the design of this agency “to establish in the near future a loan fund for the benefit of those in need of temporary assistance, and who, under existing conditions, are obliged to pay usurious interest for money.”