Produced by Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) WOMAN’S WORK IN MUNICIPALITIES NATIONAL MUNICIPAL LEAGUE SERIES WOMAN’S WORK IN MUNICIPALITIES BY MARY RITTER BEARD JOINT AUTHOR OF “AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP” [Illustration] NEW YORK AND LONDON D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1915 COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PREFACE The plan of this volume demands a few words of explanation. It was originally intended to be a collection of readings illustrating the varied phases of women’s work in municipalities, but an examination of the available literature failed to reveal succinct, up-to-date summaries of the several important branches of that work. It was therefore necessary to search the records of hundreds of organizations and societies in order to obtain a just view of the extent and character of the labors of women for civic improvement of all kinds. Accordingly the volume as finally drafted combines both readings and original surveys. The method followed has been dominated by a fourfold purpose: (1) to give something like an adequate notion of the extent and variety of women’s interests and activities in cities and towns without attempting a statistical summary or evaluation; (2) to indicate, in their own words, the spirit in which women have approached some of their most important problems; (3) to show to women already at work and those just becoming interested in civic matters, the interrelation of each particular effort with larger social problems; and (4) to reflect the general tendencies of modern social work as they appear under the guidance of men and women alike. The task has been difficult owing to the immense amount of material which months of research accumulated and the limitations of space which made necessary the compression of important narrative and descriptive accounts within a narrow compass. This difficulty has been further increased by the desire to escape the danger of overemphasizing women’s activities in great cities and of omitting the no less important and significant work of women in smaller towns. Even at the risk of distorting the perspective by giving much space to minor cities and to local club activities, it has seemed worth while to make the book truly representative of American urban life as a whole. All city dwellers do not live in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia.