Middle- and upper-class women, having more leisure than middle- and upper-class men, have had greater opportunity for social observation and the cultivation of social sympathies, for the latter accompanies the former instead of preceding it, as all active emotions are the reflexes of experience. It is these women therefore who have seen, felt, experimented, learned, agitated, constructed, advised, and pressed upon the municipal authorities the need of public prevention of the ills from which the people suffer. In their municipal demands they have often had the support of women of the working class and of working men, among others, whose own preservation is bound up with legislation and administration to an ever-increasing degree. Just in the proportion that social service develops into public action, and away from private philanthropy and personal interference, is the help of working people secured. With the increase of the demands of working people for the means with which to prevent their own destruction and the undermining of the rest of society, will come, many predict, the absorption of social service into organized public service just as the absorption of the settlement is gradually being accomplished by the school center. Whatever may be the outcome of the present tendencies in social service, it is certain that women are actively engaged in every branch of it: in organized charity, in all the specialized branches of kindred work, such as care for the several types of dependents and delinquents, in organizing women workers in the industries, in making social surveys and special investigation, and in creating the literature of social service. ASSOCIATIONS Women have rendered valiant service in various permanent associations concerned in the improvement of social conditions. The largest gift ever given by a single donor to such an organization was that of Mrs. Abram A. Anderson who gave $650,000 to the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, for a specific purpose; namely, the founding of a department of social welfare with experimental and demonstrating laboratories. In the letter accompanying her gift, Mrs. Anderson specifically stated that three departments to be established at once shall relate to public health and hygiene, matters pertaining to the welfare of school children, and the solution of problems connected with the food supply.