While the conference program was well rounded and covered every accustomed subject and many new ones, the response of the audiences brought out the trend of conference thought. And that trend was unmistakably economic—the challenge to the industrial order for sweeping readjustments. However keen the interest in other topics, this was one which never failed to elicit enthusiastic response. It broke out at the opening meeting when President Tucker sounded the call for a more fundamental and largely economic interpretation of social justice; it rose almost thunderously when Dr. McKelway in the conference sermon declared that at the bottom of the whole problem we now face is the question of wages, and added: “Men do not always know what justice is, and their thoughts widen with the process of the suns, but if there is any current of American thought today, it is the demand among the masses of men for justice. We can tell its course by the ripples on the surface, when some obstacle rears its head. Privilege of any kind must go down before the rush of that current.” The same response rose with every utterance of the slogan “Not charity but justice.” Appreciation of the industrial situation was voiced by speaker after speaker, even though his topic lay in other fields. The new radical labor groups, the I. W. W., Socialism and the single tax were frequently brought into discussion as movements to be reckoned with practically and studiously by social workers. The industrial program was the last ringing note sounded at the closing session with an all-around presentation of the minimum wage, the essence of which, to quote Mrs. Kelley, is that “the payroll has become public property,” and no business can be a going concern which does not pay a living wage, any more than if it could not pay interest or rent.[38] Many of the organizations represented at the conference had initiated valuable civic institutions like public baths, recreational provisions, medical inspection in schools, and, in discussing development of new instrumentalities of social welfare, the delegates of such societies asked for the further extension of municipal functions to meet the needs of the city’s people. Significant of the new spirit actuating the charity workers of the country is the fact that three committees were discontinued at this national convention—Immigration, Commercial Organizations and Social Welfare, and Church and Social Work—while two new committees were formed—Social Hygiene and Defectives (including defective delinquents). The Committee on Families and Neighborhoods was renamed the Committee on the Family and the Community, including community programs. A new committee was created on Neighborhood Development, including recreation, which is a very different thing from the old type of charity committee in a neighborhood.