That was our way; is still
in fact, to a large extent, though the principle has been disavowed
as both foul and foolish. But in those days the defenders of the
system--Heaven save the mark!--fought for it yet, and it was give
and take right along, every day and all day.
Before this, in time to bear a strong hand in it all, there had come
into the field a new force that was destined to give both energy
and direction to our scattered efforts for reform. Up till then
we had been a band of guerillas, the incentive proceeding usually
from Dr. Felix Adler, Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, or some one of
their stamp; and the rest of us joining in to push _that_ cart up
the hill, then taking time to breathe until another came along that
needed a lift. The social settlements, starting as neighborhood
guilds to reassert the lost brotherhood, became almost from the first
the fulcrum, as it were, whence the lever for reform was applied,
because the whole idea of that reform was to better the lot of those
whom the prosperous up-town knew vaguely only as "the poor.
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