opportunity present itself he would take our life as freely as he would take a drink of water. Our money, in reality, is what he is after; and if he does not get it through the girl, he will get it through the employment of dopes or knock-out drops. It is not wise for us, after we have been found out as Christian workers, to even drink a glass of water here, as this "pimp" may tip the waiter and have us drugged.

Now, a "pimp" is a man who is being supported by a woman of this character. For some reason or other, he has her in his grasp; maybe she is afraid of him. She can not escape if she were to try. He would murder her.

So these "pimps" are sitting around watching their girls, and if she gets $5 or $10 she must give it to him. Oh, the horrors, the horrors! How I would that I could blot them from my memory.

Maybe the girl whom we are talking to now is young and beautiful, and just falling into this revelry. Maybe the next one will be pale and wan, and with her dull eyes she tries to impress us that she likes us.

Now this is as far as we can carry you here; and we must tell you that the picture in all of its hideousness has not been painted in anything like its true colors. It is impossible to do so.

Now we leave this place at 3 a. m., and as we walk out we find but few people on the streets. Those whom we find are, in all probability, cut-throats and robbers. We hurry along towards Broadway, keeping our eyes on those about us, and ever on the alert. Once we reach Broadway we are safe and no more danger need be feared. (There are as many people on this great thoroughfare at this hour as are on the streets of Atlanta at any hour during the day.)

We go to our hotel and retire for the night, and we kneel to pray. Out of our stricken and bleeding heart, we ask God to bless the words that we have

spoken to those whose lives are so ruined; whose blight is so complete. But, we must, if we can, dismiss the horrible picture from our minds so that we may get some sleep and be ready for another trip tomorrow night.

Another night has come and we take a trip down in the Bowery, where all the notorious and low resorts and dives are located. Here, if it were possible to do so, the picture could be painted in more vivid colors, for here are the slums of New York. The poor, the wretched, the miserable haunt the streets and dives of this section of the city.

For block after block, and for hundreds of blocks the surging mass of humanity goes, dirty, poor, haggard and scantily clad. We come to a dive and enter; this dive is similar to the one we were in the night before, except that it is many degrees lower in character. acter. It's a cheap dive where the filthy congregate.

Oh, we can not describe it to youthe drinking, the cursing and the vile language made use of by the boys and girls. Possibly fifty boys and girls are found here, mostly of an age from fifteen to twenty, and as we look into the faces of these poor drunken girls, who ought to be in their mothers' arms, we are horrified and our hearts ache. And as we realize that the chances of reformation for these outcasts is only one-half of one per cent., the horribleness of the picture increases, and we are almost made to wish that we might turn back to our childhood and forget the scenes.

Oh, if we could draw the veil here and show you behind the scenes, you could better understand why her blight is so complete; but we can not. We can not take you behind the scene.

Now, we leave here and go to another dive further down, and another, and another, until nearly dawn the next morning; and what horrible scenes we have witnessed.

Oh, the city! The city! With its many opportunities for good and its many opportunities for evil. It is so easy to go to ruin in a great city; and we would tell young girls and young boys to stay away from the city. The lives of many girls and many boys have been eternally ruined and their hopes ever blighted by going to the city.

Now, the next night we will carry you down to Grand street, just off the Bowery, where so many of these young lives begin this downward career.

We find ourselves 'mid many cheap private dance-halls. We pay fifteen cents admission fee. Here we will stay for awhile, and watch the boys and girls as they swing themselves around on the waxed floor. Maybe a young girl who has never yet taken a drink will be coaxed into taking a glass of beer. Then the music begins and another round of dancing is indulged in. Thus we watch them until away after midnight.

Oh, the many pitfalls that are ever ready and awaiting to catch a sweet innocent girl, and plunge her into everlasting ruin.

But coming back to our subject: To my mind (and I speak from a long and varied experience from associating among them), the life of an outcast girl is the most tragic, the most deplorable, and the most heart-sickening that it is possible to conceive. From the very moment that she enters upon this degrading career, until she closes her eyes in eternal sleep, her life is one continual round of excitement, of dissipation, of revelry. Day after day, night after night, week after week, month after month, and year after year (if perchance she should live a year) she spends her time within the gilded walls of disgrace, of shame, and of eternal ruin. How complete is her blight!

The curse of the bar-room places the blight upon thousands and tens of thousands; and the cold and heartless grip extends to the homes of the vic

tims of drink, where the wife and little ones are made to suffer for the necessities of life. But all of these may be temporary. The drunkard may go on a week's tour in his madness with drink, and then for a time be the very essence of kindness in his home; thus smoothing over for a season, the sorrow and gloom which he had cast over his loved ones. Thus you can see that the blight of the wine-cup is not complete, but partial; then, too, the victim may pick himself up and be again a man. He has fifty chances to her one.

Frosty nights may come in the late Spring and smite the grass, the beautiful flowers, the green leaves of the trees, and in short all vegetation. Storms may come and sweep millions of dollars' worth of property away from us. Fires may destroy the houses in which we live. Drought may smite us and prevent the making of crops. Any or all of these disasters may come, and yet the result be only temporary. The grass and flowers and all vegetation would, under the influence of the sun's warm rays, put forth again. The houses destroyed be rebuilt, and the wealth again accumulated; but the blight upon the life of an outcast girl is lasting and eternal. Once the fangs of immorality are fastened upon her, her blight is almost certain to be complete. from every view-point; her soul, as well as her body, must suffer for this misspent life. How many girls do you know today who are living pure lives, who once occupied houses of dishonor and shame? I dare say that you know of but very few, if indeed any. I know of a few, only a few.

Where under Heaven is a blight more complete, more prominent and more lasting than it is upon the young woman? She steps from the parlor of her father and mother, a pure girl, into the depth of degradation and shame, a wreck. Picture, if you please, a young girl near and dear to you, with beautiful features, sweet smile, loving and

winning ways, with a heart full of sympathy and kindness, trustful and confiding; I say, picture her transformed into a being with distorted features, bloated eyes, pale face and painted cheeks, vile lips, vile thoughts and viler deeds, and see if you can draw a faint idea of her complete blight.

Oh, the many hundreds I have seen weep for a wasted life, but they seem to be bound and chained to such an extent that they can not break loose. If you had followed me during the past five years into the slums of the many Southern cities, and into the notorious segregated districts in New Orleans, where there are twenty square blocks of these unfortunate creatures, and if you had gone with me into the dives and low resorts in New York, and had you listened to the stories of regret and disappointment that I have listened to from thousands, and if you had looked into the pale faces and listless and meaningless eyes of the many thousands that I've been brought face to face with, and had you listened to the curses and abuses that have been heapen upon me by some, and the threats that have been made upon my life, and of the drunken condition which I have often found them in, you would say that truly words are inadequate to describe her blight. You would be made to say that the blight was complete. Had you listened to my pleadings with a certain girl whom I visited many times, and whose appealing eyes would touch a heart of stone, and had you heard her beg me to pray for her, saying that she wanted to give up but could not, and how that she pressed my hand and thanked me every time I went to see her, and how that she told me that something seemed to hold her there, and that a little later one night this unfortunate young woman was hurled from an automobile and instantly killed, you will be able to have a faint idea of why I love this work. You could then understand then understand

why the sad plight of these unfortunate wrecks is lying so heavily upon my heart.

If you could have followed me the many times that I went to see another young woman in a certain Southern city for about a year, heard me plead with her, and how long it was before she could yield herself to my entreaties for better living, and for preparation to meet her God, and how that finally she succeeded in breaking away from this death-like grip the devil had upon her, and how that I saw her converted to a Christian life, and that in just six weeks thereafter this poor wrecked form yielded to death; and could you have looked into her pale but beautiful face as she lay still and cold in death, you could better understand why I love them; and why I am pleading their

cases.

Oh! how many times have I wished that I might turn back to my childhood days and forget the experiences I have had; forever blotting them from my memory.

Oh! how my heart is burdened when I think of my past experiences, then of my own two little girls, then of what the future may bring; then of how I am separated from them, and when in my pensive hours how I have longed for the time to come that I might know that they are safely landed in that home beyond the skies; then when it seems that I can stand it no longer, and that my heart seems to be bursting, something seems to tell me that if I help other girls, that somehow mine will be cared for.

Then again when my life companion tells me that I am with her so little, and that she can not understand why I must do this kind of work instead of staying at home with her and the children, and when I explain to her as best I can how this cause is, in some manner, placed so heavily upon my heart, and she turns away still without understanding, then it is that my cup

of bitterness seems to be running over, and I ask God to help me; He, and He alone, can understand.

If you had heard the many hundred tell me that I was the only one who had ever called upon them in the interest of their souls, you can better understand why I've determined to spend derstand why I've determined to spend the balance of my days in an effort to help them.

If you knew how little interest I have been able to create to the world at large on behalf of these neglected ones, you would be better enabled to sympathize with me. There are thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars sent to foreign fields to convert the heathen, when right under the very sounds of our voices, within the very shadows of our homes are thousands of mothers' girls sinking down and out into everlasting and eternal ruin

with no hand outstretched to help them.

The scarlet woman, of all classes of sinners, stands pre-eminently alone; shunned and neglected. I can imagine that when she meets death, this grim reaper must, with quivering lip and aching heart, turn aside ere he could look upon this weather beaten form;

this crushed flower.

As we close we want to sound a note of warning to the young:

If you had seen the heart aches, the tears, the disappointment, the pain and suffering that I have witnessed among those who have wasted their lives in this manner: Had you witnessed the scenes where she's weeping for a wasted life, you would pray that your eyes might be closed in eternal sleep, ere you would take the step that so everlastingly wrecks, so completely blights.

ON

N March 16, 1905, Frank H. Hitchcock was appointed First Assistant Postmaster General. In September of the same year, the National Association of Letter Carriers held their Sixteenth Convention at Portland, Oregon. For the letter carriers of the United States these two events possess especial significance.

At the Portland convention, this Association had met to consider the welfare of their membership and to discuss grievances in their craft, which they intensely felt they suffered. It was a discouraging prospect that confronted them. The world had been moving but the letter carriers' vocation had not. Their salary had experienced no change in practically twenty-five years. With the exception of the eight-hour law, enacted twenty years previously, the working conditions remained the same as when men now grown gray had first entered the service. Promotions for merit were rare and so difficult as to be almost impossible. "Once a letter carrier, always a letter carrier," had become axiomatic.

This convention deliberated long and earnestly over conditions in the letter carrier service and then wisely instructed its newly elected Board of Officers to seek relief from existing conditions by appealing direct to the Post Office Department. These instructions were obeyed, and so fruitful has been this policy that the National Association of Letter carriers have since never swerved from it. Here it is that our relations with Frank H. Hitchcock began and still continue. The history of the National Association of Letter Carriers and the history of the postal service for the past six years can not be

written without according an important place in its volumes to the activi ties of this capable man.

Under the leadership of President Holland, on December 2, 1905, the first audience with Mr. Hitchcock was secured, and to the representatives of the carriers Mr. Hitchcock outlined his policy.

The aim of the service should be efficiency. Waste should be eliminated. A constant stimulus should exist to urge employees to give their best talents to their work. Some inducement should be offered to win and retain the best men in the service. Carriers should be better paid. The various branches of the service should be drawn closer together, and transfers from one department to another made easy. The highest office in the postal service should be within the reach of the deserving employee. Substitutes should share in the general uplift. Where it was not inconsistent with the best interests of the Department, the convenience of the employee was to be considered.

This was the policy of Frank H. Hitchcock as outlined by himself, shortly after his induction into office. Let us pause here and ask ourselves, "Was not this a sound philosophy? Would not the American people approve it? Would not the letter carriers as a unit endorse it?" This was six years ago, and let us now see to what extent this policy has been translated into law. Has the deed squared with the word? Have the useful workers in the postal service prospered under Frank H. Hitchcock?

For the purpose of comparison, and because I am more familiar with it.