How can women best associate their efforts for the amelioration of Society? We must come together in a teachable and religious spirit. Women, while building firmly and definitely the fabric they decide to rear, must yet build with an individual tolerance which their combined and corporate wisdom may better explain. The form of the Association should be representative, in a true and wide sense. Deliberation in common, mutual instruction, achievement for the whole better and more valuable than the success of any,--these should be the objects held constantly in view. The good of all the aim of each. The discipline of labor, faith, and sacrifice is necessary. Our growth inharmony of will and in earnestness of purpose will be far more important than in numbers.One hundred and ninety women formed this Association: a year later there were three hundred. The second Congress was held in Chicago, with an attendance “very respectable in numbers and character from the first, and very full in afternoon and evening.” On the second day, October 16, 1874, the subject considered was “Crime and Reform.” The Journal says:-- “Mrs. Ellen Mitchell's paper on fallen women was first-rate throughout. I spoke first after it, saying that we must carry the war into Africa and reform the men . . .” The meetings of the Congress grew more and more important to her. That of 1875 found her “much tossed in mind” about going, on account of the
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At its first Congress she said:
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York. 1916.
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