Walk through any large department store and observe how much valuable space is devoted to making women customers comfortable.

There is always a drawing-room with easy-chairs and couches; plenty of little desks with handsome stationery where the customer may write notes; here, and in the retiring-room adjoining, are uniformed maids to offer service.

But these things are not all that the women who support industry demand of the men in power.
They demand that industry be carried on under conditions favorable to the health and comfort of the workers.
Not until the development of the department store were women able to observe at close range the conduct of modern business.

Not unnaturally it was in the department store that they began one of the most ambitious of their present-day activities,--that of humanizing industry.
It was just twenty years ago that New York City was treated to a huge joke.

It was such a joke that even the miserable ones with whom it was concerned were obliged to smile.