Mrs. Matilde Ziegler of New York has taken a special interest in the blind. Mrs. Ziegler, at an expense of $20,000 a year, founded a monthly magazine for the blind, which has a printing press of double the capacity of any printing plant for the blind in any other country. Blind girls do all the work connected with this magazine.
Georgia Trader in Cincinnati established school classes for the blind and a library with over 25,000 volumes, from which books in raised type are sent to the blind all over the country, free of any charge. She also founded a working-home for blind girls, where they are profitably employed in weaving rugs, and in various artistic work and handicraft.
Jane Addams in 1889 opened in Chicago a social settlement, known as "Hull House." Wonderful work in sociology is done there. Many thousands of men, women and children are instructed in all kinds of handicraft, and directed to places, where they can make an honest and profitable living. They have also access to an excellent library, comfortable club rooms, lecture-halls, kindergarten, play-grounds and other institutions.
Miss Addams is to-day recognized as one of the foremost women in her line of work, and by her example as well as through her public lectures and able books, has probably done more than anybody else for the extension of practical sociology.
Women have also taken charge of thousands of tired working-girls and sent them to the country for a short rest during the summer, thus enabling them to take up their lives of toil with renewed vigor and courage.
Similar organizations have established vacation schools to save children from the demoralization of the long summer idleness, and to secure for them fresh air vacations.
Moved by a sincere desire to improve the conditions of the despised and maltreated American Indians, Helen Hunt Jackson, Alice Fletcher, and Mary L. Bonney succeeded after indefatigable efforts in awakening interest among the legislators in their work. Miss Fletcher, in her valuable book "Indian Civilization and Education," gave such ample proof of her special qualifications that she was appointed by President Cleveland in 1887 as a special agent of the Government, to allot lands to various Indian tribes. Mary L. Bonney devoted herself principally to educational work and, in 1881, was foremost in the task of organizing the "Indian Treatv-Keeping and Protective Association" by which the many unlawful encroachments of white setters, and the oppression of the Red Men by government agents were stooped.
In their efforts to alleviate the hard lot of negro slaves, Lucretia Mott, Sarah Grimke and Angelica Grimke, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and many others, braved criticism, insults and social ostracism.
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