and indeed the necessity of just such a school, and I gladly promised
to carry forward the good work.

Mrs. Croly said in parting: "I can truly say that during the whole of
my working life in New York, a period of more than forty years, my
heart has bled for these poor neglected, untrained girls, who yet have
the elements of a divine womanhood and motherhood within them, though
undeveloped and hidden by the rankest weeds and growth."

At the Convention in New York City, held in 1901, I presented the
Industrial School project, and the plan received the unanimous
endorsement of all those present. It was, however, deemed wiser to
omit the word "wayward," as the school was to be preventive and in no
sense reformatory. A Committee was formed, of which Mrs. Croly was
made Honorary Chairman; and the work upon a State Industrial School
for Girls was begun.

It was my desire as Acting Chairman of the Committee that the movement
should carry at all times the banner bearing the name of its inceptor,
a name that would always suggest not failure but success. While
seemingly insurmountable obstacles at once arose, they were more or
less overcome as the preparations and work of the Committee
progressed. And at the time of Mrs. Croly's death the project had
reached a point more hopeful than assured, resulting in the
establishment of at least one school which should stimulate the State
Legislature into a realization of the needs of the young girls of the
tenement-house neighborhoods, so that some time in the future there
might be provided through State legislation, on a broad plan, the
State Industrial or Trade School for Girls, the idea of which was
conceived by Jenny June.