The activities of Octavia Hill, in London, preceded by many years the governmental action, and there is no doubt that the creditable showing she was able to make on the financial as well as on the social and educational side had much to do with making the movement for better housing popular in London.  The efforts of Fraulein Krupp in connection with the model housing at Essen are also well known, although, of course, this was not indicated in the Krupp exhibit.

Of the five grand prix which were given for general achievements disconnected with exhibits, only one was awarded to a woman, that to Miss Octavia Hill, although a silver medal was also awarded to Frau Rossbach, of Leipzig, Germany.  Two gold medals were given to American enterprises in model housing which were carried on almost exclusively by women—­one to the Boston Cooperative Society, which was founded and largely directed by Mrs. Alice Lincoln, and one to the Octavia Hill Association, of Philadelphia.

On the whole, the special work of women in connection with housing showed most satisfactory results in “rent collecting,” which has become a dignified profession for many English ladies who conscientiously use it as a means of moral and educational uplift to those most in need of sustained and continuous help.  Improvements in housing conditions are so closely connected with the rate of mortality among little children, with the chances for decency and right living among young girls, with the higher standards and opportunities for housewives, that it has naturally attracted the help of women from the beginning of the crowded tenement conditions which unhappily prevail in every modern city.

Group 139, Miss Mary E. Perry, St. Louis, Mo.  Juror.

Under the group heading “Charities and correction” the seven classes into which it was divided represented:  Destitute, neglected, and delinquent children; institutional care of destitute adults; care and relief of needy families in their homes; hospitals, dispensaries, and nursing; the insane, feeble-minded, and epileptic; treatment of criminals; identification of criminals; supervisory and educational movements.

Miss Perry reports: 

Department O, Group 139.—­(1) Class 784:  Vacation Playground, Mrs. E.A.  De Wolfe; Philadelphia Night College for Girls, Mrs. Wilson; Missouri Industrial School for Girls, Mrs. De Bolt; Illinois Industrial School for Girls, Mrs. Ameigh; Industrial School for Girls, Washington, D.C., Amy J. Rule.  Class 785:  Door of Hope, Mrs. Moeise.  Class 786:  Committee on tuberculosis of the Charity Organization Society of the City of New York, Miss Brandt.  Class 787:  Johns Hopkins School for Nurses, Miss Ross; anatomical and pathological exhibit, Mrs. Corrine B. Eckley.  Class 788:  Seguin School for Backward Children, Mrs. Seguin; Compton School for Nervous Children, Fanny A. Compton; Chicago