The Settlement was responsible for
the furniture and paid the first month's rent, but beyond that
the members managed the club themselves. The undertaking
"marched," as the French say, from the very first, and always on
its own feet. Although there were difficulties, none of them
proved insurmountable, which was a matter for great satisfaction
in the face of a statement made by the head of the United States
Department of Labor, who, on a visit to the club when it was but
two years old, said that his department had investigated many
cooperative undertakings, and that none founded and managed by
women had ever succeeded. At the end of the third year the club
occupied all of the six apartments which the original building
contained, and numbered fifty members.
It was in connection with our efforts to secure a building for the
Jane Club, that we first found ourselves in the dilemma between
the needs of our neighbors and the kind-hearted response upon
which we had already come to rely for their relief. The adapted
apartments in which the Jane Club was housed were inevitably more
or less uncomfortable, and we felt that the success of the club
justified the erection of a building for its sole use.
Up to that time, our history had been as the minor peace of the
early Church.
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