ing to which he was to turn his attention. No amount of work seemed too arduous for him; when the gen- eral meeting of the Committee was concluded, he would often continue to work on sub-committees, superintending the difficult details of execution until the small hours of the night. He had the capacity of concentrating himself upon the task before him, de- terred by nothing -- by no fear of ridicule, no dread of interference with his own business interests, no thought of possible adverse criticism. . . . He knew not only how to initiate and to decide, but how to lis- ten, to compare, and to conclude. He had the capa- city, while listening with the utmost consideration to all suggestions, of weighing opinions rather than counting them. His own judgment, based always upon the widest and fullest consideration of all the facts placed before him, was clear-cut, final, and trustworthy." After the Committee was constituted, Baldwin wrote out a "preliminary statement" of the policy agreed upon among the working members. The dif- ferences between his provisional and final printed declaration reveal the difficulty encountered by the Committee in making the precise objects clear to the public. They were all men who knew that the first and last danger of heralded reforms was in exciting too high hopes; of inviting failure by promising what could not be performed. In rough preliminary notes, Baldwin sketches the evil in the tenements together -257- |