MR. R. A. WOODS ON VOCATION

The second Southworth Foundation lecture on "The Church and the Social Awakening," was delivered by Mr. R. A. Woods, of the South End House, Boston, in the Andover Seminary building yesterday afternoon.

As his topic Mr. Woods took "Vocation: Democracy in the Main Action of Life." Real vocation, he said, was to know the moral meaning of the task taken up, whatever that task might be. He showed that the prevalent idea of the meaning of work as a means of controlling the greatest share of material products was fast giving way to the consideration of work and especially of useful co-operation as a means of service to mankind. He took up the question of president-day industrial problems and showed that the interests of capital and labor were identical in many respects such as labor legislation for the equalization of risk between employer and workman and again in the case of compensation for injury to employee. He pointed out that the lowering of the wage limit was due to the entrance of women in to the wage-earning classes. In closing Mr. Woods spoke of vocation as a field for moral enterprise. A great opportunity, he said for the building up of humanity was to be found in the latent idealism which, although hidden in most people, needed only an awakening touch to reveal it.