ant, efficient young
woman--a young woman who works for her living and is glad of it. One
hardly dares criticize her, unless, indeed, it be to lecture her for an
ever-increasing independence of her natural male protectors and an
alleged aversion to babies.

That we should cling so tenaciously to this ideal is to our honor and
glory. But fine words butter no parsnips; nor do our fine idealizations
serve to reduce the quota which the working-girl ranks contribute to
disreputable houses and vicious resorts. The factories, the workshops,
and to some extent the stores, of the kind that I have worked in at
least, are recruiting-grounds for the Tenderloin and the "red light"
districts. The Springers and the "Pearl Laundries" send annually a large
consignment of delinquents to their various and logical destinations. It
is rare indeed that one finds a female delinquent who has not been in
the beginning a working girl. For, sad and terrible though it be, the
truth is that the majority of "unfortunates," whether of the
specifically criminal or of the prostitute class, are what they are, not
because they are inherently vicious, but _because they were failures as
workers and as wage-earners_. They were failures as such, primarily, for
no other reason than that they did not like to work. And they did not
like to work, not because they are lazy--they are anything but lazy, as
a rule--but _because they did not know how to work_.

Few girls know how to work when they undertake the first job, whether
that job be making paper boxes, seaming corset-covers, or taking
shorthand dictation. Nor by the term, "knowing how to work," do I mean,
necessarily, lack of experience. One may have had no experience whatever
in any line of work, yet one may know _how_ to work--may understand the
general principles of intelligent labor. These general principles a girl
may learn equally well by means of a normal-school training or through
familiarity with, and participation in, the domestic labor of a
well-organized household. The working girl in a great city like New York
does not have the advantage of either form of training. Her education,
even at the best, is meager, and of housework she knows less than
nothing. If she is city-born, it is safe to assume that she has never
been taught how to sweep a room properly, nor how to cook the simplest
meal wholesomely, nor how to make a garment that she would be willing to
wear. She usually buys all her cheap fin