e."

I went to the nearest restaurant. It was an immense bakery patronized by
office girls and men, hard workers who came for their only free moment
of the day into this eating-place. Everything that could be swallowed
quickly was spread out on a long counter, behind which there were
steaming tanks of tea, coffee and chocolate. The men took their food
downstairs and the ladies climbed to the floor above. I watched them.
They were self-supporting women--independent; they could use their money
as they liked. They came in groups--a rustling frou-frou announced silk
underfittings; feathers, garlands of flowers, masses of trimming weighed
down their broad-brimmed picture hats, fancy veils, kid gloves, silver
side-bags, embroidered blouses and elaborate belt buckles completed the
detail of their showy costumes, the whole worn with the air of a
manikin. What did these busy women order for lunch? Tea and buns,
ice-cream and buckwheat cakes, apple pie _a la mode_ and chocolate were
the most serious menus. This nourishing food they ate with great nicety
and daintiness, talking the while about clothes. They were in a hurry,
as all of them had some shopping to do before returning to work, and
they each spent a prinking five minutes before the mirror, adjusting the
trash with which they had bedecked themselves exteriorly while their
poor hard-working systems went ungarnished and hungry within.

This is the wound in American society whereby its strength sloughs away.
It is in this class that campaigns can be made, directly and
indirectly, by preaching and by example. What sort of women are those
who sacrifice all on the altar of luxury? It is a prostitution to sell
the body's health and strength for gewgaws. What harmony can there be
between the elaborate get-up of these young women and the miserable
homes where they live? The idolizing of material things is a religion
nurtured by this class of whom I speak. In their humble surroundings the
love of self, the desire to possess things, the cherished need for
luxuries, crowd out the feelings that make character. They are but one
manifestation of the egoism of the unmarried American woman.

For what and for whom do they work?

Is their fundamental thought to be of benefit to a family or to some
member of a family? Is their indirect object to be strong, thrifty
members of society? No. Their parents are secondary, their health is
secondary to the consuming vanity that drives them toward