al effort. Such labour would be
paid more than the mechanical factory work; the immense importation from
abroad of objects of industrial art sufficiently proves the demand for
them in this country; there would be no material disadvantage for the
girl who gave up her job in a pickle factory. Her faculties would be
well employed, and she could, without leaving her home, do work which
would be of esthetic and, indirectly, of moral value.

I was discouraged at first to see how difficult it was to help the
working girls as individuals and how still more difficult to help them
as a class. There is perhaps no surer way of doing this than by giving
opportunities to those who have a purpose and a will. No amount of
openings will help the girl who has not both of these. I watched many
girls with intelligence and energy who were unable to develop for the
lack of a chance a start in the right direction. Aside from the few
remedies I have been able to suggest, I would like to make an appeal for
persistent sympathy in behalf of those whose misery I have shared. Until
some marvelous advancement has been made toward the reign of justice
upon earth, every man, woman and child should have constantly in his
heart the sufferings of the poorest.

On the evening when I left the factory for the last time, I heard in the
streets the usual cry of murders, accidents and suicides: the mental
food of the overworked. It is Saturday night. I mingle with a crowd of
labourers homeward bound, and with women and girls returning from a
Saturday sale in the big shops. They hurry along delighted at the
cheapness of a bargain, little dreaming of the human effort that has
produced it, the cost of life and energy it represents. As they pass,
they draw their skirts aside from us, the labourers who have made their
bargains cheap; from us, the cooeperators who enable them to have the
luxuries they do; from us, the multitude who stand between them and the
monster Toil that must be fed with human lives. Think of us, as we herd
to our work in the winter dawn; think of us as we bend over our task
all the daylight without rest; think of us at the end of the day as we
resume suffering and anxiety in homes of squalour and ugliness; think of
us as we make our wretched try for merriment; think of us as we stand
protectors between you and the labour that must be done to satisfy your
material demands; think of us--be merciful.

[Illustration: "WAVING ARMS OF SMOKE AND ST