mine? That, later on, would make it
more embarrassing for him than me. I should think he would want to
wring my neck.

It was about time to find a new job, anyhow. But leaving the
brassworks is like stopping a novel in the middle. What about Rosie
and good looking Bella and her brother she was trying to rescue from
the grip of the poolroom? Mame--Mame and her kaleidoscope romances,
insults, and adventures? I just hate walking off and leaving it all.
And the boss and Miss Hibber so nice to me about everything.

Before a week is gone Minnie will be telling in an awed voice that she
knows what happened. She told me not to go out with that chauffeur. I
went, anyhow, and they found my mangled body in the gutter in
Yonkers.

III

_195 Irons "Family"_

How long, I wonder, does one study or work at anything before one
feels justified in generalizing?

I have been re-reading of late some of the writings of some of the
women who at one time or another essayed to experience first hand the
life of the working girl. They have a bit dismayed me. Is it exactly
fair, what they do? They thought, because they changed their names and
wore cheap clothes, that, presto! they were as workers and could pass
on to an uninformed reading public the trials of the worker.
(Incidentally they were all trials.) I had read in the past those
heartrending books and articles and found it ever difficult to hold
back the tears. Sometimes they were written by an immigrant, a
bona-fide worker. The tragedy of such a life in this business-ridden
land of ours tore one's soul.

An educated, cultured individual, used to a life of ease, or easier,
if she had wished to make it that, would find the life of the factory
worker well-nigh unbearable. An emotional girl longing for the higher
things of life would find factory life galling beyond words. It is to
be regretted that there are not more educated and cultured
people--that more folk do not long for the higher things of life--that
factory work is not galling to everybody. But the fact seems to be, if
we dare generalize, that there are a very great many persons in this
world who are neither educated nor "cultured" nor filled with
spiritual longings. The observation might be made that all such are
not confined to the working classes; that the country at large, from
Fifth Avenue, New York, to Main Street, Gopher Prairie, to Market
Street, Sa