s all wrinkles.

The second day I iron soft work all morning--forever men's
underclothes, pajamas, and nightshirts. Later, when I am promoted to
starched work, I tend to grow antifeminist. Why can men live and move
and have their beings satisfactorily incased in soft garments, easy to
iron, comfortable to wear, and why must women have everything starched
and trying on the soul to do up? One minute you iron a soft
nightshirt; the next a nightgown starched like a board, and the worst
thing to get through with before it dries too much that ever appears
in a laundry.

After lunch I am promoted to hospital work. All afternoon I iron
doctors' and interns' white coats and trousers. It is more interesting
doing that. But a bit hard on the soul. For it makes you think of
sickness and suffering. Yet sickness and suffering white-coated men
relieve. It makes you think, too, of having babies--that being all you
know of hospitals personally. But on such an occasion you never
noticed if the doctor had on a white coat or not, and surely spent no
time pondering over who ironed it. Yet if a doctor wore a coat Irma
ironed I think the woman would note it even in the last anguished
moments of labor.

Irma did an officer's summer uniform once. I do wish I could have
heard him when he undid the package. While Irma was pounding down on
it she was discoursing to me how, besides papers, she had cravings for
poetry.

"You remember that last snowstorm? I sat at my window and I wrote:

"Oh, beautiful snow
When will you go?
Not until spring,
When the birds sing."

There were several other stanzas. And about then Miss Cross dumped a
bundle of damp clothes into Irma's box and said, "Iron these next and
do them decent!" I peered suspiciously into the box. It was my own
family laundry!

"Hey, Irma," I said, cannily, "leave me do this batch, eh?"

I might as well be paying myself for doing up my own wash, and it
would look considerably better than if Irma ironed it.

The third day my feet are not so weary, and while I iron I mull over
ideas on women in industry. After all, have not some of us with the
good of labor at heart been a bit too theoretical? Take the welfare
idea so scoffed at by many. After all, there is more to be said for
than against. Of course, provided--It is all very well to say labor
should be allowed to look after itself, and none of this paternalism.
Of course, the paternalism can be overdone and unwisely