olution of it will
win the world's gratitude.

We used sometimes to see it claimed, in public prints, that it would be
better for all of us mill-girls to be working in families, at domestic
service, than to be where we were. Perhaps the difficulties of modern
housekeepers did begin with the opening of the Lowell factories.
Country girls were naturally independent, and the feeling that at this
new work the few hours they had of every-day leisure were entirely
their own was a satisfaction to them. They preferred it to going out as
"hired help." It was like a young man's pleasure in entering upon
business for himself. Girls had never tried that experiment before, and
they liked it. It brought out in them a dormant strength of character
which the world did not previously see, but now fully acknowledges. Of
course they had a right to continue at that freer kind of work as long
as they chose, although their doing so increased the perplexities of
the housekeeping problem for themselves even, since many of them were
to become, and did become, American house-mistresses.

It would be a step towards the settlement of this vexed and vexing
question if girls would decline to classify each other by their
occupations, which among us are usually only temporary, and are
continually shifting from one pair of hands to another. Changes of
fortune come so abruptly that the millionaire's daughter of to-day may
be glad to earn her living by sewing or sweeping tomorrow.

It is the first duty of every woman to recognize the mutual bond of
universal womanhood. Let her ask herself whether she would like to hear
herself or little sister spoken of as a shop-girl, or a factory-girl,
or a servant-girl, if necessity had compelled her for a time to be
employed in either of the ways indicated. If she would shrink from it a
little, then she is a little inhuman when she puts her unknown human
sisters who are so occupied into a class by themselves, feeling herself
to be somewhat their superior. She is really the superior person who
has accepted her work and is doing it faithfully, whatever it is. This
designating others by their casual employments prevents one from making
real distinctions, from knowing persons as persons. A false standard is
set up in the minds of those who classify and of those who are
classified.

Perhaps it is chiefly the fault of ladies themselves that the word
"lady" has nearly lost its original meaning (a noble one) indicating