cents for the much-desired
pleasure of riding back and forth the full length of an elevated
railroad, or because they had in a thirsty moment taken out a nickel for
a drink of soda water, or worst of all, had fallen a victim to the
installment plan of buying a new hat or a pair of shoes. These girls, in
their fear of beatings and scoldings, although they are sure of shelter
and food and often have a mother who is trying to protect them from
domestic storms, have almost no money for clothing, and are inevitably
subject to moments of sheer revolt, their rebellion intensified by the
fact that after a girl earns her own money and is accustomed to come and
go upon the streets as an independent wage earner, she finds
unsympathetic control much harder to bear than do schoolgirls of the
same age who have never broken the habits of their childhood and are
still economically dependent upon their parents.

In spite of the fact that domestic service is always suggested by the
average woman as an alternative for the working girl whose life is beset
with danger, the federal report on "Women and Child Wage Earners in the
United States" gives the occupation of the majority of girls who go
wrong as that of domestic service, and in this it confirms the
experience of every matron in a rescue home and the statistics in the
maternity wards of the public hospitals. The report suggests that the
danger comes from the general conditions of work: "These general
conditions are the loneliness of the life, the lack of opportunities for
making friends and securing recreation and amusement in safe
surroundings, the monotonous and uninteresting nature of the work done
as these untrained girls do it, the lack of external stimulus to pride
and self-respect, and the absolutely unguarded state of the girl, except
when directly under the eye of her mistress."

In addition to these reasons, the girls realize that the opportunities
for marriage are less in domestic service than in other occupations, and
after all, the great business of youth is securing a mate, as the young
instinctively understand. Unlike the working girl who lives at home and
constantly meets young men of her own neighborhood and factory life, the
girl in domestic service is brought into contact with very few possible
lovers. Even the men of her former acquaintance, however slightly
Americanized, do not like to call on a girl in someone else's kitchen,
and find the entire situation embarr