by the opening of such schools as the Empress of Russia has patronized for the maintenance of the “petites industries,” or those which Queen Margherita has established for the revival of lace-making in Italy.  If there was such a counter-attraction to machine labour, the bread-winner would have a freer field and the non-bread-winner might still work for luxury and at the same time better herself morally, mentally and esthetically.  She could aid in forming an intermediate class of labourers which as yet does not exist in America:  the hand-workers, the main d’oeuvre who produce the luxurious objects of industrial art for which we are obliged to send to Europe when we wish to beautify our homes.

The American people are lively, intelligent, capable of learning anything.  The schools of which I speak, founded, not for the manufacturing of the useful but of the beautiful, could be started informally as classes and by individual 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.