not exist.  Men were too long in a majority.  Women have become autocrats or rivals.  A phrase which I heard often repeated at the factory speaks by itself for a condition:  “She must be married, because she don’t work.”  And another phrase pronounced repeatedly by the younger girls:  “I don’t have to work; my father gives me all the money I need, but not all the money I want.  I like to be independent and spend my money as I please.”

  [Footnote 1:  George Engelman, M.D., “The Increasing Sterility of
  American Women,” from the Journal of the American Medical
  Association, October 5, 1901.]

What are the conclusions to be drawn?  The American-born girl is an egoist.  Her whole effort (and she makes and sustains one in the life of mill drudgery) is for herself.  She works for luxury until the day when a proper husband presents himself.  Then, she stops working and lets him toil for both, with the hope that the budget shall not be diminished by increasing family demands.

In those cases where the woman continues to work after marriage, she chooses invariably a kind of occupation which is inconsistent with child-bearing.  She returns to the mill with her husband.  There were a number of married couples at the knitting factory at Perry.  They boarded, like the rest of us.  I never saw a baby nor heard of a baby while I was in the town.

I can think of no better way to present this love of luxury, this triumph of individualism, this passion for independence than to continue my account of the daily life at Perry.

On Saturday night we drew our pay and got out at half-past four.  This extra hour and a half was not given to us; we had saved it up by beginning each day at fifteen minutes before seven.  In reality we worked ten and a quarter hours five days in the week in order to work eight and a half on the sixth.

By five o’clock on Saturdays the village street was animated with shoppers—­the stores were crowded.  At supper each girl had a collection of purchases to show:  stockings, lace, fancy buckles, velvet ribbons, elaborate hairpins.  Many of them, when their board was paid, had less than a dollar left of the five or six it had taken them a week to earn.

“I am not working to save,” was the claim of one girl for all.  “I’m working for pleasure.”

This same girl called me into her room one evening when she was packing to move to another boarding-house where were more young men and better food.  I watched her as she put her things into the trunk.  She had a quantity of dresses, underclothes with lace and tucks, ribbons, fancy hair ornaments, lace boleros, handkerchiefs.  The bottom of her trunk was full of letters from her beau.  The mail was always the source of great excitement for her, and having noticed that she seemed especially hilarious over a letter received that night, I made this the pretext for a confidence.

“You got a letter to-night, didn’t you?” I asked innocently.  “Was it the one you wanted?”