“If you do hand-work you’ll have to use your mind.  Lots of girls come in here with an idea they can let their thoughts wander; but you’ve got to pay strict attention.  You can’t do hand-work mechanically.”

“All right, sir,” I responded.  “What do you pay?”

“I’ll give you six dollars a week while you’re learning.”  I could hardly control a movement of delight.  Six dollars a week!  A dollar a day for an apprentice!

“But”—­my next question I made as dismal as possible—­“when do you pay?”

“Generally not till the end of the second week,” the kindly voice said; “but we could arrange to pay you at the end of the first if you needed the money.”

“Shall I come in Monday?”

“Come in this afternoon at 12:30 if you’re ready.”

“I’m ready,” I said, “but I ain’t brought no lunch with me, and it’s too late now to get home and back again.”

The man put his hand in his pocket and laid down before me a fifty-cent piece, advanced on my pay.

“Take that,” he said, with courtesy; “get yourself a lunch in the neighbourhood and come back at half-past twelve.”

I went to the nearest restaurant.  It was an immense bakery patronized by office girls and men, hard workers who came for their only free moment of the day into this eating-place.  Everything that could be swallowed quickly was spread out on a long counter, behind which there were steaming tanks of tea, coffee and chocolate.  The men took their food downstairs and the ladies climbed to the floor above.  I watched them.  They were self-supporting women—­independent; they could use their money as they liked.  They came in groups—­a rustling frou-frou announced silk underfittings; feathers, garlands of flowers, masses of trimming weighed down their broad-brimmed picture hats, fancy veils, kid gloves, silver side-bags, embroidered blouses and elaborate belt buckles completed the detail of their showy costumes, the whole worn with the air of a manikin.  What did these busy women order for lunch?  Tea and buns, ice-cream and buckwheat cakes, apple pie a la mode and chocolate were the most serious menus.  This nourishing food they ate with great nicety and daintiness, talking the while about clothes.  They were in a hurry, as all of them had some shopping to do before returning to work, and they each spent a prinking five minutes before the mirror, adjusting the trash with which they had bedecked themselves exteriorly while their poor hard-working systems went ungarnished and hungry within.

This is the wound in American society whereby its strength sloughs away.  It is in this class that campaigns can be made, directly and indirectly, by preaching and by example.  What sort of women are those who sacrifice all on the altar of luxury?  It is a prostitution to sell the body’s health and strength for gewgaws.  What harmony can there be between the elaborate get-up of these young women and the miserable homes where they live?  The idolizing of material things is a religion nurtured by this class of whom I speak.  In their humble surroundings the love of self, the desire to possess things, the cherished need for luxuries, crowd out the feelings that make character.  They are but one manifestation of the egoism of the unmarried American woman.