These ill-taught girls are just as prone to sin against their bodies as the better-taught children of the rich.  If employers would give them something substantial at midday, and furnish small bracket seats which could be pulled out and pushed back within a second of time, they would find their business sustained by a corps of comfortable, cheerful, healthful employes; and such a humane, sensible policy certainly ought to be sustained by all who have any sympathy with Mr. Bergh.

The belief of many, that the majority of the girls are broken down by dissipation, is as superficial as it is unjust.  Undoubtedly, many do carry their evening recreation to an injurious excess, and some place themselves in the way of temptations which they have not the strength to resist; but every physician knows that some recreation, some relief from the monotony of their hard life, is essential.  Otherwise, they would grow morbid in mind as well as enfeebled in body.  The crying shame is that there are so few places where these girls can go from their crowded tenement homes and find innocent entertainment.  Their dissipations are scarcely more questionable, though not so elegantly veneered, as those of the fashionable, nor are the moral and physical effects much worse.  But comparatively few would go to places of ill-repute could they find harmless amusements suited to their intelligence and taste.  After much investigation, I am satisfied that in point of morals the working-women of New York compare favorably with any class in the world.  To those who do not stand aloof and surmise evil, but who acquaint themselves with the facts, it is a source of constant wonder that in their hard and often desperate struggle for bread they still maintain so high a standard.

Tenement life with scanty income involves many shadows at best, but in the name of manhood I protest against taking advantage of the need of bread to inflict years of pain and premature death.  We all are involved in this wrong to the degree that we sustain establishments from which a girl is discharged if she does not or cannot obey a rule which it would be torture for us to keep.

I shall be glad, indeed, if these words hasten by one hour the time when from the temple of human industry all traders shall be driven out who thrive on the agonies of girls as frail and impoverished as Mildred Jocelyn.

THE END