and maudlin melancholy of
"humanitarian clergymen and newspaper reformers."

For her, as for most of her order, in whom as yet no faculty for seeing
both sides of a question has developed, there can be no reply save in
words already spoken. "These women, working for wages that keep them
always just above starvation point, have no power left to think beyond
the need of the hour. They cannot stop, they dare not stop, to think of
other methods of earning. They have no clothing in which they could
obtain even entrance to an intelligence office. They have no knowledge
that could make them servants even of the meanest order. They are what
is left of untrained and hopelessly ignorant lives," given over to
suffering born in part from their ignorance; and for a large proportion
of such cases there can be merely alleviation, and such slight bettering
of conditions as would come from a system into which justice entered
more fully.

With this army of incompetents we have at present nothing to do. Our
interest lies in discovering what is at the bottom of the objection to
domestic service; how far these objections are rational and to be
treated with respect, and how they may be obviated. The mistress's point
of view we all know. We know, too, her presentation of objections as she
fancies she has discovered them. What we do not know is the ground
taken by sensible, self-respecting girls, who have chosen trades in
preference, and from whom full detail has been obtained as to the
reasons for such choice. In listening to the countless stories of
experiment in earning a living, the passage from one industry to
another, and the uncertainties and despairs before the right thing had
shown itself, the question has always been asked, "How did it happen
that you did not try to get a place in some good family?"

The answers were as various as the characters of those who replied; some
with indignation that they should be supposed capable of this
degradation, but most of them thoughtfully and reasonably. In time they
arranged themselves under heads, the occupations represented by the
various respondents being over seventy. They were chiefly above the
ordinary domestic in intelligence and education, their employments being
of every order, from paper-box making to type-writing and stenography;
but the trades predominated,--American being the nationality most
largely represented, Irish born in this country ranking next, and German
and a sprinkling