important thing looking to the well-being of the working girl of
the future would be the wide dissemination of a better literature than
that with which she now regales herself. I have already outlined at
some length the literary tastes of my workmates at the box-factory. The
example cited is typical of other factories and other workshops, and
also of the department-store. A certain downtown section of New York
City is monopolized by the publishers and binders of "yellow-backs,"
which are turned out in bales and cart-loads daily. Girls fed upon such
mental trash are bound to have distorted and false views of everything.
There is a broad field awaiting some original-minded philanthropist who
will try to counteract the maudlin yellow-back by putting in its place
something wholesome and sweet and sane. Only, please, Mr. or Mrs.
Philanthropist, don't let it be Shakspere, or Ruskin, or Walter Pater.
Philanthropists have tried before to reform degraded literary tastes
with heroic treatment, and they have failed every time.

That is sometimes the trouble with the college-settlement folk. They
forget that Shakspere, and Ruskin, and all the rest of the really true
and great literary crew, are infinite bores to every-day people. I know
personally, and love deeply and sincerely, a certain young woman--a
settlement-worker--who for several years conducted an evening class in
literature for some girl "pants-makers." She gave them all the classics
in allopathic doses, she gave them copies of "A Crown of Wild Olive"
and "The Ethics of the Dust," which they read dutifully, not because
they liked the books, which were meaningless to their tired heads, but
because they loved Miss ---- and enjoyed the evenings spent with her at
the settlement. But Miss ---- did not succeed in supplanting their old
favorites, which undoubtedly she could have done had she given them all
the light, clean present-day romance they could possibly read. It is a
curious fact that these girls will not read stories laid in the past,
however full of excitement they may be. They like romance of the present
day, stories which have to do with scenes and circumstances not too far
removed from the real and the actual. All their trashy favorites have to
do with the present, with heroes and heroines who live in New York City
or Boston or Philadelphia; who go on excursions to Coney Island, to Long
Branch, or to Delaware Water Gap; and who, when they die, are buried in
Greenwo