xposed to all the dangers of unwatched
intimacy with the other sex.

"Moreover, the factory girl learns and practices but one thing,--some
one mechanical movement, which gives no scope for invention,
ingenuity, or any other of the powers called into play by domestic
labor; so that she is in reality unfitted in every way for family
duties.

"Many times it has been my lot to try, in my family service, girls who
have left factories; and I have found them wholly useless for any of
the things which a woman ought to be good for. They knew nothing of a
house, or what ought to be done in it; they had imbibed a thorough
contempt of household labor, and looked upon it but as a _dernier
ressort_; and it was only the very lightest of its tasks that they
could even begin to think of. I remember I tried to persuade one of
these girls, the pretty daughter of a fisherman, to take some lessons
in washing and ironing. She was at that time engaged to be married to
a young mechanic, who earned something like two or three dollars a
day.

"'My child,' said I, 'you will need to understand all kinds of
housework if you are going to be married.'

"She tossed her little head,--

"'Indeed, she wasn't going to trouble herself about that.'

"'But who will get up your husband's shirts?'

"'Oh, he must put them out. I'm not going to be married to make a
slave of myself!'

"Another young factory girl, who came for table and parlor work, was
so full of airs and fine notions that it seemed as difficult to treat
with her as with a princess. She could not sweep, because it blistered
her hands, which, in fact, were long and delicate; she could not think
of putting them into hot dish-water, and for that reason preferred
washing the dishes in cold water; she required a full hour in the
morning to make her toilet; she was laced so tightly that she could
not stoop without vertigo; and her hoops were of dimensions which
seemed to render it impossible for her to wait upon table; she was
quite exhausted with the effort of ironing the table-napkins and
chamber-towels: yet she could not think of 'living out' under two
dollars a week.

"Both these girls had had a good free-school education, and could read
any amount of novels, write a tolerable letter, but had not learned
anything with sufficient accuracy to fit them for teachers. They were
pretty, and their destiny was to marry and lie a deadweight on the
hands of some honest man, and to increase, in t