ar per
day, and can readily command it. Though he only knows how to
wield such rude, clumsy implements as the pick and spade, there
are dozens of places where his services are in request at a
dollar per day the year through, and he can even be transported
hence to the place where his services are wanted, on the strength
of his contract to work and the credit of his future earnings. We
do not say this is the case every day in the year, for it may not
be at this most inclement and forbidding season; but it is the
general fact, as every one knows. And any careful, intelligent,
resolute male laborer is morally certain to rise out of the
condition of a mere shoveler, into a position where the work is
lighter and the pay better after a year or two of faithful
service.

But the sister of this same faithful worker, equally careful,
intelligent, and willing to do anything honest and reputable for
a living, finds no such chances proffered her. No agent meets
her on the dock to persuade her to accept a passage to Illinois
or Upper Canada, there to be employed on fair work at a dollar
per day and expectations. On the contrary, she may think herself
fortunate if a week's search opens to her a place where by the
devotion of all her waking hours she can earn five to six dollars
per month, with a chance of its increase, after several years'
faithful service, to seven or eight dollars at most.

The brother is in many respects the equal of his employer; may
sit down beside him at the hotel where they both stop for dinner;
their votes may balance each other at any election; the laborer
lives with those whose company suits him, and needs no character
from his last place to secure him employment or a new job when he
gets tired of the old one. But the sister never passes out of the
atmosphere of caste--of conscious and galling inferiority to
those with whom her days must be spent. There is no election day
in her year, and but the ghost of a Fourth of July. She must live
not with those she likes, but with those who want her; she is not
always safe from libertine insult in what serves her for a home;
she knows no ten-hour rule, and would not dare to claim its
protection if one were enacted. Though not a slave by law, she is
too often as near it in practice as