ot regret even during those few next days of
disheartening search for work. We often read how purpose can
be so powerful that it compels. No doubt if Susan's purpose
had been to get temporary relief--or, perhaps, had it been to
get permanent relief by weaving a sex spell--she would in that
desperate mood have been able to compel. Unfortunately she was
not seeking to be a pauper or a parasite; she was trying to
find steady employment at living wages--that is, at wages above
the market value for female and for most male--labor. And that
sort of purpose cannot compel.

Our civilization overflows with charity--which is simply
willingness to hand back to labor as generous gracious alms a
small part of the loot from the just wages of labor. But of
real help--just wages for honest labor--there is little, for real
help would disarrange the system, would abolish the upper classes.

She had some faint hopes in the direction of millinery and
dressmaking, the things for which she felt she had distinct
talent. She was soon disabused. There was nothing for her,
and could be nothing until after several years of doubtful
apprenticeship in the trades to which any female person seeking
employment to piece out an income instinctively turned first
and offered herself at the employer's own price. Day after
day, from the first moment of the industrial day until its end,
she hunted--wearily, yet unweariedly--with resolve living on
after the death of hope. She answered advertisements; despite
the obviously sensible warnings of the working girls she talked
with she even consulted and took lists from the religious and
charitable organizations, patronized by those whose enthusiasm
about honest work had never been cooled by doing or trying to
do any of it, and managed by those who, beginning as workers,
had made all haste to escape from it into positions where they
could live by talking about it and lying about it--saying the
things comfortable people subscribe to philanthropies to hear.

There was work, plenty of it. But not at decent wages, and not
leading to wages that could be earned without viciously
wronging those under her in an executive position. But even in
those cases the prospect of promotion was vague and remote,
with illness and failing strength and poor food, worse clothing
and lodgings, as certainties straightway. At some places she
was refused with the first glance at her. No good-looking
girls wanted; even thou