by a
number of girls to a woman who held their confidence as to why they
worked. He wished to learn if they were happy. The question meant to
the girls evidently, "Are you happier than you would have been at
home?" and practically every answer was "Yes."

In a "dismal and murky," but fairly well-managed laundry, six Irish
girls all answered they were happy. One said the work "took up her
mind, she had been awfully discontented." Another that "you were of
some use." Another, "the hours went so much faster. At home one could
read, but only for a short time. Then there was the awful lonesome
afternoon ahead of you." "Asked a little girl with dyed hair but a
good little heart. She enjoyed her work. It made her feel she was
worth something."

At another laundry, the first six girls all answered they were happy
because the "work takes up your mind," and generally added, "It's
awful lonesome at home," or "there is an awful emptiness at home."
However, one girl with nine brothers and sisters was happy in the
collar packing room just because "it was so awful lonesome"--she
could enjoy her own thoughts. An Irishwoman at another laundry who had
married an Italian said, "Sure I am always happy. It leaves me no time
to think." At a knitting plant one girl said "when she didn't work,
she was always thinking of dead people, but work always made her cheer
up directly."

The great industrial population comes from crowded tenements. It is
inconceivable that enough work could be found within those walls to
make life attractive to the girls and young women growing to maturity
in such households.

So much for the psychological side. The fact remains that the great
bulk of women in industry work because they _have_ to work--they enter
industrial life to make absolutely necessary money. The old tasks at
which a woman could be self-supporting in the home are no longer
possible in the home. She earns her bread now as she has earned it for
thousands of years--spinning, weaving, sewing, baking, cooking--only
to-day she is one of hundreds, thousands in a great factory. Nor is
she longer confined to her traditional tasks. Men are playing a larger
part in what was since time began and up to a few years ago woman's
work. Women, in their need, are finding employment at any work that
can use unskilled less physically capable labor.

Ever has it been the very small proportion of men who could by their
unaided effort support the entire family. At