ght up by school-teachers, can
get the same effect with five cents' worth of chewing gum.

After all, one of the most attractive features about being "well
brought up" is the fun of sloughing off. The fun of sloughing off a
lot at once! Had it ever been known ahead of time the fascination of
doing forbidden things, just that first factory morning would have
been worth the whole venture. To read the morning paper over other
people's shoulders--not furtively, but with a bold and open eye. To
stare at anything which caught one's attention. (Bah! all that is
missed in New York because it has been so ground into the bone that it
is impolite to stare!) And to talk to any one, male or female, who
looked or acted as if he or she wanted to talk to you. Only even a
short experience has taught that that abandon leads to more trouble
than it is worth. What a pity mere sociability need suffer so much
repression! We hate to make that concession to our upbringers.

When the time for beginning factory work came there appeared but one
advertisement among "Help Wanted--Female" which did not call for
"experience." There might have to be so much lying, direct and
indirect, to do. Better not start off by claiming experience when
there was absolutely none--except, indeed, had we answered
advertisements for cooks only, or baby tenders, or maids of all work.
One large candy factory bid for "girls and women, good wages to start,
experience not necessary," and in a part of town which could be
reached without starting out the night before. At 7.15 of a Monday
morning we were off, with a feeling something akin to stage fright.
Once we heard a hobo tell of the first time he ever tried to get on a
freight train in the dark of night when it was moving. But we chewed
our gum very boldly.

One of the phases of finding a job often criticized by those who would
add somewhat of dignity to labor is the system of hiring. Like a lot
of other things, perhaps, you don't mind the present system if you get
by. Here was this enormous good-looking factory. On one side of the
front steps, reaching all the way up into the main entrance hall,
stood a line of men waiting for jobs; on the other side, though not
near so long a line, the girls. The regular employees file by. At
last, about eight o'clock, the first man is beckoned. Just behind the
corner of a glassed-in telephone booth, but in full view of all, he is
questioned by an employee in a white duck suit. Man