drunkenness begun in the kitchen, "alone all day long with never a one
to pass a good word." She finds herself cut off from most of the
benefits which are provided for other wage-earning girls. She finds
girls' clubhouses generally are closed to her. She is the pariah among
workers.

What is there for this girl but the factory or the shop? Yet her
presence there is a disaster for the whole labor system, for she is a
_cheap laborer_--cheap not because she is a poor laborer--she is not;
generally she is an admirable one--quick to learn, faithful to
discharge. Her weakness in trade is that she is a transient who takes
no interest in fitting herself for an advanced position. The
demonstration of this statement is found in a town like Fall River,
where the admirable textile school has only a rare woman student,
although boys and men tax its capacity. There is no object for the
average girl to take the training. She looks forward to a different
life. The working girl has still to be convinced of the "aristocracy
of celibacy"!

No more difficult or important undertaking awaits the American woman
than to accept the challenge to democratize her own special field of
labor. It is in doing this that she is going to make her chief
contribution to solving the problem of woman in industry. It is in
doing this that she is going to learn the meaning of democracy. It is
an undertaking in which every woman has a direct individual part--just
as every man has a direct part in the democratization of public life.

Individual effort aside, though it is the most fundamental, she has
various special channels of power through which she can work--her
clubs, for instance. If the vast machinery of the Federation of
Woman's Clubs could be turned to this problem of the democratization
of domestic service, what an awakening might we not hope for! Yet it
is doubtful if it will be through the trained woman's organizations
that the needed revolution will come. It will come, as always, from
the ranks of the workers.

Already there are signs that the woman's labor organizations are
willing to recognize the inherent dignity of household service. And
this is as it should be. The woman who labors should be the one to
recognize that all labor is _per se_ equally honorable--that there is
no stigma in any honestly performed, useful service. If she is to
bring to the labor world the regeneration she dreams, she must begin
not by saying that the shop girl, t