There are
many authors, journalists, accountants, etc., who have achieved striking
success; but ordinarily this success has sprung from certain brilliant
or profound mental attributes. Hand labor that requires no thought
does not exercise our best faculties. I cannot specify just here what
occupations an average girl may undertake. I gladly refer to certain
books which contain statistics of work and its profits, or which suggest
occupations: "The Working Girls of Boston," by Carroll D. Wright; "Think
and Act, Men and Women, Work and Wages," by Virginia Penney; "What
Girls Can Do," by Phillis Brown.
My poor girls, who work so hard, so very hard, who seem daily to narrow
all enjoyment, and to give your very existence to factories and looms,
to dry-goods counters and ready-made clothing stores, who put your
eyes out earning twenty-five cents a day, and sometimes put your souls
out trying to keep breath in your bodies one short year more,--what
shall I say to you? I cannot find the words to tell you what I would
say. Your experience shall not be embittered by being told what to
do and what not to do. Bear your work as well as you can, try to find
something really good about it, do not slight it. Remember you make
the world noble; and, if you have an absorbing desire to work in some
other way, watch every little loop-hole of opportunity, and see if
you cannot make it large enough to jump through to a wider field.
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