Missouri Country Life Conference. 163 



me more. I advertised in the paper for two girls, a house girl 

 and a cook. The next day two big, strong girls, just the pic- 

 tures of health and young womanhood, came and applied to 

 my housekeeper for the position. They said that they were 

 sisters and that they had come from two counties down below 

 me. Well, of course, I had nothing to do with that; she em- 

 ployed them. After the first meal I saw that they did not 

 know the first thing about cooking. There was so little to 

 do so far as the house girl's duties were concerned, the idleness 

 and the leisure made her restless and she was impatient. So 

 she went down town, looked in the shop windows and saw the 

 attractive things, saw the girls in the store, and it dawned on 

 that poor, misguided girl that she was competent to take a place 

 as a "sewing girl." As she put it, "to learn how to sew, how 

 to make those beautiful dresses." So she came back after two 

 days and said she believed she would prefer to go and learn 

 dressmaking, or sewing, and that she had a position offered her 

 down town. My housekeeper told her that was all right. In 

 the first place, she did not know anything about the duties at 

 my place. She quit and went down town the next* morning. 

 At night she was back and said that she had lost her place, but 

 that she was talking to her sister and her sister wanted to know 

 if we would take her back. As neither girl was competent to 

 fill the places we had my housekeeper suggested that she would 

 go down and intercede with the dressmaker to see if she could 

 not again get the place for the girl, who wanted to sew. She 

 went down and asked the dressmaker why she did not keep the 

 girl. "Why," the dressmaker said, "she came in here and told 

 me she could sew. When we tried her she could not sew a 

 straight seam; did not know the first principles of sewing; never 

 had run a machine. 1 told her that she was just fooling away 

 time here and that she had better go and learn something else. 

 She told me about giving up her place at your house and I told 

 her she had better go back." 



To make a short story, that girl came back and told her 

 sister there was an advertisement in the paper of work for girls 

 at an overall factory. So the sister, the one who was pretending 

 to cook, came and said she believed it would be better for them 

 both to go, that they would rent a room down town and work at 

 this overall factory. They went down and got that place. They 

 just worked one day, and were back again. The proprietor of 

 the factory told them they were not competent, that he had to 



