1900.] ESSAYS. 109 



help them to star! a new life, and engage in some industrious, 

 honest and honorable employment. But to eling to my subject, 

 I wish they might he induced to go into the country, there is 

 room for all, hundreds and thousands of acres of virgin soil in 

 our United States are still uncultivated. A large proportion of 

 these women earn but a mere pittance per day, and eke out an 

 existence somehow. They will tell you they like city life, are 

 satisfied, and know no other. They are a good deal like the 

 woman who put nutmeg into her custard pies, she did not like 

 the taste of it, neither did her husband, but that was the rule, 

 she always had put it in and supposed she always should. 



In the city of Lawrence, Mass., lives a father, mother, seven 

 children and two boarders. They occupy four rooms in a low 

 tenement house. The house does not front on a strept, neither 

 is it the second one back, but the third, where Heaven's sun- 

 light never shines through the windows. They work in the 

 Pemberton mills. The father earns a dollar a day, the mother 

 a little less. The mill gate is locked at 7 and 1 o'clock, and if 

 late they lose a half day's work. The mother does what little 

 work she can mornings, evenings and Sundays. This is only 

 one illustration of what might be told. 



The women of this country must organize more charitable 

 societies, and help place the lower class of people on a higher 

 level if possible. About five miles from my home, in Sherborn, 

 Mass., stands the State Reformatory Prison for abandoned 

 women. The average number of inmates is three hundred and 

 fifty. The work is all done by the prisoners. I have visited 

 every part of it, from laundry to workshop, and it is the pat- 

 tern of neatness. They do all the work in the greenhouses, 

 poultry and duck houses. All the vegetables consumed through- 

 out the year are raised on the grounds in their season by the 

 inmates. 



It is said that the wives and sisters of the soldiers in the 

 20th Kansas regiment, when in the Philippines, went out info 

 the deserted fields to work. The crops needed attention, and 

 there was no one else to give it, as nearly all the members of 

 the regiment were farmers, and there are now hundreds of girls 

 at work on the farms. 



