, 1888-08-22
WORK FOR IDLE GIRLS.
h Might be Done by tho Daughters
of Prosperous Parents.

W AbnBtAou5 Il @AthNas
A class of young women generally con
sidered to be in a most enviable position,
and whose discomfort, where it exists, is
considered TO be without excuse, have in
fact fair cause to be discontinued. These
are the idle girls of good society; the
young women who, after having been
well educated and taught to think for
Reconsideration having had their eyes
open TO see a certain degree of the truth
about social relations and the exigencies
of human existences-are condemned to
comparative inaction by the assumption
on il part of their parents that the
proper thing for them to do mex is 10 en-
joy life, and that they are fortunate in
not being obliged to do any of
work except that which is involved in
this apparently enviable vocation.
These girls ave fair cause to be dis
contcnted, because, in truth, there has
yet beer no place made in the world for
girls of their class. 1t is perfectly true
that parents who are in prosperous cir
cumstances, and able to provide for their
daughters without any help of theirs,
have the right TO ask of them that, their
school education finished, their mental
powers well trained, and their especial
abilities developed to the point of being
able to give and receive pleasure through
art, or music, or what not, they should
now adorn and enliven their parents
home; and it seems to be an ungracious,
not TO say ~ungrateful, thing for such girls
to ask for a career, 10 require to be taught
n profession, or to be put at once in the
way of some wage earning occupation.
And yet girls Of this class, earnest,
thoughtful girls, the very girls to delight
q - 1nr+ia At-1- o,,1 - - IL 80 - ~ ..
mothers heart, will persist in Just these
unreasonable demands. They know,
theoretically, the uncertainties Of life and
of fortune; they know, theoretically, of
course, the need OF the world for honest
workers, and its small need of mere but
terfly existences; they know, still the
oretically, the bitter woes of a large class
of human beings, and the urgent neces-
sity that the world should stir itself up to
find a remedy Why, then, should they
be idle, or merely occupied in those So
cial duties which seem SO trivial, and
which are often more laborious than the
work they fain would undertaken
h girls are right, and yet their
parents are not wrong. Fathers and
mothers have a claim upon their daugh-
tiers for the gentle services which only
they can give. They have a right to ask
them to beautify their home, to be- a CEN
ter of attraction to their friends, to keep
the wheels Of social life In motion, to
give to their parents the exquisite pleas
are Of making much of them, and show
.ring gifts and pleasures upon them, and
yet the daughters, too, nave rights other
han those of maintenance and of in
diligence, which their parents are bound
TO respect.
They have the right to ask that, nav
ing been trained to think, and having
been given the materials for most solemn
thought in the knowledge which comes
from history, from literature and from
political and social science, they shall be
allowed to carry thought into action.
Though duty forbids them to ask for n
career which would sequester them from
their home ministry, they have q right
TO that larger horizon, that broader field
Of activity which their training has made
to them a necessity, and failing which,
not merely their mental and moral, but
even their physical natures must
dwindle.
Such girls as these should be intro
duced by their parents into philanthropic
work. The crying want of the times is
for unpaid workers who are trained
pih4hSAoJ ~ ah udIlSLCo VI WIN "
others. Not only for personal service
among the poor-though the need for
that is enough to occupy the energies of
all the idle girls in our large cities-but
for the study of social problems; for tho
collection of statistics; for writing news
paper articles, magazine articles, tracts
and books on special subjects. There is
a need of women of leisure and of intelli-
gence and activity to serve upon boards;
to visit prisons and jails, and almshouses,
and insane asylums, and, since abuses
are by no means always the result of in
dolence or of d~epravity, but mostly of
ignorance, to study into their nature, and
to learn by what means a remedy may
be found.
One great cause of those difficulties
with which society is now graphing, the
labor problem and the problem of pau
perism, is that while physical science has
been making rapid progress, economic
science has been almost at a standstill.
The study Of economics has at last be-
come the imperative duty of every edu-
Gated man and These women
Of leisure, these idle girls with their
trained mental powers, owe it to their
generation and to the world to do all
that in them lies to advance, by study.
and by experiment, the present state of
social and economic science. : Frank
Ieslie,s.