The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1909-09-11

HE man misunderstood by his
wife is one of the business girls
II gravest dangers. I might count
on my fingers the girls I have seen
led from the straight and narrow path
through love of finery during my fif-
teen years experience in the business
world, but a long and sad list might
be compiled from those lured to ruin
by il-placed, undeserved sympathy.
% The morals of the business girl, hers
social relations, her right to spend her
earnings on feminine fripperies-these
are fruitful topics for essayists whose
horizon Is bounded by library walls
and pink teas.
No one thinks of questioning the priv
ileges, tl1e petty 9xtravagances, the So
cial delinquencies Of the girl in tho
leisure class or the girl: at college: But
the self-supporting girl has more self
appointed guides and mentors and
prophets than her slender earnings and
her unpretentious social position really.
seem to require.
Anyone who has worked among bust
ness girls, who has broken bread with
them, known their struggles for COM
mercia1 recognition, their domestic
lives and trials, will realize that the
girl who must work for her living is
tennperamentally very much like the
girl who is not obliged to work. She
is swayed by the same emotions and
;o1d tn inf
may give her thin veneer Of impertur-
bable calmness tinged with cynicism,
but beneath this veneer palpitates the
same sympathetic heart and flows the
same warm blood possessed by her cou-
sin whose life is made up of teas, din
ners and dances.
The business-like girl who works for
her living is less liable to temptation
than her stay-at-home friend because
she is absorbed by her work and her
thoughts seldom stray from it during
business hours.
The girl who is not businesslike, who
is not absorbed by her. work, who
uses her position in the wage-earning
field purely as a means of carrying on
firtations with men, would be more
useful to society in private life than
she is to her employer in business. She
would lower the moral standard of her
sex in her own parlor or at church
social just as quickly as she does in
the office, the store or the factory.
Morality knows no geography, no en-
vironment. The good woman shines out
in the lowest environment; the impure
woman darkens and muddies the clear
est pool. Business does not injure a
< girls morals, but she can drag down
the moral standard in the establishment
where she works.
Prominently is one of the first aids to
the devil; but propinquity is not con-
fined to offices, stores and factories.
The girl who, joins a dancing class,
who works In a Sunday school or set
tlenent house, who sings in church
choir or who nurses among the sick
and helpless is no less subject to it's
Influence for good or evil than she
: who runs loom, sells goods across a
, counter or tinkles away on a typewriter.
me 'puDllC press Iee11lS Will tales u
= men misunderstood" who have dis.
= graced their, cloth or calling. Why
q should the girl in business expect to
i. be free from the same Influences?
III i And even here there is a difference.
!. Thesgirl who,meets men in a way pure
!. social. charitable or churchly is apt
n to- be. less sophisticated than the girl
4 employed, in the business world. She is
B, more apt to accept men at their face
A value. ~ The girl downtown proudly
huns. I'm wise; I'm wise as can be-
and thereby escapes the dangers Of
gpropinquity and the dangers of a too
questioning faith in mere masculine
protestant eacs, n sxfs, 4 e,t y. ia
4 as let strangely enough the girl who
laughs at comp iments, and proves inn