to do with the servant class you are describing. Our girls are
respectable. They meet their friends at church. They come to us from
reputable employment offices, which would not deal with them if they
were not all right."

Are you sure you know this? What, after all, do you really know about
your servants? What do you know about the employment office that sent
her to you? What do you know of the world inhabited by servants and the
people who deal in servants? Can you not imagine that it might be
different from the one you live in so safely and comfortably?

Are you willing to know the facts about the world, the underworld, from
which the girl who cooks your food and takes care of your children is
drawn? Do you care to know how a domestic spends the time between
places, how she gets to your kitchen or nursery, the kind of homes she
may have been in before she came to you? Make a little descent into that
underworld with a girl whose experience is matched with those of many
others.

Nellie B---- was an Irish girl, strong, pretty of face, and joyful of
temperament. The quiet Indiana town where she earned her living as a
cook offered Nellie so little diversion that she determined to go to
Chicago to live. She gave up her place, and with a month's wages in her
pocket went to the city.

It was late in the afternoon when her train reached the station. Nellie
alighted, bewildered and lonely. She had the address of an employment
agency, furnished her by an acquaintance. Nellie slept that night, or
rather tossed sleepless in the agency lodging house, on a dirty bed
occupied by two women besides herself. In all her life she had never