something beautiful to look at and think about--a photograph or copy of
some _chef d'oeuvre_, an _objet d'art_, lessons in literature and art
which would uplift their souls from the dreariness of their
surroundings. Three weeks as a factory girl had changed my beliefs. If
the young society women who sacrifice one evening every week to talk to
the poor in the slums about Shakespeare and Italian art would instead
offer diversion first--a play, a farce, a humourous recitation--they
would make much more rapid progress in winning the confidence of those
whom they want to help. The working woman who has had a good laugh is
more ready to tell what she needs and feels and fears than the woman who
has been forced to listen silently to an abstract lesson. In society
when we wish to make friends with people we begin by entertaining them.
It should be the same way with the poor. Next to amusement as a means
of giving temporary relief and bringing about relations which will be
helpful to all, I put instruction, in the form of narrative, about the
people of other countries, our fellow man, how he lives and works; and,
third, under this same head, primitive lessons about animals and plants,
the industries of the bees, the habits of ants, the natural phenomena
which require no reasoning power to understand and which open the
thoughts upon a delightful unknown vista.

My first experience is drawing to its close. I have surmounted the
discomforts of insufficient food, of dirt, a bed without sheets, the
strain of hard manual labour. I have confined my observations to life
and conditions in the factory. Owing, as I have before explained, to the
absorption of factory life into city life in a place as large as
Pittsburg, it seemed to me more profitable to centre my attention on the
girl within the factory, leaving for a small town the study of her in
her family and social life. I have pointed out as they appeared to me
woman's relative force as a worker and its effects upon her economic