wrong as that of domestic service, and in this it confirms the
experience of every matron in a rescue home and the statistics in the
maternity wards of the public hospitals. The report suggests that the
danger comes from the general conditions of work: "These general
conditions are the loneliness of the life, the lack of opportunities for
making friends and securing recreation and amusement in safe
surroundings, the monotonous and uninteresting nature of the work done
as these untrained girls do it, the lack of external stimulus to pride
and self-respect, and the absolutely unguarded state of the girl, except
when directly under the eye of her mistress."

In addition to these reasons, the girls realize that the opportunities
for marriage are less in domestic service than in other occupations, and
after all, the great business of youth is securing a mate, as the young
instinctively understand. Unlike the working girl who lives at home and
constantly meets young men of her own neighborhood and factory life, the
girl in domestic service is brought into contact with very few possible
lovers. Even the men of her former acquaintance, however slightly
Americanized, do not like to call on a girl in someone else's kitchen,
and find the entire situation embarrassing. The girl's mistress knows
that for her own daughters mutual interests and recreation are the
natural foundations for friendship with young men, which may or may not
lead to marriage, but which is the prerogative of every young girl. The
mistress does not, however, apply this worldly wisdom to the maid in her
service, only eighteen or nineteen years old, utterly dependent upon her
for social life save during one afternoon and evening a week.

The majority of domestics are employed in families where there is only
one, and the tired and dispirited girl, often without a taste for
reading, spends many lonely hours. That most fundamental and powerful of