To Miss Margaret Riley
Shop Girl, Concerning Her Oppressors
Your letter has been destroyed, as you requested, and you need not fear my betraying your confidence.
Your mother was so long in my employ that I feel almost like a foster-mother to you, having seen you grow up from the cradle to self-supporting young womanhood.
The troubles and evils which you mention as existing about you, I know to be quite universal in all large shops, factories, and department stores, indeed in all houses where the two sexes are employed.
I know that a certain order of men in power use that power to lower the ideals and standards of womanhood when they can.
A pretty young girl once in my service related to me the cold-blooded suggestions made to her by her employer to increase the miserable wage paid her in a sweat-shop.
The sacrifice of her virtue seemed no more to this man than the sale of an old garment.
The girl did not make the sacrifice, however, and she did not starve, freeze, or die. She managed to exist and to better her condition by doing domestic work and saving her money to fit herself for more congenial employment. When I last saw her she was planning to become a trained nurse, and had paid for a course of instruction in massage. I tell you this merely to illustrate a fact I fully believe, that any girl who is determined to live an honourable life and retain her self-respect can make her way in the world and rise from lesser to higher positions, if she is patient and willing to do what is termed menial work as a stepping-stone. You tell me that scores of girls are kept in poorly paying, inferior positions when capable of filling better places, simply because they will not accept the dishonourable attentions of some of the men in authority.