Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/27

Cost of Modern Sentiment not always so sleepy as I could desire. If my sister declines to do this at a wage equal to her factory earnings, and with board and lodging included, she is well within her rights, and I have no business, as is sometimes my habit, weakly to complain of her decision. If I made my household arrangements acceptable to her, she would come. As this is difficult or distasteful to me, she goes to a factory instead. The right of every man and woman to do the work he or she chooses to do, and can do, at what wages, and under what conditions he or she can command, is the fruit of centuries of struggle. It is now so well established that only the trade unions venture to deny it.

In that vivid and sad study of New York factory life, published some years ago by the Century Company, under the title of "The Long Day," a girl who is out of work, and who has lost her few possessions in a lodging-house fire, seeks 11