Page:May Walden - Socialism and the Home (1900).pdf/21

 Rh found the right way of living. We have made laws that force a woman to be dependent upon a man and that force men to be dependent upon other men for the chance to live.

Let us take another example which has the same solution. Take the daughter of that day laborer. Cramped all her girlhood for pretty things to wear, for chances to see and know something of the world, for books to read, for the companionship of people who know more than she does, she determines to make her own way. She teaches in a country school until she earns enough to study a business course in a larger place. She finishes and gets a position. The pay is small, very small, for there are many other girls who also want to make their own way. Why, the world is full of them! She didn't know it before. She gets sick and loses lier place. When she is well enough she hunts for work. Many weary miles she tramps to find something. She gets a place for a few days and is able to pay up her back board. Her clothes are getting shabby. In despair she goes back to her first employer to see if he cannot find an- other place for her. She doesn't like him, but he always was friendly—too friendly, it seemed to her, but she must do something. She goes and he asks her to meet him at a restaurant for dinner while they talk it over. She has had nothing to eat that day and consents—it is that or starve. He offers after dinner to find her a new boarding place. She refuses and goes back to the old one to be told that after that night she cannot stay, as some one else wants the room. She knows it is because she cannot pay her board, for she was asked if she had found work. Then begins her struggle for life. Day after day she searches for work, and finds nothing. Nothing, did I say? Yes, there is one thing she can still sell—her virtue. She haunts the bridges over the river, thinking she will end it all here. A