Page:The Business of being a Woman by Ida Tarbell.djvu/129

 relieving the family budget of dressing the girl is a boon to fathers and mothers.

It is hard on industry, however, for the wage earner who can afford to take $6 or $8 helps pull down the wages of other thousands who support not only themselves, but others.

Moreover, to put in one's days in hard labor simply to dress well, for that is the amount of it, is demoralizing. It is this emphasis on the matter which impels a reckless girl sometimes to sell herself for money to buy clothes. "I wanted the money," I heard a girl, arrested for her first street soliciting, tell the judge. "Had you no home?" "Yes." "A good home?" "Yes." "For what did you want money?" "Clothes."

"Gee, but I felt as if I would give anything for one of them willow plumes," a pretty sixteen-year-old girl told the police matron who had rescued her from