Page:The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living (1909).djvu/309

 matrons of homes or temporary shelters for working-girls, have any conception of the number of unskilled, untrained girls who plunge into cities without sufficient funds to tide them over a fortnight. These girls honestly believe that within a week they will be working somewhere, somehow, on a salary which will not only permit them to live in city comfort, but to send something home to "the folks." The pathos of their ignorance is not a matter for consideration here. Their relief, their social salvation, is a matter of moment.

No mother should permit her daughter to go to a strange city unless she can provide the girl with funds to pay board and room for a month, which will amount to not less than twenty dollars, and the price of her return ticket in case she fails to find work in that time. The mother who recklessly allows her unskilled daughter to enter a strange city armed only with a week's board and high hopes, is guilty of criminal neglect as the guardian of her child's future.

I wish I could drive this lesson into the heart of every mother who feels that her daughter must go to some large city in order to succeed. If the two are convinced that the home town offers no future for the daughter, then let them prove the sincerity of their conviction by earning enough money at home, even if it means taking in washing and ironing, to insure all or