Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/276

 270 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

to brass ''jewelry'* with glass gems; from fall-apart furniture to tinder- box tenements; from faked foods to murderous cure-alls; from paper shoes to shoddy. Can any person continue to manufacture and sell nostrums that are worthless — or worse — ^with a "ready-relief label, and still maintain his self-respect ? Can a girl design labels and wrap- pers and display-advertisements for this nostrum, and still maintain her self-respect? Can a chemist advise how fraud may be concealed, can a lawyer advise how the law may be evaded — and still Tnaiutain his self-respect?

Yes, yes: people want jewelry, and since they can not afford fine goods, we please them by making for them the nicest that can be had for the money that they can afford to spend. People want to have as handsome furniture as any they see in the stores; we give them some that looks just as nice as the finest — ^for a while. People want to be as well dressed as their employers, so we give them near-wool tn stylish patterns. And all the time we shriek out loud — as loud as we can afford to — through the advertising pages and posters and sky-iUumina- tors, urging the people to buy, buy, buy 1

Very probably, people are not coerced into buying. And there seems to be 8om$ logic in the common attitude ''They are going to spend their money anyhow, so we may as well take iV* But the bgic is that of the highwayman, the logic of the exploiter. There is some truth in the manufacturer's or the dealer's shrug which says, " It is our business to supply the demand." But the other side of the truth is that half of your efforts are devoted to creating the very demand in question. At any rate, while men will persist in getting drunk, I don't want my son to supply them the whiskey. While some men persist in losing all their savings in an attempt to get something for nothing, through a sure tip on the races, or on the stock market, or on some hopeful fool's gold-mine — ^I do not feel that I have a right to take their money, even though I do need it in my own business.

But most young men and women who are set at work can not find the connection between the special tasks they are performing and the ultimate service or fraud to which they contribute. There is, however, a side of the occupation that ought to be more clear. For example, is a girl asked to serve all day — at a "living" wage — surrounded by women fixed up in all the frills and fineries that the fashions permit? Or does a young chap have to carry messages that reek with foulness and corruption? In New York a state law prohibits the employment of minors as messengers during night hours; but girls may still be placed in all kinds of department stores. And in some of these stores, if a girl complains to the superintendent that the elevator man or one of the "higher" male employes has insulted her, she is disciplined by be- ing discharged, while the gentleman in question is cautioned to be

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