Page:The Future of the Women's Movement.djvu/137

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ECONOMIC PROBLEM : THE PROSTITUTE
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the facts of human nature. I have known a woman who said, "I don't allow my girl to go anywhere without me, except to church and to the G.F.S."; but I had myself met the girl in a variety of other places. Another employer, with two daughters who often went to dances, refused to allow her pretty parlourmaid (who helped to dress the young ladies) to go to a ball which her friends and brothers were attending. The employer thought balls were not good "for that class of person." Another lady, who was constantly seen at dinner parties, theatres and receptions, said, when asked that her servant should be allowed to join a social club, where there was singing and dancing and acting and billiards, "I don't believe you can help that class of people except through religion." Such employers as these, and they are very many, bring into disrepute not only the employment of domestic service, but the whole of the standard of morals which they imagine themselves to be upholding. Young people will have pleasure if they can get it, and to make their lives dreary and lonely is to drive them underground for pleasure and for companionship. The desolate loneliness of many domestic servants, far from home and friends, and with well-meaning, puritanical mistresses, is a cause perhaps quite as effective as service in a disorderly house or with an immoral master. The living-in system is full of difficulties, and I believe it is one of the systems which will have to go; but the only chance of success is