Work of itself is not hard. It is the conditions under which most work is done that makes it a hardship. Work under good conditions is exhilarating.

There never was a time in all my four years in the underbrush that the work itself palled on me. It was the conditions under which I was forced to work that made it objectionable. One of my chief reasons for liking my work as an inspector of dog licenses was that I was a free agent, not bound by any hampering conditions. Each inspector was given his or her district, instructed as to their power and limitations under the law, and sent out to get results.

Never once did the manager of the A. S. P. C. A. tell me that I must do a given thing in a given way. The few times that I found myself facing a problem about the handling of which I was in doubt, when I appealed to him he gave me advice; advice, never instructions. I was always a free agent at a living wage. Though the wage could never be called generous, especially for a man with a family, it was sufficient for me to live on in a rooming-house or a tenement-flat, and pay for a five-hundred-dollar Liberty bond. At the time that I left I was receiving one hundred and four dollars and car-fare per month—quite a raise in four years for an untrained woman who began on six dollars the week.

What we know as labor unrest is caused as much by the conditions under which workers struggle as the amount of wage so grudgingly paid them. The untangling of both those knotty problems is in the hands of our women.

On the way they untangle those two knots, as I see it, hangs the fate of our country, the United States as we know it to-day—whether it lasts fifty years or fifty centuries.

Now I know by actual experience what conditions were before this country entered the World War. I watched the improvement that followed—larger windows made in dark rooms to improve light and ventilation; when this was impossible workers would be moved into better quarters. I saw lofts that had not known a broom or wash-pail for years swept and garnished as though for a celebration.

One reason for this was the coming of the girl who didn’t have to work for her living—the war-worker. I had managers tell me:

“You’re an educated woman—ah—ah—Why, to tell the truth, I’m afraid you wouldn’t be happy here. Our loft is not—not what we’d like it to be. Not very clean, you know.”

“What about your regular workers?” I asked him.

“Oh, they’re different. They’re used to it.”

At a munition plant in Hoboken the manager of a department jumped at me as an applicant for work. He was going to “place” me at once, and sent to the office for a pass. The employment manager happened to be in a “cranky” mood, or so the department manager explained to me, and said he could not issue a pass until he had me investigated. I left with the understanding that an investigator would see me that afternoon, and the manager urged me to report early the next morning ready for work.

The investigator did see me that afternoon, and because I answered her questions truthfully she learned that I am a college graduate. The next morning the employment manager issued me a pass without question, but when I returned to the office of red-haired Mr. Black, the department manager, he had changed his mind.

“Why, you’re a college graduate!” he exclaimed, leaning forward in his swivel-chair and looking for all the world like a big frog ready to hop. “You wouldn’t be happy here a day. You just wouldn’t stand it.”

Out in the passageway I chanced upon the girl who had conducted me to Mr. Black’s office. When I told her that he had refused to give me a job she stared, then nodded her head.

“I mighter known he wouldn’t take you on. He wants girls he can chuck under the chin and poke in the ribs and call by their first name,” she told me. “He’s foxy, that red-head, he seen he couldn’t make free with you. You come with me. I’ll take you to the employment manager. He’ll give you a job in the office, real Gentile work.”

But I’d had enough office work, so I refused her offer.

When I applied at Store Beautiful the employment manager apologized for offering me seventeen dollars a week. He was not allowed to pay more for an inexperienced saleswoman, he explained. When I accepted the job he quickly told me that there were many better-paying positions in the store, and if I stayed he would try to fit me into one of them. Remember this happened after the war. Employment managers had learned the value of educated working women.

Now I’d as soon try to reason with a herd of jackasses as with a selfish woman. It is because I learned during my four years in the underbrush that American women are not, as a rule, selfish when they understand conditions that I have written this book. It is because I know by experience that American women are, as a rule, unselfishly patriotic that I am adding to the narrative of my experience an expression of my opinion on that condition known as our “labor troubles.”

The United States is to-day the most powerful nation in the world. We, its women, are the most powerful half of the nation. Again we, its educated women of native birth and lineage, are the most powerful group in that half.

It is up to us how our country is coming through its period of labor troubles. Are we going to remain human cooties, forcing our fathers and husbands to beat down and rob their employees for the sake of getting money to support us in idle luxury?

They, the men of the United States, have given us, their womenfolks, the ballot and Prohibition. Not because they wanted either, but because we, their adored womenfolks, clamored for them. Every profession is open to us, every line of work.

What are we going to do with all this wealth of opportunity?

Our sister, the working woman, believes in us. She ties her faith to us—her hope for her children and their future. Many, many times I had women of the slums assure me that “rich ladies” fought for suffrage that they might get shorter hours for working women. And even more often they told me that the fight for Prohibition was fought and won by “rich ladies” for the protection of working-people’s homes.

During the war we showed them that there was no work we couldn’t do, and wouldn’t do, when it was necessary. During the war through us they realized what work was with the stigma rubbed out—work was a badge of honor, idleness a disgrace.

To-day those women stand between us and chaos. A slender cordon of hope, they are holding back the surging multitude of unrest. Their men have ceased to believe in any method of getting justice except by violence.

What are we going to do?—measure up to the working-woman’s faith in us, come out of our nests as cooties and, taking our place at her side as we did during the war, do our share of the work. Or are we going to remain human cooties, let that cordon of hope crumble, be swept away?

There is one thing as certain as the rising of the sun. If we do not give, it will be taken from us.

Were I a girl growing up to-day I would demand of my parents an equal chance with my brother. If he was given his training—for trade or profession—I would have mine—trade or profession. I would insist on my obligations as a citizen, a future voter, to learn the condition and the needs of my country.

How can a girl vote intelligently if she spends her days debating on how high she can wear her skirt, or how low she can cut her camisole? That time is passed. We must either keep step with progress or be swept away by the class of women who have learned the lesson that we refused to be taught.

Only motherhood—bearing and caring for a living child—should excuse a woman from working for her living.