“Other evils are, many of your girls have to work out for little or nothing, we may say. Their labor is often very toilsome and disagreeable. The days are long. The landlady, and often the landlord too, are abusive, cruel, and sometimes lustful. The social relations with the family is often like a slave. The girl is often not permitted to spend her few leisure minutes in the family parlor. She is, so to speak, a social outcast. She belongs to a different caste. There is a boss who looks upon her as an inferior creature wherever she goes. Under such a cruel, disagreeable, social and industrial system, it is no wonder that many of your ladies marry very young and become mothers prematurely. It is very natural that an inexperienced girl, placed in such deplorable conditions, will accept, in marriage, most any man that comes along and at most any age, too. To be sure, the conditions, in an average, are not better but even worse, when married than when single; but the youth, in his love and under his social and industrial burden, does not see that. One who is burdened and in slavery will try most any scheme but the right one, to throw it off and be free. “Again, look what a slave your traveling woman is. Perhaps she has a baby or two and other necessaries to carry and care for, but a gentleman is hardly safe to offer his services, because one can not tell but what a jealous husband may come around the corner, who will begin a suit against a person for alienating the affections of his wife, or he may draw a revolver on you for being intimate, as he calls it, with his wife and child. And the jealousy of your women is just the same. “Any man or woman, with us, may freely assist any woman, whether traveling or not. Any one may carry her babe or parcel, if the lady is satisfied. No particular man owns her, and therefore she is as free to accept services from one man as from another. “Notice how distant and unsociable your men and women are when traveling, especially in railroad cars. Rarely do they speak to each other. Instead of having a good, sociable time, they generally all sit like mummies. The lady seems to fear the wrath of a jealous husband or beau, and the gentleman of a jealous wife or sweetheart. Your travelers act much like as if the Creator had decreed that sexual sociability were an unpardonable offense and that it is dangerous and impure for a strange lady and gentleman to converse together. They seem to assume that all men are ravishers and all women are grown-up babies; and the actual facts of your marriage system has, no doubt, to a great extent established and confirmed this fear, which becomes very plain, I think, when we remember that your primitive ancestors, perhaps, first instituted your system of marriage by capturing their wife or wives.