All of which is something of an impatient retort to those who look at the world through their own eyes and by no means a justification of the _status quo_. And to introduce the statement—which a month ago would have seemed to me incredible—that I have seen and heard as much contentment in a laundry as I have in the drawing-room of a Fifth Avenue mansion or a college sorority house—as much and no more. Which is not arguing that no improvements need ever be made in laundries. * * * * * There was one place I was not going to work, and that was a laundry! I had been through laundries, I had read about laundries, and it was too much to ask anyone—if it was not absolutely necessary—to work in a laundry. And yet when the time came, I hated to leave the laundry. I entered the laundry as a martyr. I left with the nickname, honestly come by without a Christian effort, of “Sunbeam.” But, oh! I have a large disgust upon me that it takes such untold effort every working day, all over the “civilized,” world to keep people “civilized.” The labor, and labor, and labor of first getting cloth woven and buttons and thread manufactured and patterns cut and garments made up, and fitted, or not, and then to keep those garments _clean_! We talk with such superiority of the fact that we wear clothes and heathen savages get along with beads and rushes. For just that some six hundred and fifty thousand people work six days a week doing laundry work alone—not to mention mother at the home washboard—or electric machine. We must be clean, of course, or we would not be civilized, but I do not see why we need be so fearfully sot up about it. A new Monday morning came along, and I waited from 7.40 to 9.15 in a six-by-nine entry room, with some twenty-five men and women, to answer the advertisement: GIRLS, OVER 18 with public school education, to learn machine ironing, marking, and assorting linens; no experience necessary; splendid opportunity for right parties; steady positions; hours 8 to 5.30; half day Saturday. What the idea was of advertising for superior education never became clear. No one was asked how far she had progressed intellectually. I venture to say the majority of girls there had had no more than the rudiments of the three r's. It looked well in print. One of the girls from the brassworks stood first in line. She had tried two jobs since I saw her last. She did not try the laundry at all.