Page:About people (IA aboutpeople00well).pdf/173

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PERSONAL INFLUENCE.
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disgrace, and personal liberty is supposed to be obtained by making working hours include only those of the daytime; therefore, housework is declined. A more just, rather than a kinder, spirit must pervade house-keepers. The recognition of the fact that they consider no work to be menial would establish better relations between the help and the family. Domestics must be allowed their right to personal peculiarities, and to a certain amount of time which shall be absolutely theirs, while an equality, rather than a condescension, of speech must be shown toward them.

Finally, as preventive, removed from direct personal influence, comes legislation. Any offence that is criminal in the woman should be visited with an equal grade of punishment upon the man. Reformatory institutions have been and still are beneficial; yet, when the influences of the "boarding-out" system are deemed better for the wards of the State than the associations of an institution, surely it may

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