Page:About people (IA aboutpeople00well).pdf/216

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ABOUT PEOPLE.

recognition of social lines, and talk of "the laziness and ignorance of the lower class of working-women." Even when out of employment, or, perhaps, engaged in some "uncongenial occupation as a temporary makeshift," they still feel keenly that they "belong elsewhere." "An honest working-woman," said one of them, "whether of the upper or lower grades of labor, holds herself infinitely superior to the trashy, flashy sort. We may not get work, but we can go from work to poverty, from poverty to exhaustion, from exhaustion to death, but not to sin, — those who follow that are a different class, with which we have nothing to do."

In a conversation with several of them it was asked: "What is the real grievance of the working-women?" And the general answer was that it was due to the spirit of caste, which prevented combination and coöperation, the two agents that could lighten the burdens of ill-paid labor; yet they had suffi-