self-interest well understood, is sometimes quicker than the brain and
will of philanthropy to discern and inaugurate reform
The keen eye and rapid hand of gain, of what Jouffroy calls
self-interest well understood, is sometimes quicker than the brain and
will of philanthropy to discern and inaugurate reform. An illustration
of this statement, and a practical recognition of the physiological
method of woman"s work, lately came under my observation. There is an
establishment in Boston, owned and carried on by a man, in which ten
or a dozen girls are constantly employed. Each of them is given and
required to take a vacation of three days every fourth week. It is
scarcely necessary to say that their sanitary condition is
exceptionally good, and that the aggregate yearly amount of work which
the owner obtains is greater than when persistent attendance and labor
was required. I have never heard of any female school, public or
private, in which any such plan has been adopted; nor is it likely
that any similar plan will be adopted so long as the community
entertain the conviction that a boy"s education and a girl"s education
should be the same, and that the same means the boy"s. What is known
in England as the Ten-hour Act, which Mr. Mundella and Sir John
Lubbock have recently carried through Parliament, is a step in a
similar direction. It is an act providing for the special protection
of women against over-work. It does not recognize, and probably was
not intended to recognize, the periodical type of woman"s
organization. It is founded on the fact, however, which law has been
so slow to acknowledge, that the male and female organization are not
identical.[35]
