PERILS OF THE SHOP GIRL.

       One of the many questions we hear discussed at the present time, by earnest men and women of every creed, is how to assist young working girls who earn their livelihood in the stores of our large cities.

       I have spent fifteen years in the retail dry goods district, and my position has afforded me an opportunity of knowing many facts, and of studying a few of the causes that lead so many from the path of virtue. My experience has taught me that a number of them would have been saved, had their parents or guardians taken as much interest in their business lives as they take in the school lives of their children.

       In shops and stores girls and boys meet with many objectionable men and women, who have little respect for youth or virtue, and whose influence has a degrading effect upon the minds of the young. To a thoughtful person it is certainly astonishing to observe the indifference of parents in regard to the acquaintances a girl makes where she is employed; and their blindness to the ruinous influence some people exercise over the youthful mind, by their manners and conversation.

       I know of many girls whose first wrong step was in meeting these men and women at their rooms and at hotels, at street corners and at almost any place except their father's house, which is the only proper place for them to receive their friends. It is sometimes said that mothers have no time to watch over their sons and daughters, no time to follow them when they go out at night to meet doubtful acquaintances, — no leisure, in fact, to stand between their children and spiritual death.

       If parents had the faintest idea that their children were contemplating suicide I think they would manage to spare time to follow and watch them; yet they allow them to go to meet grave danger to their souls, and do not lift a hand to save them.

       There are a great many girls whose lives have been ruined by the men who employed them, or had charge over them, and on inquiry into several of the cases, I found that these young girls received some pretty present or gift of wearing apparel, and the parents never showed the least interest, or came to inquire why a man should give their daughters gifts, or what his motive was in wanting a young girl to be better dressed than her salary or circumstances could possibly allow.

       I find that all employers who have a good moral character insist on their employees dressing plainly and neatly. Yet a mother will allow her daughter to accept a ring or some other expensive present, and will take it as a matter of course, that her daughter can receive what pleases her, regardless of the risk she runs.

       In this progressive age of countless daily papers, books, and all kinds of publications, where parents can read for themselves of the many dangers that surround working girls, they only seem to grow more indifferent, and think their children are able to take care of themselves, as long as they are able to work. Young people need much more sympathy after they have entered upon a business career than they did in childhood; and so long as parents simply look to the few dollars their children earn, and never give a thought to the many dangers they encounter while working, our young people will continue to be exposed to the loss of what is dearer to them than life itself.

       If the parents would win the confidence of their children with kindness and sympathy, and use the authority that a parent should exercise over minors, firmly yet with gentleness, we should soon see a change for the better in many of our young people. If children are denied kindness at home, they soon find it abroad, and they often accept the imitation for the genuine article.

AN EYE WITNESS.       

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