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180 George Bernard Shaw
be in than the factory where Anne Jane got poisoned.
None of our girls were ever treated as I was treated in
the scullery of that temperance place, or at the Waterloo
bar, or at home. Would you have had me stay in them
and become a worn-out old drudge before I was forty?
. . .
Yes, saving money. But where can a woman get the
money to save in any other business? Could you save
out of four shillings a week and keep yourself dressed
as well? Not you. Of course, if you re a plain woman
and can t earn anything more: or if you have a turn for
music, or the stage, or newspaper writing: that s differ
ent. But neither Liz nor I had any turn for such things :
all we had was our appearance and our turn for pleas
ing men. Do you think we were such fools as to let
other people trade in our good looks by employing us as
shop-girls, or barmaids, or waitresses, when we could
trade in them ourselves and get all the profits instead of
starvation wages? Not likely. . . .
Everybody dislikes
having to work and make money; but they have to do it
all the same. I m sure I ve often pitied a poor girl, tired
out and in low spirits, having to try to please some man
that she doesn t care two straws for some half-drunken
fool that thinks he s making himself agreeable when he s
teasing and worrying and disgusting a woman so that
hardly any money could pay her for putting up with it.
But she has to bear with disagreeables and take the rough
with the smooth, just like a nurse in a hospital or any
one else. It s not work that any woman would do for
pleasure, goodness knows; though to hear the pious peo
ple talk you would suppose it was a bed of roses. Of
course it s worth while to a poor girl, if she can resist
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