With us there is no compulsion.If any girl wishes to remain,she remains.If she wishes to go,she goes.No one is detained a day or an hour longer than they choose to stay.Yet our experience shows that,as a rule,they do not run away.Much more restless and thoughtless and given to change,as a class,than men,the girls do not,in any considerable numbers,desert.The average of our London Homes,for the last three years,gives only 14per cent.as leaving on their own account,while for the year 1889only 5per cent.And the entire number,who have either left or been dismissed during that year,amounts only to 13per cent.on the whole.
IV.--They would not work.
Of course,to such as had for years been leading idle lives,anything like work and exhaustive labour would be very trying and wearisome,and a little patience and coaxing might be required to get them into the way of it.Perhaps some would be hopelessly beyond salvation in this respect,and,until the time comes,if it ever does arrive,when the Government will make it a crime for an abled-bodied man to beg when there is an opportunity for him to engage in remunerative work,this class will wander abroad preying upon a generous public.It will,however,only need to be known that any man can obtain work if he wants it,for those who have by their liberality maintained men and women in idleness to cease doing so.And when it comes to this pass,that a man cannot eat without working,of the two evils he will choose the latter,preferring labour,however unpleasant it may be to his tastes,to actual starvation.
It must be borne in mind that the penalty of certain expulsion,which all would be given to understand would be strictly enforced would have a good influence in inducing the idlest to give work a fair trial,and once at it should not despair of conquering the aversion altogether,and eventually being able to transform and pass these once lazy loafers as real industrious members of Society.