Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: The Woman Who Toils Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls by Van Vorst John Mrs Van Vorst Marie Roosevelt Theodore Author Of Introduction Etc
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page
Ebook has 1057 lines and 71061 words, and 22 pages
FACING PAGE
"The streets are covered with snow, and over the snow the soot falls softly like a mantle of perpetual mourning," 12
"Waving arms of smoke and steam, a symbol of spent energy, of the lives consumed, and vanishing again," 58
"They trifle with love," 70
After Saturday night's shopping, 84
Sunday evening at Silver Lake, 96
"The breath of the black, sweet night reached them, fetid, heavy with the odour of death as it blew across the stockyards," 102
In a Chicago theatrical costume factory, 114
Chicago types, 128
The rear of a Chicago tenement, 144
A delicate type of beauty at work in a Lynn shoe factory, 172
One of the swells of the factory: a very expert "vamper," an Irish girl, earning from to a week, 172
"Learning" a new hand, 184
The window side of Miss K.'s parlour at Lynn, Mass., 196
"Fancy gumming," 210
An all-round, experienced hand, 210
"Mighty mill--pride of the architect and the commercial magnate," 220
"The Southern mill-hand's face is unique, a fearful type," 240
THE WOMAN WHO TOILS
MRS. JOHN VAN VORST
INTRODUCTORY
Any journey into the world, any research in literature, any study of society, demonstrates the existence of two distinct classes designated as the rich and the poor, the fortunate and the unfortunate, the upper and the lower, the educated and the uneducated--and a further variety of opposing epithets. Few of us who belong to the former category have come into more than brief contact with the labourers who, in the factories or elsewhere, gain from day to day a livelihood frequently insufficient for their needs. Yet all of us are troubled by their struggle, all of us recognize the misery of their surroundings, the paucity of their moral and esthetic inspiration, their lack of opportunity for physical development. All of us have a longing, pronounced or latent, to help them, to alleviate their distress, to better their condition in some, in every way.
Now concerning this unknown class whose oppression we deplore we have two sources of information: the financiers who, for their own material advancement, use the labourer as a means, and the philanthropists who consider the poor as objects of charity, to be treated sentimentally, or as economic cases to be studied theoretically. It is not by economics nor by the distribution of bread alone that we can find a solution for the social problem. More important for the happiness of man is the hope we cherish of eventually bringing about a reign of justice and equality upon earth.
It is evident that, in order to render practical aid to this class, we must live among them, understand their needs, acquaint ourselves with their desires, their hopes, their aspirations, their fears. We must discover and adopt their point of view, put ourselves in their surroundings, assume their burdens, unite with them in their daily effort. In this way alone, and not by forcing upon them a preconceived ideal, can we do them real good, can we help them to find a moral, spiritual, esthetic standard suited to their condition of life. Such an undertaking is impossible for most. Sure of its utility, inspired by its practical importance, I determined to make the sacrifice it entailed and to learn by experience and observation what these could teach. I set out to surmount physical fatigue and revulsion, to place my intellect and sympathy in contact as a medium between the working girl who wants help and the more fortunately situated who wish to help her. In the papers which follow I have endeavoured to give a faithful picture of things as they exist, both in and out of the factory, and to suggest remedies that occurred to me as practical. My desire is to act as a mouthpiece for the woman labourer. I assumed her mode of existence with the hope that I might put into words her cry for help. It has been my purpose to find out what her capacity is for suffering and for joy as compared with ours; what tastes she has, what ambitions, what the equipment of woman is as compared to that of man: her equipment as determined,
what her strength is and what her weaknesses are as compared with the woman of leisure; and finally, to discern the tendencies of a new society as manifested by its working girls.
After many weeks spent among them as one of them I have come away convinced that no earnest effort for their betterment is fruitless. I am hopeful that my faithful descriptions will perhaps suggest, to the hearts of those who read, some ways of rendering personal and general help to that class who, through the sordidness and squalour of their material surroundings, the limitation of their opportunities, are condemned to slow death--mental, moral, physical death! If into their prison's midst, after the reading of these lines, a single death pardon should be carried, my work shall not have been in vain.
IN A PITTSBURG FACTORY
IN A PITTSBURG FACTORY
I get no farther than the depot when I observe that I am being treated as though I were ignorant and lacking in experience. As a rule the gateman says a respectful "To the right" or "To the left," and trusts to his well-dressed hearer's intelligence. A word is all that a moment's hesitation calls forth. To the working girl he explains as follows: "Now you take your ticket, do you understand, and I'll pick up your money for you; you don't need to pay anything for your ferry--just put those three cents back in your pocket-book and go down there to where that gentleman is standing and he'll direct you to your train."
This without my having asked a question. I had divested myself of a certain authority along with my good clothes, and I had become one of a class which, as the gateman had found out, and as I find out later myself, are devoid of all knowledge of the world and, aside from their manual training, ignorant on all subjects.
My train is three hours late, which brings me at about noon to Pittsburg. I have not a friend or an acquaintance within hundreds of miles. With my bag in my hand I make my way through the dark, busy streets to the Young Women's Christian Association. It is down near a frozen river. The wind blows sharp and biting over the icy water; the streets are covered with snow, and over the snow the soot falls softly like a mantle of perpetual mourning. There is almost no traffic. Innumerable tramways ring their way up and down wire-lined avenues; occasionally a train of freight cars announces itself with a warning bell in the city's midst. It is a black town of toil, one man in every three a labourer. They have no need for vehicles of pleasure. The trolleys take them to their work, the trains transport the products of the mills.
I hear all languages spoken: this prodigious town is a Western bazaar where the nations assemble not to buy but to be employed. The stagnant scum of other countries floats hither to be purified in the fierce bouillon of live opportunity. It is a cosmopolitan procession that passes me: the dusky Easterner with a fez of Astrakhan, the gentle-eyed Italian with a shawl of gay colours, the loose-lipped Hungarian, the pale, mystic Swede, the German with wife and children hanging on his arm.
In this giant bureau of labour all nationalities gather, united by a common bond of hope, animated by a common chance of prosperity, kindred through a common effort, fellow-citizens in a new land of freedom.
At the central office of the Young Women's Christian Association I receive what attention a busy secretary can spare me. She questions and I answer as best I can.
"What is it you want?"
"Board and work in a factory."
"Have you ever worked in a factory?"
"No, ma'am."
"Have you ever done any housework?"
She talks in the low, confidential tone of those accustomed to reforming prisoners and reasoning with the poor.
"Yes, ma'am, I have done housework."
"What did you make?"
"Twelve dollars a month."
"I can get you a place where you will have a room to yourself and fourteen dollars a month. Do you want it?"
"No, ma'am."
"Are you making anything now?"
"No, ma'am."
"Can you afford to pay board?"
"Yes, as I hope to get work at once."
She directs me to a boarding place which is at the same time a refuge for the friendless and a shelter for waifs. The newly arrived population of the fast-growing city seems unfamiliar with the address I carry written on a card. I wait on cold street corners, I travel over miles of half-settled country, long stretches of shanties and saloons huddled close to the trolley line. The thermometer is at zero. Toward three o'clock I find the waif boarding-house.
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page