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[Illustration: MRS. JOHN VAN VORST AS "ESTHER KELLY" Wearing the
costume of the pickle factory]
[Illustration: MISS MARIE VAN VORST AS "BELL BALLARD" At work in a shoe
factory]
* * * * *
THE WOMAN WHO TOILS
_Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls_
BY
MRS. JOHN VAN VORST
and
MARIE VAN VORST
_ILLUSTRATED_
NEW YORK:
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1903
* * * * *
DEDICATION
To Mark Twain
In loving tribute to his genius, and to his human sympathy, which in
Pathos and Seriousness, as well as in Mirth and Humour, have made him
kin with the whole world:--
this book is inscribed by
BESSIE and MARIE VAN VORST.
* * * * *
PREFATORY LETTER FROM THEODORE ROOSEVELT
_Written after reading Chapter III. when published serially_
WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, October 18, 1902.
_My Dear Mrs. Van Vorst_:
_I must write you a line to say how much I have appreciated
your article, "The Woman Who Toils." But to me there is a most
melancholy side to it, when you touch upon what is
fundamentally infinitely more important than any other
question in this country--that is, the question of race
suicide, complete or partial_.
_An easy, good-natured kindliness, and a desire to be
"independent"--that is, to live one's life purely according to
one's own desires--are in no sense substitutes for the
fundamental virtues, for the practice of the strong, racial
qualities without which there can be no strong races--the
qualities of courage and resolution in both men and women, of
scorn of what is mean, base and selfish, of eager desire to
work or fight or suffer as the case may be provided the end to
be gained is great enough, and the contemptuous putting aside
of mere ease, mere vapid pleasure, mere avoidance of toil and
worry. I do not know whether I most pity or most despise the
foolish and selfish man or woman who does not understand that
the only things really worth having in life are those the
acquirement of which normally means cost and effort. If a man
or woman, through no fault of his or hers, goes throughout
life denied those highest of all joys which spring only from
home life, from the having and bringing up of many healthy
children, I feel for them deep and respectful sympathy--the
sympathy one extends to the gallant fellow killed at the
beginning of a campaign, or the man who toils hard and is
brought to ruin by the fault of others. But the man or woman
who deliberately avoids marriage, and has a heart so cold as
to know no passion and a brain so shallow and selfish as to
dislike having children, is in effect a criminal against the
race, and should be an object of contemptuous abhorrence by
all healthy people_.
_Of course no one quality makes a good citizen, and no one
quality will save a nation. But there are certain great
qualities for the lack of which no amount of intellectual
brilliancy or of material prosperity or of easiness of life
can atone, and which show decadence and corruption in the
nation just as much if they are produced by selfishness and
coldness and ease-loving laziness among comparatively poor
people as if they are produced by vicious or frivolous luxury
in the rich. If the men of the nation are not anxious to work
in many different ways, with all their might and strength, and
ready and able to fight at need, and anxious to be fathers of
families, and if the women do not recognize that the greatest
thing for any woman is to be a good wife and mother, why, that
nation has cause to be alarmed about its future_.
_There is no physical trouble among us Americans. The trouble
with the situation you set forth is one of character, and
therefore we can conquer it if we only will._
_Very sincerely yours,_
_THEODORE ROOSEVELT._
* * * * *
PREFATORY NOTE
A portion of the material in this book appeared serially under the same
title in _Everybody's Magazine_. Nearly a third of the volume has not
been published in any form.
* * * * *
CONTENTS
By MRS. JOHN VAN VORST
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Introductory 1
II. In a Pittsburg Factory 7
III. Perry, a New York Mill Town 59
IV. Making Clothing in Chicago 99
V. The Meaning of It All 155
By MARIE VAN VORST
CHAPTER PAGE
VI. Introductory 165
VII. A Maker of Shoes at Lynn 169
VIII. The Southern Cotton Mills 215
The Mill Village
The Mill
IX. The Child in the Southern Mills 275
* * * * *
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Miss Marie and Mrs. John Van Vorst in their factory costumes,
_Frontispiece_
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 $10 to $14 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
CHAPTER I--INTRODUCTORY
BY
MRS. JOHN VAN VORST
* * * * *
CHAPTER I
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,
1st. By nature,
2d. By family life,
3d. By social laws;
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
* * * * *