Woman Who Toils Being the experiences of to ladies as factory girls [Paperback]

Bessie (Mrs. John) Van Vorst and her sister-in-law Marie Van Vorst were both from New York's privileged class at the turn of the 20th century. The pair worked for several months under assumed names - Bessie as Esther Kelly, Marie as Bell Ballard - to dsicover first-hand the working conditions, values, and ambitions of factory girls. From a Pittsburgh pickle factory to a Lynn, Massachusetts shoe factory to a cotton mill in South Carolina, the two wrote of their experiences in what was considered a landmark work of social investigation. This fascinating account, originally published in 1903, includes an introductory letter from President Theodore Roosevelt.

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 appre- ciated your article, The Woman Who Toils. But to me tliere 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 ques- tion 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, tnere 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 normalC7