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 .

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.Introductory1

II.In a Pittsburg Factory7

III.Perry, A New York Mill Town59

IV.Making Clothing in Chicago99

V.The Meaning of It All 155

By MARIE VAN VORST

Chapter Page

VI.Introductory165

VII.A Maker of Shoes at Lynn169

VIII.The Southern Cotton Mills215

The Mill Village

The Mill

IX.The Child in the Southern Mills275

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Miss Marie and Mrs. John Van Vorst in their factory costumes

"The streets are covered with snow, and over the snow the soot falls softly like a mantle of perpetual mourning"

"Waving arms of smoke and steam, a symbol of spent energy, of the lives consumed, and vanishing again"

"They trifle with love"

After Saturday night's shopping

Sunday evening at Silver Lake

"The breath of the black, sweet night reached them, fetid, heavy with the odour of death as it blew across the stockyards"

In a Chicago theatrical costume factory

Chicago types

The rear of a Chicago tenement

A delicate type of beauty at work in a Lynn shoe factory, and One of the swells of the factory: a very expert "vamper," an Irish girl, earning from $10 to $14 a week

"Learning" a new hand

The window side of Miss K.'s parlour at Lynn, Mass.

"Fancy gumming," and An all-round, experienced hand

"Mighty mill—pride of the architect and the commercial magnate"

"The Southern mill-hand's face is unique, a fearful type"