FOREWORD

This book tells the story of the Woman Inspectorate of Factories and Workshops from its beginning in 1893, when the first Women Inspectors (Miss May Abraham and Miss Mary Paterson) made their first inspection, until the year 1921, when thirty Women Inspectors saw the fruits of the work of their branch, not only in greatly developed protection for the woman worker, but also in her own increased capacity to help herself.

It was a story worth the telling, for it is a chronicle of a steady and dogged campaign, of few defeats and many victories. The adversaries to be met were all the ills which threaten the “factory girl”—poisoning by lead or phosphorus or arsenic or mercury, insanitary or unventilated rooms, accidents from unsafe machinery, phthisis, anthrax, overstrain, truck and sweating, and more besides. Readers who like a “thrill” will perhaps begin with the chapters on “Dangerous Trades” and on the War; and if their imagination serves them, they may read between the lines of those brief records stories of suffering, of endurance, and of rescue, which will set them wondering why our predecessors so long grudged to the woman worker the help which only a woman can give.

viiiBut the whole book, with its documented record of steady grinding effort and hard-won success, is well worth reading.

Dame Adelaide Anderson went through it all, and for twenty-four out of the twenty-eight years with which the volume is concerned filled the responsible position of Chief Woman Inspector with untiring devotion and conspicuous success. It was plainly “up to” her to write the history of the struggle; and all will like to read it who honour our working women for their work and value their welfare.

(Signed) CAVE.

Richmond,

March 30, 1922.

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