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THE MEANING OF IT ALL

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CHAPTER V

THE MEANING OF IT ALL

Before concluding the recital of my experiences as a working girl, I want to sum up the general conclusions at which I arrived and to trace in a few words the history of my impressions.  What, first of all, was my purpose in going to live and work among the American factory hands?  It was not to gratify simple curiosity; it was not to get material for a novel; it was not to pave the way for new philanthropic associations; it was not to obtain crude data, such as fill the reports of labour commissioners.  My purpose was to help the working girl—­to help her mentally, morally, physically.  I considered this purpose visionary and unpractical, I considered it pretentious even, and I cannot say that I had any hope of accomplishing it.  What did I mean by help?  Did I mean a superficial remedy, a palliative?  A variety of such remedies occurred to me as I worked, and I have offered them gladly for the possible aid of charitable people who have time and money to carry temporary relief to the poor.  It was not relief of this kind that I meant by help.  I meant an amelioration in natural conditions.  I was not hopeful of discovering any plan to bring about this amelioration, because I believed that the conditions, deplorable as they appear to us, of the working poor, were natural, the outcome of laws which it is useless to resist.  I adopted the only method possible for putting my belief to the test.  I did what had never been done.  I was a skeptic and something of a sentimentalist when I started.  I have become convinced, as I worked, that certain of the most unfortunate conditions are not natural, and that they can therefore be corrected.  It is with hope for the material betterment of the breadwinning woman, for the moral advancement of the semi-breadwinner and the esthetic improvement of the country, that I submit what seems a rational plan.

For the first three weeks of my life as a factory girl I saw among my companions only one vast class of slaves, miserable drudges, doomed to dirt, ugliness and overwork from birth until death.  My own physical sufferings were acute.  My heart was torn with pity.  I revolted against a society whose material demands were satisfied at the cost of minds and bodies.  Labour appeared in the guise of a monster feeding itself on human lives.  To every new impression I responded with indiscriminate compassion.  It is impossible for the imagination to sustain for more than a moment at a time the terrible fatigue which a new hand like myself is obliged to endure day after day; the disgust at foul smells, the revulsion at miserable food soaked in grease, the misery of a straw mattress, a sheetless bed with blankets whose acrid odour is stifling.