Prisoners of Poverty: Women Wage-Workers, Their Trades and Their Lives

by Helen Campbell

END AND BEGINNING.

The long quest is over. It ends; and I turn at last from those women, whose eyes still follow me, filled with mute question of what good may come. Of all ages and nations and creeds, all degrees of ignorance and prejudice and stupidity; hampered by every condition of birth and training; powerless to rise beyond them till obstacles are removed,—the great city holds them all, and in pain and want and sorrow they are one. The best things of life are impossible to them. What is worse, they are unknown as well as unattainable. If the real good of life must be measured by the final worth of the thing we make or get by it, what worth is there for or in them? The city holds them all,—“the great foul city,—rattling, growling, smoking, stinking,—a ghastly heap of fermenting brickwork, pouring out poison at every pore.”

The prosperous have no such definition, nor do they admit that it can be true. For the poor, it is the only one that can have place. We pack them away in tenements crowded and foul beyond anything known even to London, whose “Bitter Cry” had less reason than ours; and we have taken excellent care that no foot of ground shall remain that might mean breathing-space, or free sport of child, or any green growing thing. Grass pushes its way here and there, but for this army it is only something that at last they may lie under, never upon. There is no pause in the march, where as one and another drops out the gap fills instantly, every alley and by-way holding unending substitutes. It is not labor that profiteth, for body and soul are alike starved. It is labor in its basest, most degrading form; labor that is curse and never blessing, as true work may be and is. It blinds the eyes. It steals away joy. It blunts all power whether of hope or faith. It wrecks the body and it starves the soul. It is waste and only waste; nor can it, below ground or above, hold fructifying power for any human soul.

Here then we face them,—ignorant, blind, stupid, incompetent in every fibre,—and yet no count of such indictment alters our responsibility toward them. Rather it multiplies it in always increasing ratio. For it is our own system that has made these lives worthless, and sooner or later we must answer how it came, that living in a civilized land they had less chance than the heathen to whom we send our missionaries, and upon whose occasional conversions we plume ourselves as if thus the Kingdom of Heaven were made wider. If it is true that for many only a little alleviation is possible, a little more justice, a little better apportionment of such good as they can comprehend, it is also true that something better is within the reach of all.

How then shall we define it, and what possibility of alteration for either lives or conditions lies before us? Nothing that can be of instant growth; and here lies the chief discouragement, since as a people we demand instantaneousness, and would have seed, flower, and fruit at the same moment. Admit patience, capacity to wait, and to work while waiting, as the first term of the equation, and the rest arrange themselves.

For the greater part of social reformers, co-operation has stood as the initial and most essential step, as the fruit that could be plucked full-grown; and experience in England would seem to have demonstrated the belief as true. It is the American inability to wait that has proved it untrue for us, and until very lately made failure our only record; but there is a deeper reason than a merely temperamental one. The abolition of the apprentice system, brought about by the greed of master and men alike, has abolished training and slow, steady preparation for any trade. An American has been regarded as quick enough and keen enough to take in the essential features of a calling, as it were, at a glance, and apprenticeship has been taken as practically an insult to national intelligence. Law has kept pace with such conviction, and thus the door has been shut in the face of all learners, and foreigners have supplied our skilled workmen and work-women. The groundwork of any better order lies, if not in a return to the apprentice system, then in a training from the beginning, which will give to eye and hand the utmost power of which they are capable. Industrial education is the foundation, and until it has in its broadest and deepest sense become the portion of every child born on American soil, that child has missed its birthright.

With the many who accept it, it stands merely as an added capacity to make money, and if taken in its narrowest application this is all that it can do. Were this all, it would be simply an added injustice toward the degeneration that money-making for the mere sake of money inevitably brings. But at its best, perfected as it has been by patient effort on the part of a few believers, it is far more than this. Added power to earn comes with it, but there comes also a love of the work itself, such as has had no place since the days when the great guilds gave joyfully their few hours daily to the cathedrals, whose stones were laid and cemented in love and hope, and a knowledge of the beauty to come, that long ago died out of any work the present knows. The builders had small book knowledge. They could be talked down by any public-school child in its second or third year. But they knew the meaning of beauty and order and law; and this trinity stands to-day, and will stand for many a generation to come, as an ideal to which we must return till like causes work again to like ends. The child who could barely read saw beauty on every side, and took in the store of ballad and tradition that gave life to labor. We have parted with all this wilfully. To the Puritan all beauty that hand of man could create was of the devil, and thus we represent a consecrated ugliness, any departure from which is even now, by some conscientious souls, regarded with suspicion.

The child, then, who can be made to understand that beauty and order and law are one, has a new sense born in him. Life takes on a new aspect, and work a new meaning. But the fourteen weeks per year of education, at present required by our law as it stands in its application to children who must work, has no power to bring such result. It begins in the kindergarten, from which the poorest child takes home, even to the tenement-house, something strong enough, when growth has come, to abolish the tenement-house forever. No man who works to these ends has gauged possibilities more wisely than Felix Adler, whose school shows us something not yet attained by the many who, partially accepting his methods, pronounce his theories dangerous and destructive to what must be held sacred. However this may be, he and his band of co-workers have proved, in seven years of unceasing struggle against heavy odds, that a development is possible even for the tenement-house child, that reconstructs the entire view of life and makes possible the end for which all industrial training is but the preparation. It is in such training that children, rich or poor, best learn the demand bound up in living and working together, and find in the end that co-operation is its natural out-growth. There is no renunciation of the home or destruction of the truest home life. There is simply the abolition of competition as any necessary factor in human progress, and the placing of the worker beyond its power to harm.

Thus far we have left the bettering of social conditions chiefly to the individual, and any hint of State interference carries with it the opprobrium of socialism. Yet more and more for those who are unterrified by names, the best in socialism offers itself as the sole way of escape from monopolies and the stupidities and outrages of the present system. No one panacea of any reformer fits the case or can alter existing conditions. Only what man’s own soul sees as good, and wills to possess, is of faintest value to him. No attempt at co-operation can help till the worker sees its power and use, and is willing to sacrifice where sacrifice is necessary, to work and to wait in patience. Such power is born in the industrial school in its largest sense,—the school that trains heart and mind as well eye and hand, and makes the child ready for the best work its measure of power can know. This we can give by State or by individual aid, as the case may be, and every ward in the city should own a sufficient number to include every child within it. A check upon emigration would seem an imperative demand,—not prevention, but some clause which might act to lessen the garbage-heaps dumped upon our shores. Pauperism and disease have no rights as emigrants, and eliminating these would make dealing with mere poverty a much more manageable matter.

The schools exist, and, while painfully inadequate in number, demonstrate what may be done in the future. Co-operation even for this hasty people is almost equally demonstrated, as will be plain to those who read two recent publications of the American Economic Association: “Co-operation in a Western City,” by Albert Shaw, and “Co-operation in New England,” by Edward W. Bemis. Minneapolis is the centre of the facts given in the first-mentioned pamphlet, which is also the more valuable of the two, not in execution but merely because it records a movement which has ceased to be experimental; as the little history includes every failure as well as the final success, and thus stands as the best argument yet made for the cause.

Industrial education for the child of to-day; co-operation as the end to be attained by the worker into which the child will grow,—in these two factors is bound up much of the problem. They will not touch many whose miserable lives are recorded in these pages, but they will forever end any chance of another generation in like case. There are workers who think, who are being educated by sharp conflict with circumstances, and who look beyond their own present need to the future. These men and women, crowded to the wall by the present system, are searching eagerly, not as mere anarchists and destroyers, but as those who believe that something better than destruction is possible.

It is these workers for whom the path must be made plain, and to whom we are most heavily responsible. And this brings me to the final point bound up indissolubly with the two already defined,—a change in our own ideals. Such change must come before any school can accomplish its best work, and till it has at least begun neither school nor system has lasting power. In these months of search in which women of all ages and grades have given in their testimony,—from the girl of fourteen earning her two or three dollars a week in the bag-factory or as cash-girl, to the woman stitching her remnant of life into the garments that by and by her more fortunate sisters will find on the bargain counter,—I discover not alone their ignorance and stupidity and grossness and wilful blindness, but behind it an ignorance and stupidity no less dense upon which theirs is founded,—our own. The visible wretchedness is so appalling, the need for instant relief so pressing, that it is small wonder that no power remains to look beyond the moment, or to disentangle one’s self from the myriad conflicting claims, and ask the real meaning of the demand. Mile after mile of the fair islands once the charm of the East River and the great Sound beyond are covered by lazar-houses,—the visible signs in this great equation that fills the page of to-day; the problem of human crime and disease and wretchedness complicating itself with every addition, and no nearer solution than when the city was but a handful of houses and poverty yet unknown.

We have made attempts here and there to limit the breeding ground; to offer less fruitful soil to the spawn increasing with such frightful rapidity, and demanding with every year fresh reformatories, larger asylums and hospitals, more and more machinery of alleviation. Yet the conviction strengthens that even when the tenement-house of to-day is swept aside, and improved homes with decent sanitary conditions have taken their place, that the root of the evil is even then untouched, and that it lies not alone in their lives, but in our own. And so, as final word, I say to-day to all women who give their lives to beneficence, and plan ceaselessly and untiringly for better days, that no beneficence can alter, no work of our hands or desire of our hearts bring the better day we desire, till the foundations have been laid in something less shifting than the sands on which we build.

The mission of alleviation, of protection, of care for the foulest and lowest of lives, has had its day. It is time that this mass of effort stirred against its perpetual reproduction, its existence, its ever more and more shameless demands. An improved home goes far toward making these tendencies less strong; it may even diminish the number of actual transgressors; but what home, no matter how well kept, has or will have power to alter the fact that in them thousands of women must still slave for a pittance that borders always on that life limit fixed by the political economists as the vanishing point in the picture of modern life? Sunlight and air may take the place of the foulness now reigning in the dens that many of them know as homes; but will either sun or air shorten hours or raise wages, or alter the fact that not one in a thousand of these women but has grounded her whole pitiful life on a delusion,—a delusion for which we are responsible?

Year by year in the story of the Republic, labor has taken lower and lower place. The passion for getting on, latent in every drop of American blood, has made money the sole symbol of success, and freedom from hand-labor the synonyme of happiness. The mass of illiterate, unenlightened emigrants pouring in a steady stream through Castle Garden have become our hands, and, as hands dependent on the heads of others, have fallen into the same category as the slaves, whose possession brought infinitely more degradation to owners than to owned. It is the story of every civilized nation before its fall,—this exploitation of labor, this degradation of the worker; and the story of hopeless decay and collapse must be ours also, if different ideals do not rise to fill the place of this Golden Calf to which all have bent the knee. There is not a girl old enough to work at all who does not dream of a possible future in which work will cease and ease and luxury take its place. The boy content with a trade, the man or woman accepting simple living and its limitations contentedly, is counted fool. To get money, and always more and more money, is the one ambition; and in this mad rush toward the golden fountain, gentle virtues are trampled under foot, and men count no armor of honest thought worth wearing unless it be fringed with bullion. The shop-girl must have her cotton velvet and her glass substitutes for diamonds. The lines of caste are drawn as sharply with her as in the ascending grades through which she hopes to pass. Labor is curse; never the blessing that it may bear when accepted man’s chief good, and used as developing, not as destroying power.

Never till men see and believe that the fortune made by mere sharpness and unscrupulousness, the fruit not of honest labor but of pure speculation, is a burning disgrace to its owner, a plague-spot in civilization, shall we be able to convince girl or woman that labor is honorable, and better gains possible than any involved in merely getting on. Never till this furious fight for success, this system of competition which kills all regard for the individual, demanding only a machine capable of so much net product,—never till these and all methods of like nature have ceased to have place, or right to existence, can we count ourselves civilized or hope to better the conditions that now baffle us. No church, no mission, no improved home, no guild or any other form of mitigation means anything till the whole system of thought is reconstructed, and we come to some sense of what the eternal verities really are.

It is easy for a woman to be kind and long-suffering, but the women who can be just to themselves, as well as to others, we can count on our fingers. Yet justice is the one demand in this life of to-day, and not one of us who shrinks and shudders at the thought of what women-workers are enduring but has it in her power to lessen the great sum of wretchedness; to begin for some one the work of education into just thinking and just living. Sweeping changes may not be possible. But beginning is always possible; and not a woman capable of thinking but has power by the simple force of example to lay the corner-stone of the new temple, fairer than any yet known to mortal eyes. If there is doubt for this generation of working-women toiling in blindest ignorance, it rests with us to lessen the doubt for the next, and to make it impossible in that better day for which we labor. Not one of us but can ask, “What is the source of the income which gives me ease? Is it possible for me to reconstruct my own life in such fashion that it shall mean more direct and personal relation to the worker? How can I bring more simplicity, less conventionality, more truth and right living into home and every relation of life?”

I write these final words with all deference to the noble women whose lives have been given to good work, and many of whom long ago settled these questions practically for themselves. But for many of us there has been simply passive acceptance of all present conditions, without a question as to how or why they have come. It is because I believe that with us is the power to remedy every one if we will, that I appeal to women to-day. I write not as anarchist; not as declaimer against the rights of property, but as believer in the full right to ownership of all legitimately acquired property. I believe it the order of life, of any life that would hold good work of whatever nature, that enough should be acquired to make sharp want or eating care and perplexity impossible. But it is certain that even for the most unselfish of us there is an exaggerated estimate of the value of money,—an involuntary and inevitable truckling to the one who has most,—and that, no matter what our teaching may be, the force of every act and tendency makes against it. And there can be no retracing of steps that have for generations turned in the wrong direction. The very breath we draw on this American soil is poisoned by the foulness about us, and about us by our own act and choice. We have degraded labor till there is no lower depth, and not one but many generations must pass before these masses over whose condition we puzzle can find their feet in the path that means any real progress.

Ask first, then, not what shall we do for these women, but what shall we do for ourselves? How shall we learn to know what are the real things? How shall we come to love them and cleave to them, and hold no life worth living that admits sham or compromise, or believes the mad luxury of this generation anything but blighting curse and surest destruction? Till we know this we have learned nothing, and are forever not helpers, but hinderers, in the great march that our blunders and stupidities only check for the time. For the word is forever onward, and even the blindest soul must one day see that if he will not walk by free choice in the path of God, he will be driven into it with whips of scorpions, made thus to know what part was given him to fill, and what judgment waits him who has chosen blindness.

University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge.

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MRS. CAMPBELL’S BOOKS.

THE WHAT-TO-DO CLUB. A Story for Girls. 16mo. $1.50.

MRS. HERNDON’S INCOME. A Novel. 16mo. $1.50.

MISS MELINDA’S OPPORTUNITY. A Story for Girls. 16mo. $1.00. (Paper, 50 cents.)

PRISONERS OF POVERTY. Women Wage-workers, their Trades and their Lives. 12mo. $1.00. (Paper, 50 cents.)

PRISONERS OF POVERTY ABROAD. 16mo. $1.00. (Paper, 50 cents.)

ROGER BERKELEY’S PROBATION. A Story. 12mo. $1.00. (Paper, 50 cents.)

WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS. Their Past, their Present, and their Future. 16mo. $1.00.

THE EASIEST WAY IN HOUSEKEEPING AND COOKING. Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes. A new revised edition. 16mo. $1.00.

IN FOREIGN KITCHENS. With Choice Recipes from England, France, Germany, Italy, and the North. 50 cents.

SOME PASSAGES IN THE PRACTICE OF DR. MARTHA SCARBOROUGH. 16mo. $1.00.

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MRS. HERNDON’S INCOME.
A NOVEL.

BY HELEN CAMPBELL.
AUTHOR OF “THE WHAT-TO-DO CLUB.”

One volume. 16mo. Cloth. $1.50.

“Confirmed novel-readers who have regarded fiction as created for amusement and luxury alone, lay down this book with a new and serious purpose in life. The social scientist reads it, and finds the solution of many a tangled problem; the philanthropist finds in it direction and counsel. A novel written with a purpose, of which never for an instant does the author lose sight, it is yet absorbing in its interest. It reveals the narrow motives and the intrinsic selfishness of certain grades of social life; the corruption of business methods; the ‘false, fairy gold,’ of fashionable charities, and ‘advanced’ thought. Margaret Wentworth is a typical New England girl, reflective, absorbed, full of passionate and repressed intensity under a quiet and apparently cold exterior. The events that group themselves about her life are the natural result of such a character brought into contact with real life. The book cannot be too widely read.”—Boston Traveller.

“If the ‘What-to-do Club’ was clever, this is decidedly more so. It is a powerful story, and is evidently written in some degree, we cannot quite say how great a degree, from fact. The personages of the story are very well drawn,—indeed, ‘Amanda Briggs’ is as good as anything American fiction has produced. We fancy we could pencil on the margin the real names of at least half the characters. It is a book for the wealthy to read that they may know something that is required of them, because it does not ignore the difficulties in their way, and especially does not overlook the differences which social standing puts between class and class. It is a deeply interesting story considered as mere fiction, one of the best which has lately appeared. We hope the authoress will go on in a path where she has shown herself so capable.”—The Churchman.

“In Mrs. Campbell’s novel we have a work that is not to be judged by ordinary standards. The story holds the reader’s interest by its realistic pictures of the local life around us, by its constant and progressive action, and by the striking dramatic quality of scenes and incidents, described in a style clear, connected, and harmonious. The novel-reader who is not taken up and made to share the author’s enthusiasm before getting half-way through the book must possess a taste satiated and depraved by indulgence in exciting and sensational fiction. The earnestness of the author’s presentation of essentially great purposes lends intensity to her narrative. Succeeding as she does in impressing us strongly with her convictions, there is nothing of dogmatism in their preaching. But the suggestiveness of every chapter is backed by pictures of real life.”—New York World.

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MISS MELINDA’S OPPORTUNITY.
A STORY.

BY HELEN CAMPBELL,
AUTHOR OF “THE WHAT-TO-DO CLUB,” “MRS. HERNDON’S INCOME,” “PRISONERS OF POVERTY.”

16mo. Cloth, price, $1.00; paper covers, 50 cents.

“Mrs. Helen Campbell has written ‘Miss Melinda’s Opportunity’ with a definite purpose in view, and this purpose will reveal itself to the eyes of all of its philanthropic readers. The true aim of the story is to make life more real and pleasant to the young girls who spend the greater part of the day toiling in the busy stores of New York. Just as in the ‘What-to-do Club’ the social level of village life was lifted several grades higher, so are the little friendly circles of shop-girls made to enlarge and form clubs in ‘Miss Melinda’s Opportunity.’”—Boston Herald.

“‘Miss Melinda’s Opportunity,’ a story by Helen Campbell, is in a somewhat lighter vein than are the earlier books of this clever author; but it is none the less interesting and none the less realistic. The plot is unpretentious, and deals with the simplest and most conventional of themes: but the character-drawing is uncommonly strong, especially that of Miss Melinda, which is a remarkably vigorous and interesting transcript from real life, and highly finished to the slightest details. There is much quiet humor in the book, and it is handled with skill and reserve. Those who have been attracted to Mrs. Campbell’s other works will welcome the latest of them with pleasure and satisfaction.”—Saturday Gazette.

“The best book that Helen Campbell has yet produced is her latest story, ‘Miss Melinda’s Opportunity,’ which is especially strong in character-drawing, and its life sketches are realistic and full of vigor, with a rich vein of humor running through them. Miss Melinda is a dear lady of middle life, who has finally found her opportunity to do a great amount of good with her ample pecuniary means by helping those who have the disposition to help themselves. The story of how some bright and energetic girls who had gone to New York to earn their living put a portion of their earnings into a common treasury, and provided themselves with a comfortable home and good fare for a very small sum per week, is not only of lively interest, but furnishes hints for other girls in similar circumstances that may prove of great value. An unpretentious but well-sustained plot runs through the book, with a happy ending, in which Miss Melinda figures as the angel that she is.”—Home Journal.

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THE WHAT-TO-DO CLUB.
A STORY FOR GIRLS.

By Helen Campbell.

16mo. Cloth. Price $1.50.

“‘The What-to-do Club’ is an unpretending story. It introduces us to a dozen or more village girls of varying ranks. One has had superior opportunities; another exceptional training; two or three have been ‘away to school;’ some are farmers’ daughters; there is a teacher, two or three poor self-supporters,—in fact, about such an assemblage as any town between New York and Chicago might give us. But while there is a large enough company to furnish a delightful coterie, there is absolutely no social life among them.... Town and country need more improving, enthusiastic work to redeem them from barrenness and indolence. Our girls need a chance to do independent work, to study practical business, to fill their minds with other thoughts than the petty doings of neighbors. A What-to-do Club is one step toward higher village life. It is one step toward disinfecting a neighborhood of the poisonous gossip which floats like a pestilence around localities which ought to furnish the most desirable homes in our country.”—The Chautauquan.

“‘The What-to-do Club’ is a delightful story for girls, especially for New England girls, by Helen Campbell. The heroine of the story is Sybil Waite, the beautiful, resolute, and devoted daughter of a broken-down but highly educated Vermont lawyer. The story shows how much it is possible for a well-trained and determined young woman to accomplish when she sets out to earn her own living, or help others. Sybil begins with odd jobs of carpentering, and becomes an artist in woodwork. She is first jeered at, then admired, and finally loved by a worthy man. The book closes pleasantly with John claiming Sybil as his own. The labors of Sybil and her friends and of the New Jersey ‘Busy Bodies,’ which are said to be actual facts, ought to encourage many young women to more successful competition in the battles of life.”—Golden Rule.

“In the form of a story, this book suggests ways in which young women may make money at home, with practical directions for so doing. Stories with a moral are not usually interesting, but this one is an exception to the rule. The narrative is lively, the incidents probable and amusing, the characters well-drawn, and the dialects various and characteristic. Mrs. Campbell is a natural story-teller, and has the gift of making a tale interesting. Even the recipes for pickles and preserves, evaporating fruits, raising poultry, and keeping bees, are made poetic and invested with a certain ideal glamour, and we are thrilled and absorbed by an array of figures of receipts and expenditures, equally with the changeful incidents of flirtation, courtship, and matrimony. Fun and pathos, sense and sentiment, are mingled throughout, and the combination has resulted in one of the brightest stories of the season.”—Woman’s Journal.

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SOME PASSAGES IN THE PRACTICE OF DR. MARTHA SCARBOROUGH.

BY HELEN CAMPBELL.

16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00.

Besides being equal to Mrs. Campbell’s best work in the past, it is strikingly original in presenting the ethics of the body as imperiously claiming recognition in the radical cure of inebriety. It forces attention to the physical and spiritual value of foods, and weaves precedent and precept into one of the most beguiling stories of recent date.

It is the gospel of good food, with the added influence of fresh air, sunlight, cleanliness, and physical exercise that occupy profitably the attention of Helen Campbell. Martha is a baby when the story begins, and a child not yet in her teens when the narrative comes to an end, but she has a salutary power over many lives. Her father is a wise country physician, who makes his chaise, in his daily progress about the hills, serve as his little daughter’s cradle and kindergarten. When she gets old enough to understand her expounds to her his views of the sins committed against hygiene, and his lessons sink into an appreciative mind. When he encounters particularly hard cases she applies his principles with unfailing logic, and is able to suggest helpful means of cure. The old doctor is delightfully sagacious in demonstrating how the confirmed pie-eater marries the tea inebriate, with the result in doughnut-devouring, dyspeptic, and consumptive offspring. “What did they die of?” asked little Martha, in the village graveyard; and her father answers solemnly, “Intemperance.” So Martha declares that she will be a “food doctor,” and later on she helps her father in saving several victims of strong drink. The book is one that should find hosts of earnest readers, for its admonitions are sadly needed, not in the country alone, but in the city, where, if better ideas of diet prevail, people have yet as a rule a long way to go before they attain the path of wisdom. Meanwhile it remains true, as Mrs. Campbell makes Dr. Scarborough declare, that the cabbage soup and black bread of the poorest French peasants are really better suited to the sustenance of healthy life than the “messes” that pass for food in many parts of rural New England.—The Beacon.

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ROGER BERKELEY’S PROBATION.
A Story.

BY HELEN CAMPBELL,

Author of “Prisoners of Poverty,” “Mrs. Herndon’s Income,” “Miss Melinda’s Opportunity,” “The What-to-do Club,” etc.

16mo, cloth, price, $1.00; paper, 50 cents.

This story is on the scale of a cabinet picture. It presents interesting figures, natural situations, and warm colors. Written in a quiet key, it is yet moving, and the letter from Bolton describing the fortunate sale of Roger’s painting of “The Factory Bell” sends a tear of sympathetic joy to the reader’s eye. Roger Berkeley was a young American art student in Paris, called home by the mortal sickness of his mother, and detained at home by the spendthriftness of his father and the embarrassment that had overtaken the family affairs through the latter cause. A concealed mortgage on the old homestead, the mysterious disappearance of a package of bonds intended for Roger’s student use, and the paralytic incapacity of the father to give the information which his conscience prompted him to give, have a share in the development of the story. Roger is obliged for the time to abandon his art work, and takes a situation in a mill; and this trying diversion from his purpose is his “probation.” How he profits by this loss is shown in the result. The mill-life gives Mrs. Campbell opportunity to express herself characteristically in behalf of down-trodden “labor.” The whole story is simple, natural, sweet, and tender; and the figures of Connie, poor little cripple, and Miss Medora Flint, angular and snappish domestic, lend picturesqueness to its group of characters.—Literary World.

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PRISONERS OF POVERTY ABROAD

By HELEN CAMPBELL,
AUTHOR OF “THE WHAT-TO-DO-CLUB,” “PRISONERS OF POVERTY,” “ROGER BERKELEY’S PROBATION,” ETC.

16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00; paper, 50 cents.

Mrs. Helen Campbell, an occasional and valued contributor to this journal, and the author of “Prisoners of Poverty,” and other studies of social questions in this country, has offered in this book conclusions drawn from investigations on the same themes made abroad, principally in England or France. She has devoted personal attention and labor to the work, and, although much of what she describes has been depicted before by others, she tells her story with a freshness and an earnestness which give it exceptional interest and value. Her volume is one of testimony. She does not often attempt to philosophize, but to state facts as they are, so that they may plead their own cause. She puts before the reader a series of pictures, vividly drawn, but carefully guarded from exaggeration or distortion, that he may form his own opinions.—Congregationalist.

Can life be worth living to the hordes of miserable women who have to work from fifteen to eighteen hours a day for a wage of from twenty-five to thirty-five or forty cents? And what have all the study of political economy, all the writing of treatises about labor, all the Parliamentary debates, all the blue books, all the philanthropic organizations, all the appeals to a common humanity, done, in half a century, for these victims of what is called modern civilization? Mrs. Campbell is by no means a sentimentalist. We know of no one who examines facts more coolly and practically, or who labors more earnestly to find the real causes for the continued depression of the labor market, as this horrible state of things is euphemistically termed. The conclusions she reaches are therefore sober and trustworthy.—New York Tribune.

No work of fiction, however imaginative, could present more startling pictures than does this little book, which is sympathetic, but not sentimental, the result of personal investigation, and a most valuable contribution to the literature of the labor question.—Philadelphia Record.

Mrs. Helen Campbell’s “Prisoners of Poverty,” a study of the condition of some of the lower strata of the laboring classes, particularly the working-women in the great cities of the United States, is supplemented with another volume, “Prisoners of Poverty Abroad,” in which the life of working-women of European cities, chiefly London and Paris, is depicted with equally graphic and terrible truthfulness.

They are the result of fifteen months of travel and study, and are examples of Mrs. Campbell’s well-known methods of examination and description. They paint a horrible picture, but a truthful one, and no person of even ordinary sensibilities can read these books without experiencing a strong desire to do something to abate the monstrous injustice which they describe.—Good Housekeeping.

Sold by all Booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of the price, by the Publishers,

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY,
Boston.

In Foreign Kitchens.

With Choice Recipes from England, France, Germany, Italy, and the North.

By HELEN CAMPBELL,
Author of “The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking,” “Prisoners of Poverty,” “The What-To-Do Club,” etc.

16mo. Cloth. Price, 50 cents.

While foreign cookbooks are accessible to all readers of foreign languages, and American ones have borrowed from them for what we know as “French cookery,” it is difficult often to judge the real value of a dish, or decide if experiment in new directions is worth while. The recipes in the following chapters, prepared originally for The Epicure, of Boston, were gathered slowly, as the author found them in use, and are most of them taken from family recipe-books, as valued abroad as at home. So many requests have come for them in some more convenient form than that offered in the magazine, that the present shape has been determined upon; and it is hoped they may be a welcome addition to the housekeeper’s private store of rules for varying the monotony of the ordinary menu.

Sold by all Booksellers. Mailed, postpaid, on receipt of the price by the Publishers,

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY, Boston.

Women Wage-Earners. Their Past, their Present, and their Future. By Helen Campbell. 16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00.

The writer describes employments in the factory and home, compares the condition of women workers here and abroad, dwells upon the evils and abuses in factory life and in general trades, and points out remedies and gives suggestions. The book is an expansion of a prize monograph for the American Economic Association, for which a reward was given in 1891, expanded to nearly double its original size. An introduction to it is contributed by Prof. Richard T. Ely. Nowhere else could one get so much information on this subject in so small a space as in this book.—The School Journal.

It includes such topics as factory labor, rise and growth of trades, labor bureaus, wage rates, and general conditions for women workers in England, on the Continent, and in the United States.

The importance of this subject with which Mrs. Campbell deals is not easily overestimated. The present age is the era of woman, since whatever affects her receives a consideration never before given. For a long time the agitation in favor of woman was to remove barriers and open the way for her. The way has been opened and woman has entered scores of fields previously closed to her. The questions which now arise are as to her remuneration for her work in these fields, and the influence of women wage-earning on the family, the home, and society. These are questions not yet settled. Mrs. Campbell approaches their discussion in a spirit of fairness, and what she says is suggestive and helpful, if not conclusive. Her volume is a valuable contribution to the literature of social science.—Boston Advertiser.

Such a work could never have been compiled for women except by a woman. It is itself a demonstration of the fact that women can handle the woman question as men alone cannot do, and that women can be raised and elevated from their present depressed condition only by organizations and trades unions of their own. Every woman should read this book carefully. She will gain from its perusal a breadth and depth of knowledge which will be of lasting value to her, and it will show her how great a work exists for women to do, in order to “make the world better.”—Woman’s Journal.

It is a sober statement of facts by a thoughtful woman who has made a life-study of economic questions, both through the medium of books, and by personal investigation into the modern conditions of labor. The book covers the history of the wage question as affecting women, its present status, and its prospect for the future.—Worcester Spy.

Her style is robust, orderly, precise, every page carrying the evidence of trained thought and of careful, conscientious research.—Public Opinion.

LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers,
254 Washington Street, Boston.

No Woman can give herself to a more noble occupation than the making of the ideal home.—The Beacon.

The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking. Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes. By Helen Campbell. A new revised edition. 16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00.

The work grew out of Mrs. Campbell’s experiences as a teacher of cookery, more especially at the South, but its principles are applicable anywhere, and as a manual for inexperienced housewives or as a class-room text-book it will be found of decided value.... No woman can give herself to a more noble occupation than the making of the ideal home, and Mrs. Campbell, by showing women how to do this, accomplished a great and important task. The book she has written tells about the requirements of a healthful home, explains how the routine of daily housekeeping may be most economically and effectually conducted, sets forth the chemistry of food and the relations of food to health, and in the second part gives special instructions on the preparation of different sorts of food, with many carefully tested recipes.—The Beacon.

It is not a cook-book pure and simple. It is more. It covers a large range, such as the situation and arrangement of the house, drainage and water supply, the day’s work and how to plan it, fires, lights, and things to work with, washing-day and cleaning in general, the body and its composition, food and its laws, the relations of food to health, the chemistry of animal food, the chemistry of vegetable food, condiments, and beverages. The book is interestingly written, as is everything that comes from Mrs. Campbell’s pen. It certainly will prove a great benefit to housewives and would-be housewives who read it; besides, the ample recipes it contains make it a book of reference of constant value.—Cleveland World.

In the midst of always increasing cookery books, it has had a firm constituency of friends, especially in the South, where its necessity was first made plain. There is something here for the tyro and the adept, and whether used at home with growing girls, in cooking clubs, in schools, or in private classes, the system outlined has proven itself admirable, and the theory and practice of Miss Campbell’s book are almost beyond criticism.—Oregonian.

It is not merely a cook-book, but is a text-book of about everything that is of special interest to the housekeeper, and is adapted either for domestic use or study in classes. It is in fact a housekeeper’s most valuable encyclopædia, written by a lady who by education and thoroughly practical knowledge was rendered singularly competent for the important work here undertaken and so successfully carried out.... It is a book that intelligent young housekeepers especially will come to regard as an indispensable companion.—Boston Home Journal.

It really is one of the most admirable of manuals for the usual young housekeeper.—Providence Journal.

LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY,
254 Washington Street, Boston, Mass.