ative freedom--freedom of thought, taste and personality.

Classes in industrial art already exist at the Simmons School in Boston
and Columbia University in New York. New classes should be formed.
Individual enterprise should start the ball and keep it rolling until it
is large enough to be held in Governmental hands. It is not sufficient
merely to form classes. The right sort of pupils should be attracted.
There is not a factory which would not furnish some material. The
recompense for apprenticeship would be the social and intellectual
advancement dear to every true American's heart. The question of wages
would be self-regulating. At Hull House, Chicago, in the Industrial Art
School it has been proved that, provided the models be simple in
proportion to the ability of the artisan, the work can be sold as fast
as it is turned out. The public is ready to buy the produce of
hand-workers. The girls I speak of are fit for advancement. It is not a
plan of charity, but one to ameliorate natural conditions.

Who will act as mediator?

I make an appeal to all those whose interests and leisure permit them to
help in this double emancipation of the woman who toils for bread and
the girl who works for luxuries.

* * * * *

MARIE VAN VORST

INTRODUCTORY

VII. A MAKER OF SHOES AT LYNN

VIII. THE SOUTHERN COTTON MILLS

IX. THE CHILD IN THE SOUTHERN MILLS

* * * * *

CHAPTER VI

INTRODUCTORY

There are no words too noble to extol the courage of mankind in its
brave, uncomplaining struggle for existence. Idealism and estheticism
have always had much to say in praise of the "beauty of toil." Carlyle
has honoured it as a cult; epics have been written in its glory. When
one has turned to and performed, day in and day out, this labour from
ten to thirteen hours out of the twenty-four, with Sundays and legal
holidays as the sole respite--to find at the month's end that the only
possible economics are pleasures--one is at least better fitted to
comprehend the standpoint of the worker; and one realizes that part of
the universe is pursuing means to sustain an existence which, by reason
of its hardship, they perforce cling to with indifference. I laid aside
for a time everything pertaining to the class in which I was born and
bred and became an American working-woman. I intended, in as far as was
possible, to live as she l