By CORNELIA STRATTON PARKER Author of “AN AMERICAN IDYLL” NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS MCMXXII Working With the Working Woman Copyright, 1922, by Harper & Brothers Printed in the United States of America...

T he number of books on the labor problem is indeed legion. The tragedy of the literature on any dynamic subject is that most of it is written by people who have time to do little else. Perhaps the best books on many subjects will never be written because those folk, who would be most competent to do the writing, through their vital connection with the problem at hand, never find the spare minutes to put their findings down on paper. There could be no more dynamic subject than labor, since labor

W ise heads tell us we act first—or decide to act first—and reason afterward. Therefore, what could be put down in black and white as to why we took up factory work is of minor value or concern. Yet everyone persists in asking why? So then, being merely as honest as the Lord allows, we answer first and foremost because we wanted to. Isn't that enough? It is the why and wherefore of almost everything anyone does any place at any time. Only the more adept can concoct much weightier reasons as an a

S weetness and Light. So now appears the candy factory in retrospect. Shall we stumble upon a job yet that will make brass seem as a haven of refuge? Allah forbid! After all, factory work, more than anything so far, has brought out the fact that life from beginning to end is a matter of comparisons. The factory girl, from my short experience, is not fussing over what her job looks like compared to tea at the Biltmore. She is comparing it with the last job or with home. And it is either slightly

H ow long, I wonder, does one study or work at anything before one feels justified in generalizing? I have been re-reading of late some of the writings of some of the women who at one time or another essayed to experience first hand the life of the working girl. They have a bit dismayed me. Is it exactly fair, what they do? They thought, because they changed their names and wore cheap clothes, that, presto! they were as workers and could pass on to an uninformed reading public the trials of the

F ingers poke through cold holes in the wool mittens; the old coat with two buttons gone flaps and blows about the knees; dirt, old papers, spiral upward on the chill gusts of a raw winter day. Close your eyes, duck your head, and hurry on. Under one arm is clutched the paper bag with lunch and the blue-checked apron. Under the other the old brown-leather bag. In the old brown-leather bag is an old black purse. In the old black purse are fifty-five cents, a key, and a safety pin. In the old brow

A h , one should write of the bleachery via the medium of poetry! If the thought of the brassworks comes in one breath and the bleachery in the next, the poetry must needs be set to music—the Song of the Bleachery. What satisfaction there must be to an employer who grows rich—or makes his income, whatever it may be—from a business where so much light-heartedness is worked into the product! Let those who prefer to sob over woman labor behind factory prison bars visit our bleachery. Better still,

P erhaps , more strictly speaking, instead of working with the working woman, it was working with the working man. Hotel work is decidedly co-educational! Except, indeed, for chambermaids and laundry workers, where the traditionally female fields of bed-making and washing have not been usurped by the male. Even they, those female chambermaids and launderers, see more or less of working menfolk during the day. So it might be thought then that hotel work offers an ideal field for the growth of suc

HISTORY OF ART By Elie Faure Vol. I—Ancient Art Translated from the French by Walter Pach No History of Art fills the place of this one. First, it shows art to be the expression of the race, not an individual expression of the artist. Second, it reverses the usual process of art history—it tells why , not how , man constructs works of art. Nearly 200 unusual and beautiful illustrations selected by the author. THE DEVELOPMENT OF EMBROIDERY IN AMERICA By Candace Wheeler A history of embroidery in

MARK TWAIN: A Biography By Albert Bigelow Paine Mr. Paine gave six years to the writing of this famous life history, traveling half way round the world to follow in the footsteps of his subject; during four years of the time he lived in daily association with Mark Twain, visited all the places and interviewed every one who could shed any light upon his subject. EDISON: His Life and Inventions By Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin The authors are men both close to Edison. One of them i