Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Alicia Williams and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team. at www.pgdp.net. [Illustration: MRS. JOHN VAN VORST AS "ESTHER KELLY" Wearing the costume of the pickle factory] [Illustration: MISS MARIE VAN VORST AS "BELL BALLARD" At work in a shoe factory] * * * * * THE WOMAN WHO TOILS _Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls_ BY MRS. JOHN VAN VORST and MARIE VAN VORST _ILLUSTRATED_ NEW YORK: DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1903 * * * * * DEDICATION To Mark Twain In loving tribute to his genius, and to his human sympathy, which in Pathos and Seriousness, as well as in Mirth and Humour, have made him kin with the whole world:-- this book is inscribed by BESSIE and MARIE VAN VORST. * * * * * PREFATORY LETTER FROM THEODORE ROOSEVELT _Written after reading Chapter III. when published serially_ WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, October 18, 1902. _My Dear Mrs. Van Vorst_: _I must write you a line to say how much I have appreciated your article, "The Woman Who Toils." But to me there is a most melancholy side to it, when you touch upon what is fundamentally infinitely more important than any other question in this country--that is, the question of race suicide, complete or partial_. _An easy, good-natured kindliness, and a desire to be "independent"--that is, to live one's life purely according to one's own desires--are in no sense substitutes for the fundamental virtues, for the practice of the strong, racial qualities without which there can be no strong races--the qualities of courage and resolution in both men and women, of scorn of what is mean, base and selfish, of eager desire to work or fight or suffer as the case may be provided the end to be gained is great enough, and the contemptuous putting aside of mere ease, mere vapid pleasure, mere avoidance of toil and worry. I do not know whether I most pity or most despise the foolish and selfish man or woman who does not understand that the only things really worth having in life are those the acquirement of which normally means cost and effort. If a man or woman, through no fault of his or hers, goes throughout life denied those highest of all joys which spring only from home life, from the having and bringing up of many healthy children, I feel for them deep and respectful sympathy--the sympathy one extends to the gallant fellow killed at the beginning of a campaign, or the man who toils hard and is brought to ruin by the fault of others. But the man or woman who deliberately avoids marriage, and has a heart so cold as to know no passion and a brain so shallow and selfish as to dislike having children, is in effect a criminal against the