sociated.

There were, of course, many little points that when I was a worker in
earnest I had not eyes to see, but which my recent conscious study
brought out in proper perspective.

Yet it was as a working girl that I learned to know most of the
characters that people this book, and which give to it any value it may
possess.

For obvious reasons, I have been obliged to give fictitious names to
factories and shops in which I worked; and I have, in most cases,
substituted for the names of the streets where the factories were
located the names of streets of like character.

The physical conditions, the sordid wretchedness of factory and
workshop, of boarding-and lodging-house, I have not in any wise
overstated.

As to moral conditions, I have not been in every instance so
scrupulously truthful--that is, I have not told all the truth. For it is
a truth which only too often will not bear even the suggestion of
telling. Only in two or three instances--for example, in my account of
Henrietta Manners--have I ventured to hint definitely at anything
pertaining to the shame and iniquity underlying a discouragingly large
part of the work-girls' world. In my magazine articles I was obliged to
leave out all reference to this tabooed topic. The attitude of the
public, especially the American public, toward this subject is a curious
mixture of prudery and gallantry. It bridles at anything which impeaches
the traditional honor and chastity of the working girl. The chivalry of
American men--and my experience in workshop, store, and factory has
proved to me how genuine and deep-rooted that chivalry is--combined with
our inherent spirit of democracy, is responsible for the placing of the
work-girl, as a class, in a light as false and ridiculous as that in
which Don Quixote was wont to view the charms of his swineherd lady,
Dulcinea. In the main, our notions of the woman who toils do more credit
to our sentiments and to the impulses of our hearts than they do credit
to our heads or to any serious desires we may cherish for her welfare.
She has become, and is becoming more and more, the object of such an
amount of sentimentality on the part of philanthropists, sociological
investigators, labor agitators, and yellow journals--and a goodly share
of journalism that prides itself upon not being yellow--that the real
work-girl has been quite lost sight of. Her name suggests, according to
their imaginations, a proud, independent, self-reli