pproached academically. Yet most of the approach to the problems of
labor is academic. Men in sanctuaries forever far removed from the
endless hum and buzz and roar of machinery, with an intellectual
background and individual ambitions forever far removed from the
interests and desires of those who labor in factory and mill,
theorize--and another volume is added to the study of labor.

But, points out some one, there are books on labor written by
bona-fide workers. First, the number is few. Second, and more
important, any bona-fide worker capable of writing any kind of book on
any subject, puts himself so far above the rank and file that one is
justified in asking, for how many does he speak?

Suppose that for the moment your main intellectual interest was to
ascertain what the average worker--not the man or woman so far
advanced in the cultural scale that he or she can set his ideas
intelligently on paper--thought about his job and things in general.
To what books could you turn? Indeed I have come to feel that in the
pages of O. Henry there is more to be gleaned on the psychology of the
working class than any books to be found on economic shelves. The
outstanding conclusion forced upon any reader of such books as
consciously attempt to give a picture of the worker and his job is
that whoever wrote the books was bound and determined to find out
everything that was wrong in every investigation made, and tell all
about the wrongs and the wrongs only. Goodness knows, if one is
hunting for the things which should be improved in this world, one
life seems all too short to so much as make a start. In all honesty,
then, such books on labor should be classified under "Troubles of
Workers." No one denies they are legion. Everybody's troubles are, if
troubles are what you want to find.

The Schemer of Things has so arranged, praise be, that no one's life
shall be nothing but woe and misery. Yea, even workers have been known
to smile.

* * * * *

The experiences lived through in the following pages may strike the
reader as superficial, artificial. In a way they were. Yet, they
fulfilled their object in my eyes, at least. I wanted to feel for
myself the general "atmosphere" of a job, several jobs. I wanted to
know the worker without any suspicion on the part of the girls and
women I labored among that they were being "investigated." I wanted to
see the world through their eyes--for the time bei