ng to close my own
altogether.

There are no startling new facts or discoveries here recorded. Nothing
in these pages will revolutionize anything. To such as wish the lot of
the worker painted as the most miserable on earth, they will be
disappointing.

Yet in being as honest as I could in recording the impressions of my
experiences, I am aware that I have made possible the drawing of false
conclusions. Already such false conclusions have been drawn. "See,"
says an "old-fashioned" employer, "the workers are happy--these
articles of Mrs. Parker's show it. Why should they have better
conditions? They don't want them!"

A certain type of labor agitator, or a "parlor laborite," prefer to
see only the gloomy side of the worker's life. They are as dishonest
as the employer who would see only the contentment. The picture must
be viewed in its entirety--and that means considering the workers not
as a labor problem, but as a social problem. Workers are not an
isolated group, who keep their industrial adversities or industrial
blessings to themselves. They and their families and dependents are
the majority of our population. As a nation, we rise no higher in the
long run than the welfare of the majority. Nor can the word "welfare,"
if one thinks socially, ever be limited to the word "contentment." It
is quite conceivable--nay, every person has seen it in actuality--that
an individual may be quite contented in his lot and yet have that lot
incompatible with the welfare of the larger group.

It is but as a part of the larger group that worker, employer, and the
public must come to view the labor problem. When a worker is found who
appears perfectly amenable to long hours, bad air, unhygienic
conditions in general--and many are--somebody has to pay the price.
There are thousands of contented souls, as we measure contentment, in
the congested tenement districts of East Side New York. Does that fact
add to our social welfare? Because mothers for years were willing to
feed their children bad milk, was then the movement to provide good
milk for babies a waste of time and money? Plenty of people always
could be found who would willingly drink impure water. Society found
that too costly, and cities pride themselves to-day on their pure
water supply and low typhoid rate.

There are industrial conditions flourishing which insidiously take a
greater toll of society than did ever the death of babies from unclean
milk, the death of old