CHAPTER III

PERRY, A NEW YORK MILL TOWN


No place in America could have afforded better than Pittsburg a chance
to study the factory life of American girls, the stimulus of a new
country upon the labourers of old races, the fervour and energy of a
people animated by hope and stirred to activity by the boundless
opportunities for making money. It is the labourers' city _par
excellence_; and in my preceding chapters I have tried to give a clear
picture of factory life between the hours of seven and six, of the
economic conditions, of the natural social and legal equipment of woman
as a working entity, of her physical, moral and esthetic development.

Now, since the time ticked out between the morning summoning whistle to
that which gives release at night is not half the day, and only
two-thirds of the working hours, my second purpose has been to find a
place where the factory girl's own life could best be studied: her
domestic, religious and sentimental life.

Somewhere in the western part of New York State, one of my comrades at
the pickle works had told me, there was a town whose population was
chiefly composed of mill-hands. The name of the place was Perry, and I
decided upon it as offering the typical American civilization among the
working classes. New England is too free of grafts to give more than a
single aspect; Pittsburg is an international bazaar; but the foundations
of Perry are laid with bricks from all parts of the world, held together