Eva McDonald Valesh

Title: One of Valesh's First Articles
Type: Newspaper
Date: March 1888
Source: St. Paul Daily Globe

Description: Valesh's first newspaper article described the working conditions for women in local factories.

Transcription:

'Mong Girls Who Toil

The Classification of Minneapolis Women Who are Bread-Winners.

Girls Who Work at the Manufacture of Overalls, Jumpers, Etc.,

In Illy Ventilated Rooms for Wages Little Less than Starvation.

Eva Gay's Trip Through Upper Stories Where Girls Are Employed.

Working girls and their lives. How little the outside world knows of them.

And yet there are thousands in the city of Minneapolis.

On her lecture to the socialists People in favor of government ownership of factories, railroads, etc., and an equal distribution of wealth. at Turner hall last year, Mrs. Marx-Aveling took occasion to refer to the working girls of Minneapolis and to denounce in the roundest terms Condemn strongly. the hard work and small wages they received. It is an interesting and a vital subject, but it is a difficult one to handle. The commissioner of labor, John Lamb, can tell at what pains and trouble he obtained the statistics required by the duties of his office. Many of the shops and factories are guarded for the one purpose of preventing the outflow of information, while the foremen People in charge of workers at a factory. are made spies as well as taskmasters. Fear of discharge prevents the girls themselves from giving any information, which alas! for it there have been cases where the very shame for it has prevented these girls from describing the meager pittance they earn. This I know by actual word of mouth, and I propose to carry GLOBE readers with me through a series of articles and show the life, home life and shop life, of the working girls and women of Minneapolis.