Elizabeth Beardsley Butler
Published: 2015-07-20
Total Pages: 528
Get eBook
Excerpt from Women and the Trades: Pittsburgh, 1907 1908 One of the first acts of the trustees of the Russell Sage Foundation was to make an appropriation of $7,000 for the work of the Pittsburgh Survey. Other appropriations followed during the year, that made a total sum of $27,000. The plan of the survey proposed a careful and fairly comprehensive study of the conditions under which working people live and labor in a great industrial city, and a fair public statement of facts discovered. It was hoped that these facts would lead to the prompt application of some practical measures, whose value to the community would be readily recognized, and that with respect to such conditions as are firmly rooted in custom and convention, they would afford a basis for efforts to secure legislative or other remedies. It was hoped, too, that they would constitute a body of evidence, such as we had never had, bearing on our national civilization, and that they would supply a foundation for further study in a deeper and more comprehensive way of conditions whose consequences are little understood, although they affect vitally our whole community life. These anticipations have already been realized. The appointment by the Mayor of Pittsburgh of a Civic Commission composed of eminent citizens and specialists in various lines, to devise and advocate measures to promote the welfare of Pittsburgh's people, and to advance their standards materially and spiritually, may in itself prove a sufficient justification and return for the effort and expenditure put into the survey. These volumes will present a vivid picture of certain phases of life in Pittsburgh. We do not claim that it is a complete picture nor that it is entirely free from error. But we believe that it presents fairly and justly dominant elements in the lives of many individuals who form a large and important proportion of Pittsburgh's population. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.