Untitled - Rhode Island Historical Society

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Apponaug Print'Works, Vlarwick, circa 1900.
RIHS Collection (RHi X3 2192).
118 "WAS SHE CLOTHED \TITH THE RENTS PAID FOR THESE \TRETCHL,D ROOMS:
are prepared for trades, girls are trained for housework, despite the general reluctance
of people to hire former reform school inmates to work in their homes.
Although it was principally intended to expose the cruelty and inadequ acy of
institutions caring for wards of the state, the story also implies that Josie's dismal
situation was partly brought about by the conditions of life prevalent in
factory villages. Its opening ssnlsngs-"Josie \(elch's mother was a widow, who
worked in a cotton factory"-s.ems to carry with it the girl's death knell. It is,
in fact, the inadequacies of mill town life that srart Josie toward her downfall.
"Men and women who labor eleven hours a day in the stifling ar of a great factory
have limitations to their freedom of will," Lillie writes. "\fomen must
often toil on in the home after the mill work is done. They cannot spend time
and money to go our in search of healthful recreation. . . . In factory villages,
but little effort is made, by what calls itself christianity, to compete with Satan
in his struggles for souls, or to prove his choice of pleasures an unwise one to
the multitude."50 In directly connecing Josie's ruin with the deficiencies of life
for working-class families in mill villages, Lillie was not only supporting her
mother's reform initiative but subtly shaping it to suggest a wider critique.