The Long Day: The Story of a New York Working Girl. - Softcover

The Long Day is a wonderfully readable personal narrative of the trials and tribulations of an "unskilled, friendless, almost penniless girl of eighteen, utterly alone in the world" who arrives in New York City in 1905 to earn her livelihood.The book reveals much about the lives of working women in early twentieth-century urban America- the sort of jobs available to women, the ethnic and demographic makeup of the female labor force, the harshness of the conditions, the less-than-satisfactory living arrangements, the physically demanding nature of the work, and the long working hours.

Dorothy Richardson was born in Prospect, Pennsylvania, in 1972, the daughter of a physician. She began her career as a journalist for the Pittsburgh Dispatch. She also wrote for the Social Democrat and a Chicago magazine called the New Times. She published The Long Day in 1905 while working for the New York Herald. Cindy Sondik Aron is Associate Professor of History at the University of Virginia. She is the author of Ladies and Gentlemen of Civil Service: Middle-Class Workers in Victorian America.