Hear My Sorrow: The Diary of Angela Denoto, a Shirtwaist Worker (New York, 1909)

Angela is a young girl of poor parents who lives in New York in 1909. Although she would like to continue school it becomes necessary for her to drop out of school and get a job in a factory where they make women's clothes.

The book centers around the absolutely horrible working conditions that the girls had to suffer under, including incredibly low pay, incredibly long hours and virtually no safety procedures at all. The girls have a nasty floor boss who is always telling them to work faster.

There is also a lot of time devoted to the girls trying to form a union and become part of a bigger union and a strike that they have to try and get better working conditions. Since so many of the girls come from poor families, however, some of them end up going back to work anyhow or going to work at another factory that is not being affected by the strike.

There is a very disturbing section which tells about an actual historical event, the Triangle Waist Company fire of March 25, 1911 in which 146 workers, most of which were women and girls, died. They died since they worked on the top two floors of the building which were beyond the reach of the fire ladders, and in most of the doors were locked to prevent girls from stealing things, sneaking out, etc. The result was that the girls were unable to escape the fire (remember, at this time there were no sprinkler systems or anything like that at all), and those who tried to jump out the window were killed when they fell since the nets the firemen used were not strong enough to stop the momentum of people jumping from such a height.

It shows just how horribly abused workers were by big business of the time, something which seems to be happening more and more even in today's world, especially in retail jobs.

The chapter describing what Angela saw when she got to the scene of the fire might disturb some younger readers and parents might want to be available to talk to them after they read this book. Still, it's an very worthwhile book, showing a dark part of our own history.

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