Bessie Van Vorst

Bessie McGinnis was born in 1873 in New York City.{{Cite web|url=https://digital.janeaddams.ramapo.edu/items/show/5607|title=Van Vorst, Bessie (1873–1928)|work=Jane Addams Digital Edition|access-date=January 7, 2020}} She was educated in New York private schools.{{Cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/16404642/11171914the_brooklyn_daily_eagle/|title=Bessie Van Vorst To Wed|date=November 17, 1914|work=The Brooklyn Daily Eagle|access-date=January 7, 2020|pages=4}} In 1898, she started working for the New York Evening Post. In 1899, she married John Van Vorst.{{Cite web|url=https://data.bnf.fr/en/10707265/bessie_van_vorst/|title=Bessie Van Vorst (1873–1928)|website=data.bnf.fr|access-date=January 7, 2020}} The marriage lasted only twelve hours – it was the groom's last wish to marry the bride before his death.{{Cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/21182373/bessie_woodruff_mcginnis_marriage_and/|title=Married as he was dying|date=March 1, 1899|work=The Baltimore Sun|access-date=February 20, 2020}} His father Judge Hopper Cornelius Van Vorst was a president of the Holland Society and served on the United States Circuit Court.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BWYsAAAAQBAJ|title=Child Labor in America: A History|last=Rosenberg|first=Chaim M.|date=July 17, 2013|publisher=McFarland|isbn=978-0-7864-7349-6|pages=75|language=en}} Upon her husband's death, she moved to Paris with her sister-in-law Marie Van Vorst, and the two co-authored the novel Bagsby's Daughter, published in 1901.

File:Bessie Van Vorst.jpg

In 1901. Bessie and Marie Van Vorst began an undercover investigation into women and child factory laborers by finding jobs in factories under aliases.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vLxsDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA37|title=Birth Control and American Modernity: A History of Popular Ideas|last=MacNamara|first=Trent|date=October 11, 2018|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-316-51958-5|pages=37|language=en}}{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=l1sTCgAAQBAJ|title=Class Unknown: Undercover Investigations of American Work and Poverty from the Progressive Era to the Present|last=Pittenger|first=Mark|date=August 13, 2012|publisher=NYU Press|isbn=978-0-8147-6740-5|pages=1|language=en}} Bessie worked in a plant in Perry, New York, a knitting mill near Buffalo, and a Pittsburgh pickle factory, among other places, using the name "Esther Kelly".{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rVLOhGt1BX0C&pg=RA2-PA515|title=Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary|last1=James|first1=Edward T.|last2=James|first2=Janet Wilson|last3=Boyer|first3=Paul S.|last4=College|first4=Radcliffe|date=1971|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0-674-62734-5|pages=515|language=en}} Marie Van Vorst found employment in a shoe factory in Lynn, Massachusetts, and a cotton mill in Columbia, South Carolina, under the alias "Bell Ballard".{{cite book|first=Katherine H. |last=Adams|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fRu7UrygSf0C&pg=PA166|title=A Group of Their Own: College Writing Courses and American Women Writers 1880-1940|publisher=SUNY Press|year=2001|isbn=9780791449356|page=166}} The Van Vorsts began writing a column detailing their experiences in Everybody's Magazine.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZJHNAAAAMAAJ&pg=PR4-IA3|title=Everybody's Magazine|date=1902|publisher=Ridgeway Company|pages=413|language=en}}

Their writings attracted the attention of the President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, who was interested in demographic issues. He wrote a letter to Bessie Van Vorst in 1902.{{Cite web|url=https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Research/Digital-Library/Record.aspx?libID=o183324|title=TR Center – Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Bessie Van Vorst|website=www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org|access-date=January 7, 2020}} Roosevelt's primary concern in his letter was race suicide that he believed was more important than any other issue in the country.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vLxsDwAAQBAJ|title=Birth Control and American Modernity: A History of Popular Ideas|last=MacNamara|first=Trent|date=October 11, 2018|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-316-51958-5|pages=38|language=en}}

When the publisher saw the letter he asked Van Vorst to compile her magazine work on laboring women into a book and use the president's note for the preface. In 1903, Roosevelt's preface appeared in Van Vorsts' book The Woman Who Toils: Being the Experiences of Two Ladies as Factory Girls – a book form of the magazine series. One part of the letter in particular caused a sensation among Americans who were not used to seeing any president address such issues as demography and birth control:

{{Blockquote|text=If a man or woman, through no fault of his or hers, goes throughout life denied those highest of all joys which spring only from home life, from the having and bringing up of many healthy children, I feel for them deep and respectful sympathy; the sympathy one extends to the gallant fellow killed at the beginning of a campaign, or the man who toils hard and is brought to ruin by the fault of others. But the man or woman who deliberately avoids marriage, and has a heart so cold as to know no passion and a brain so shallow and selfish as to dislike having children, is in effect a criminal against the race, and should be an object of contemptuous abhorrence by all healthy people.}}

Roosevelt's outcry struck a chord with many Americans. His criticism of voluntary childlessness was accepted by many citizens at that time and helped change the way families were depicted in mass media emphasizing the children.{{Cite book|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/book/24041|title=Conceiving the Future: Pronatalism, Reproduction, and the Family in the United States, 1890–1938|last=Lovett|first=Laura L.|date=2007|publisher=The University of North Carolina Press|isbn=978-1-4696-0472-5|language=en}} The idea of race suicide would become a favorite Roosevelt topic on his lecture tours, in which he urged white women to have babies.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PjlODwAAQBAJ|title=Theodore Roosevelt: A Literary Life|last1=Bailey|first1=Thomas|last2=Joslin|first2=Katherine|date=April 3, 2018|publisher=University Press of New England|isbn=978-1-5126-0259-3|pages=151|language=en}}

In their book the Van Vorsts portrayed the troublesome working and living conditions they had observed, and their consequences for women and girls. Bessie appealed for a more compassionate attitude towards these employees. Van Vorst also noted that factory women enjoyed the independence afforded them by paid labor and therefore delayed marrying.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Qp81fdtpzjgC|title=The American New Woman Revisited: A Reader, 1894–1930|last=Patterson|first=Martha H.|date=2008|publisher=Rutgers University Press|isbn=978-0-8135-4296-6|pages=107|language=en}} "I never saw a baby nor heard of a baby while I was in town", Van Vorst wrote after nearly three weeks spent in Perry. She also discussed sociability and the discipline of factory work as a dangerous alternative to family unity.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2dZzhyFCU0YC|title=American Hungers: The Problem of Poverty in U.S. Literature, 1840–1945|last=Jones|first=Gavin|date=October 12, 2009|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-1-4008-3191-3|pages=90|language=en}}

The book, with the same title and title page but containing only Bessie's contributions, was reprinted in 1974.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rEYxxKG_-jcC|title=Simulacrum America: The USA and the Popular Media|last1=Kraus|first1=Elisabeth|last2=Auer|first2=Carolin|date=2000|publisher=Camden House|isbn=978-1-57113-187-4|pages=170|language=en}}

Some contemporary authors criticize Bessie and Marie Van Vorst for having a condescending attitude toward the working class, and indeed they themselves described working-class women as "degrading to look upon and odorous to approach".

Sociologist Carolin Auer, in a 2000 essay on "social reportage", criticizes Bessie and Marie Van Vorst for the simulated reality they create. Auer claims that the women's undercover investigation is nothing but a simulation of the reality as the researchers remain untrammeled by the economic, educational, and emotional ties which bind female factory workers. She notes that equating a life among the Other with the life of the Other is erroneous. Therefore, the Van Vorsts' efforts result in "false representations" as they produce a fragmentary and flawed account of the worker's world, as well as represent a report of what is actually a fake world. Auer calls their narrative constructed when describing encounters, situations and events.{{Cite book|last=Auer|first=Carolin|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rEYxxKG_-jcC&pg=PA170|title=Simulacrum America: The USA and the Popular Media|date=2000|publisher=Camden House|isbn=978-1-57113-187-4|editor1-last=Kraus|editor1-first=Elisabeth|pages=169–80|chapter='A Transcript from Real Life': The Simulated Reality of the Social Reportage|editor2-last=Auer|editor2-first=Carolin}}

In 1908, Van Vorst wrote the book The Cry of the Children, in which she described child labor in wool and cotton mills in New Hampshire and Alabama. She conducted her study through visits to the Dwight Manufacturing Company in Alabama City, the Massachusetts Cotton Mill in Lindale, Georgia, and the Merrimack Manufacturing Company in Huntsville. Everywhere she traveled she saw children of twelve years and younger working as doffers or sweepers, earning between twenty and fifty cents for a twelve-hour workday and often working night shifts. Her book was illustrated by drawings by Guernsey Moore, a well-known illustrator who was responsible for Saturday Evening Post covers.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aSJqCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA96|title=Making Photography Matter: A Viewer's History from the Civil War to the Great Depression|last=Finnegan|first=Cara A.|date=May 30, 2015|publisher=University of Illinois Press|isbn=978-0-252-09731-7|pages=96|language=en}} Van Vorst's study of child labor in the mills of Alabama and New Hampshire helped stir reform sentiment.

Van Vorst settled in Paris among the expatriate American community. In 1914, she married Hugues Robert Charles Henri Le Roux, a writer and editor of Le Matin.{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1914/11/27/archives/bessie-van-vorst-marries-american-author-weds-hughes-le-roux-editor.html|title=Bessie Van Vorst Marries|date=November 27, 1914|work=The New York Times|access-date=January 7, 2020}} Van Vorst continued writing on social issues as a correspondent for US and French publications,{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1913/01/12/archives/americans-stake-cash-against-death-that-says-bessie-van-vorst.html|title=Americans stake cash against death; that, says Bessie Van Vorst, explains the founding of institutes where investigators can work|date=January 12, 1913|work=The New York Times|access-date=February 20, 2020|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}} including Harper's Magazine,{{Cite journal|last=Van Vorst|first=Mrs. John (Bessie)|date=1903|title=The Woman of the People|journal=Harper's|pages=871–75}} Revue des deux Mondes, and Journal des débats.

Van Vorst died on May 19, 1928, in Paris.

• 1901 – Bagsby's daughter{{Cite book|url=http://find.galegroup.com/openurl/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&url_ctx_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&res_id=info:sid/gale:AMFN&ctx_enc=info:ofi:enc:UTF-8&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:unknown&rft.artnum=BGGXDR976732603&req_dat=info:sid/gale:ugnid|title=Bagsby's daughter|last1=Van Vorst|first1=John|last2=Van Vorst|first2=Marie|last3=Carleton|first3=Clifford|last4=Harper & Brothers|date=1901|publisher=Harper & Bros.|location=New York; London|language=en|oclc=669323522}}
• 1903 – The woman who toils: being the experiences of two gentlewomen as factory girls{{Cite book|url=http://ncco.galegroup.com/gdc/ncco/MonographsDetailsPage/MonographsDetailsWindow?disableHighlighting=false&prodId=NCCO&action=1&activityType=BasicSearch&javax.portlet.action=viewPortletAction&documentId=GALE%7CAUCAIJ197209254&dviSelectedPage=1&userGroupName=|title=The woman who toils: being the experiences of two gentlewomen as factory girls|last1=Van Vorst|first1=John|last2=Van Vorst|first2=Marie|date=1903|publisher=Doubleday, Page|location=New York|language=en|oclc=786286489}}
• 1903 – L'ouvrière aux États-Unis{{Cite book|title=L'ouvrière aux États-Unis.|last1=Van Vorst|first1=John|last2=Van Vorst|first2=Marie|last3=Doumic|first3=Jacques|date=1903|publisher=F. Juven|location=Paris|language=fr|oclc=3099881}}
• 1904 – The issues of life: a novel of the American woman of today{{Cite book|title=The issues of life: a novel of the American woman of today|last1=Van Vorst|first1=John|last2=Doubleday|first2=Page & Company|date=1904|publisher=Doubleday, Page & Company|location=New York|language=en|oclc=2150048}}
• 1907 – Magda, queen of Sheba, from the ancient royal Abyssinian manuscript, "The glory of the kings" — translator{{Cite book|title=Magda, queen of Sheba, from the ancient royal Abyssinian manuscript, "The glory of the kings";|last1=Le Roux|first1=Hugues|last2=Van Vorst|first2=John|date=1907|publisher=Funk & Wagnalls|location=New York|language=en|oclc=3368823}}
• 1908 – The cry of the children; a study of child-labor{{Cite book|title=The cry of the children; a study of child-labor|last=Van Vorst|first=John|date=1908|publisher=Moffat, Yard and Co.|location=New York|language=en|oclc=1626306}}
• 1918 – Popular history of France{{Cite book|title=A popular history of France|last=Van Vorst|first=John|date=1918|publisher=Frederick A. Stokes Co.|location=New York|language=en|oclc=2546577}}
• 1918 – On the field of honor (Au champ d'honneur){{Cite book|title=On the field of honor (Au champ d'honneur)|last1=Le Roux|first1=Hugues|last2=Van Vorst|first2=John|date=1918|publisher=Houghton Mifflin Co.|location=Boston; New York|language=en|oclc=3610319}}
• 1918 – A popular history of the war from 1914 to 1918{{Cite book|title=A popular history of the war from 1914 to 1918|last=Van Vorst|first=John|date=1918|publisher=Librairie Larousse|location=Paris|language=en|oclc=3977835}}
• 1919 – A popular geography of France, industries, principal cities{{Cite book|url=https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb31542316w|title=A Popular geography of France, industries, principal cities, by B. Van Vorst...|last=Van Vorst|first=Bessie|date=1919|publisher=Larousse|location=Paris}}
• 1919 – To the homeward-bound Americans{{Cite book|title=To the homeward-bound Americans|last=Van Vorst|first=John|date=1919|publisher=Imp. Lang, Blanchong & cie.|location=Paris|language=en|oclc=9048650}}
• 1926 – A girl from China (Soumay Tcheng) — translator{{Cite book|title=A girl from China (Soumay Tcheng)|last=Van Vorst|first=John|date=1926|publisher=Frederick A. Stokes Co.|location=New York|language=en|oclc=844214}}

{{Reflist}}

• {{Commons category-inline}}
• [https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433076050701&view=1up&seq=7 Bagsby's Daughter] at Hathi Trust (US access only)
• [https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15218/15218-h/15218-h.htm Text of The Woman Who Toils] at Project Gutenberg
• [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006496486 L'ouvrière aux États-Unis] at Hathi Trust (US access only)
• [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008679704 The issues of life: a novel of the American woman of today] at Hathi Trust (US access only)
• [https://books.google.com/books?id=N1NDAAAAYAAJ Magda, queen of Sheba] at Google Books
• {{Librivox author |id=16874}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Van Vorst, Bessie}}

Category:20th-century American women journalists

Category:19th-century American journalists

Category:19th-century American women journalists

Category:20th-century American journalists

Category:1873 births

Category:1928 deaths

Category:American women writers

Category:New York Post people

Category:Journalists from New York City

Category:Writers from New York City