The Alchemy of Murder Read Online Free

utter nonsense!
    This was an attack upon women, not a brutish one by a masher, but done with pen and paper. Mr. Wilson had no understanding of the plight of women who either refused to give up their freedom and legally prostitute themselves in marriage—sex for board and room and a twenty-four hour workday—or for those who were turned out onto the streets to sell their bodies for their daily bread. Had this foolish reporter but opened his eyes, he would have seen that there are thousands of women working in factories and shops, doing just as good a job, if not better, as their male coworkers— for half the pay .
    This man was repeating the conventional wisdom that a woman should stay away from the rigors of employment and devote her life to husband and home. The fact that many women had neither husband nor home and had to subsist minimally on beans and bread at a workers’ boarding house from the pennies earned in a factory or retail shop, had been completely ignored by the columnist.
    I, for one, was brimming with ideas and ambitions, but because of men like him I was unable to express myself. Mind you, I know what I speak of, for I was a factory girl grinding out a meager subsistence in a Pittsburgh sweatshop working ten and a half hours a day, six days a week, and living in a boarding house with my mother. What held me back was not my poverty, but this conventional wisdom about the “weaker sex.”
    Weaker, indeed. I worked as hard as the men around me, yet there were no opportunities for me—or any of the women I worked with, except a lifetime of the same menial labor.
    One could argue that I held a lowly position because my education had been cut short by a heart condition that forced me to leave high school just prior to getting my three-year diploma. * But there were men at the factory that had less education and received better pay and promotions.
    It all boiled down to one thing: I was a woman in a man’s world.
    Emboldened by my anger—for I knew this Mr. Wilson would just think of me as a hysterical woman if I barged into his office and gave him a piece of my mind—I sat down with pen in hand, determined to educate this newspaper about the plight of factory girls. However, I was not entirely ignorant of how my employer might react if he found out one of his worker bees held the radical belief that she should be treated as fairly—or at least not more unfairly—than men.
    For fear of losing the job that put food on the table, I signed the letter to the editor, “Lonely Orphan Girl.”
    To say the least, I was more than surprised when a few days later I read a cryptic message in the “Our Mail Pouch” column in the Dispatch :
    LONELY ORPHAN GIRL
If the writer of the communication signed “Lonely Orphan Girl” will send her name and address to this office, merely as a guarantee of good faith, she will confer a favor and receive the information she desires.
    Concerned over what action to take, I finally decided that the best course was to take the matter in hand and present myself at the newspaper office.
    I arrived in a black ankle-length dress and black coat, an imitation Russian silk with a circular hem and false fur turban. The coat and turban I borrowed from a woman at our boarding house who had received it as a “present” from her shopkeeper employer after she worked “overtime” for him. While the outfit might have appeared flamboyant for a girl of eighteen, I hoped it added a degree of sophistication and feminine poise. *
    As the doorman took me into the news room and pointed out Mr. Maddox, the editor, I couldn’t help but smile for I’d expected a big man with a bushy beard who would look over the top of his specs and snap, “What do you want!?”
    Instead, I found a pleasant-faced, boyish individual, wearing suspenders and an open collar, who was mild-mannered and good-natured. He wouldn’t even kill the nasty roaches that crawled over his desk.
    He told me I wasn’t much for formal