Darkness and Daylight; or, Lights and Shadows of New York Life…
Campbell, Helen and Thomas Knox and Thomas Byrnes. Darkness and Daylight; or, Lights and Shadows of New York Life. A Pictorial Record of Personal Experiences by Day and Night in the Great Metropolis. Introduction by Rev. Lyman Abbott. Hartford, Conn: The Hartford Publishing Company, 1896.
First Edition.8vo; 740pp; reddish-brown gilt-stamped cloth; covers soiled and rubbed, especially at tips and spine ends; tear to cloth spine about 1/4" long, about one quarter up from bottom; about very good. Profusely illustrated with 251 half-tones after photographs taken for this volume and drawn in facsimile.
Helen Stuart Campbell (1839-1918), author, reformer, and home economist, was a close associate of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, sharing her concern for the appalling poverty of women and children. She began her writing career by publishing children's stories under her married name, Helen Weeks, during the Civil War. She also published several adult novels under the names "Campbell Wheaton" and “Helen Stuart Campbell". This latter name she used after her divorce for the rest of her life. She was active in the early home economics movement, helping organize the National Household Economics Association, an outgrowth of the Women's Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition. In 1882 she published The Problem of the Poor, which was based on her work in a New York waterfront mission. She stressed the evil effects of low wages on women, following with Mrs. Herndon’t Income. By 1886, The New York Tribune commissioned her to study conditions among women in the needle trades and department stores in New York City. After a series of weekly articles, Prisoners of Poverty was published. Following a lengthy European trip, she wrote a sequel, Prisoners of Poverty Abraod, in 1889. By 1897, she was well known for her reform work. In this exposé of the dark heart of New York, the life of the poor, insane, indigent, and chronically ill is detailed. The activities of the missions and charitable organizations that work with the "less fortunate" are also detailed. An important contemporary source for the charitable work in NYC at the turn of the century.
Helen Campbell received an award from the American Economic Association in 1891. She served as head resident in the Unity Settlement in Chicago with Charlotte Perkins Gilman, with whom she had lived in California in 1894 and continued her association with around 1900 by moving to New York. Her last years were spent in Dedham, MA. She anticipated the work of the muckrakers by many years, and while her scholarship was never viewed as that of first rank, her work was popular and had great impact. The results can be seen in the formation of the ILGWU and Consumer's Unions, both of which directly benefited working women.
NAW I, pp. 280-281.
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