Chicago, 1911–1917

This chapter follows Edith after her arrival in Chicago in early 1911, armed with a commission from The Ladies’ Home Journal. She was to examine alumnae attitudes toward College education. She was much helped in the project by University of Chicago Dean of Women, Marion Talbot (1858–1948), who also helped her speak out against women’s fraternities for The Century Magazine. Edith then started a monthly Department, “What Can I do?” for The Ladies’ Home Journal. She especially worried about how even women living domestic lives might achieve some modicum of independence. Although she recognized that it was no small thing to direct a magazine sold to nearly two million people, she tells Salmon that she was under constant strain working for a magazine that had so many elements foreign to her sympathies. In 1914 she left the magazine and, probably influenced by Cooley, moved to work on the Commercial Club of Chicago’s Bill introducing vocational schools in Illinois. She returned to her fiction when in January 1915 “forces hostile to the Bill” cut her funding. But by then she was also enmeshed in Manly’s text-book undertakings.