Making Headlines of a Biografy of Nelly BLY

Nellie brought the broom along,as the song says,and sat out to sweep Pittsburg clean.It needed it.Under smoke-blackened skies,which glowed flame red at night,workers were little more than slaves to uncaring factory owners.Women in a bottle factory worked fourteen hour days in an unheated building.Children were endangered by living in dirty,disease ridden,fire prone buildings in a slum called the Point.

When Nellie Bly joined the staff of the Dispatch,more than 156,000 people lived in Pittsburg.Many were immigrants,drawn by jobs in the iron and steel industries.Few labor unions protected these unskilled workers,and no social service agencies existed.

Nellie brought her discoveries of social injustices to public attention through the Dispatch.She was not content to sit at her hard-won desk in the city room,letting others do the research.Every story was her own,fropm the first idea,through the investigation and writing to her byline,or name,on the finished article.

A bottling factory was Nellie’s first target.The glass industry was Pittsburg’s third largest business;some seventy factories produced half the nation’s glass,and more champagne bottles than there were in France.Accompanied by her artist,she located the factory owner and told him  she wanted to write an article for the Dispatch about his factory.Deceived by her ladylike manner and pleasant smile,he welcomed her with open arms.He thought she was offering him good,free publicity,so he told her to talk to any one and look anywhere.

Nellie talked to the workers as the artist sketched.Someo f these women stood on an icy cement floor for fourteen hours at a stretch.To cope with the winter cold that seeped through the factory walls,the workers had to wrap rags around their feet,which kept their toes around their feet,which keep their toes from freezing.Several hundred workers shared one toilet,along with a family of rats.Worse yet was the daily risk of injuri from broken or exploding bottles.Since worker’s compensation didi not exist,an injury could result in the loss of a person’s job and only source of income. 

Nellie was shocked by the conditions in the factories,and she canneled all her outrage into print.She held nothing back,including names,dates,and drawings.When her article appeared in the Dispatch every copy of that day’s paper sold quickly at the city’s newsstands.The factory owners were engaged when they saw Nellie’s articles.Letters flooded the Dispatch office.Although Nellie faced protests,and even threats,efforts at reform began which eventually improved conditions in the factories of Pittsburg.