Any sensitive young woman starting out in life comes sooner or later up against the hard, and sometimes unpalatable, fact that it is one of her most important jobs as a woman to conciliate the man. He may be her father; he may be her employer; he may be her lover; he may be her husband – the point is that the great majority of women are economically dependent on some man.

Now this unequal state of affairs is not particularly pleasant to swallow. Most of us who are women, and particularly who are unsheltered women, have, I suppose, at one time or another, been moved to envy men the greater ease with which they can maintain their self- respect, and play their own hands without dissimulation; without niggardly fears for the future.

These stories are not propaganda; they are not attempts to solve the unsoluble [sic]. I wrote about the individual women, young and old, whom I have written about, because, very briefly, each of them happened to come my way; and it seemed to me that I was able to understand, at least in part, something about them: what they wanted, what they were unable to obtain, and the nature of the handicap against them. They are real to me, and I have tried to make them, and their problems real. That is all.