A Moral Success and a Profitable One

Abstract

Abstract In the early years of the twentieth century, U.S. relationships with the East were shaped by influential men and women bent on modernising and Christianising other countries. Sidney Gulick, whose 1915 Working Women of Japan is part of a larger effort to support Japan’s modernisation, writes about a charitable institution as an exemplar for future projects. Although the project successfully attracted many young textile workers and assisted them by providing education, healthy living, and new opportunities, it also reveals a darker underside to western charitable impulses. Gulick conflates morality with industry, happiness with production, and success with profit, reducing a laudable attempt to interest fellow Americans in charitable efforts to an attempt to gain buy-in for a commercial project. By working in close partnership with exploitative factories and their owners, these would-be reformers end by supporting the very conditions which they set out to reform.