Helen Stuart Campbell (1839-1918)
Helen Stuart Campbell was an author, reformer, and pioneer in the home economics movement. Her stories were earnest tales chronicling women's struggles especially in domestic life and poverty.
Campbell was born in Lockport, New York and attended school in Warren, Rhode Island, and later, Mrs. Cook's seminary in Bloomfield, New Jersey. Early in her writing career she published children's stories under her married name, Helen Weeks. As an activist in the home economics movement, Campbell helped organize the National Household Economics Association. In 1881, she published a textbook entitled The Easiest Way in House-Keeping and Cooking. She is best known for her 1882 book, The Problem of the Poor,based on her work in a New York City mission. This volume was followed by Prisoners of Poverty (1887), and Women Wage Earners (1893), which won an award from the American Economic Association. Mrs. Herndon's Income (1886) is Campbell's fictional account of the evil effects of low wages for women.
Campbell taught at the Raleigh Cooking School in North Carolina in 1878 and, for a short time, at the University of Wisconsin, where the 1894-95 catalog lists her two courses, "Women wage-earning" and "Domestic Science." IIn 1886 she was hired by the New York Tribune to study the conditions among women in the city's needle trades and department stores. She also served as head resident in the Unity Settlement in Chicago. Campbell spent her last days in Dedham, Massachusetts.
OCP Resources
Campbell, Helen. The Problem of the poor: a record of quite work in unquiet places. New York: Fords, Howard & Hulbert, 1882.
Campbell, Helen. Miss Melinda's opportunity: a story. Boston: Roberts Bros., 1886.
Campbell, Helen. Prisoners of poverty: women wage-workers, their trades and their lives. Boston: Roberts Bros., 1889.
Campbell, Helen. Darkness and daylight, or, Lights and shadows of New York life: a woman's story of gospel, temperance, mission, and rescue work "in his name," with hundreds of thrilling anecdotes and incidents, personal experiences, sketches of life and character, humorous stories, touching home scenes, and tales of tender pathos, drawn from the bright and shady sides of city life. Hartford, Conn.: A.D. Worthington, 1893.