into our plutocracy. But one thread will string every character she ever conceived; all her people do something for a living. She is the goddess of the worker. And from her typewriter keys spring hard-working bankers, merchants, burglars, garage-helpers, stenographers, actors, traveling salesmen, hotel clerks, porters and reporters, wholesalers, pushcart men, wine touts, welfare workers, farmers, writers—always doers of things: money makers, men and women who pull their weight in the boat. And her stories chiefly tell what a fine time these hardworking Americans have with their day’s work.
“In the Great American Short Story, which must tell of American life rather than our Great American Novel, Edna Ferber’s section will be among the workers. Mrs. Wharton and Henry Fuller and Sherwood Anderson can have the loafers, in high life and low life. But Miss Ferber’s people will come from the stores and offices and workshops. They will, as the Gospel Hymn has it, come rejoicing, bringing home the bacon. Their dramatic moments are oftenest in aprons, shirt sleeves, overalls, at desks, behind counters, in kitchens, behind stage curtains, in the midst of the business of earning a living. Precious little is done in the Ferber stories ‘in God’s great out of doors—in the wide open spaces.’ When anything has to be open in Miss Ferber’s work it is a lively and festive wide-open town.
“So let us consider who she is and how she happened to be a writing woman. In the middle or late ’eighties of the nineteenth century she was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, of Jewish parents. Her father was a Hungarian. Her mother an American, born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her father was the owner of a general merchandise store, first in Iowa, then in Appleton, Wisconsin. Miss Ferber at seventeen was graduated from the Ryan High School in Appleton. For her graduating essay she wrote an account of the life of the women workers in a local mill. The local editor saw it: recognized that it was good reporting and gave her a job as local reporter
