Theodore purchased in bulk from a reading room at the New York Stock Exchange issues of newspapers being discarded, hundreds if not thousands of them. He took them home to Fort Lee, New Jersey, and there the two women analyzed them, in essence running a clipping service, arranging the clippings by topic: diet, clothing, housing, working conditions, and the like. As the book says in its introduction, the Southern newspapers give themselves, especially in advertisements for runaway slaves, evidence of mistreatment of the enslaved.