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331.4
M76a

A STUDY OF CHICAGO'S STOCKYAPT
COMMUNITY

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE
STOCKYARDS DISTRICT

AN INVESTIGATION CARRIED ON UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE

BOARD OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SETTLEMENT

AND THE CHICAGO ALUMNAE CLUB OF

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

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THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

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THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON AND EDINBURGH

THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA

TOKYO, OSAKA, KYOTO

KARL W. HIERSEMANN

LEIPZIG

THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY

NEW TOSS

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A STUDY OF CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS
COMMUNITY

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE
STOCKYARDS DISTRICT

AN INVESTIGATION CARRIED ON UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE

BOARD OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SETTLEMENT

AND THE CHICAGO ALUMNAE CLUB OF

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

Published August 1913

Composed and Printed By

Tbe Unirersity of Chicago Press

Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

V»

PAGE

INTRODUCTION ................. i

£>

SECTION I. THE EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS OF THE COMMUNITY . . 2

1. The Attitude of the Majority ...... » . . . . 2

2. The Attitude of the Minority ........... 6

3. The Prevailing Attitude in Regard to the Education of Girls . . 7

SECTION II. THE LOCAL SCHOOLS ........... 8

1. Public and Parochial Schools ....... .... 8

2. The Adaptation of the Public School to the Needs of the Girl . 1 1

a) The Attitude of the Girl to the School ....... n

b) Continued Interest in Educational Opportunities . . . . 13

c) The Extent of Retardation and Elimination ...... 15

SECTION III. THE GIRL AS A WAGE-EARNING CHILD ..... 17

1. The Attitude of the Parents ......... * . 17

2. The Method of Finding Work ........... 18

3. Where the Compulsory Education Law Fails ...... 20

4. The Family Need .............. 21

5. Occupations Open to Girls under Sixteen Years of Age ... 23

6. The Relation of Wage and Occupation to Grade ..... 25

7. Some Physical, Mental, and Moral Aspects of the Problem . . 28

8. The Attitude of the Employer .......... 32

SECTION IV. THE WORKING-GIRL ........... 35

1. Records of One Hundred Girls Sixteen and Seventeen Years of
Age Who Did not Complete the Seventh Grade . . . . . 35

2. Records of Fifty Girls Sixteen and Seventeen Years of Age Who
Completed Eight Grades ............ 38

3. Records of One Hundred Girls from Eighteen to Twenty-four
Years of Age Who Did not Complete the Seventh Grade . . 42

4. Records of Fifty Girls from Eighteen to Twenty-four Years of
Age Who Completed Eight Grades ......... 46

5. Probable Opportunities of the Working-Girl ...... 50

6. Health in Relation to Occupation .......... 55

7. The Girl and the Family ............ 57

vi TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

SECTION V. PROBLEMS OF ADJUSTMENT 61

1. Summary 61

2. Remedial Measures 62

a) The Reorganization of the School 63

b) A Revised Compulsory Education Law 64

c) A New Attitude to the Problem of Family Poverty ... 65

d) Preparation for a City-wide Vocational Guidance Program . 66

e) Adequate Provision for, and Supervision of, Public Places of
Amusement and Recreation .68

APPENDIX . 68

INTRODUCTION

In the stockyards district, as in every other foreign industrial
community, the American-born girl lives between two determining
influences, the unseen traditions of the Old World and the visible
customs of the New. The foreign parent and the American child
are under one roof, struggling with the misunderstandings common
to age and youth but intensified by the natural desire of the one
to cling to inherited standards and by the strong young will of the
other to be a vital part of the present generation. It is the purpose
of this survey to consider some of the phases of this difficult environ-
ment and in dealing with them to reveal as far as possible the
mental attitudes of both parent and child as they affect the future
of the potential woman.

The 900 families who form the background of the study have
been known to the University of Chicago Settlement for a period
extending into the past from one to eight years. The recorded
facts are recent, having been secured between November i, 1911,
and September i, 1912. Their interpretation rests, not alone upon
the statistical evidence of a single investigation, but upon the
cumulative knowledge gained through eight years of daily contact
with the life of the neighborhood. Within this group of 900
families, 500 girls were selected from whom it was possible to
obtain with a fair degree of accuracy the information needed to
throw light upon the topics under consideration. No girl who at
any time has been recorded as defective or delinquent was included
in the number. Among the parents five foreign peoples pre-
dominate: Poles, Germans, Bohemians, Irish, and Slovaks. A
miscellaneous group includes English, Scotch, Dane, Swede, Dutch,
Lithuanians, and Russian Jews. Of the 500 girls, 458 were born
in Chicago in the stockyards district, 21 in neighboring states, and
21 in foreign countries. The 42 girls born outside of Chicago were
brought to their present homes at so early an age that the general
conditions and opportunities of the stockyards community have
been practically the same for them. No attempt was made to

2 CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

draw final conclusions in regard to racial differences under a common
American environment. Without exception the group of 500 girls
represents a prevailing type apart from the historical background
of the parents — the first generation in America, struggling to keep
up with American standards and making every effort to avoid
being classed as "foreigners." The parents come to America with
a fixed sense of inherited class distinctions. In a district where
within a radius of ten blocks one may hear a babel of tongues, a
confusion arising from the mingled voices of people from twelve
nations of Europe, there are necessarily different levels of popula-
tion, distinct social groups which may be either of the same or of
different racial composition. There are also other groups held
together by a common feeling of attainment in the New World
regardless of the place of birth, for in America unification cannot
depend upon race. The bitter recollection of ancient wars may be
present. The conquered and the conquering peoples are side by
side, but the effort to sustain a continued sense of national separa-
tion is weakened by the daily recognition of an economic status
which, especially among the young, tends to obliterate the rigid
old-country standards, prejudices, and traditions, and to substitute
an unfixed determinant based on changing opportunities. These
invisible forces so vital in the life of such a community are not
easily given objective values in tables of statistics.

The principal topics of inquiry are presented in the following
order: (i) the educational standards of the community; (2) the
local schools and their adaptation to needs of the girl; (3) the girl
as a wage-earning child; (4) the working-girl, her present wage
and probable opportunities; (5) problems of adjustment.

SECTION I. THE EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS OF THE
COMMUNITY

I. THE ATTITUDE OF THE MAJORITY

The dominant educational standard of the neighborhood is
the minimum legal requirement of the state, accepted with little
protest by the majority, for the people as a whole are essentially
a law-abiding people. By habit and tradition they bow before
the accepted order of things. In the absence of higher ideals

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 3

585, or 65 per cent,1 of the 900 families take advantage of the
compulsory age law to fix the limit of the child's schooling. Within
this group it is possible to make a loose classification of the control-
ling influences among the parents who maintain this minimum
standard: (a) the peasant belief that education is the privilege of
"the upper classes"; (6) the need of money and the ambition to
own property; (c) the failure of the school to meet the practical
demands of the working people; (d) the ecclesiastical ideal of edu-
cation which must permeate a community that is dominantly
Catholic. This classification is not given to represent exclusive
boundary lines. It is common to find families both consciously
and unconsciously governed by two or more or all of these influ-
ences united.

a) Among many hard-headed peasants there is the traditional
feeling that education is a luxury either for the well-to-do or for
those whom some mysterious power has placed above the common
people. "You are not a rich American. You need no education
beyond the law," was the answer of the Slovak mother to the
daughter who wished to remain hi school until the end of her
course. "My children belong to the working class," said the
German father. "Education will spoil them for earning a living
with the hands." Polish parents who owned a three-story tene-
ment from which they were collecting sixty dollars a month in
rentals placed their fourteen-year-old little girl in a factory at
three dollars a week, not because they were pressed for money,
but because in the natural order of things she was destined to
marry a Polish working-man and it would be very unwise to unfit
her for that position by giving her "the education of a Yankee."
In more than one-half of the 585 families this underlying sentiment
rises and falls, sometimes carrying all the weight of an authority
that has never been questioned, and again overpowered by a sudden
comprehension of the equal opportunities open to all classes through
the public schools.

b) A number much larger than that in the above group find an
actual need of the child's wages to supplement the earnings of the

1 The percentage is higher for the neighborhood as a whole. To secure material
for later comparisons in the wage-earning capacity of girls, a search was made for
families who had kept their girls in school to complete the elementary course.

4 CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

father. Broadly speaking, when the father's wage falls below two
dollars a day there is less hope for the extension of the girl's school-
ing beyond the compulsory age limit, although the neighborhood
furnishes heroic examples of parental sacrifices proving many excep-
tions to the rule. In this group of 585 families there are 125
women widowed, deserted, or with husbands incapacitated for work,
who are dependent wholly or in part on the wages of their children,
and the wage of 297 men is steadily below two dollars a day.

The ambition of the immigrant to own property in America
is one of his most striking characteristics. For it he will make
almost unbelievable sacrifices both of his own comfort and of that
of his wife and children, since the heavily mortgaged house too
often calls for the united wage-earning power of the entire family.
"We are building without money," was the reply of the fourteen-
year-old girl when asked why she was leaving school before com-
pleting the sixth grade. The strength of this feeling is due in part
to the natural desire for a home which in the stockyards district
is intensified by a constant fear of reaching an early1 old age in
helpless penury. The possession of a house from which one may
draw an income is the highest mark of prosperity, just as the
inability to pay one's rent is the lowest degree of poverty. The
sacrifice of little girls to this passionate determination to own
property may be found in any social group, from the undaunted
widow who takes in washing six days of the week and drives her
children to any task that will bring in money to meet the payments
on the four-room cottage, to the thriving saloon-keeper who is
landlord over a dozen tenants. Thirty-seven of the 125 women who
must live without the help of the wage-earning man, 138 of the
297 men who can never command two dollars a day, and 95 of the
remaining 163 are property-owners.2

c) The failure of the elementary school to meet the practical
needs of an industrial community is recognized by many parents.

1 Before he is forty years of age the stockyards laborer begins to have a fear of
being laid off permanently and giving place to younger men. At forty-five he is in
the ranks of the old men, with a lowered vitality that lessens his chances of employ-
ment in any capacity.

1 The important subject of housing as it affects the family life has been purposely
omitted, as this subject will be considered in forthcoming papers.

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 5

Although they cannot always define their dissatisfaction, their
ultimate demand is that educational processes shall be measured
in terms of economic advantage. With the vague notion that the
school should bear some relation to the future usefulness of the
child they often look for concrete results that shall bring immediate
returns. "Mary left school in the sixth grade and she can bring
home just as much money as Helen who made all that expense
for another year to finish the seventh grade," is a characteristic
comment given as conclusive proof that an added year in school
has no practical value. A German father who had spent fifteen
years as an unskilled laborer in the stockyards patiently and
laboriously pondered the relative value of different courses offered
in the elementary school and finally decided that even girls need
a steady job. "Work with the hands is good," he explained, "and
American education does not give it." A prosperous Bohemian
who owns three tenement houses has four daughters who bear
witness to the power of his authority by bringing home a weekly
wage from department store and factory. Each girl was sent out
to work at the age of fourteen years because the father firmly
believed that, in the absence of vocational training in the schools,
there is no other way of getting a mastery of any occupation.
In 123, or 21 per cent, of the 585 families the parents expressed a
desire for some definite training that should furnish either trade or
business opportunities for girls. This is a small number. More
than 50 per cent of these same families believe in trade and business
training for boys. The skilled workers from the older countries
lament the lack of opportunity to learn a trade in the public schools
and willingly give their girls to tailors, dressmakers, and milliners
to work for a nominal wage that merely covers the street-car fare,
or even pay for places in the sewing trades because they do not
know that apprenticeship as they conceive of it does not exist in
America. Parents of this type are ready to make sacrifices for their
children and frankly say that the need of money or the desire for
larger gains would not stand in the way of continued schooling
"of the right kind," as they phrase it.

d) Among the 900 families 805 feel an obligation to send their
children to the parochial school for a part of their training. The

6 CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

feeling arises from a deep religious conviction that conquers even
those who recognize the greater practical value of the work of the
public school. In many families the confirmation of the child
is the triumphant end of his term of schooling, although this
religious ceremony may take place at the close of the fourth or
fifth grade. "She has finished school," is the simple reply to a
challenge of the idle fourteen-year-old girl, or to the suggestion
that more training would be advisable, but in the mind of both
parents and child this statement relates to the confirmation only.
An ideal is established therefore, based primarily on a religious
conception of education which enables the parents to hold a con-
sciousness of high achievement as the result of having met the
minimum educational requirement of the Catholic church.

2. THE ATTITUDE OF THE MINORITY

Apart from the group of parents who from one motive or
another accept the compulsory age limit as their educational
standard is another group made up of those who look beyond the
law. In 315 families one or more of the children had completed
the elementary public-school course and in a few there was an
ambition for high school or business college. Often fathers and
mothers had a vague notion of putting their children "beyond
their parents" and labored to that end with the patient hope that
schooling would do it. Just how this was going to be accomplished
they could not explain. As a Bohemian laborer of the stock-
yards expressed it, "People who have learned nothing do the dirty
work of the world. I want my children to have a chance at a clean
job. That's why I send them to school." At the birth of his first
child, a. little girl, a Polish carpenter bought an English dictionary
and began paying for an encyclopedia on the instalment plan
because he meant to educate his children and he knew that "edu-
cated people always have books around." A strong conviction
that continued schooling would be best for the child sometimes
conquered extreme poverty. An Irish mother denied herself
sufficient food that she might pay the cost of sending two children
to the high school, and it is not uncommon to find women taking
in washing to meet the tuition of a six months' course in a business

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 7

college. We have seen that in the first group of 585 families,
422 are struggling with a poverty that makes the wage-earning
child a probable necessity. Although the prosperous financial
condition of the family is by no means a guaranty of a higher
educational standard, broadly speaking again, when the father's
wage is above the two-dollar-a-day limit there is less haste in
getting the children into temporary occupations and a little more
intelligent consideration of their future. In 180, or 57 per cent,
of the 315 families the wage or income of the father alone is steadily
above two dollars a day. For 92, or 51 per cent, of the 180 families
the father's income is above $825.00 a year; and $825.00 a year,
according to the standards of the neighborhood, is considered a very
comfortable living. This emphasis is laid upon the position of the
head of the family because in the majority of cases it is his earning
power, and not a temporary income from boarders, lodgers, rentals,
or the mother's work, that determines when the child shall leave
school.

3. THE PREVAILING ATTITUDE IN REGARD TO THE EDUCATION

OF GIRLS

The educational standards of the foreign home as outlined
above influence the future of both boys and girls, but in the stock-
yards district it is necessary to take into consideration a point of
view that affects girls as a separate class. The fundamental idea
that the education of the girl is a matter of much less importance
than the education of the boy is accepted without question in all
of the 900 families. A well-to-do Polish landlord who doubted
the advisability of sending his fourteen-year-old daughter to the
high school told with pride of the plans he had in mind for the
university training of his son who was then playing in a kinder-
garten. A kindly and indulgent father, he had no reason for making
this distinction except his negative attitude toward the education
of women. "If a girl is very smart," said a Lithuanian mother,
"it is well to keep her in school, but when she is not so she must
make money before the marriage tune comes." That marriage
is the ultimate goal of the girl admits of no argument in the com-
munity. This state requires no special schooling and it will come

8 CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

early in life. In the families hard pressed by poverty, the girl is
made to feel that she must earn money enough to make some cash
return for her bringing up. In the probable event of an early
marriage, prolonging her school time shortens the period of her life
when she is paying this debt. However, it does not follow that all
girls are neglected. There are subtle influences that may tem-
porarily obscure a fundamental ideal and give the girl a permanent
advantage. Among those who completed the elementary-school
course 40 possessed an unusual cleverness that enabled them to
finish before the age of fourteen. The only daughter or the
youngest girl in the family may be given the exceptional chance
to extend her school life a year or more into the high school, not
always from any definite conviction of the parents in regard to
the needs of the girl but rather as a matter of indulgence. Espe-
cially is this true in families where the income is sufficient, $825.00
a year or more, and there is a desire to protect the girl at home and
keep her from the limited field of industry which a few parents
now recognize is the only field open to the girl under sixteen years
of age. Still the fact remains that in a community of compara-
tively low educational standards there is an underlying thought
which both consciously and unconsciously assigns to the girl a
position inferior to that of her brother.

SECTION II. THE LOCAL SCHOOLS
I. PUBLIC AND PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS

The 900 families live within the district boundaries of three
public schools,1 the Hamline, the Hedges, and the Seward. The
combined membership of these schools at the close of September,
1912, was 1,273 boys and 1,222 girls. They are subject to the
general course of study outlined for all of the elementary public
schools of the city. Cooking and sewing are the only occupational
subjects provided for girls and there are as yet no opportunities

1 The Hamline School contains an open-air room, a dental room, and provides
special instruction for subnormal children. The Seward School has two special rooms
set apart, one for subnormal children, and one for truants and other children who
need individual attention.

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT

MAP SHOWING THE LOCATION or PUBLIC AND PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS

1. Seward Public School.

2. Hedges Public School.

3. Hamline Public School.

4. Sacred Heart, Polish Catholic School.

5. St. Joseph, Polish Catholic School.

6. St. John of God, Polish Catholic School.

7. St. Rose of Lima, Irish Catholic School.

8. St. Michael, Slovak Catholic School.

9. Holy Cross, Lithuanian Catholic School.

10. S. S. Cyrill and Methodius, Bohemian Catholic School,
n. St. Augustine, German Catholic School.

12. St. Martinni, German Lutheran School.

13. Lake Public High School.

10 CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

for vocational courses.1 The Lake High School2 offers the usual
studies with the exception that the course in household arts is
omitted owing to the lack of a sufficient number of girls to form
classes in subjects designed to equip the homemaker. At the
close of September, 1912, the membership was 459 boys and 307
girls. The one evening school of the neighborhood, which is open
four evenings in the week for twenty weeks of the year, offers
optional classes in cooking and sewing for girls over fourteen years
of age and provides special instruction for foreigners who wish to
learn the English language. It also gives all pupils who did not
complete the eighth grade a chance to make up that loss. The
total enrolment for the season closing March 13, 1913, was 511
men and boys and 102 women and girls.

Within this same boundary or closely adjacent to it there are
nine parochial schools (eight Catholic and one German Lutheran)
that draw pupils from the population of these public-school districts.
At the close of September, 1912, the total membership3 was about
5,722. No adequate information is on record of the work of the
parish schools, of the relative amount of time spent in teaching
the English language nor of the number of subjects which the
pupils are required to accept in a foreign tongue. No study of the
parochial school child has been made. In the absence of an exact
card system which records the work of the pupil from the beginning
to the end of his school life we have no data from which to draw
conclusions. There is a constant movement between the public and
the parochial school, and the number of years any child spends in
each depends upon the family standards. Some ambitious parents
appreciate the loss involved in the change and give to the parochial

1 For the present the elementary industrial course for grades 6, 7, and 8 (adopted
June 29, 1911) is offered only on the special permission of the superintendent and in
districts where the demand is sufficient to call for four divisions of pupils.

a The Lake High School offers special vocational courses for over-age boys from
grades 6, 7, and 8 of the elementary schools. Eighty boys were transferred to these
courses in September, 1912. No such provision is made for girls. They may be
admitted to the Lucy Flower Technical High School, but the distance which requires
car-fare makes this school prohibitive for those whose need is greatest.

s The figures for seven of these schools are given in the official Catholic Directory
for 1912. Membership by sex is not given.

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT II

school the minimum time required. To this group may be added
many who are too poor to carry the burden of continued tuition.
A large number are loyal to the parochial school as an institution
and send their children to the public school only after confirmation.
At present all that can be said in fairness is that in the problems
of retardation and elimination the parochial school plays a part
that has never been fully examined.

2. THE ADAPTATION OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL TO THE NEEDS

OF THE GIRL

The public-school teachers work under a serious handicap.
In a community of low educational standards they are dealing
largely with children who either have begun or must end their formal
education in a parochial school, or at best are obliged to interrupt
the public-school course with a year of absence. However, there
are three legitimate methods of testing the success of the present
school system: (a) the attitude of the girl to the school; (b) her
continued interest in educational opportunities; (c) the extent of
retardation and elimination.

a) The attitude of the girl to the school. — To what extent girls
would be able to rise above the level of the home under a different
school system cannot at present be estimated. Tfhat the school as
it stands today has too little power in drawing their voluntary
attendance is the conclusion based on the combined testimony of
teachers, parents, and children. Of 300 girls who left school
before completing the elementary course, 195, or 65 per cent, were
below the seventh grade. Of the entire number only twelve went
unwillingly, forced to do so by the purely commercial attitude of
their parents. Two hundred and eighty-eight, or 96 per cent, had
a more or less pronounced dislike of school, as shown by their trivial
reasons for leaving and by the eagerness with which they welcomed
the first opportunity to escape and go to work for a meager wage.
Since the possession of an eighth-grade certificate is a matter, of
pride, it is not surprising to find a larger number among the so-called
"graduates" who expressed a cheerful or even an enthusiastic
attitude toward the school. There are certain types for whom the
everyday life of the school runs smoothly. They are bright and

12 CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

secure their promotions easily, they are sociable and find friends,
they are tractable and submit to the discipline of a routine which,
if sometimes irksome, is on the whole a part of a happy childhood.
Of the 200 girls who are now proud of having completed the ele-
mentary course, 102, or 51 per cent, liked school. Ninety-eight
disliked it and if they had been allowed to follow their own childish
inclinations would have left at the earliest opportunity. The
parents who compelled 98 girls to complete the eighth grade told
many a tale of their trials. "Don't talk to me of high school,"
said a father. " It's been all I'm worth to drive my children through
the first school." " My girls won't take education easily," explained
the mother of three daughters with unconscious irony, "because
they're all so strong they like something to do."

The girl's dislike of school is not grounded in any discriminating
analysis of the situation, and her feeling is often exaggerated1 by
the natural restlessness of this period of youth which brings the
desire for new fields of endeavor more alluring because remote and
untried. To secure some understanding of the attitude of the
older girl who has had her chance to gratify this childish longing
the simple question, "What did you learn in school that has
helped you to earn a living?" was put to 200 working girls of
the first group and to 100 of the second group who are between
sixteen and twenty-four years of age. One-half of the first
group replied, "Nothing." The other half gave, in about equal
proportion, reading, writing, arithmetic, and "English when it
helps you to talk well." One thoughtful girl realized the gist
of the matter when she said, "Nothing helps me much because I
had so little of it." The vague notion that training of some kind
might increase their earning capacity was revealed in a few answers.
As one girl sadly put it, "After we get out and try working a couple
of years we find we need something we haven't got. Maybe it's
education. Whatever it is, we don't know how to get it." The
100 girls of the second group, being eighth-grade graduates and
engaged largely in commercial work, gave the same list of studies

1 One girl threatened to kill herself if she were forced to stay in school and cheer-
fully accepted the alternative of rising at six o'clock in the morning to be ready for a
position in a tailor-shop where she could earn three dollars a week.

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 13

but emphasized the value of spelling and grammar. An effort
was also made to discover whether education meant greater
efficiency, joy in work, or any other satisfaction apart from money
values. The revelations were pathetic. For the girls who had
missed the benefit of the complete course the school was something
altogether remote. It had taught them the " fundamentals," read-
ing, writing, and figuring, which all agreed are a necessity in any
position. Beyond this service the school was in no way related to
the business of living as they had experienced it. The "graduates"
invariably gave some credit to school discipline and training regard-
less of their feelings at the time when they were a part of it. A few
had found pleasure in the mental activity of the high school or the
business college. For the greater number a longer period in school
meant an opportunity to enter that respectable form of occupation
known as " the office job." These positions are held in exaggerated
esteem throughout the entire neighborhood and, by giving a cer-
tain "upper class" quality to the girls who secure them, add to the
value of the conventional requirements of the school.

It is not possible to draw exact conclusions from evidence of
this character, yet it has a certain suggestive value. Judged by
the personal feelings of girls, there is too little joy in the present
formal processes of education. From the testimony of the older
girls, it is evident that the school leaves but slight impression upon
those who fail to receive the benefit of a complete elementary course.

b) Continued interest in educational opportunities. — It has been
a widely accepted notion in the past that pupils may take advantage
of the evening school to compensate in a measure for their failure
to secure the needed training of the eight grades. The principal
who has had ten years of experience in the evening school of the
neighborhood states that few girls care for what he calls "regular
class work." One wishes to make a shirt waist, another would like
to trim a hat, a third asks for the teacher's help in fitting a skirt,
and a few enjoy the sociability of a cooking class. The majority
are seeking a pleasant evening, the free use of a sewing-machine,
and some immediate practical returns for their time, but do not
take kindly to technical instruction in any subject. During the
past year two girls completed in the evening school the required

14 CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

studies of the elementary course and at the present writing are
candidates for the eighth-grade certificate. No other cases are
on record. In the first group of 300 girls there are 18 who attended
the evening sessions for one season. Only 15 have been willing to
spend their evenings at the Settlement in cooking, sewing, or millin-
ery classes. Two ambitious girls paid $50.00 and $60.00 respec-
tively for special courses in sewing, one to a private dressmaker
and the other to a "college of dressmaking." Of the three girls
who went to business college, two gave it up before the end of the
six months' course because of deficient preparation in English. The
third, after spending six months in the college, and three months
in searching for an opening, surrendered in bitter disappointment
and went into a bookbindery, though she innocently insisted that
she might have been a stenographer if anyone had been willing to
give her a position. This is the record of 38 girls who made the
effort to secure systematic training in some form after leaving school.
For the remaining 262, when the school granted the work certificate
it was equivalent to a dismissal from all active educational interests.
It is evident that even the American-born girl of the community
cannot make up for a deficient education by taking class instruction
after working-hours.1 Yet these girls are not stupid. They are2
handicapped in many ways. Work from eight to ten hours a day
taxes their strength; neither their ambitions nor their special apti-
tudes and interests have been stimulated to the point of making
further attendance at school seem desirable. Moreover, the inde-
pendent effort expected of those who voluntarily attend special
classes is too often beyond their capacity because they have missed
the training and discipline they should have received at an earlier
age.

In the second group of 200 girls, 19 attended the Lake High

1 The new compulsory education law of Ohio, in effect May, 1910, recognizes the
need of part-time day schools for working children between fourteen and sixteen years
of age who have not completed the eighth grade. Evening-school hours may not be
accepted as a substitute.

2 In his study of the educational status of working boys, Mr. Ristine found that
"boys of the eighth grade were superior to those of the seventh, as were those of the
seventh superior to the sixth" (.4 report on Vocational Training in Chicago and in Other
Cities by a Committee of the City Club of Chicago, p. 277). As far as the writer knows,
no similar tests have been given to girls.

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 15

School for periods ranging from three months to three years. (One
remained three years, and six stayed two years.) Twenty-four
were in the high school at the time this investigation was in process.
Thirty-four went to business college for periods ranging from two
months to one year. Five are in business college at the present
writing. Five had given one winter to the evening school but not
one had attended the domestic classes at the Settlement. This
makes a total of 87 out of 200 in contrast to the 38 out of 300 who
tried to take advantage of educational opportunities open to them
after leaving the elementary school. This difference in favor of the
eighth-grade graduate is due in part to a greater freedom from
financial pressure, but in a larger measure to the school training
that made a profitable continuation of any line of study possible.

c) The extent of retardation and elimination. — The recent con-
clusion that the instruction given in the eight grades of the ele-
mentary school is better fitted to the needs of the girl than to the
nature of the boy is based upon AyresV investigation showing the
relative distribution of boys and girls in the grades, and the greater
percentage of retardation and elimination among boys. He finds
that "retardation among boys in elementary schools is 13 per cent
more prevalent than among girls"; also that "the proportion of
girls who remain to the final elementary grade is 17 per cent greater
than the proportion of boys who remain." Accepting the method
of computation used by Ayres, Mr. Wreidt,2 in his study of the pub-
lic schools of Chicago, finds that for the city as a whole there is
15 per cent more retardation among boys than among girls and
also that the percentage of girls in the first grade who remain to
enter the eighth is 15 per cent greater than the percentage of boys.
He accepts Ayres's conclusion that the present school system is
"better suited to the needs of the girls than to those of the boys."

This conclusion is not wholly true for the district under con-
sideration. The following tables present retardation and elimina-
tion figures3 for three public schools.

1 Ayres, Laggards in Our Schools, p. 158.

2 A Report on Vocational Training in Chicago and in Other Cities by a Committee of
the City Club of Chicago, pp. 31-32.

3 Based on the age and grade records of pupils at the time of their first enrolment
during the school year 1910-11. The method of computation is that used by Ayres

CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

TABLE I

PERCENTAGE OF RETARDED PUPILS AMONG BOYS AND AMONG GIRLS IN THREE

LOCAL SCHOOLS

School

Boys

Girls

Difference in Favor
of the Girls

Hamline

33.6

IO 6

Hedges

26.6

21 . 0

A 7

Seward

34.6

32.8

I 8

Average of percentages ....

31.6

25-9

5-7

In each school there is more retardation among boys than among
girls. Since the average percentage of retardation is 31.6 among
boys and 25.9 among girls, taking the percentage of retardation
among girls as a basis, we find that retardation among boys is 22
per cent greater than among girls.

TABLE II

PERCENTAGE OF BOYS AND GIRLS RETAINED TO THE EIGHTH GRADE IN THREE

LOCAL SCHOOLS

Schools

Percentage of Boys
Retained to the
Eighth Grade

Percentage of Girls
Retained to the
Eighth Grade

Difference in Favor
of the Boys

Hamline

Hedges

35. 1

28.1

7-4

Seward

23.4

8.6

Average of Percentages ....

32.5

26.2

6-3

In each school a greater percentage of boys than of girls is
retained to the eighth grade, the difference in favor of the boys
being 6 . 3 per cent. Taking the percentage of girls retained to the

in presenting the relative amounts of retardation and elimination among boys and
girls in fifteen cities. The results differ slightly from those obtained by securing the
percentage of retardation and elimination for the three schools together according to
the method of computation used above to obtain the percentage for each school sepa-
rately. The results obtained in computing retardation must vary according to the
method employed and the time in the school year at which the statistics are gathered.
Ayres has pointed out the difference between figures on record in September and
those on record in June even in the same city; also the difference between figures
gathered on the basis of total enrolment and those gathered at a given date in the
school year.

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 17

eighth grade as a basis, we find that the proportion of boys who
remain in school to enter the eighth grade is 24 per cent greater
than the proportion of girls who remain. These figures show a
condition for the three local schools the reverse of that revealed in
other investigations in which a higher percentage of retardation is
naturally followed by a higher percentage of elimination. Not all
of the pupils retained to the eighth grade remain to complete the
course. A count was made of the number of children who received
eighth-grade certificates from the three schools during a period
of six years. From September, 1906, to July, 191 2,1 249 boys and
213 girls are so recorded. Judged by the extent of retardation,
the tendency of the girls of the stockyards district is the same as
that of girls everywhere. They are meeting the demands of the
American public-school system more easily than their brothers. In
spite of this fact, the percentage of elimination among the girls is
greater than that found in Chicago as a whole and in other cities of
which we have similar records.

It is not possible to push the logic of Ayres to the conclusion
that these local schools retain to the eighth grade and also
graduate a higher percentage of boys because the work offered is
better suited to their needs. The explanation seems to lie in the
educational standards of the community which, as we have seen,
regard the education of the boy as a matter of more consequence
than the education of the girl.

SECTION III. THE GIRL AS A WAGE-EARNING CHILD
I. THE ATTITUDE OF THE PARENTS

The political and religious conflicts of the older nations have had
little influence in determining either the character or the extent of
immigration to the stockyards district. With few exceptions,
these foreign people came to America with the hope of improving
their financial condition. Many brought with them the simple

1 During the same period 14 boys and 2 girls, who had previously graduated from
the Seward or the Hamline schools, completed a four-year course at the Lake High
School. One boy and one girl, both from the Hamline School, finished the two-year
business course. No boy or girl from the Hedges School has completed any course at
the Lake High School. No records were secured from the Catholic High School
located at Wallace and Forty-fifth streets.

i8 CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

conviction that in the New World there are vast spaces in which
may be found unlimited opportunities to work at relatively high
wages. It must be remembered also that there is no economic
surplus which makes the idle woman possible. From necessity
neither women nor children are exempt from labor of some kind and
there is no sentiment in the community that favors their existence
as an unproductive class. The ever-present thought of the girl's
early marriage renders the careful choice of an occupation unneces-
sary. As a natural result of this point of view, the immediate
money value of any position open to little girls is too often the first
consideration, in entire disregard of disastrous effects that may
follow in the physical, mental, or moral life of the child. Yet
the foreign mothers who appear to accept as a matter of course
demoralizing conditions of employment for their daughters are
not necessarily brutal in other relations with them. The women
are vigorous', hard headed, and practical, and to them belongs the
difficult task of making ends meet. Moreover, they are altogether
ignorant of the city outside of their very limited round, for the
majority who innocently send their little girls to look for work
"down town somewhere" have never done a day's shopping beyond
the two or three blocks on Ashland Avenue where the department
stores supply all of their needs. Fathers too often have no knowl-
edge of opportunities other than those of the packing industry
where they are employed. Many a father who persistently refuses
even in the face of poverty to secure a place for his daughter in
the "Yards" because he has some understanding of the conditions
there, will unwittingly expose her to greater dangers in remote
industries of which he knows nothing. Men and women are facing
unknown conditions, a strange language, and an unwonted freedom.
They look back to their own childhood of early hard labor in the
small village or the open field and justify the work of their children
in the city factory. It is a complex situation for simple minds,
and a confusion of standards is inevi table.

2. THE METHOD OF FINDING WORK

Since parents lack a constructive knowledge of the occupations
open to their daughters, the girls are thrown upon their own limited

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 19

resources. The first information often comes from a neighbor's
daughter who knows the wage of the beginner in the place where
she herself is working. With this one fact only as a guide the girl
may make an application in person with no thought of her fitness
for the place and no knowledge that a vacancy exists. Assistance
of this kind from friends or relatives can have no positive value
without a point of view which they do not possess. The best
employment offices do not care to handle child labor. Boys some-
times resort to them, but little girls, being less daring and more
economical, will not promise the first week's wages for the sake of a
position which others have found with no expense. The only
intelligent assistance has come from a few school teachers who have
voluntarily followed a limited number of children beyond the door of
the schoolhouse, and from the Settlement, which has always made
an effort to keep in touch with groups of young people. However,
there is another factor to be reckoned with in the problem of super-
vision. The escape from the discipline of school often brings a
sudden recognition of an unaccustomed freedom that may be used
without question. Girls have been known to avoid the Settlement
for fear of being advised to return to school, or of missing the chance
to go to the heart of the city. Untrained girls of this age and type
are essentially gregarious and they blindly follow this instinct. If
one finds a place in a factory on the West Side of the city, a dozen
others in her block will follow if possible in spite of the inconvenient
distance and an altogether undesirable occupation. The haphazard
way of finding work has its attractions and appears to offer wide
opportunities. Day after day groups of little girls go the round of
one factory after another, pitifully ignorant of a condition that
makes the field of industry into which they seek an entrance always
overcrowded with applicants of their kind, and feeling only a cer-
tain childish wonder and joy in the roar of a great city. Often they
spend weeks following the incomplete and misleading advertise-
ments of the newspapers, usually finding that the positions call for
girls beyond their years and ability, and it is not impossible to find
them walking up and down State Street, leaving a poorly written
application for work at the several department stores and even
stopping men and women with an eager request for "a job some-

20 CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

where." In all this there is a pleasurable excitement if it does not
last too long and a cheap position results from their wanderings.

In such a manner and with no preparation little girls go from the
comparative protection of the school and the home to gain their
first experiences as wage-earners. The opportunities for indis-
cretions and follies at the close of many such days of unguided
freedom in a large city must not be underestimated.

3. WHERE THE COMPULSORY EDUCATION LAW FAILS

The first group of 300 girls contains 185 who found immediate
occupation. (This does not mean steady employment.) Forty-
two were taken out of school by busy mothers who demanded the
sacrifice of the fourteen-year-old girl to the care of younger children.
The remaining 73 were idle for periods ranging from four months
to one year. Their record showed futile and unintelligent efforts to
find work, repeated to the point of discouragement and exhaustion
but relieved by weeks at home, for not one of the 73 girls thought of
returning to school and not one was compelled to do so. They had
taken out their "working papers," and so final is this legal possession
of the work certificate that in spite of the failure to secure employ-
ment few girls1 return to school after this certificate has been granted.
Although the law calling for the alternative of school in the event
of unemployment may be enforced when boys are concerned, it
is practically a dead letter for the girls of the district because they
may always put forth the officially honored excuse of being "needed
at home," in spite of the fact that this usually means no positive
training and many hours of idleness on the street. Omitting the
185 who succeeded in obtaining some kind of temporary position
without loss of time after leaving school, there remain 115 for whom
the work certificate meant a license to be idle regardless of the fact
that they had failed to complete even the seventh grade of the
elementary school. The defect lies both in the law and in the lack
of machinery for enforcing it. As long as children are allowed the

1 One of the truant officers of wide experience says it is impossible to make a
successful court case of the girl after she is fourteen years of age. If the mother
appears and swears that she needs the child at home the judge accepts this as "being
employed."

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 21

independent possession of their working papers,1 educational over-
sight in a large city is impossible.

4. THE FAMILY NEED

The customary method of considering the entire income of
the family at the time when the child leaves school in order to deter-
mine the extent to which the economic pressure is responsible
for his leaving is likely to be misleading when applied to the people
of the stockyards district. Many families will show for a period of
two or three years an abundant income due entirely to the wages
of several children. But it must be remembered that these same
children did not grow up with this plenty nor are they going to
remain long at home to add to the common purse. The older son
who may be earning ten dollars a week makes larger personal
demands as he nears his majority, and resents being asked to con-
tribute what he considers an undue share to the family for no other
reason than to prolong the education of a girl. The older daughter
who is more capable of such sacrifices finds it difficult to surrender
her desire for social pleasures to a kind of training for the younger
children which she did not herself receive. The small sums a
mother may earn by taking in either washing or boarders are often
needed to meet some unusual drain upon the family like sickness
or burial expenses. The income derived from rentals is usually
applied on the mortgage and does not count in the apparent surplus,
for at all times the need of keeping up the payments on a house
outweighs the need of keeping a child in school. The following
tables present the wage-earning power of the head of the family as
the important steady economic factor in the lives of the 500 girls
under consideration. For the men here represented there has been
little variation in wages during the past eight or ten years except
that due to the irregular employment common to the neighborhood.
That is, the men who are now recorded at two dollars a day and
less have been steadily in the ranks of those who can never command

1 The Ohio law recognizes this fact effectively. In case the child is either dis-
missed or voluntarily withdraws, the employer is obliged to return the work certificate
to the superintendent of schools. The return of the certificate at once calls attention
to the fact that the child is not employed and must be followed by the truant or other
special officer.

22 CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

more even when opportunities to work are abundant, and who have
never had a year of "full time." Wage-earners above this level
include the more skilled workmen who have had fairly steady
employment. Those considered "successful" can depend upon an
income of $825 . oo a year and more. This last group is made up of
skilled workmen, foremen, and small merchants (including saloon-
keepers) who have made financial gains since they came to the
neighborhood.

TABLE III

THE ECONOMIC POSITION OF THE HEADS' OF FAMILIES WHO ALLOWED THREE
HUNDRED GIRLS TO LEAVE SCHOOL BEFORE COMPLETING
THE SEVENTH GRADE

Number of women" Wage

62 Irregular: $i . oo a day and less

Number of men

112 Below $2.00 a day

24 $2 . oo a day

47 $2 . 01 to $2 . 60 a day

21 Successful

TABLE IV

THE ECONOMIC POSITION OF THE HEADS* OF FAMILIES WHO ALLOWED
Two HUNDRED GIRLS TO COMPLETE EIGHT GRADES

Number of women Wage

25 Irregular: $i . oo a day and less

Number of men

37 Below $2 . oo a day

17 $2.00 a day

47 ' $2 . 01 to $2 . 60 a day

63 Successful

The contrast needs little comment. If it is necessary for the
head of the family to command with a fair degree of regularity over

1 There is not an exact correspondence between the number of heads of families
and the number of girls, since some families furnished more than one girl.

Although no effort was made to study racial characteristics, the following figures
showing the nationality of the father given by the 300 girls are suggestive: Poles, 70;
Germans, 89; Irish, 51; Bohemians, 43; Miscellaneous, 27; Slovaks, 20.

3 The woman's wage is difficult to estimate. The figures do not mean that she
never earns above $i . oo in a given day. When the woman is thrown upon her own
resources, her average earnings are usually between $5 . oo and $6 . oo a week.

3 The following figures show the nationality of the father given by the 200 girls:
German, 61; Bohemians, 58; Irish, 48; Poles, 13; Miscellaneous, 20.

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 23

$2.00 a day in order to keep the children in school, then less than
26 per cent of the first group should be expected to do it. That
this wage is one of the important determining factors seems evident
from the 58 per cent of the second group who are above the $2 .00-
a-day limit. The remaining 42 per cent represent families where
ambition conquered poverty, where the mother took on the added
burden of a supplementary wage-earner, or where the girl was able
to complete her course either below or close to the age of fourteen
years.

5. OCCUPATIONS OPEN TO GIRLS UNDER SIXTEEN YEARS OF AGE

The little girls of the stockyards district are found in the
factory, the bookbindery, the department store, domestic service,
the sewing trades, typewriting and stenography, and occasionally
in the laundry. The factory positions are those in which the quick
and delicate touch of the girls' fingers are required. These include
wrapping or packing all small articles like soap and toilet prepara-
tions, confectionery, chewing-gum, crackers, and chipped beef, or
tending some of the simpler machines similar to those of a box
factory. The bookbindery offers only mechanical work like sorting
and folding, or operating a simple machine. The laundry has a
few easy positions like shaking out clothes and marking them, but
the other hand work as well as the operation of the machines requires
the strength of the older girls. The department store stands next
to the factory in the list of occupations accessible and considered
desirable. Many little girls have a nervous dread of being near a
factory machine, and to them the work in the store seems easy and
attractive. Here there are places as cash girl, wrapper, assistant
in the stockroom, or inspector. The girl under sixteen is seldom
found in the position of clerk, but she often looks with envy upon
the girl behind the counter and clings to her poor little job with
the hope of advancement. Domestic service and the sewing trades
furnish the ideal opening according to the simpler standards of
foreign parents. From their point of view, the time-honored house-
hold occupations of women may be practiced outside of the home
with dignity and a fair remuneration. The American-born girl
does not accept this standard. Although the parents sometimes

24 CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

prevail with the younger ones, the positions of the older girls
prove that there has been a general tendency to leave domestic
service and even the sewing trades to the immigrants. These
last occupations are usually regarded as the time-serving of the
apprentice who is learning a trade. A partial truth obscures the
real situation which does not admit of any positive training to the
child who is "minding a baby" and which often compels girls in a
dressmaking establishment to spend months in clipping and pulling
basting-threads or in delivering packages to customers.1 The undue
importance attached to the office position has been mentioned.
This term may be used to dignify any kind of indoor routine in
mercantile and other business establishments from folding circulars
and addressing envelopes to typewriting.

It is difficult to classify the above positions either with reference
to the relative amount of skill they require or by their opportunities
for advancement. With the possible exception of stenography,
typewriting, and some requirements of the office position, they
represent what is by common consent looked upon as "girls'
work." The boy is not found in these positions for three reasons:
he scorns the low wage which the little girl endures as her birth-
right; by nature he cares less for details and will not do his work
with the same niceness and dexterity, and he seldom submits to the
"speeding-up process " of the piece-work system which is common in
factories and upon which the possibility of increased wages usually
depends. The greater docility of the girl added to her temporary
attitude toward any employment renders her an easy victim. No
preparation is exacted for entrance into these occupations, little
time is required in learning the simple processes or duties involved,
and few of them lead to openings calling for skill beyond that of
speed or mechanical dexterity. There are always a limited number
who by strength of character, persistency, or the native possession
of some unusual ability may rise to positions of responsibility. To
what extent the above occupations open such opportunities will
be revealed in the records of the older girls.

1 A girl apprenticed to a milliner for one year spent her entire time in delivering
hats. A Polish woman gave a tailor $25 .00 to secure for her daughter a year's train-
ing in his shop. At the end of six months the girl was still pulling basting threads
as a preliminary to the instruction to be given later.

AT WORK IN A CANDY FACTORY

TJ'I

BOX FACTORY GIRLS

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 25
6. THE RELATION OF WAGE AND OCCUPATION TO GRADE

Although the first position a girl secures is so often a matter of
accident, the relation of wage and occupation to grade as revealed
in the following tables is suggestive.

TABLE V

GIRLS BEGINNING WORK UNDER SIXTEEN YEARS OF AGE
SEVENTH GRADE NOT COMPLETED

KIND OF WORK

No. OF
GIRLS

BEGINNING WEEKLY WAGE BY OCCUPATION

$ -so

$1 .00

$1.50

It. 75

$2.00

$2.5°

$3.00

$3.30

$4.00

$4-5°

$5.00

$6.00

Bindery

9
63
26
108
5
5
13
29

i
i

I
II

16
6

2
II

2
2
38

i
i

7
3

Store1

Domestic

Factory

Laundry .

Millinery .

Office

2
12

Dressmaking

258

* There is an interesting story current in the neighborhood of the morning when a little group of
cash girls who had been working for $i . 50 a week banded together and refused to continue for less than
$2 .00 a week. This juvenile "strike" was settled by a compromise which placed the wage in that store
at $1.75-

TABLE VI

GIRLS BEGINNING WORK UNDER SIXTEEN YEARS OF AGE
EIGHTH GRADE COMPLETED

No. OF

GINNIN(

i WEEK

LY WAC

E BY O

:CUPATI

GIRLS

$1.00

$i.S°

$2.00

$2.50

$3.00

$3.50

$4.00

$4.50

$5.0°

$6.00

$8.00

Bindery

Store

Domestic

Factory

•J

Hairdressing . . . .

Millinery

Office

Dressmaking. . . .
Stenographer . . .

22
O

•z

Typist

107

26 CmCAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

Including the purely mechanical positions of the bindery and
the laundry under the head of factory work, among the girls who
did not complete the seventh grade the factory and the department
store claim 185, or 71 per cent of the whole number. Sixty-two,
or 50 per cent, of those included as factory workers began at a wage
below $4.00 a week. Fifty-five per cent of the department-store
girls began at less than $3 . oo a week. The girls in the sewing trades
who could begin above $3.00 are exceptionally clever with the
needle. The office position of this group does not mean either type-
writing or stenography. The alluring wage of $5.00 or $6.00 a
week is the highest point ever reached by the girl under sixteen in
work of this character. In the total of 258 girls, 178, or nearly
69 per cent, began at a wage below $4 . oo a week. Only 1 1 per cent
were able to begin above that point.

The second table shows the marked tendency which is always
found in the eighth-grade girl to get away from factory work and
seek employment where she thinks she is holding a position of
higher social value. The factory and the department-store employ
only 38 per cent of the whole number. Fifty-four per cent are in
the sewing trades or in office positions. The domestic helper is
also represented, due to the influence of the foreign home. In the
total of 107 girls, 55, or 51 per cent, began at a wage below $4.00
a week. Thirty-seven per cent began above that point.

These figures disclose the general trend. Judging solely from
the beginning wage, the eighth-grade girls can earn more money.
In so far as the apprenticeship and the office may lead to better
opportunities than the factory or the store, the greater number
have chosen their occupations with more insight.

It is difficult to estimate the actual money value of the girl's
labor from beginnings only. The child's lack of judgment and love
of novelty lead to frequent changes, and many seasonal and tempo-
rary places are open to her. Naturally this child-labor is the first
to be dispensed with in the dull or slack season of any industry.
The small candy-packer may be required only seven or eight months
of the year, the sewing and the millinery apprentice in the fashion-
able shop gets her enforced summer vacation, and the important little
office girl in a mail-order house is often laid off for a month after

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 27

the advertising circulars have been sent out. Only the department-
store girls and the household helper seem to be in perpetual
demand. The following table shows the real money value of 100 of
the girls whose beginning wage is given in Table V. These girls
were selected from the group because it was possible to follow their
ups and downs for a year with a fair degree of accuracy. Moreover,
they represent families who embrace the earliest opportunity to
send their children to work and keep them employed. The weekly
wage is estimated on the basis of the actual amount earned by the
girl during the first year after leaving school. To show more clearly
the exact contribution to the family income the amount the girl
was obliged to spend each week in street-car fare was deducted.

TABLE VII

AVERAGE WEEKLY CONTRIBUTION TO THE FAMILY INCOME OF ONE HUNDRED

GIRLS DURING A WORKING-PERIOD or ONE YEAR. STREET-CAR

FARE Is SUBTRACTED

Age

Number

$1.5°

$I.5I-$2.00

$2. 01 -$2.50

$2.51-13.00

$3.°i-$3.50

14-1 <; . .

11-16. .

100

Thirty-three of these children were driven before that family
specter, the mortgage on the house.

The suggestion that girls should be legally forbidden to go to
work under sixteen years of age brings out the old argument of the
family need. It is put forth by thrifty parents and local politicians,
by employers who wish an excuse for accepting children, and by
charity workers struggling with the family problem of poverty.
The school1 has accepted the argument without questioning its
real value and children have learned to make use of it. The law
determines the amount of the widow's pension on the supposition
that the fourteen-year-old child is a legitimate wage-earner. The

'The Fifty-eighth Annual Report of the Board of Education, city of Chicago, for
the year ending June 30, 1912, voices the common sentiment and gives the need in
the home as a reason for not recommending an amendment to the compulsory educa-
tion law forbidding the employment of children at fourteen years of age.

28 CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

ability of the child to add to the family income has been exaggerated
and overemphasized. For these paltry sums they have been forced
to exchange school time and play time, the natural rights of the
child.

7. SOME PHYSICAL, MENTAL, AND MORAL ASPECTS OF THE PROBLEM

We have as yet no scientific knowledge of the physical effects of
child-labor. We have certain recognized standards with reference
to night work and the so-called "dangerous occupations" and a
widespread public opinion that up to the age of fourteen years
children should be allowed to develop their bodies in the freedom of
the play activities most natural to them. Of the exact relation
between the demands of the industries employing little girls and the
actual power of the growing child to meet them without physical
deterioration we know nothing with the certainty based upon
scientific study. That there are several untabulated bodily
injuries which result from their continuous employment in any one
of the present occupations open to little girls in the city of Chicago
no one who has observed girl-labor for any length of time can deny.
More than one-half of these children who have come under the
observation of the writer during the past eight years have been
nervous, troubled with headaches, and "tired most of the time."
This is a small number and is a record of confessions reluctantly
given, for it is a significant fact that until the working-girl has
suffered to the point where she can no longer conceal it, she will
seldom admit poor health. " I am always well. I never lose time
from sickness," are the persistent assertions of thin, anemic-looking
little girls. This is a natural attitude resulting from their employ-
ment in industries which are usually making heavier demands upon
the body than upon the brain, and every girl soon learns that the
one thing she must not confess is physical weakness of any kind.
That the very evident lack of vitality in many little girls was not
due to any serious organic trouble was proved by the number of
cases sent to a physician who merely prescribed "rest" or "a tonic,"
and by the rapidity with which they recovered if they were so
fortunate as to be "laid off" for a few weeks, except in instances of
extreme poverty where the mental anxiety more than offset the

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 29

recuperative value of a period of leisure. However, there is con-
siderable evidence that the intermittent weeks of enforced idleness
are all that save the majority of these girls from an earlier and a
more complete physical deterioration than apparently takes place.
This group of girls furnishes no evidence that for them one form
of occupation had been better or worse than another as long as they
were employed "on steady time," that is, receiving a fixed weekly
sum and not the uncertain wage of the pieceworker. The most
pernicious side of factory work is the "speeding-up" process which
strains every nerve and keeps the worker on a rack of anxiety.
Some little girls acquired a premature wisdom as a result of their
factory experiences and refused to go beyond a certain fairly com-
fortable speed limit which they established for themselves when the
nature of the occupation permitted it and they were not forced to
"keep up with a machine." Some of them found a pleasurable
excitement in discovering just how "comfortable" they could be
without losing their positions. Girls who held to a more even pace
and never revealed their utmost capacity have endured the piece-
work system with less injury than those who were eager to respond
to pressure. As there is often a difference of two or three dollars a
week between what she accepts as her limit and what she can do
"on a spurt," the temptation to earn more money may be accepted
at a frightful cost of nervous energy. Mothers frequently give an
additional incentive to increased speed by making their daughters'
spending money and even necessary clothing depend entirely upon
this extra sum. It is difficult to reach fair conclusions on the sub-
ject of piecework. Employers say that girls "don't hurt them-
selves." Girls testify that they are always in danger of having a
cut in the rate of payment for a certain output if the girls who
represent the highest speed begin to earn "too much money."
When a cut in the rate is made they are forced to increase their
speed or accept a lowered wage. Miss Goldmark concludes that
although the system is sound in theory and "works admirably in
highly organized trades where collective agreements assure the
workers fair, fixed rates, it fails among the most helpless workers
who most need to be protected from overpressure and the inroads pf
fatigue. With them it almost inevitably breeds a spirit of perma-

30 CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

nent 'rush' in work, and to that extent it is physiologically
dangerous."1 It is this "rush" that the American temperament
cannot endure. Factories that use this system are obliged to draw
upon the more enduring vitality of the hardy immigrant.

The legal hours of labor are eight daily, but girls who seek the
downtown factories and stores must allow at least two hours in
addition for street-car rides. As they are obliged to go and return
when all cars to and from the stockyards district are overcrowded,
the fatigue of standing the greater part of the time must also be
included in the day's work. The fact that local department stores
can secure cash girls for $i . 75 a week is due in part to the number
who cannot endure the nervous strain of getting down town and
back again. The daily walk and the warm noon meal at home are
all health-preserving factors, but as there are comparatively few
local opportunities,2 for the majority this street-car ride on their
feet is inevitable. Of the 365 girls who began work under sixteen
years of age 310 were obliged to ride distances consuming from two
to two and one-half hours daily.

The non-educative character of all occupations open to these
children is not the only negative side of the problem. Here again
there is no proper basis for exact conclusions in regard to the mental
effect of the child's work under the modern conditions of industry.
Yet if the tendency is to an overstrain and fatigue detrimental to
physical growth, it is not unreasonable to conclude that disastrous
results both mental and moral may follow. Girls grow dull with a
routine that calls for no exercise of brain power, and the general
stupidity of which many employers complain is increased as the
months go by. Noise and confusion, the whirl of factory machines,
or the distractions of the department store make consecutive
thought-processes difficult, and the unconscious reaction from
monotonous labor is a desire for excitement in some novel form, the
moving-picture show, the forbidden saloon-hall dance, or late hours
with companions on the street after the day's work is over. The

1 Josephine Goldmark, Fatigue and Efficiency, p. 84.

3 Judging from the records at the office of the state factory inspector, the entire
packing industry seldom employs at any one time more than 100 girls under sixteen
years of age. These positions are usually filled by the foreign girls.

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 31

fifteen-year-old factory girl who gave as her excuse for going to the
five-cent theater six nights in the week her need of "something to
make me feel rested " is not an exaggerated type but a painful
illustration of the lack of nervous balance which is all too common
among these children. Whether such an unstable condition is due
to purely physical or to mental causes it is often difficult to say,
since for many girls there is such a close connection between health
and mental attitude. Girls are held to one miserable distasteful
piece of work by fear, discouragement, timidity, or the lack of
knowledge of other opportunities. A few have confessed that they
thought all the factories down town made candy and there was
nothing else for little girls to do except wrapping and packing
confectionery. Some who had learned a single simple process in a
box factory were unable to adapt themselves to other positions when
laid off temporarily. One girl insisted that " pasting labels " was
her "trade" and refused to consider anything else. Another said
she could work only in the one department store in which she began.
She had tried others but they always made her feel "strange and
queer." Still another worked a full year in fear of the forewoman
who had an "evil eye" that held girls to their work. A different
type of girl makes a continuous effort to break through the limita-
tions of her enforced occupation by changing as often as possible.
These changes are a means of stimulation which the girl's nature
demands. Three girls who were chums and refused to be separated
had worked together in eleven different places during fifteen con-
secutive months. For them the mere thought of steady employ-
ment had grown distasteful. One girl flippantly remarked: "The
new boss may have red hair. Anything to change the scenery."
That the search for excitement as an antidote for fatigue and
monotonous labor may be attended by grave moral dangers no one
can doubt. Girls do not understand this abnormal craving. They
are caught in the meshes of feelings too complex for their untaught
minds to comprehend. Unfortunately both parents fail at this
point. Many endeavor to exercise a strict surveillance that would
keep the working girl at home in the evening "helping mother" as
the safest outlet for any extra energy she may have. The diverse
attitude on the part of parents and children in regard to the way

32 CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

the leisure time should be filled is one of the greatest causes of
family clashing. Here the girl usually conquers. Those who
faithfully hold to a difficult and uncongenial occupation, bringing
home the entire wage to the family and submitting to an almost
patriarchal control in other matters, will demand a freedom in the
use of their evening hours before which the foreign parents are
helpless. "She is a good girl," said the Polish mother. "She
brings home all her money, but — she goes out where she pleases
nights and Sundays and we can't follow." Ninety per cent of the
parents admitted that they had little control over their daughters
in this matter. Many fiercely condemned "the American life"
which made such insubordination possible. This unnatural
position of the little girl, carrying the premature responsibility of
the wage-earner and asserting her right to a feverish search for
evening pleasures, is forced upon her at the beginning of the period
marked by physical changes, rapid growth,, and the dawn of sex
consciousness when curious and misunderstood moods are dominant.

8. THE ATTITUDE OF THE EMPLOYER

Interviews with employers revealed two points of view: (i) the
labor of girls under sixteen years of age is of doubtful value to
the employer and is not necessary to the continuation of any
industry; (2) unless girls begin to work under sixteen years of age
they do not get the necessary training that leads to their advance-
ment and therefore the number of skilled workers among older girls
will be depleted.

The first point of view has four causes: the eight-hour day, the
general inefficiency of the girls who apply for work, the introduction
of new machinery, and a growing sentiment against the employment
of children. One of the common grievances which employers find
it difficult to adjust is the difference in hours which causes jealousies
and petty disturbances among girls not far below and just above the
age of sixteen years. The girl who was sixteen last week will work
out her full time cheerfully with seventeen-year-old companions
but will be restless and dissatisfied if associated with a group six
months younger having the advantage of an earlier dismissal. A
surprising amount of supervision is needed to prevent the fraudulent

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 33

record of the child's age for which the employer alone is held
responsible when the factory inspector appears. The inefficiency
of the untrained mass which is recruited from the ranks of children
who leave school below the seventh grade makes them a financial
loss to any business or industry during the period required for their
training. The amount of shifting adds to the work of the employ-
ment department. The superintendent in a large factory using
over 300 little girls stated that they expected to register five girls in
order to secure one who would feel any responsibility for reappear-
ing to take up the work she had applied for. Even the girls who
have finished the eighth grade are childish and cannot be given
places of responsibility which the office requires. The introduction
of machinery is displacing the need of many a small pair of hands.
The inventions for covering, glueing, and labeling in the box
factories are comparatively new and are pronounced satisfactory.
The machine-dipped chocolate drops look almost as well as those
covered by hand and are in greater demand. The clever devices for
closing packages with the unfeeling points of a machine almost
human in its skill are a monument to inventive genius. One of the
largest employers of child-labor in the city of Chicago said: "If we
could not by law employ the girl under sixteen years we should find
some way to make the machine do her work."

Finally, there appears to be a growing sentiment against the
employment of children in spite of the evidence of the school census
taken May 2, 1912, which gives a total of 8,923 girls and 8,214 boys
under sixteen years of age either temporarily or permanently em-
ployed in the city of Chicago. A sentiment is a difficult thing to
measure in figures until it reaches a definite expression in legislation.
Yet the feeling exists, voiced all along the line by the head of the
firm, the superintendent, the business manager, and the foreman,
often in the face of the actual fact that the practical policy of the
business or the industry allowed the use of children. The proposi-
tion to exclude the girl from early employment met with a quick
response from employers who look at the boy from a different point
of view. The frankest words came from the president of a large
manufacturing establishment: "As an employer, I can and do
make money out of the work of little girls. As a man, I know it

34 CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

would be better for them and for the state if I were forbidden by
law to employ them."

The second point of view, that the girl must get her training for
business or industrial efficiency by going to work at the earliest age
possible, is advanced by employers who find temporary help a con-
venience and by those who wish the speed and skill that come with
the repetition of a single highly specialized process. They are
looking for a very limited efficiency which may be acquired only by
practice in the business or industry calling for it and they know that
youth is the golden age of this kind of skill. They do not ask for a
longer period in school or for any form of industrial education to fit
girls for their positions. "Give us girls who are quick, bright, and
healthy and we will do the training," is their demand. Their
further suggestion that the supply of skilled adult workers will be
lessened if girls do not receive this early training is without proof.1

These advocates of child-labor could not fail to refer to the
family poverty that apparently can be relieved only by the work of
children. Three went so far as to say that they engaged girls under
sixteen solely because the families represented were in need. And
yet when it came to the final question, no employer would admit
that either the business or the industry he represented rested upon
so slight a foundation as the labor of little girls. One conclusion at
least seems permissible: the premature employment of girls under
sixteen years of age is not necessary to the continuation of any
business or industry.

1 Considering the present seemingly unlimited supply of young unskilled immi-
grant labor, it is impossible to predict the effect upon the adult worker of the complete
elimination from all forms of industry of girls under sixteen. If the period these girls
now spend in idleness or in worse than unprofitable employment were utilized in learn-
ing a trade, acquiring some efficient knowledge of a business office, or even in the
so-called cultural studies (which it is the tendency of the moment to undervalue),
there is little doubt that the two years so spent would add to their wage-earning
capacity, since there seems to be no oversupply of skilled labor in the trades and
occupations open to women today. It is not necessary to attempt a radical prophecy
on the economic side of the question. The main point is that no community can afford
to tolerate a system that means physical, mental, and moral deterioration to the
growing girl.

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 35

SECTION IV. THE WORKING-GIRL

I. RECORDS OF ONE HUNDRED GIRLS SIXTEEN AND SEVENTEEN
YEARS OF AGE WHO DID NOT COMPLETE THE SEVENTH GRADE

In order to throw more light upon the situation outlined above
it is necessary to record the progress of the girl for a number of
years. The following tables give the facts concerning one hundred
girls who left school before completing the seventh grade. They
were either sixteen or seventeen years of age at the time of the last
interview.

TABLE VIII

THE FIRST POSITION OF ONE HUNDRED GIRLS SIXTEEN AND SEVENTEEN YEARS
or AGE WHO DID NOT COMPLETE THE SEVENTH GRADE

NUMBER

WAGE

OF GIRLS

$i-so

II.7S

$2.00

$2.30

$3.00

$3-50

$4.00

$4.SO

$5.00

Bindery

Store

Domestic

Factory

Laundry

Office

Dressmaking
Tailor

i
i

Telephone

Yards

100

Sixty-one of these girls began work at fourteen, twenty-six at
fifteen, and thirteen (who had been helping at home) at sixteen
years of age. No sixteen-year-old girl received less than $4.00 a
week. One of them was able to qualify for the telephone service,
which does not accept girls under this age. Her wage of $5.00
represents the amount paid to the beginner while she is taking class
instruction. With this exception, the girls are found in the positions
previously discussed, the factory and the department store being the
only means of entrance to industry known to the majority. Fifty-
six per cent began at a wage of less than $4.00 a week.

Some indication of the amount of shifting that is common
to the untrained working-girl may be gained from Table IX. A
change of position does not always imply a change in the character

CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

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THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 37

of the occupation, since there may be reasons for leaving one candy
factory in favor of another or for exchanging the store down town
for one near at hand. The three girls, each one of whom had
worked in eleven different places, represent one extreme, yet the
fact that only twenty-six had held to the first position secured is
proof of the restlessness and dissatisfaction which must result from
the accidental way of getting started. The figures just above the
broken diagonal line show the number of girls still in their original
occupations regardless of the number of times they may have
changed employers. The three girls who began in a bindery are
now in the store, the factory, and the yards. Only thirteen of the
twenty-nine who began in the store are holding to it as a permanent
choice. The others found the factory, the laundry, the office, the
sewing trade, the telephone, and the yards more congenial places.
The four girls beginning as domestic helpers scattered to the
bindery, the store, the dressmaking shop, and the yards. Of the
forty girls who dropped into the factory for their first experience,
thirty have not changed occupation, although only seven have
remained in the original factory. Three factory girls have risen to
office positions. One office girl found her first choice an impossible
one and was obliged to fall back to the factory. So the shifting goes
on with the hope and some possibility of better adaptation through
experimenting in different places. But the significant fact is that
although seventy-four changed positions, only thirty-nine succeeded
in changing the occupation, and among the latter some of the
migration, as from the yards to the factory and back again, should
not be regarded strictly as a change of occupation, since this may
mean only the difference between packing dried beef in a tin can
and putting peanut candy in a paper box.

Ninety-two of this group have a wage of $6 . oo a week and less.
The most significant thing brought out by personal interviews was
the lack of hope for the future in these occupations. Eighty out
of the ninety- two said they could see little chance for advancement.
Two girls in the telephone service, three in the sewing trades,
six in stores, and one clever in the piece-work of a hammock
factory felt sure they could "work up to something." The eight
girls receiving above $6.00 a week also expected promotion. This

CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

makes a total of twenty out of one hundred girls who were working
with enthusiasm and some joy in the daily occupation. The 80
per cent accepted with varying degrees of patience and rebellion a
situation they could not control. Adding the positions in the

TABLE X

PRESENT WAGE AND PRESENT OCCUPATION OF ONE HUNDRED GIRLS SIXTEEN

AND SEVENTEEN YEARS OF AGE WHO DID NOT COMPLETE THE

SEVENTH GRADE

NUMBER

WAGE

OF GIRLS

$3-00

$4-00

$4-SO

$S-oo

$5- SO

$6.00

$7.00

$7.50

$8.00

Bindery

•2

Store

Factory

Laundry

•J

Office

Dressmaking
Telephone

Yards

•t

100

laundry, the yards, and the bindery to those of the factory, 67 per
cent are found in monotonous occupations, wrapping and packing
confectionery, butterine, soap, dried beef, and biscuits, or attending
the machine processes involved in the washing and ironing of clothes
or in the manufacture of books and boxes, hammocks, and cheap
ready-made clothing.

2. RECORDS OF FIFTY GIRLS SIXTEEN AND SEVENTEEN YEARS OF
AGE WHO COMPLETED EIGHT GRADES

Thirteen of these girls (see Table XI) began work at fourteen,
fifteen at fifteen, twenty at sixteen, and two at seventeen years of
age. Only three of the twenty-two who had passed the sixteenth
birthday received less than $5 .00 a week. Again the choice of the
eighth-grade girl is apparent. Sixty-two per cent are found in office
positions, in the sewing trades or with the Telephone Company.
Only 22 per cent began at a wage below $4.00 a week.

The lack either of adjustment or of ability to find the first choice
in occupations is less evident (see Table XII). Still there is some

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 39

shifting in this group. The domestic helper preferred the store and
the factory. Only two of the seven factory girls accepted their posi-
tions as permanent. Three who received their first experience in a
store turned to housework, factory, and office. Seven routine office
girls advanced to the higher positions of the typist and the stenog-

TABLE XI

THE FIRST POSITION OF FIFTY GIRLS SIXTEEN AND SEVENTEEN YEARS OF AGE
WHO COMPLETED EIGHT GRADES

KIND OF WORK

NUMBER
or GIRLS

WAGE

$i-5°

$2.00

$3.oo

$3.5°

$4.00

i
i

$5-00

$6.00

$8.00

Bindery

7
i

IS
3
9
3

I
I
I

2
2

I
I

4
6

Store

Domestic

Factory

Millinery

Office

Dressmaking

Stenography

Telephone

5°

rapher, and three, finding they could not hold their places, went into
the store, the factory, and the yards. Thirty changed positions
but only twenty-three changed occupations, and with three excep-
tions these changes were in line with the girl's choice and ambition.
Only twenty-one girls receive a present wage of $6 . oo a week and
less (see Table XIII). All below $8 . oo, except the domestic helper,
feel that they are in line for promotion. The thirteen who can
earn from $8.00 to $10.00 are not sure of their ability to advance
beyond their present positions but they are fairly contented. It
is evident that the factory, domestic service, and the sewing trades
do not furnish the places considered desirable by the eighth-grade
girl after she is old enough to choose for herself. The common labor
of the stockyards is literally tabooed. The only girl employed there
" candles eggs," a work requiring some skill and offering a chance
for promotion. Sixty-two per cent are with business firms doing
some kind of office work, or in the service of the telephone
company.

CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

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£ 2

H E

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THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 41

PRESENT WAGE OF ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY GIRLS SIXTEEN
AND SEVENTEEN YEARS OF AGE

WEEKLY WAGE

NUMBER OF GIRLS

$8.00 to $10.00 inclusive

$6.00 to $7.50 inclusive

Below $6. oo

The 50 girls shown in the white sections completed the Eighth grade.

The 100 girls shown in the lined sections did not complete the Seventh grade.

It has been shown that a comparatively small number of girls complete the
eight grades. It was impossible to secure equal numbers for comparison and retain
the same neighborhood surroundings.

CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

TABLE XIII

PRESENT WAGE AND PRESENT OCCUPATION OF FIFTY GIRLS SIXTEEN AND
SEVENTEEN YEARS or AGE WHO COMPLETED EIGHT GRADES

NUMBER OF

WAGE

GIRLS

$4.00

$5-00

$6.00

$6.25

$7-00

$7.SO

$8.00

$9.00

$10.00

Bindery

Store

Domestic

Factory

Millinery

Office

Dressmaking

Stenography

Telephone

Typist. .

Yards

5°

3. RECORDS OF ONE HUNDRED GIRLS FROM EIGHTEEN TO TWENTY-
FOUR YEARS OF AGE WHO DID NOT COMPLETE THE
SEVENTH GRADE

The records of the older girls were studied to see whether time
gave them a mastery over any occupation in spite of their lack of
schooling.

TABLE XIV

THE FIRST POSITION OF ONE HUNDRED GIRLS FROM EIGHTEEN TO TWENTY-FOUK
YEARS OF AGE WHO DID NOT COMPLETE THE SEVENTH GRADE

KIND OF WORK

NUM-
BER OF
GIRLS

WAGE

$ .50

$1.00

$l.SO

$i.7S

$2.00

$2.50

$3-oo

$3-50

$4.00

$4-50

$5-00

$5-50

$6.00

$6.50

Bindery ....
Store

7
28

13
14

2
5

S
4
5

I
2

I
7
5
S

I
I

2
2

Domestic . . .
Factory ....
Laundry . . .
Millinery . . .
Office . . .

I
2

Dressmaking
Tailor

i
i
4

I
8

Yards

100

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 43

TABLE XV

PRESENT OCCUPATION IN RELATION TO THE ORIGINAL OCCUPATION OF ONE HUNDRED GIRLS FROM EIGHTEEN TO TWENTY-FOUR
YEARS OF AGE WHO DID NOT COMPLETE THE SEVENTH GRADE

PRESENT OCCUPATION

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CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

Eleven girls (see Table XIV) began work before they were four-
teen. Fifty-eight were just fourteen, nineteen were fifteen, and
twelve were sixteen years of age. Only five of the sixteen-year-old
girls began below $5.00 a week. The department store, and the
factory type of occupation (including the bindery, the laundry, and
the yards) gave 68 per cent of this group their first experience as
wage-earners. For 60 per cent the beginning wage was less than
$4 . oo a week.

The ten girls who have moved from eight to fifteen times and the
sixteen who held to the first position (see Table XV) represent the
opposite extremes in temperament. The same kind of shifting in
search of better adaptation or more congenial employment is marked
in this group. Only twelve of the twenty-eight who began in the
store found it the best final choice. Twelve of the thirteen domestic
helpers scattered to six different occupations. One each from the
bindery, the store, and the factory sought domestic service as a
relief from the nervous strain of their downtown work. Three of
the five girls ambitious for office positions were obliged to fall back
upon the bindery and the factory, and four from the store, the
factory, and the yards felt promoted when they secured places as
office girls. Eighty-four changed positions and fifty-four changed
occupations.

TABLE XVI

PRESENT WAGE AND PRESENT OCCUPATION or ONE HUNDRED GIRLS FROM

EIGHTEEN TO TWENTY-FOUR YEARS OF AGE WHO DID NOT

COMPLETE THE SEVENTH GRADE

KIND OF WORK

NUM-
BER OF

GIRLS

WAGE

$3.00

$4.00

$5.00

$5-5°

$6.00

$6.50

$7-0°

$8.00

$8.50

$0.oo

$10.00

$11.00

$12.00

Bindery

4
24
3
4
6
6
3

2
I

I
3

I
10

i
i

2
2

I
I
I

Store

Domestic
Factory

Laundry

Millinery
Office

Dressmaking. .
Tailor

Telephone

Waitress. . . .

I
2

Yards

100

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 45

Forty-five of this group receive a wage of $6 . oo a week and less
in contrast to the ninety-two of the sixteen- and seventeen-year-old
group. It is evident that time may add something to the wage-
earning power of girls of this class especially among those who
possess physical strength and certain stable qualities that make
them desirable. Of the eleven girls who began work under fourteen
years, six now receive $8 . oo a week and above. Of the twelve who
waited until sixteen to take the first position, only three receive
$8 . oo. The girls who began at fifteen are not ahead of the average
wage of those who began at fourteen. From the vantage point of
money only, there is apparently no gain for the girl who, leaving an
unfinished school course at the age of fourteen, spends a year or two
in idleness before entering any one of the occupations open to her.
The lack of hope for the future was voiced by the majority in this
group. Forty-one said they had little chance of getting beyond the
$6.00 a week limit. Seventeen girls at $7.00 a week, twenty-two
at $8 . oo, four at $9 . oo, four at $10 . oo, and one at $i i . oo said they
had apparently reached the highest wage paid for the kind of work
they are doing. Of the remaining eleven who look for promotion,
two are with the Telephone Company, three are in the sewing
trades, three in stores, and one each in laundry, bindery, and office
work. It is an interesting fact that of the thirty-five girls who
receive $8 . oo a week and above, twenty-seven held to the original
occupation chosen. The nineteen-year-old girl who is now worth
$10.00 a week the year round in a millinery shop began as an
apprentice at $i . oo a week. Having completed the fifth grade, she
left school on her fourteenth birthday with a fixed determination to
learn to trim hats. In the absence of school training, it is possible
for ambition, persistency, and manual skill to win recognition when
the child is so fortunate as to have some comprehension of her own
fitness or desire for a certain kind of work which is at the same time
within her reach. For the majority there is no such adaptation.
The forty-one who cannot rise above $6 .00 a week and the seventeen
who came to a final stop at $7 . oo lack any positive training to enable
them to take better positions, although they are not without native
capacity. Adding the work of the bindery, the laundry, and the
yards to that of the factory, 56 per cent are found in the monotonous

CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

occupations that have been considered. Remembering the 67 per
cent of the sixteen- and seventeen-year-old girls, we conclude that
there is a tendency to get away from the factory type of occupation
whenever it is possible.

4. RECORDS OF FIFTY GIRLS FROM EIGHTEEN TO TWENTY-FOUR
YEARS OF AGE WHO COMPLETED EIGHT GRADES

TABLE XVII

THE FIRST POSITION OF FIFTY GIRLS FROM EIGHTEEN TO TWENTY-FOUR YEARS
OF AGE WHO COMPLETED EIGHT GRADES

KIND or WORK

NUMBER
OF GIRLS

WAGE

$1.00

$1.50

$2.00

$2.50

$3.00

$3-50

$4.00

$4.50

$5.00

$6.00

$7-00

Bindery

i
2

Store

i
16

2
2

Domestic

Factory

Millinery

Office

Dressmaking
Stenography
Telephone

Tvuist

5°

Only fourteen in this group began work at fourteen years of age.
Twenty- three were fifteen, ten were sixteen, and three were seven-
teen years old. The tendency of the eighth-grade girl is to extend
the period of her schooling beyond the compulsory age limit.
Fifty- two per cent chose the office position, the sewing trades, or
the Telephone Company. Forty-four per cent were obliged to
accept a beginning wage of less than $4.00 a week.

Again there is a lack of adjustment between the girl and the first
position (see Table XVIII). Only seven of the girls who began in
the store accepted that occupation as the one best suited to them.
Three girls from the store, two from the factory, one from the
routine office, and one who wished to be a milliner sought the tele-
phone service and the two domestic helpers went to the store. One
who served her apprenticeship in a dressmaker's shop escaped to
find more rapid advancement in a factory. Thirty-six changed

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 47

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CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

positions and twenty-eight changed occupations. All except two
of these changes were in line with the girl's ambition and prefer-
ence.

TABLE XIX

PRESENT WAGE AND PRESENT OCCUPATION OF FIFTY GIRLS FROM EIGHTEEN TO
TWENTY-FOUR YEARS OF AGE WHO COMPLETED EIGHT GRADES

KIND OF WORK

NUMBER
OF GIRLS

WAGE

$6.00

$7.00

$8.00

$9.00

$10.00

$12.00

$".50

$13.00

$15.00

Store

3
14
3
7
ii
i

I
I
I
2

I
I

i
i

I
3

i
i

Factory

Office

Dressmaking
Stenography

Telephone

Typist. .

Only one is receiving $6 . oo a week in contrast to the twenty-one
of the sixteen- and seventeen-year-old group at a wage of $6 . oo and
less. The lowest wage is received by a girl who was sixteen years
old before beginning to work, but she had no training beyond that
of the eighth grade. Of the three girls representing the highest
wage of $15 .00, one spent a year and a half in the high school, added
to this a six months' course in a business college, and was nearly
seventeen when she took her first place as a stenographer. The
second girl had no high-school training, but took six months in a
business college. The third waited until she was nearly sixteen
before beginning as a department-store cash girl at $3.00 a week
and rose rapidly to $15 .00 through the plan of receiving a commis-
sion on sales. Of the twenty-one girls who are receiving $10.00 a
week and above, ten spent from six months to two years in some
additional training. Of the twenty-nine below $10.00, one took a
two-year course at the high school, one spent one year there, and
four had six months' courses at the business college. Conclusions
from so small a number are not final, but it is a significant fact that
ten out of the twenty-one girls earning $10.00 a week and above
have reached this point apparently through the help of some training

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 49

PRESENT WAGE OF ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY GIRLS EIGHTEEN
TO TWENTY-FOUR YEARS OF AGE

WEEKLY WAGE

NUMBER OF GULLS

$n.ooto$is.oo inclusive .

$3.oo to $10.00 inclusive .

$6.00 to $7. 50 inclusive.

Below $6. oo

The 50 girls shown in the white sections completed the Eighth grade.

The 100 girls shown in the lined sections did not complete the Seventh grade.

added to the work of the eighth grade. All who are receiving less
than $8.00 a week expect promotion. With the exception of the
eleven telephone girls who advance according to a regular schedule
based on length of service, and one stenographer at $9 .00 who hopes
to reach $15.00, the others have probably reached their limit.
However, without an exception, the fifty girls have a sense of
satisfaction in their positions that can be appreciated only by
understanding certain neighborhood standards. The stockyards
wage of $6.00 a week for the common labor of women and girls
(this makes no allowance for the intermittent employment that
lowers the average or for the piecework that may add to it in busy
seasons) dominates the community to such an extent that any posi-
tion above $6.00 puts a girl a little above the common lot.
Positions from $8.00 to $15.00 are distinct personal triumphs.
The occupations also illustrate the ambition of the eighth-grade
girl. Sixty-six per cent are with business firms doing some kind of
office work or in the service of the Telephone Company. This is a
slight addition to the 62 per cent of the sixteen- and seventeen-year-
old eighth-grade girls who are engaged in occupations of the same
character.

5. PROBABLE OPPORTUNITIES OF THE WORKING-GIRL

The employer who is questioned with reference to the oppor-
tunities open to girls in the particular business or industry he
represents invariably replies, "It all depends upon the girl," and
points to his private secretary who rose from $5.00 a week to
$80.00 a month, to his rapid piece-worker who commands $15 .00 a
week in the rush season, to the single forewoman who began as a
little candy-packer, or to the head clerk who was once a fourteen-
year-old cash girl. The element of truth in this point of view,
which is pre-eminently optimistic and American, obscures the real
facts of the industries that are constantly renewing their supply of
low-grade and unskilled labor. The 80 per cent in the sixteen- and
seventen-year-old group and the 41 per cent of the older group who
see little chance of getting beyond $6.00 a week represent a real
demand of our present methods of production and distribution. A
large number of girls must continue in monotonous, highly special-

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 51

ized occupations requiring no education and little intelligence.
The supply is constant from the untrained mass who are driven to
some temporary means of earning money, for although the girl in
industry may be a transient factor as an individual, each one who
leaves is at once followed by more than one successor entirely willing
to take the vacant place at the same wage. " The room at the top "
is made for those of special manual dexterity or some native ability
that makes opportunity. The girls in the factory, the bindery, and
the yards who receive more than $6.00 a week attain the higher
wage only through the piecework system. Many girls are forced to
lessen the nervous strain attending piecework by changing factories,
and securing another kind of monotony in their daily labor. This
means beginning with a lowered wage and acquiring a new skill.
Others hold their places in rush seasons only and plan to be idle
three or four months of the year. By far the greater number, after
some experience, learn to set a pace they are able to keep without
excessive fatigue. The girls of this last class average from $7 . oo to
$8.00 a week. In brief, the opportunity in the factory type of
occupation depends upon the efficiency that means speed, and the
girl does not earn for any length of time the high wage used by the
employer to illustrate the advantages of the system. Judging from
the positions of the two hundred girls, who fairly represent the
general situation, 61 per cent of the girls of the stockyards district
who leave school before completing the elementary course will find
their places in this factory type of occupation. The possibility of
securing one of the few executive positions open to girls should be
mentioned. Only one girl has been found who attempted to hold
the place of forewoman, and after a few weeks she fell back to her
familiar piecework. More than one employer testified to the
difficulty of finding competent forewomen among the rank and file
of workers whom they would willingly promote. The reasons are
obvious. The untrained mind which can easily grasp all the
requirements of the piecework system fails when it comes to meeting
the demands of even a subordinate executive position. The daily
work offers no chance for mental development. Moreover, the
inferior rank assigned to the girl is not conducive to the growth of
initiative and self-assertion.

52 CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

Comparatively few of the American-born girls remain in the
sewing trades in spite of the fact that dressmaking and millinery are
among the largest industries at present open to women. This is
due chiefly to the methods in the shops which prolong the period of
apprenticeship and give small opportunity to the learner. The
dressmakers are calling for girls who have had some training at least
in plain sewing. The foreign girls come better prepared, but it is a
curious fact that the mothers, many of whom are capable of
beautiful needlework, do not succeed in teaching their American
daughters the same art. The schools have done comparatively little
and the result is the untrained girl who enters the shop for errand
work grows tired of it before she has had a chance to do much else,
and leaves for some position that seems to promise more rapid
promotion. As a rule it requires from two to three years to reach
a wage of $7.00 or $8.00 a week, and the girl must be a good
observer and quick to take casual suggestions, for she will get little
real teaching. Yet there are always good positions waiting for those
who persist through the beginner's time-serving and learn to be one
of the specialized workers. The same difficulties confront the girl
who wishes to be a milliner, and even those who felt attracted to
this trade and undoubtedly possessed enough ability to reach the
average wage of $10.00 or $12.00 a week have been turned aside
because they could not get a start. The girls in the tailor estab-
lishments were scheduled apart from the other sewing trades
because all who receive above $6 . oo a week are a part of the piece-
work system possible in this industry through the minute sub-
division of all the processes involved. The opportunities in this
work, like those in the factory, depend upon the speed of the
worker.

Domestic service is by common consent the least desirable of all
the occupations. The eighth-grade girl will take any kind of factory
work in preference, much as she dislikes the latter. Of the five girls
so employed, only one is contented. The other four were forced to
it after a period of overwork in store, bindery, and factory that
made a change a physical necessity. A full presentation of the
domestic-service situation is not possible here, but a few reasons
may be given to account for the prevailing attitude. There is no

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 53

real preparation available for the majority of these girls. The
mothers cannot give any systematic training that would make their
daughters valuable in an American household and the bi-weekly
cooking-class for one school year offers the only bit of instruction
open to them. The fourteen- or fifteen-year-old child is of little
service to the employer who cannot accept her in her untrained state
and act as a teacher. It is little wonder that the girl who is placed
at a low wage to help with "light housework" or "mind a baby"
proves unsatisfactory in a position that requires more maturity and
good sense than the factory demands. Moreover, the early age of
her employment makes it difficult for the girl to leave home and
accept the isolation of the average domestic helper. Since there is
little chance to begin under acceptable conditions, the logical result
is the adaptation to other occupations easily accessible, which allow
the child to live at home where she naturally belongs at her age.
The definite duties and fixed hours combined with the greater
sociability of every other occupation are more attractive to youth.
The years do not bring either opportunity or inclination to acquire
enough knowledge of household arts to enable these girls to hold
good positions. Finally, the American-born girl, so close to the
foreign home, holds tenaciously to her conviction that domestic
service is un-American, an inferior kind of work that must be left
to "foreigners." How far the employers of household labor are
responsible for the attitude of mind that makes this occupation so
universally undesirable may be left an open question.

The department store stands next to the factory as a low-grade
entrance to employment, but more than half of those who begin in
the store refuse to remain there. The wages are low and oppor-
tunities for advancement are few. Seventeen out of the one hundred
in the eighth-grade group and thirty-four from the two hundred of
the other group, or only 17 per cent of the total, are in stores, and
those who receive more than $7.00 a week are working on the
commission plan, wages estimated on the basis of the number of
sales. Again the girl must submit to the speeding-up process if she
wishes to get out of the low-wage class.

The office position holds little hope for the girl who has had less
than eight grades in school, and she seldom rises above $7 . oo a week

in simple routine work. The one exception to this which Table
XVI shows is but another illustration of the persistency and native
ability that may conquer many adverse conditions. For the girl
who completes the elementary-school course there are opportunities
commanding a wage varying from $8.00 to $12.00 or possibly
$13.00 a week. Much depends upon her accuracy and general
reliability and other characteristics that may make her a valuable
part of the routine. The clever stenographer may reach $15.00 a
week but is not likely to do so unless she is well qualified in English,
and the majority fail at this point without more training than they
acquire in the six months' course of the business college. The
possession of the eighth-grade certificate is not required to enter the
service of the Telephone Company, but comparatively few girls in
the district succeed in qualifying without it, although the telephone
girl stands next to the office girl in having achieved a position that
gives social distinction. After passing through the school, operators
formerly1 began at the rate of eleven cents an hour for the first six
months. The new schedule gives twelve cents an hour for the first
month, with a more rapid rate of increase. It is also possible for
girls to reach supervisory positions but few will be able to do so.
Judging from the one hundred girls who fairly represent the
tendency of those who complete the eight grades, 64 per cent of the
girls in the neighborhood who are able to reach this group will find
places in some form of office work or with the Telephone Company.
In the sewing trades, the factory, the bindery, and the yards, a
girl is subject to seasonal employment. This is especially true of
the low- wage class, for even in seasonal occupations the skilled
workers may be retained or may find places by migrating from one
part of the city to another.

'The following schedule was put into effect January 16, 1913:

12 cents an hour for the first month

13 ' « « « « next two mc)nths

14 " * " « « « three months

15 " « « « « « four months

16 " « « « « « jjve months

17 " « « « « "six months

18 " " " " " " seven months
19" * • "" " eight months
20 " " * " " * year

and so on up to the maximum of 23 cents.

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 55
6. HEALTH IN RELATION TO OCCUPATION

In the beginning of this investigation an effort was made to
secure records of the girl's physical condition in relation to her
home environment, her occupation, and the length of time she had
been employed. It was impossible to make the records complete
enough for any final conclusions. The average working-girl cannot
afford to confess to physical weaknesses, but the majority accept as
a matter of course "two or three colds every winter" or "frequent
nervous headaches" for which no physician is consulted, or the need
of the stimulation supplied by an excessive use of tea and coffee.
The question is extremely complex, since health is dependent upon
so many factors both psychic and physical. Overcrowding, lack of
proper food, worry, and friction, all work together to undermine
the health of a girl who might under a more favorable environment
endure the stress of the occupation that appears to be the cause of
her breakdown. However, a few suggestive facts grew out of the
effort. The girls between eighteen and twenty years of age showed
the best average of general good health, regardless of their occupa-
tions. Those under eighteen and over twenty showed the greatest
number of minor ailments and nervous tendencies, also regardless of
the character of the occupations in which they had been engaged.
Girls who had changed occupation, when the new position meant
greater satisfaction in work or some added pleasure due to increased
wages, showed a better average of health than those working with a
sense of discontent or a desire for changes which they were unable
to bring about. Those twenty years of age and over who began at
fourteen admitted that they were "tired most of the time." The
late beginning, although it often meant no gain in wages over the
girl of the same age who began earlier, had served to postpone the
almost inevitable coming of weariness and aversion experienced by
so many girls after six years of continuous employment. The head
of the employment department in a large manufacturing industry
using the piecework system is responsible for the statement that the
average "efficient life" of the rapid pieceworker seldom exceeds
three years. That is, few girls are able to endure for a longer period
the combination of monotony and speed required to earn the high
wage held out as an inducement at the beginning of their work.

56 CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

These girls had been o.bliged to slacken the pace or change the
occupation to bring into use a different set of muscles in order to
avoid a nervous breakdown. The long rides, standing in crowded
street cars, which 80 per cent of the girls are obliged to take, add an
inconceivable amount to the burden of the day's work. A part of
the desire for office and telephone positions arises from the shorter
hours1 required in these occupations. The unanimous testimony of
the thinking mothers is that "American-born girls grow up with
less physical vigor than their parents."

Exact information from employers was difficult to obtain, as no
records are kept of the number who drop out of any industry or for
what cause. The general impression of the managers of employ-
ment departments seems to be that girls leave to be married; that
this is the final occupation open to all of them; that the limited
period of their employment could not seriously affect their health.
Many were able to point to their welfare work, restrooms, and
trained nurses in attendance, and all looked upon the general
appearance of those at the moment employed as a guaranty that the
specialized form of occupation they represented could not be
detrimental to health. One who visits any business or industry
calling for large numbers of women and girls, will be impressed by
the freshness and youth2 of the mass. Yet it is obviously impossible
to arrive at any conclusion through the study of the survivors,
rather than the victims of modern industry.

The study of occupational diseases is not new. Miss Goldmark
draws a line sharply between the longer established interest in
special trade diseases and the recent physiological study of over-
work. Fatigue and nervous exhaustion, the subtle and hitherto
unrecognized effects of speed, monotony, noise, piecework, and the

. * The Telephone Company requires eight hours of actual work, but pays for eight
and one-half hours, a rest period of fifteen minutes being given each morning and after-
noon. The hours of office girls are not uniform, but vary from eight to nine and one-
half. Only two girls in the group were found working in a Union factory with a uni-
form eight-hour day.

'"Successive reports of the United States Census indicate that self-supporting
girls are increasing steadily in numbers each decade, until 59 per cent of all young
women in the Nation between the ages of 16 and 20, are engaged in some gainful
occupation." — Jane Addams, A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil, p. 56.

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 57

stress of rush seasons are the dangers that threaten the workers of
today. With the exception of the few domestic helpers, all of the
wage-earning girls are subject to some form of this "new strain in
industry." They are meeting it bravely, but blindly, driven by
forces beyond either their comprehension or their control. Judging
from studies in other1 industrial communities, there is abundant
evidence that efficient girlhood in factory, shop, or store will mean
inefficient motherhood2 visible in "a heightened infant mortality, a
lowered birth-rate, and an impaired second generation." What the
results will be no one dares to prophesy. Even now there are signs
of physical deterioration in this first generation from vigorous
foreign stock.

7. THE GIRL AND THE FAMILY

The girl begins her work in response to the family standard that
demands the wages of children, and she remains amazingly docile in
supplying the family need. (From time immemorial the economic
value of the woman has been estimated in terms of the immediate
needs of the family.) The customary duties of wife and mother are
accepted as a matter of course and every girl is expected, after a
temporary season of wage-earning, to go from the home of her father
to that of her husband. "Economic independence" for the woman
in a sense conveyed by the modern use of these words is as yet
unknown and incomprehensible. It follows that what the girl
earns is easily appropriated by the parents and, broadly speaking,
obediently surrendered by the girl. Among the three hundred girls
between sixteen and twenty-four years of age, there are 290 who
have no independent control of their own wages. That is, what
they earn goes into the common family fund and they receive back
again from the mother what she decides they require for carfare,
lunches, amusements, and clothes. Girls sometimes complain that
they do not have enough "returned" to them in spending money
and in "the kind of clothes other girls wear." If the mother is

1 This foreign district does not yet furnish enough children of the second genera-
tion in America to make possible a study of mothers who had been in the class of
working-girls here described.

2 Josephine Goldmark, Fatigue and Efficiency, pp. 90-100.

58 CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

indulgent with her daughter's desire for evening pleasures and some
of the novelties and frivolities of fashion, there is little friction; if
she fails to recognize these legitimate demands of youth, the distance
between mother and daughter is widened, although among the five
hundred girls their instinctive devotion to the family claim has
been strong enough to keep them obedient. When the son begins
to feel that he should no longer surrender his entire wage to his
mother, this same dispute is promptly handled in a different manner.
A definite sum, usually from $3 . oo to $5 . oo a week, is exacted from
him, proportioned according to his wage and the amount the mother
thinks she can demand and still keep him loyal to the family. This
sum entitles him to board, lodging, and laundry. "Boys can run
away if you don't do the right thing by them," says the foreign
mother, "and of course you wouldn't treat boys the way you do
girls." Girls sometimes complain of the superior attitude of the
brother, but at the same time, they bow before it. Those who are
earning more than either the father or the son accept a position in
the household that forces them to coax, cry, or quarrel with the
mother whenever they wish independent spending-money. With
ten girls of this group, rebellion reached a climax. They demanded
and secured an equal right with the brother to pay a fixed sum
for board.1

Under these family conditions it is difficult to say what con-
stitutes "a living wage" for a girl. These girls are supplementary
wage-earners. They represent the class who furnish the "living at
home" excuse of the employer who is questioned about his low wage
scale. Parents and daughters alike accept with little protest a wage
that could not cover the cost of the most meager living apart from
the family. The woman who frets over the $6.00 a week of the
sixteen-year-old boy will regard the same wage complacently when
the seventeen-year-old girl receives it. Whether the wage proves
unsatisfactory from the older daughter depends entirely upon the
amount the girl must have returned to her. Mothers object
especially to the department-store positions that call for an undue

'In one family the matter was settled by accepting $5.00 a week from the
daughter, although only $4.00 a week was demanded from the son who could earn
the same amount as his sister.

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 59

outlay in clothes in proportion to the wage received, and make a
point of encouraging the factory work which takes less account of
the girl's appearance. The cheap office position is open to the same
objection as the department store. The consensus of opinion
among the more intelligent mothers is that considering the present
high cost of living any occupation in the public eye requiring a girl
"to look well" calls for a minimum of $8.00 a week even when she
has the advantage of living at home. Strange as it may seem, the
fact that the wage sufficient only for carfare, lunches, and clothes
leaves a part of the girl's support to be met by the rest of the
family, is not regarded by the general run of parents as unjust. As
long as this attitude remains, the individual supplementary wage-
earner will continue to complicate the problem of wages.

Although the girl accepts the standards of the home that control
the extent of her schooling and demand her wages, the first experi-
ence as a wage-earner brings a slight change in her relation to the
other members of the family. The world is bigger than she knew
and there are other ways of living than those she has been taught to
accept. A new attitude toward life begins to develop, manifested
in a little more self-assertion and a desire "to do as other girls do."
Gradually she comes into her own world of hopes and ambitions in
which the parents have little part. Since there is no place for social
gatherings in the four-room flat, she meets chance companions on
the corner, often gets an invitation to the five-cent theater, and
"makes dates" for successive evenings. It must be remembered
that it is possible for a girl to do this and preserve an almost
incredible degree of innocence and childishness. As she grows
older, the public dance-hall furnishes a larger share of her evening
pleasures. Seventy-five per cent of the girls from sixteen to
twenty-four years of age attend public dances where there is
practically no supervision. Those who do not are among the
younger ones who are still obedient to parental authority. It is
common also for various social clubs to hire a hall, demand an
admission fee to cover the cost of rent and music, and take charge of
their own dance. Here there is no oversight beyond that exercised
by a "floor committee" of exuberant young fellows who may be
from eighteen to twenty-one years of age. Parents protest in vain.

60 CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

The young people are making their own standards through the
natural law of imitation which leads them to break away from the
older ideals of the home and try to be a conspicuous part of some
prevailing custom,1 fashion or sentiment. The simple peasant
courtesies having their being in class distinctions not openly
recognized in America are despised. The mother does not under-
stand why she must not kiss the hand of one whom her Old World
instincts make her recognize as her "superior." In their own
country the Slavic women below the middle class do not wear hats
and among all other nations there is a tendency to make the head-
dress represent a distinction that stands for something vital and
unalterable. For this reason the American daughter places an
exaggerated importance upon the possession of a fashionable hat2
that brings girls of all classes and all nations to one level. Both
father and mother cling to their native speech. Although the
daughter does not lose it entirely, she takes little pains to preserve
it. Dress and speech are the visible signs of the distance between
parents and child. A further cause of contention lies in the demand
of the children for a higher standard of living at home. Sons often
unite with the daughters in calling for a better grade of food, more
comfortable furnishings, or an additional room in the flat. It is a
significant fact that the rebellion against overcrowding comes from
the young people and not from the parents. This feeling even
hastens the marriage of both sons and daughters who find seven or
eight people in four rooms an unbearable condition. Although the
father is not an unimportant factor in these disputes, it is usually
the mother who manages the combined income of husband and
children. If she wishes to retain her firm hold on the family purse,
she is often forced to make compromises, and children on their part
are often obliged to conform to the stern authority of the parents.

1 At one of these club dances the writer remonstrated with a youth of nineteen
who was dancing in an unseemly fashion. In a straightforward and manly way he
assured his critic that he was in complete accord with " the latest thing in fashionable
society on the other side of the town."

3 A milliner of long experience in the neighborhood says she has witnessed many
a dispute between mother and daughter over the relative amount that should be spent
for the hat. The girl is willing to practice economy in every other direction; the
mother is horrified at the cost of an unnecessary bit of finery.

OLD COUNTRY MOTHERS

AMERICAN DAUGHTERS

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 61

Sometimes the children permanently raise the standard of living in
the home; sometimes they sink under the burden of a daily life
wholly incompatible with their tastes and ambitions. In this
process of assimilation the American girl presents a strange mixture
of independence and helplessness, self-assertion and submission,
loyalty and rebellion, that confuse, anger, and grieve the foreign
parent; but neither understands the subtle and irresistible forces at
work to produce a situation so difficult for both father and mother
and so dangerous for the girl.

SECTION V. PROBLEMS OF ADJUSTMENT
I. SUMMARY

Before considering the possible methods of meeting some of the
problems outlined, the leading points in the discussion may be
summarized.

1. The immigrants of the stockyards district represent various
races and different levels of both social and financial attainment.

2. The dominant educational standard of the people is the
minimum legal requirement of the state, and by common consent
the education of the girl is a matter of less importance than the
education of the boy.

3. Eighty-nine per cent of the families feel an obligation to send
their children to the parochial school for a part of their training.
The constant movement between public and parochial schools
makes loss of time unavoidable and increases the amount of
retardation and consequent elimination that takes place before the
completion of the elementary-school course.

4. Retardation and elimination statistics show a condition in the
local public schools the reverse of that revealed in the investigations
of other communities; retardation among boys is 22 per cent
greater than retardation among girls, but owing to the inferior
position assigned to the girl, the proportion of boys who remain in
school to enter the eighth grade is 24 per cent greater than the
proportion of girls who remain.

5. The wage of the father is an important factor in determining
the extent of elimination.

62 CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

6. The school is not meeting the needs of the majority of the
girls in the district, and makes but slight impression upon those
who fail to receive the benefit of a complete elementary course.
They do not successfully attend the evening school and cannot
make up for a deficient education by taking class instruction after
working-hours.

7. The girls who complete eight grades recognize a value in the
discipline of a complete course, and 43 per cent tried to take some
advantage of educational opportunities after leaving the elementary
school.

8. The compulsory education law that requires the alternative
of school in the event of failure to find work during the fourteen-to-
sixteen-year period is not enforced and cannot be as long as girls
are allowed the independent possession of their work certificates.

9. The employment of girls under sixteen years is not necessary
to the continuation of any business or industry. The occupations
open to them are non-educative and attended by grave physical
and moral dangers. The actual power of the girl to add to the
family income has been exaggerated and overestimated.

10. The records of older girls show that 61 per cent of those who
leave school before completing eight grades accept places in the
factories where the opportunity to earn more than $6.00 a week
must depend upon their skill as pieceworkers. Sixty-four per cent
of those who complete eight grades will find positions in some form
of office work or with the Telephone Company, where there is a
possibility of their earning from $8.00 to $15.00 a week.

11. Records of the relation between health and occupation are
not complete enough for final conclusions, but one general fact is
obvious: under the existing conditions of life and labor in the
stockyards district the first generation of American girls lack the
physical stamina of the foreign stock from which they come.

12. In the unavoidable conflict of standards, the gravest dan-
ger to the girl lies in the freedom she has demanded to resort to
unregulated public places of amusement.

2. REMEDIAL MEASURES

The conditions summarized above call for remedial measures:
(a) the reorganization of the school; (6) a revised compulsory

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 63

education law; (c) a new attitude to the problem of family poverty;
(d) preparation for a city- wide vocational guidance program; (e)
adequate provision for, and supervision of, public places of amuse-
ment and recreation.

a) The reorganization of the school. — Chicago has recently been
made alive to the fact that "43 per cent of her school children who
enter the first grade do not reach the eighth grade at all, and 49
per cent do not complete the eighth grade."1 A careful analysis of
the present situation in the schools, a study of the need for industrial
and commercial training, together with recommendations as to the
form in which such training may be made a part of the public-school
system of the city, may be found in the comprehensive report of the
City Club of Chicago. Training of a preparatory trade character
to be introduced into the seventh and eighth grades, vocational
work and individual attention for overage pupils to enable them to
complete the work of the grades, a trade school that shall admit girls
of fourteen years who have completed six grades, the suggestion
that "the subject-matter of the academic studies should be closely
related to the handwork and to industrial needs," are among the
recommendations that will meet the more immediate requirements
of the girls of the stockyards district. The education of a girl offers
a complex and difficult problem, since it calls for the recognition of
her need of adequate preparation for earning a livelihood, and the
further more important preparation for life as a wife and mother.
The first half of the problem has been surrendered to the store, the
factory, the shop, and the business office; the second has been
forgotten. At present the lack of training in the household arts,
and the neglect of the teaching that will develop efficient mother-
hood threaten serious consequences to the future2 generation. To

1 A Report on Vocational Training in Chicago and in Other Cities by A Committee
of the City Club of Chicago, p. i.

* A young girl came to the Settlement recently from whom the following record
was secured: left school in the sixth grade at fourteen years; spent three years in
migrating from factory to factory wrapping soap or candy; met a young fellow at a
public dance-hall; married at the age of seventeen; after one week of married life
came to ask for a place in a factory. They had decided "to board with mother."
The American girl, slender, pale, inefficient in every direction save "wrapping,"
returned with her husband to the old German mother who was still vigorous, a capable
mistress of all the homely arts, but helpless before conditions that had fashioned her
daughter.

64 CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

be effective in remedying this condition among people who are not
sufficiently conscious of what they lack, enlarged opportunities must
be brought to their very doors. The reorganization of the courses
in the local schools and the establishment of a trade school1 within
reach without the expenditure of carfare, are the first requisites of
the voluntary attendance that will lead to a conscious awakening
without which no lasting reformation is possible.

b) A revised compulsory education law. — The reorganization of
the school will do much to arouse an interest that may induce
voluntary attendance, but in a neighborhood of low educational
standards and predominantly low wages, legislation to raise the
compulsory age limit to sixteen years is imperative. In no other
way will this new opportunity be opened to those whose need is
greatest. The ignorance and indifference of parents, the failure of
the present law as it relates to the fourteen-to-sixteen-year period,
the non-educative character of all city occupations open to little
girls, combined with the grave physical and moral dangers attend-
ing their employment, call for such legislation coincident with the
provision for vocational training in the school. To protect the
children of foreign parents from a mistaken sentiment that requires
them to receive the greater part of their education hi their mother-
tongue, the law should demand that all candidates for work cer-
tificates be able to read and write the English language.2 At
best any standard minimum age as the chief requisite for beginning
work is open to serious objections, and in the evolution of child-
labor legislation3 this arbitrary test will give way to a more intelli-

1 Continuous efforts have been made to induce girls to attend the Lucy L. Flower
Technical High School. Parents complain that "it is too far away and takes car-
fare." Since the opening of the school in September, 1911, only six girls from this
district have taken advantage of this opportunity and only two are remaining for
their second year.

3 The present law demands that a child shall not be illiterate, but does not require
even a rudimentary knowledge of the English language. Girls come to the Settlement
who can neither read nor write the simple sentences of a First English Reader, but
they hold out their work certificates as proof of their fitness for entrance to industry.
The sentiment of the parents who wish their children to respect and use the mother-
tongue is not undervalued and at all times deserves consideration, but the experience
of the past years has proved that the children are too seriously handicapped by this
shortsighted policy.

3 Mrs. Florence Kelley has given a program for effective child labor legislation
and its enforcement in Some Ethical Gains through Legislation, pp. 91-99.

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 65

gent consideration of the child's physical, mental, and moral fitness
for a given occupation regardless of the exact number of years
attained. Mr. Lovejoy, in reviewing the progress of the National
Child Labor Committee, says: "The chronological age test for
children seeking employment, which was general eight years ago,
has been supplemented in many states by requiring sufficient
physical examination to at least discover whether the child corre-
sponds to the norm for its age, and the public now generally
recognizes that educational and physical tests are essential to any
adequate dealing with the problem of committing children to
industry." The more exact knowledge that will result from the
present movement for the vocational training, guidance, and super-
vision of working-children cannot fail to stimulate the needed
legislation in this direction.

c) A new attitude to the problem of family poverty — The new
compulsory education law will mean increased hardship in many
families where even the trifling wages of the child have an enlarged
value when added to the total family income. The results of
investigations in other communities seem to prove that the early
leaving of school is not determined by the family need. In the
stockyards district the economic situation will demand a new atti-
tude to the problem of the poverty that is increased by the neglect
of the children. "The most hopeless condition of the poor is
unfitness for work. Unfitness for work means low wages, low wages
mean insufficient food, insufficient food means unfitness for labor,
and so the vicious circle is complete."1 Poverty of this kind is a
social disease. It can never be an isolated fact, unrelated to the
progress and welfare of the city as a whole. An effective recognition
of the social rather than the individual aspect of poverty must lead
to some practical means that shall make it possible for parents to
accept the new law. Whatever the method, children must be
relieved of the need of becoming premature breadwinners, an
unnatural burden forced upon them by the ignorance, disability, or
low wage of the parents. Public and private charity may intervene
temporarily but the problem is ultimately one of wages. In her
discussion of Minimum- Wage Boards, Mrs. Kelley says: "Poverty

1 Rowntree, Poverty, p. 46.

66 CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

is the regular human by-product of certain industries without
standards, of certain socially subnormal industries. But it is
obvious that in any rational society, each industry must sustain the
people employed in it. An industry which supports its workers and
their families only in part, places an undue burden upon charity
and is, itself, a parasite upon the community."1

Through this newer attitude to the problem of family poverty it
will be possible to establish the right of children to the normal
period of childhood and to adequate training for future usefulness
as citizens of an enlightened community.

d) Preparation for a city-wide vocational guidance program. — The
Board of Education has recently established a department of voca-
tional supervision.2 The work of employment, supervision,
vocational guidance, and investigation of the industrial oppor-
tunities open to children who leave school to go to work has been
supported for two years by a number of private organizations under
the direction of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy
Department of Social Investigation. In different parts of the city
the necessarily limited experiments of private efforts have proved
both the need and the possibilities of this new movement, but its
ultimate success must depend upon a method that will leave no
community isolated and attempting to work out its own problems
apart from the rest of the city. The School has come to the point
of a severe testing of its efficiency, for it must attack the difficult
problem of bringing into a city-wide co-operation the home, the
school, and the world of industry, and of leading the way to new
legislation. Through this unification of social agencies the weak
points in each will be revealed. Vocational training must precede
the possibility of vocational guidance, but at present there is a lack
of sufficient information to enable the schools to make an intelligent
choice of the trades that should be taught, or of the kind of instruc-
tion demanded for a profitable entrance to different trades and
occupations. The proportion both of the skilled and of the
unskilled who suffer from seasonal employment is unknown. A

1 Mrs. Florence Kelley, "Minimum-Wage Boards," American Journal of Sociology,
November, 1911.

'Circular of Announcement, Series III, No. 18, May i, 1913.

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 67

study of the relation between the demand and the supply of
unskilled labor1 may reveal the extent to which, under the present
methods in business and industry, a large number of workers will be
found in the automatic occupations requiring no previous training.
It is obviously one of the first requisites of a city-wide program to
make provision for securing such information2 and keeping it up to
date. With the best of knowledge at their command, it is a difficult
task for adult minds to understand and guide the young. To
further this aim the school should keep records of the child's
progress, aptitudes, personal tastes, and ambitions, together with
physical, mental, and moral characteristics. The child's transfer
from one school to another should not break the continuity of this
record. But it is not final to train children for the vocations to
which they are seemingly best adapted. Provision should be made
for a supervision of their employment during the most trying years
of the adolescent period. A little girl who commits some trifling
offense may become the ward of the Juvenile Court and may be
carefully guided in all of her activities until she is eighteen years of
age. The same careful supervision of all children will decrease the
number recorded in the Juvenile Court. With the school as the
center of the vocational training, guidance, and supervision of all
children, it may be possible to prevent one of the great tragedies of
life — the vocational misfit. What the school may do to enrich the
lives of those whose daily work will be (according to present indica-
tions of the probable future of many industries) a mere deadly
routine is one of the problems for the future. The effort to solve it
may bring the employer to a recognition of the truth that business
and industry in all forms must serve in the training for citizenship
and the growth of democracy.

1 Two men who were looking for a desirable place to establish a new factory
recently came to the Settlement to ask for an estimate of the surplus labor available
among women and girls. The reputation of the stockyards district for cheap and
docile labor had reached them. It is not improbable that the future will see a spirit
of city-wide co-operation that will make such a proposition not only unethical but
wholly impracticable.

3 A beginning has been made by the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy
Department of Social Investigation in their report on finding employment for children
who leave the grade schools to go to work.

68 CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

e) Adequate provision for, and supervision of, public places of
amusement. — It was stated in the beginning that no delinquent girl
is included in the number who form the basis of this study. The
five hundred girls, living and growing under the trying conditions
imposed by conflicting standards, forced by the new methods of
industry to accept outside of their homes the nerve-wrecking and
non-stimulating occupations open to untrained girlhood, and
seeking in the five-cent theater and the dance-hall to satisfy their
youthful craving for excitement, are as yet among the large mass
of upright working-girls who are constructing their own code of
protective ethics. It is a dangerous experiment. Never before in
the world's history have women been considered as a class of
industrial workers. Never before have young girls been allowed
the freedom they indulge in today. As the city, through the
Board of Education, has decided to undertake the difficult task of
bringing together all the agencies involved in the vocational
adjustment of youth, so it must ultimately through some effective
instrument make provision for recreation apart from the com-
mercial enterprise that profits from the juxtaposition of vice,
intemperance, and innocent amusements. The universal demand
of the workers today for shorter hours of labor is gaining a hearing.
The leisure they crave will be forthcoming, but to what end ? The
modern city has tried "this stupid experiment of organizing work
and failing to organize play,"1 and the disastrous results are appar-
ent in the perversion of the normal instincts of youth. " The Right
to Leisure," the social cry of the present century, must be estab-
lished through municipal direction and control of all forms of public
recreation.

APPENDIX

The following personal records are added because they represent
typical experiences and attitudes of American-born girls in this
district.

Case i. — Left school in the sixth grade at fourteen years. Began in a fig
and date factory at $3. 50 a week; stayed five months; box factory for one
week at $3.00; biscuit factory one month at $3 . 50 a week ; yards six months at
$5 . oo a week; candy factory two weeks at $2 . 50 a week; laundry two months

1 The final word on this subject has been given by Jane Addams in The Spirit of
Youth and the City Streets.

THE AMERICAN GIRL IN THE STOCKYARDS DISTRICT 69

at $5.00 a week; candy factory on piecework for two weeks, but earned less
than the usual time wage; folded circulars in an office for three days and
received $1.35 for entire time; back to candy factory at $4.00 a week. Girl
was not sure of the exact order of her positions and thought she "might have
forgotten two or three of them." Could not understand why anybody who
had "seen so much of the city and had had so many experiences" should
always find such low wages.

Case 2. — Left school in the sixth grade on her fourteenth birthday. Went
into a soap factory; wiped and packed daily seventeen boxes, each box holding
fifty bars of toilet soap; received $4.00 a week when she could keep up this pace.
At the end of the first year, hands were red and sore and head ached the last
half of the week. During the second year often stayed out on Thursday
because she could not endure the nervous strain without this interruption.
Occasionally reached a speed of twenty-two boxes daily and received $5 . 50 a
week. At the age of sixteen, wearied, disgusted, and rebellious, she came to the
Settlement to know "why girls have to work in nasty places," and to ask for a
book on "How Poor Girls Became Famous." She had heard there were books
like that and she had "got to do something quick."

Case 3. — Left school in the seventh grade at fourteen years. At home two
years. Piecework in different bookbinderies for five years. Never earned
more than $7 . oo a week. So sick of the monotony that she must try something
new. Piecework in an upholstery factory for seven months. Ill for six months,
heart permanently weakened. Placed in a good position to do housework,
and rapidly improving.

Case 4. — Left school in the sixth grade at fourteen years. Factory piece-
worker for five years, earning from $8 . oo to $9 . oo a week. Repeated inter-
ruptions due to illnesses of the fifth year. Nervous breakdown ascribed by
doctor to overstrain of piecework. Idle six months trying to recover. Forced
to accept an easy factory position at $5 . oo a week.

Case 5. — Left school in the seventh grade at fifteen years. Tried house-
work for six months at $3 . oo a week. Steady factory work at $7 . oo to $8 . oo
a week. Tells experience of a " lightning worker " who once outdid herself and
made $4. oo on the day's piecework. A cut on the rate followed at once which
reduced girls in her class to $5.00 and $6.00 a week. Two girls went to the
office and complained on behalf of the entire number. They were discharged.
The other girls cried over their machines but nobody could lead a strike.

Case 6. — Left school at fourteen in the seventh grade. A department-store
girl for six years, advancing from $3 . oo to present wage of $6 . 50 a week.
Tired and worn. Says she knows now that " the untrained girl without a trade
is not worth more than an average of $6.00 or $7.00 a week."

Case 7. — Left school in the fourth grade at fourteen years. Piecework for
seven years. Can earn from $13 . oo to $15 . oo a week, but the average for the
year round is from $8 . oo to $9 . oo. Says a factory means "incessant watching
and driving for speed." At fourteen an unusually strong, vigorous, solid girl

70 CHICAGO'S STOCKYARDS COMMUNITY

with the steady German capacity for continuous work. At twenty-one, forced
to "lay by," nervous, listless, "disgusted with everything." Lost ten pounds
of her weight between twentieth and twenty-first birthdays.

Case 8. — Left school at the close of the fourth grade when twelve years old.
Began at once in a department store at $i . 50 a week. Between eighteen and
twenty years of age at the height of her earning power, $10.00 a week. At
twenty began to weaken. Dropped to position at $8.00. Severe eye-strain
which glasses could not relieve. Finally went into a bindery "for a chance to
sit down." The change from constant standing to constant sitting improved
general health and relieved eye-strain.

Case 9. — Eighth-grade girl began in a department store at $3 . oo a week.
In eighteen months rose to $4.50. Tried the "commission on sales plan"
which averaged $15.00 a week. Lasted one year. Broken in health. At
home for one year. Returned to another store on steady wage of $6.00 a
week.

Case 10. — Left school in the fifth grade at fourteen years. Factory worker
for six years. Average of $8 . oo a week for past four years. Says: "I have
earned money for the family and they could not live without my wages, but /
know nothing. Foreign people will not teach a girl anything because they
think she will marry by eighteen years. I am considered old at twenty, but I
cannot marry a foreign man and live like my parents."

In the absence of more cases the extent to which the following
are typical of what the stockyards district will produce is an open
question. Miss Goldmark1 quotes from English records of the
lowered birth-rate among women who have spent their girlhood
employed in stores.

Case i. — Left school in the fifth grade at fourteen years. Home two years.
Worked in a bookbindery nearly three years. Average wage $6.00 a week.
Has been married two years and seven months. No children.

Case 2. — Left school in the fifth grade at fourteen years. Reached average
of $9.00 a week in a department store. Has been married four years. No
children.

Case 3. — Left school in the fifth grade at fourteen years. Factory girl for
four years. Never could earn more than $7.00 a week. Has been married
four years. No children.

Case 4. — Left school in the seventh grade at fourteen years. Department
store for six years, rising from $3 . oo to $10.00 a week. Has been married five
years. No children.

Case 5. — Left school in the seventh grade at thirteen years. Large and
vigorous and "passed for fifteen." Department-store girl for six years. Feet
swollen till she was unable to stand. Became an office girl for one year. Has
been married three years. No children.

1 Fatigue and Efficiency, p. 96.

30112046523368

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