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UGHLIN
THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
By CLARA E. LAUGHLIN
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ALL THEIR TIME FOR PART OF THEIR "KEEP."
These thirteen-year-old girls think they are helping to sup- port their families because they turn over to them the $3.50 per week they earn. The fact is, this is less than their " keep " costs. Who pays the deficit?
THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
A Study of Some Present-Day Conditions
BY
CLARA E. LAUGHLIN
Author of
"The Evolution of a Girl1* Ideal," "Everybody1 Lonesome," etc.
ILLUSTRATED
CHI
Fleming H. Revell Com
THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
A Study of Some Present -Day Conditions
BY
CLARA E. LAUGHLIN
Author of
"The Evolution of a Girl's Ideal," "Everybody's Lonesome," etc.
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO
Fleming H. Revell Company
LONDON AND EDINBURGH
Copyright, 1913, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 125 N. Wabash Ave. Toronto: 25 Richmond St., W. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street
To
JOHN THOMPSON
272251
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION n
I. AT THE NIGHT COURT . . . .21
II. THE EFFORT TO SAVE GIRLS ... 46
III. WHERE THE TROUBLE BEGINS ... 72
IV. THE INDICTMENT OF THE HOME . . 90 V. HER DAILY BREAD 107
VI. THE GIRL WHO EARNS $6 A WEEK . .127
VII. MINIMUM WAGE 156
VIII. MAMIE'S DEFICIT 177
IX. GIRLS' SCHOOLING 210
X. FORCED OUT 237
XI. THE PRICE OF PROGRESS .... 263
XII. "THE WOMAN OF IT" .... 289
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
All Their Time for Part of Their " Keep " . Title
Where Workers and Workless Meet ... 27 A Common Sight in Eastern Cities ... 46 Well-Regulated Work Is the Best Kind of Fun . 72
The Family Breadwinner 90
Learning the Art of Selling 107
A Kitchen Cozy Corner 133
Being Prepared to Earn Their Living . . .177 Learning a Trade That Pays Well . . .210
While Other Folks Sleep 237
An Effort to Revive Wholesome Pastimes . . 263 Her Father's Assistant 289
INTRODUCTION
THE chapters of which this book is composed were written from time to time during a period of about three years, on order for magazines. This means that they are journalistic rather than academic. The editorial orders came to the author not because she had any special knowledge of the sub- jects nor any special advantage for observation and investigation, but solely because certain editors be- lieved her sympathetic and candid, and told her to " look into " some phases of the work-a-day girl's re- lations to society.
It is hoped, therefore, that the book may be judged not as the work of one speaking with authority, but as the observations of one who can claim scarcely any other qualification for the task than an exceeding great' interest in it, and an " eagerness to know " which has made her study of it at least fairly comprehensive. The range of reading covered in the preparation of these chapters may without exaggeration be called enormous; and the range of personal interviews and investigations was not less. It could scarcely have been possible for any one to put more work into a volume of this size; but the same amount of labour
performed by a scholar in social science would doubt-
11
13 INTRODUCTION
less have produced a work of authority — whereas, the most that can be hoped for these chapters is that here or there among them a reader may find some suggestion upon which he or she may act in the great Opportunity, the great Privilege, of social betterment. Nearly every one, in these days of new visions, is eager to serve ; is saying : ' ' Here am I ! What can I do ? " The author of these chapters has tried very earnestly to learn what can be done — not alone by legislators and by others specially empowered, but by average men and women of many cares and limited opportunities. She has endeavoured, in this book, to make some suggestions of great services which are within the power of nearly every reader. The readers' of the magazines in which the articles appeared, showed, in their correspondence with the author, a spirit of eagerness to serve, of wistfulness to be shown a way, that made it seem probable there would be a' public for the chapters in book form.
So they are here presented, in the order in which they were written. This order has been preserved because the author thinks it may be somewhat typical of the steps by which many observers go, from effects back to causes.
It is a matter of only a very few years — some four or five — since the American social conscience rebelled against the practice of locking up overnight persons who were arrested after police court hours in the after- noon, and so unable to get a hearing until the next day.
INTRODUCTION 13
Many who suffer arrest are able to clear themselves im- mediately on appearing before a magistrate. So, New York City instituted a Night Court where such as were arrested after four o'clock in the afternoon could be heard after not more than a few hours' deten- tion.
This Night Court, the only one in the world, aroused wide interest; many persons concerned in the ad- ministration of justice and many more who had never before visited a police court, attended its sessions. The author of these chapters was interested in this as, previously, she had been interested in the pioneer juvenile courts; her interest was like that of thousands, the country over, who rejoice at each new move in what seems the direction of a broader, deeper, kindlier humanitarianism. That was why an editor (to whom she will never be able sufficiently to acknowledge her indebtedness) said to her: " There are a lot of people who have the same kind of interest you have, but have not your opportunity of seeing for themselves. Tell them about the Night Court as you see it."
As she first saw it, it was a court for offenders of both sexes and of many sorts; the procession before the magistrate contained boys arrested for playing baseball in crowded streets, men arrested for peddling without a license, chauffeurs who had exceeded the speed limit, dock labourers who had grown too bellig- erent in drink, male creatures of many sorts and ages who had made assaults upon little girls, and a variety
14 INTRODUCTION
of other offenders; but the majority were women, and most of them were there on charges of immoral con- duct forbidden by the statutes of New York.
After a while it became necessary to have two Night Courts in New York, and the growing feeling that men and women should not be heard at the same tri- bunal, was respected : the original Night Court at Jef- ferson Market became a court for women only. (Bos- ton had led the way in a separate court for women. Chicago is now hearing in private, before a woman judge and women court officers, the cases of delin- quent young girls — sparing them both shame and pub- licity. Three or four years ago, when the author of these chapters began frequenting the Jefferson Market Night Court, it seemed a great step forward to find a woman probation officer always on duty; now, in Chicago, it seems no more than a beginning of what should be, to sit in Judge Mary Bartelme's little room with its door locked against the world, and see young girls in close counsel with a wise, tender little woman, wistful to help them redirect their lives.)
The Night Court presented, most urgently, a prob- lem in erring girls. It seemed quite reasonable, at that early stage of the author's progress, to ask the girls why they were there. As if they knew!
Then, when one had talked with a number of girls like " Florence," it was inevitable that a deep dejection should ensue. Magistrates, matrons, probation officers, rescue workers, all contributed to the feeling of despair
INTRODUCTION 15
regarding the Florences. "What's to be done?" " Well, whatever salvage may be effected is to be worked for among the betrayed girls who have not yet become public prostitutes."
This led to the article on "The Effort to Save Girls." And that, as inevitably, led to "Where the Trouble Begins " and " The Indictment of the Home " as set forth particularly in the United States Senate Report on " The Relation of Occupation to Crimi- nality and Immorality Among Women." Many per- sons were charging modern industrialism with the downfall of girls — crying that there was danger in going away from home to work. The Government investigators found that not industrialism but the slipshod home was the chief contributing source of female delinquency.
Then began a study of the kinds of homes from which many of our girl workers come, and of the family economics. The report rendered, after years of thorough investigation, to the United States Senate, was destructive of the old notion that most girls work for pin-money or for gewgaws. Four-fifths of them were found to hand over all their earnings to the family fund. What were the conditions which made this necessary ? How different, essentially, were they from the old conditions whose passing so many persons de- plore? How necessary are these differences? Could they be argued or legislated away? Or are they an inevitable phase of our social and economic evolution?
16 INTRODUCTION
These were a few of the questions that arose and demanded inquiry.
The notion that money paid to girl workers was in the nature of a contribution to their candy and feather fund, seemed deeply imbedded in many minds — es- pecially in the minds of those who employ girls' labour. On one hand were outcries against the small wages paid to girl workers, and demands for Minimum Wage legislation. On the other hand were retorts that girl workers were inefficient, undependable, and worth no more than the small sums for which they willingly sold their labour.
In studying the pros and cons of Minimum Wage legislation, it became evident that girls are indeed ill prepared for that industrial phase which most of them now enter upon for a longer or shorter period ; and also that they are ill paid, usually, even for the kind of service they render. A tragic proportion of them are not paid enough to keep body and soul together. The deficit must always be made up. Who pays it? That led to some startling revelations, and disclosed an astoundingly prevalent conviction that women have always been " supported " by some one other than themselves; that their labour has never been reckoned worth their " keep," but that the difference has been obligingly made up by somebody.
A very superficial glance at the history of woman and her share in the world's work serves to dispel this curious idea. But only a few persons, it would
INTRODUCTION 17
seem, have given the facts even a superficial survey. The last three chapters of this book summarize, to the best of the author's present ability, some of the most salient truths about woman and industry. In the gathering of these truths the author has neglected, she thinks she may say, no important work in English on women and economics, sex and society, or any kindred topic. The gist of them all is very simple: Woman was the creator of industry; she has always performed a major share of the world's work; when she has relinquished to man a field of labour of which neces- sity made her the mother, she has either made for her- self another field or, failing that, has become the pro- genitress of a decadent race. The nations on the " up grade " have always been the nations whose women were vigorous creatprs of industry. The na- tions on the " down grade " have always owed their decline to the wealth which divorced the women of their ruling classes from the development that labour gives, and made of them weak parasites and pamper- ing mothers.
Dense ignorance of the past and of its lessons has bred in many persons of to-day an attitude toward women and self-sustaining labour which must be cor- rected. There has been a marvellous increase of com- mon sense in the last few years; but even yet there are too many women who wear an apologetic manner because they earn their bread, and too few who are apologetic because they don't earn it ! Even yet there
18 INTRODUCTION
is a great deal of confusion in many minds about women " going to work." As if they had not always been very busily at work, maintaining themselves and others with the labour of their hands, the ingenuity of their brains !
The work-a-day girl is no new product. But she works, now, under new conditions, many of which are bewilderingly strange not to her only, but to her family, to her employer, and to the social order of which she is so important a part. The hope of helping even a few readers to realize how this change has come about and how exceedingly necessary it is that we meet it intelligently, has animated the author of these chapters.
She trusts that no explanation of their semi-story form will seem to have been called for. Also, that the plain speaking may nowhere offend. She has a very vivid memory of those not-so-distant years when her own curiosity was set violently in motion by what were meant for " discreet allusions." For instance, it has been suggested that in telling about Florence Arthur, in the first chapter of this book, the author should have contented herself with saying that Florence was ar- rested on a serious charge and taken to the Night Court. Could anything more completely " kill " all that follows, and keep the mind unacquainted with the sorry facts of street-walking, intent on : " What was it that she did ? " Could anything be more im- portant for a fun-loving young girl to know than the
INTRODUCTION 19
reason why she must be so circumspect on the streets and in all public places, so that she shall give no one cause to question her?
The slogan so reluctantly adopted by poor little Katie (as told in the second chapter) has also been questioned — not for its truthfulness, but for the ad- visability of printing it. The phrase was used as in his opinion expressing the crux of a terribly grave situation, by a man who knows more about the tempta- tions of the young working girl than any one the author has ever met. After years of experience on thousands of cases of delinquency, he declared that the hardest thing he had to fight was that oft-repeated cry : " You gotta be a good Indian ! " Few indeed are the girls who, after a very short experience in making their way in the world, have hot had this hideous sug- gestion made to them. What end shall we then serve by eliminating it from a story of their temptations? The author, frankly, cannot grasp this point «of view. She cannot believe that chapters written so earnestly and with such deep affection for the little sisters who face the world for their daily bread, can either offend or mislead. If she errs, in this, she very humbly begs
pardon.
C. E. L.
Chicago.
AT THE NIGHT COURT
THE Saturday night theatre crowds thronged Broadway. It was a few minutes past eight on a mellow October evening, and even people who were anticipating a treat in the playhouse seemed a little loath to go in out of the soft night air. Limousines and taxis, darting at breakneck speed up and down Broadway and around the corners of the cross streets, had their windows down, revealing for a fraction of a second, as they flashed by, glimpses of girls and women in filmy finery, their light wraps not even drawn together over their bare throats. Street cars discharged crowds of hatless femininity in light frocks at the theatre doors. Florists' shop windows were marvels of colour — orchids and violets and lilies- of-the-valley and gardenias and chrysanthemums and American Beauties and Killarney roses, displayed against backgrounds of feathery green ferns and bronze autumn leaves. Cheap jewellery stores, and a few of the better class, poured floods of electric light on their glittering displays. Hundreds of young working folk — lads and lassies — in pairs, in little groups, surged up and down taking in the sights.
Hundreds of " has-beens " slouched amid the throngs,
21
22 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
cynically reflective. Swift and ceaseless as the rush of waters through Niagara Gorge or Yellowstone Canon is the torrent of the human current through the dazzling Great White Way.
Near the corner of Thirtieth Street a girl loitered, looking in the windows of a candy shop and a cheap jeweller's next to Daly's Theatre. She was a pretty girl, of a quiet, unobtrusive sort, and as modest-look- ing as any of the girls who thronged the street. Her neat suit was brown, and she had a black hat with ostrich feathers, of the type thousands of working girls buy for " best."
A man stopped at the window a-glitter with rhine- stones. Out of the corner of her eye the girl marked him ; he was alone, and his leisurely manner indicated that he had nothing particular to do. The girl moved a little closer. " Good-evening," she said. Her man- ner was almost timid, but the man was city-wise. Whether his morals were offended, or his taste was not appealed to, or his mood was not propitious, the girl would never know; but he moved away.
The girl was about to saunter along, when a second man came up to the window and looked in. He lifted his gaze from the glittering gewgaws to glance cov- ertly at the girl. Something indefinable in his manner made her feel that he would not resent being spoken to. She tried again.
This man answered. " Good-evening," he said. " It's a fine night, ain't it? " j
AT THE NIGHT COURT 23
"Yes," agreed the girl. "Don't you feel like havin' a god)d time?"
"Sure! Where?"
She nameid a hotel of the kind seldom resorted to for any but disreputable purposes.
" You're under arrest ! " said the man, opening his coat and showing his badge. He was a plain-clothes detective from the Thirtieth Street police station.
There, a few minutes later, she was booked. She gave her name as Florence Arthur, her age as twenty- three, and her residence as on Twenty-seventh Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. The affidavit filed against her set forth that she was " a common prostitute and street walker," and that, in violation of the statute of the State of New York " in such cases made and provided," she had stopped John Feeny " for such purpose," naming the place and the hour. To this John Feeny swore, and Florence was held for an hour or so until there were, at the Thirtieth Street station, enough women who were entitled to immediate hearing at the Night Court, to make a wagon load. Then they and the officers who had made the arrests were driven down to Jefferson Mar- ket Court at Sixth Avenue and Tenth Street.
Arrived at the receiving door for prisoners on the Tenth Street side of the Jefferson Market building, John Feeny entered Florence's name, his own, and the charge against her. Then she was locked up in the receiving pen for women and he went to the desk
24s THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
of the clerk of the court and stated the particulars, so that papers might be made out for the case. This done, he awaited the call to appear.
In the pen with Florence were eight other women and girls who, like herself, had been arrested since 4 P.M., charged with misdemeanours and disorderly conduct, not felonies. It was a large cell, perhaps twenty-five feet square, and wooden benches ran around three sides; the fourth side was iron-barred and through the bars could be seen all that went on in the corridor outside. The walls of the pen were whitewashed, and it was brightly lighted with elec- tricity. When the first of the night prisoners was put into it, it was quite unobjectionably clean; but already the air in it was becoming foul.
Two of the women in the pen were drunk — one in a heavy stupor, and one noisy and violent. The woman in the stupor was a white woman, and young; she wore a dark blue calico wrapper and neither hat nor coat, and she was lying in a heap on the stone floor. Two or three times her fellow-prisoners had tried to dispose her decently on the narrow bench, but she repeatedly rolled off. The disorderly drunk was a negress; she was middle-aged and ample and terribly obscene.
One woman was crying; she was an eminently re- spectable-looking woman, almost smartly dressed, and she had been arrested just before closing time in a Sixth Avenue store, charged with shoplifting. Try-
AT THE NIGHT COURT 25
ing occasionally to console her was a younger woman wearing the full livery of poverty at its pinchingest; she had, too, the mark of consumption in her thin face, as well as signs of the ravages of a vile disease. She was there on a charge of violating the tenement house act which makes it unlawful for a woman to use for immoral purposes a room in any " building occupied as the home or residence of three families or more, living independently of each other and doing their own cooking upon said premises."
Besides these, there were four girls. One was very young and very frightened ; she sat still, in a far cor- ner of the pen, cowering, and when any one passed through the corridor, she hid her face with her hands. One girl was expensively dressed and defiant. One, a Jewess, was showily but shoddily dressed, and appar- ently unconcerned. One was a coloured girl, in Sev- enth Avenue finery; she was cheerful, unabashed, and had the same curious interest in her cellmates, their clothes, their grievances, their places of residence and modes of life, that another class of woman shows at a tea party or meeting of the sewing circle. All these girls were booked on the same charge as that made against Florence.
The magistrate arrived a little before eight, and promptly at eight an officer came to the pen, called " May Mooney," and the frightened little girl who did not look the seventeen years she claimed, stepped to the gate. The officer unlocked the gate and May
26 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
passed, trembling, through, hiding her face with her hands as she went. And after an interval of dazed unseeingness, she found herself looking into a not at all unkindly face three feet away from her across a broad desk. All around were other men, some in po- lice uniforms, others in citizens' clothes; but these May felt rather than saw, at first.
Her notion of a court had been of something in- quisitorial. Instead, she found herself face to face with a man who talked to her with much kindliness.
" How did you come to do such a thing, May? " he was asking. She had admitted the charge against her.
" It was like this," she said. " My pa's been sick in the hospital since las' winter, an' he ain't never goin' t' git no better, fer it's the consumption he has. An' all we had t' live on — my ma an' us five kids an' my ma's mother that lives with us — was what my oldes' brother could earn out o' school hours, runnin' errands an' sellin' papers an' that-like, an' what I got. I had a job in a millinery place on Sixt' Avenoo. I ust t' do kind o' easy things in the workroom, like puttin' in the linin's, an' t' deliver the hats, some- times, an' put away stock. An' I los' my job fer — fer foolin' around some, when I was sent out on errands. I ust t' like t' hear the songs an' ragtime on the pianos where they sell music in the department stores, an' sometimes I'd look a little in a penny arcade. An' so I got fired. An' I couldn't bear t' tell my ma. I tried
AT THE NIGHT COURT 27
every way I could t' git another job, but I couldn't. An' a girl that spoke t' me when I was sittin' in Union Square lookin' at the Help Wanteds in a paper that a woman left on a bench, she says to me that she knew how I could earn easy money — an' — I went with her an' she showed me. An' after that, I'd go out every mornin' just like I was goin' t' work, an' go t' one of the parks or some place like that, an' do jus' like she told me; an' I'd git something. An' in the afternoons, maybe I'd go to the stores or to a nickel show; an' at six I'd go home like I was comiri' from work; an' Sat'day night I'd give my ma the money." " And she never knew? "
" No; oh, no! She'd 'a' died if she'd ever knew! "
" Then you knew you were doing wrong, May ? "
" Sure ! — I mean, yes, your Honour. But I thought
I had to. I didn't see no other way; an' I didn't
know you could git arrested for it."
" Your kind friend, the girl, didn't tell you that?" " No, sir; I don't think she knew it, either." " Well, you know now, don't you, that you've broken the laws of the State of New York? " :< Yes, your Honour."
" And you know that your poor father would die of shame, and your mother's heart would break, if they knew where you are now? " " Yes, your Honour."
" Well, May, I believe you're going to be a better girl after this, and I'm going to give you a chance.
28 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
I'm going to see if the probation officer won't take you on trial. Miss Smith, please ! "
Out of the big group of persons behind May — bailiffs and reporters and others privileged to come within the rail that separates the judge's bench and prisoners' dock from the spectators' part of the court- room— stepped a tall, fine-looking woman of less than middle age, with firmness and gentleness in every line of her commanding figure and of her comely counte- nance. She was Miss Alice Smith, one of the oldest in point of service of women probation officers, and one of the most devoted and most efficient women in that work anywhere.
" Come with me, May," she said; and led the way through a gate opposite to that through which May had come from the pen, and into a big, quiet room where a police sergeant off duty dozed behind a high office desk. At the corner of a long table was a chair in which, following Miss Smith's motion, May sat down. The probation officer drew another chair close beside her; for fifteen minutes she questioned May and talked to her as a wise mother might have done. The tender, understanding heart in her was full of sympathy for the girl's pathetic situation, of appre- ciation of the pure human nature in May's love of ragtime and penny arcades; but she was careful not to let May feel that sympathy too much. God knew it was not in her heart to blame the child ! But God knew, too, how bad for the child it would be if the
AT THE NIGHT COURT 29
enormity of her offence were not deeply impressed upon her then and there.
" Well, May," she said, " I'm going to accept you on probation. Monday morning I shall set to work to get you a job. And I'll go to see your mother. No ! don't look like that ; I sha'n't tell her you've been in trouble — not unless you go back to this horrible business again. And if you do, you know you can be rearrested and brought in here and sentenced to the Island or to a reformatory for erring girls. I'll just tell your mother, Monday, that I'm a friend of yours and have heard that your father is ill. I'll see if there isn't something that can be done to save your father's life or to get work for your mother to do at home — anything to help you all get along. And you're to come to see me once a week for six months, and tell me how you are getting on and what a good girl you're trying to be. Will you do that? "
" Yes, ma'am — sure I will."
" Then you can go. And if I'm not mistaken, you'll see the day when you'll be glad — as I am — that you were arrested this afternoon. Your being brought here has given me a chance to know about you and to help you. If you begin, to-night, to be a good, true girl, working hard and keeping yourself self-respect- ing, you may look back on this experience as one of the best that ever happened to you. I don't want you to go from here feeling that the Law has disgraced you — but that it has saved you. You did what you could
30 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
to disgrace yourself; the Law has stepped in to save you. Good-night, May."
The woman accused of shoplifting had, meanwhile, been before the magistrate. She had never been ar- rested before and was evidently a decent woman — probably one of the many who are kept without pocket money by mean husbands — who had found the tempta- tion of some specially coveted bit of finery too strong for her resistance. Being truthful, she had given her own name when arrested; but it was noticed that she had not sent for her husband. When she was dis- missed with a kindly warning — the stolen trinket had been given up the moment she was apprehended — she thanked the judge and then broke into an impassioned plea for secrecy. The judge looked over the top of his spectacles at the young men from the newspapers ; she followed the direction of his glance, interpreted it, and turned to them. Her pleading was the most dramatic episode the old court had witnessed in some time. She never knew what it cost those boys to promise her what she asked; she was the best " story " the court had offered in many nights. But she won them, and they were heroically true to their word. That is, they wrote the story, but they scrupulously guarded every clue to her identity — even the boys of the " Yellow Press," who were taking their lives — or at least their jobs — in their hands by so doing.
The expensively dressed and defiant girl, and the Jewess who was unconcerned, were fined when their
AT THE NIGHT COURT 3.1
respective cases were called. The expensively dressed girl paid her fine from a well-filled purse and departed, gathering up her skirts. Not want, but sheer deviltry had brought her there. The Jewess had only part of the amount of her fine, so she was taken to the prison to " sit out " a few hours of confinement in lieu of the remainder.
The coloured girl was sentenced to the Island. " Somebody gotter go ter the Islan'," she declared with good-nature apparently unshaken, as she was being conducted to a cell upstairs, " othahwise you-all wouldn' be able ter keep yo' jobs. Somebody that cain't pay gotter make it look like you-all was powah- ful busy; an'/' breaking into a comic-opera lilt, "it might as well be me."
At the top of the winding iron stairs she was re- ceived by an ample matron, wholesome-looking in her immaculate uniform of blue and white stripes, white apron, and neat white collar, and decidedly kindlier in manner than the average trained nurse.
" Hello, Mamie," she said to the coloured girl, " you up again ? "
Mamie grinned. " Yas'm," she assented, submit- ting to being searched for " dope " and razors as if it were the most ordinary of amenities; "when dey cain't ketch nobody else, an' it look bad fer 'em, dey always comes aroun' an' ketches me."
Thereupon, with an air not very different from that of a hostess showing a guest to her room, the matron
3£ THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
conducted Mamie to a cell which was so many, many degrees cleaner and better aired and more comfortable than Mamie's room on Seventh Avenue that she might well have been philosophic about making it her abode till Monday morning, when she would go to the Island.
There was a comfortable, clean cot bed in the cell, which Mamie could hook up against the wall if she wanted more space to move about in; and there were a toilet, and a basin with running water, and an elec- tric light. Perhaps the only discomfort, from Ma- mie's point of view, was the cleanliness of it all.
But there was trouble ahead, the matron knew, with Mamie. Before the night was over the effects of the cocaine now in her would have worn off, and she would be clamouring for more. And doubtless before Monday morning she would be under the care of the jail physician and receiving, by his orders, small doses of her " dope," sufficient to keep her from going mad, but not sufficient to keep her from being ugly.
Presently the coloured drunk and the white drunk were brought upstairs. The coloured woman was under sentence to the Island. The white woman was being held until her relatives could be found; she was not disorderly, and if her people would take her away and keep her from being harmed while she was help- less, the city had no wish to assume the burden. The probation officer would take her on parole and see what could be done to help the unfortunate creatare overcome her weakness for drink.
AT THE NIGHT COURT 33
The receiving pen filled up as fast as it was cleared. Of those who had preceded Florence into it, all were now gone but the wretched violator of the tenement house act; but others, of like sorts, had taken their places.
" It's a gay life — not ! " the woman of squalor re- marked bitterly to Florence as her turn drew near. " I got a sick kid at home, an' when things got t' the worst, I done the one thing I could t' get a little money."
She told her story to the magistrate — her common- place story of desertion, struggle, sickness, no work, despair, and final recourse to " the oldest profession in the world " ; and he remanded her, to wait until a court officer investigated her case — or, in other words, went to see how far the testimony of her neighbours corroborated her story.
Then Florence was called. When the magistrate heard what she had to say for herself — which wasn't much, except that she had never been arrested before — he directed that she be sent in to Miss Smith, to see if that officer would receive her on probation. Under Miss Smith's kindly questioning, Florence talked rather freely. She was twenty-one, she said, and was born in Georgetown, Maryland. Her father died when she was young, and in a few years her mother married again. Florence was the only child of her mother's first marriage. She didn't like her stepfather, and he didn't like her. When his own
34 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
children came " he was worse than ever/7 Florence had to work hard at home, because her mother was ailing and the babies came close together and were ailing, too. The stepfather was a skilled mechanic who made good wages; but he was "tight" with his money, and he drank — Saturday nights. Florence used to steal out in the evenings, sometimes, to have a "little fun," and when he found it out he beat her. Often he beat her for other things, too. And finally she ran away and went to Baltimore, where she worked as a domestic. When she was seventeen and had saved a little money and got herself decently clad, she came to New York, " where wages was big, I heard, and there was lots to see when you wasn't workin'." She had " worked in families," first, but that " wasn't any fun " ; so she got a job as waitress in a cheap cafe. There was " more goin' on " in the cafe, more to see and hear, and it was nearer to the places where Florence liked to spend her " off time." But by and by Fourteenth Street shop windows, the penny arcade, the occasional visit to a five-cent theatre, failed to satisfy Florence. Only the " greenest " girls she met with in the " kuffay " were interested in these cheap delights; the others, who wore the largest pom- padours and the swellest suits and the biggest rhine- stone horseshoes and the most beplumed hats, were far beyond " them jay pleasures." They went to " real theaytres," attended dances " frequent," pat- ronized cafes with ladies' entrances and perpetuated
AT THE NIGHT COURT 35
palms and " vodeville," and bought the finery neces- sary for these " swell times " on Sixth Avenue above Fourteenth Street! There was only one way Flor- ence could share in these delights — and that was to do as the other girls did. As some measure success in life by the number of dollars they can save, and some women measure it by the number of persons they can afford to snub, so Florence measured it by the amount of " fun you have," and it was her dis- tressful limitation that she knew only one possible kind of fun. Eventually, she had given up the prosaic business of " waiting " and undertaken to support her- self solely by the " oldest profession in the world." But something must have been wrong with her busi- ness methods; for in a city where that business pros- pers, as it has probably never before prospered under the sun, Florence had not made a success of it. And to-night, with her funds down to twenty-nine cents, she had been driven to the street.
" Do you support a man, Florence ? " asked Miss Smith.
" No," said Florence — not convincingly.
" And you want to do right ? "
« Why— yes."
" If I let you go to-night, instead of having you sent up to the Island, and if I get work for you and do all I can to help you, will you try to keep straight ? Will you come to see me for a few minutes one even- ing each week for a while? "
36 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
Yes, Florence would; but she was not enthusiastic about it, and she stipulated that the work must not be " in a fam'ly." It must be where the possibilities of " fun " appealed to Florence ; otherwise she would have none of it.
" Florence," urged Miss Smith, " I know that every young girl wants to have a good time; that it's part of her youth to crave pretty clothes and parties and beaus. I don't say you mustn't try to have a pleasant time, and meet young men, and wear little ' pretties ' to make them find you attractive. But there are kinds of fun that are safe and wholesome; and the kind you have been having is neither, I suppose you know. Now, I shall be on duty here till long after mid- night, and to-morrow I ought to rest late and I want to go to church. But if you will go with me, I'll take my rest time and go over to Bellevue Hospital with you and get a special permit to take you through the wards where the girls who started out to have fun, as you understand fun, are dying horrible deaths and going into Potter's Field. I'd like to take you a short walk down one of those wards — if you can stand the indescribable horror of it — so you can say to yourself : ' If I go on as I'm going, here's where I shall be in two years or three years, or possibly five years at the outside.' '
"I don't think I could go," said Florence; "I always hate to see sick people."
" Florence ! " Miss Smith's tone suddenly be-
AT THE NIGHT COURT 37
came intense, searching. " You haven't any real idea of quitting this life — have you?"
Florence avoided Miss Smith's eyes. " Well "
she began, and hesitated.
" I know ! If you can have all the feathers and fun you want, without being vicious, you'd probably a little bit liefer have it that way. But the feathers and the fun you will have, and if you must pay a horrible price for them, you'll pay it. Isn't that it ? "
Florence was folding and refolding her handker- chief, minutely fluting the hem of it, and apparently deeply engrossed therein.
"Isn't that it?" Miss Smith repeated.
" Well " she began again.
Miss Smith wanted to sigh, but she forbore. Florence was one of such a large, such a terribly large class; and such a hopeless class, too, as experience had proved. Nevertheless she accepted Florence on probation; she could not bear to let her go to the Island without having tried to do for her what she could.
To blame Florence is as impossible as to help her. She is young; she is nice-looking; she is driven by every instinct of that brute part of her which develops itself and asks for no schooling, toward the one and only thing that Nature demands of her. She has had absolutely no education in the control of natural tend- encies by spiritual strength. She wants feathers and fun; she walks on Broadway and sees women having
38 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
both; girls she knows tell her there is only one way for her kind to share in life's gaieties. What sheer folly to tell Florence she must not want to be gay! What smug hypocrisy, too ! And how begin, now, to teach Florence ways of happiness that do not follow the paths of sin!
A victim of resourcelessness is Florence. She craves pleasures; she is incapable of creating pleasures for herself; and the few kinds of pleasure she is able to enjoy are kinds that cost too dear for her slender purse — the purse of the unskilled working girl — and that easily, when come by as she must come by them, lead to the depths. Nature makes Florence want feathers; and that soul in Florence which ought, if she knew she had one, to hold Nature in sufficient check to keep it from destroying her (and none of Nature's forces is so beneficent that it will not also destroy if it is not held in check), that soul is sleep- ing. Some believe there is a clarion call that can bring it at once into dominant activity; but, even of these, not many believe that the call can be made loud enough to wake Florence's soul at this stage in her piteous career. When she is " down and out," she may be made to hear; but while she is well, and the rhinestones glitter in the windows on Broadway, the ragtime floats out from behind the perpetuated palms of cabaret cafes, and fun and feathers are to be had for a price, Florence is not a hopeful subject for reclaim.
AT THE NIGHT COURT 39
More love in her home might have helped Florence ; but it is true, too, that girls have been known to run away from love-lit homes, lured by the burning of those million lights that flood the Great White Way. More education might have helped her; but it is also true that girls from the best colleges in the land have sometimes joined the desperate throng swirling toward Potter's Field.
One thing only seems certain to most of those who work with and for Florence and her like; and that is, that more education of one particular sort would have helped — more instruction in the penalties of sin. But that is, after all, the restraint of fear — which was the only spiritual control the world had until Love be- came incarnate and brought men to seek the better way because it is the happier. Merely to scare Florence so that she will forego the fun and feathers because of the hideous disease and the nameless grave that await her, is not to make Florence over into a very valuable member of society.
There are tens of thousands of women in New York — and everywhere else — who are just like Flor- ence in resourcelessness, in love of feathers and of fun; but, by virtue of kindly circumstance, they have not been driven, as she has, to pay the most hideous price for their amusement. Some man, their rela- tions with whom have the sanction of society, pays for their bridge "and their finery and their motor cars and their pink teas. Only God knows which of these
40 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
women, if the sanctioned relationship were to fail, to become impossible of renewal, would forego the feathers, and which would forego the sanction. In a world so full of possible happiness, they have never learned how to enjoy anything but feathers. There's the situation ! Human nature will seek delight ! The one possible safety for it is when it can be taught to find its delight in things that uplift and satisfy, and not to seek it in things that deprave and create dissat- isfaction.
Meanwhile, what little can be done for Florence and her kind the woman probation officers are seeking to do. And for the others — like May Mooney, for instance, and for the woman who was dead drunk, and even for the emaciated violator of the tenement house act — they are doing a very great deal. Not only do hundreds of girls owe an infinitely bettered life to the redirection they have had from some fine probation officer to whom they were paroled after their arrest, but in many, many cases the regeneration of whole families has followed on the interest awakened in them by the temporary misfortune of one of their members. It is not easy for a girl to keep good if her father is out of work and all her wages are swallowed up by the hungry necessities of a big family; so, often the probation officer begins her fight for the girl's future by getting work for the father. It is not easy for a girl to grow into fine young womanhood if her mother " tipples " and, as most tipplers do, keeps a slatternly
AT THE NIGHT COURT 41
home with the meals never on time; so, often the pro- bation officer bends all her energies to cure the mother of her wretched vice. Through the interest of this fine, strong, thoroughly-informed woman into whose charge a member of the household has been put, sick children (and elders) are sent to the hospitals and ailing ones to the country for " fresh air " vacations ; wayward lads are set to learning, under discipline of school or shop, a good trade; and new vistas of useful- ness and happiness are opened up to every one. So far from being a calamity, it is — as it should be — fre- quently a great mercy that offenders young in years and young in wrongdoing are brought to the bar of justice and turned over to a probation officer. The work is not yet being adequately done. The appro- priation for it is everywhere too small, and each officer has far too much to do to allow of any of it being done as thoroughly as it should be done. But the idea is unquestionably right and deserves every encourage- ment.
The needs of the work are many. One of the chief of them is a Municipal Detention House for Women, where offenders against the law can be held pending a thorough investigation of their case. This house should be graded, so that girls arrested for a first offence need never come in contact with women of long-standing depravity, but now wishing to reform. The dangers of contamination are not only mental and moral, but physical, and the sharpest segregation is
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the only justice. This should be followed in all re- ceiving pens, also; vile and obscene women should not sit, even for an hour, side by side with girls like May Mooney.
In a proper detention home there would be some alternative for Florence besides sending her to the Island or turning her immediately loose into the streets. There would be a place to keep girls who want to abandon the evil life and who are afraid — on account of the vengeful ire of the wretch they have been supporting; a place where they might safely stay until work could be found for them and they could be spirited away. Many otherwise decent women drink; they are not offenders against the law, but their help- lessness while intoxicated obliges the law to take care of them, if their relatives cannot immediately be found; it is a pity to lock these women in cells with felons and degraded wretches. A Municipal Deten- tion Home would take care of them. Another pur- pose it would serve would be the safe-keeping of wit- nesses who are now sometimes locked in cells like criminals.
Miss Maud Miner, once a probation officer, has opened a temporary home for girls which she calls Waverley House; it is at 38 West Tenth Street, only a few doors from the Jefferson Market Court. Miss Miner, aided by her sister Stella, receives into this home, which is supported by voluntary contributions, girls from the night or day courts of New York. She
AT THE NIGHT COURT 43
has accommodations for twenty-five girls and keeps them until a close study of their case shows what kind of care or work they need. Medical help for the sick is secured, work for the workless, clothing for the unclothed. The girls who remain any length of time are taught to cook and sew, and every effort is made to keep them happy.
The work of Waverley House has extended far be- yond its original purpose of a temporary home for girls from the courts, and has now many protective features. A big work is being done in prosecuting traffickers in girls, in teaching girls to avoid danger, and in helping parents to safeguard unruly daughters; also in returning runaway girls to their homes. But the Municipal Detention Home is still urgently needed, and no agency is more earnestly working for it than Waverley House, which cannot possibly enlarge its scope to meet the detention needs of the whole great city of Manhattan.
Another need of the probation work is a fund for the immediate relief of cases where the straits are so sore that to wait upon the action of any of the various charities may mean all the difference between a new start and abandonment to despair. Until such a fund is raised, any one who mistrusts his or her own ability to give money without encouraging the unworthy, cannot do better than to let one of these devoted probation women know that in one of the emergencies which are always confronting her, she
44 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
can spend a dollar for food or three dollars for a girl's arrears of rent, or five dollars for a warm coat, and be reimbursed next day. Also, any woman who has clothes to give away would find on any pro- bation officer's list persons in need of just what she has to give; and a bit of fairly suitable finery thus bestowed may save a girl from selling her soul for a gewgaw. Another thing that would help would be the cooperation of a greater number of societies and individuals interested in giving work and friendly en- couragement to girls taken on probation. The Jewish women are of all classes the best to their own. Their organizations are splendidly active in getting places for Jewish girls on probation, in visiting them in their homes, and attending to the needs of the family. More recently, another organization of women in New York has essayed to do the same for English and Canadian girls who come under the law. There ought to be much more assistance of the same sort, so as greatly to increase the number of quarters to which a probation officer can look for work and other assist- ance for girls she receives on probation. And the greatest need of all is a much-extended Big Sister League, the members of which shall take girls of the probation court under their personal, sisterly care. The work of the Big Brother League throughout the country has been magnificent and has done quite as much for the sturdy business and professional men who have assumed the brotherly care of delinquent
AT THE NIGHT COURT 45
boys as for the boys themselves. The work of fine organizations is necessary and valuable, but the really vital results are going to come in the close personal contact, the month-in and month-out association of sweet, sheltered women with girls who have felt the " world's rough hand." When those women come to realize, through this immediate contact, the girls' needs, those needs will be supplied. There will be more trade schools for girls, where they can be taught proficiency in work that will bring them a living wage. There will be Industrial Homes for young girls. There will be an enormous increase in the harmless pleasures open to young girls of poor parents and to those who are away from home, strangers in a big city. There will be girls' clubs for dancing and dramatics. There will be abundant places for the girls to entertain their young men friends. And there will be some action taken toward the instruction of girls in the wiles of the seducer. Thousands of girls who never meant harm are yearly led astray through their ignorance of the snares the destroyer uses. The Big Sisters must see to this.
It is a great work. Not the punishment but the prevention of crime is the endeavour of the modern reformers. And few steps taken toward that ideal of prevention are more worthy of support from the merciful, the law-loving, than the work of the proba- tion women.
II
THE EFFORT TO SAVE GIRLS
KATIE was sixteen. The time had come for her to go to work. For sixteen years Katie's father had supported her. He was a pretty good sort of father, but his interest in his children was not sentimental merely. Beginning as soon as he could earn enough for two, he had married. Through all the years of his later youth and early prime he had toiled hard and given his children a decent living. He had been investing, as it were, in a family — as some men invest in twenty-year paid-up life insurance — and he was now approaching the time when he could hope to realize on his investment. Katie was the first " bond " to become due.
There was nothing at home that Katie could do to reduce outlay or produce income by her labour, so Katie must go out into the market where labour is bought. And Katie was eager to go. For Katie knew a thing or two ! She knew how much fun she'd have, staying around home and helping her ma. She knew how much chance she'd have of meeting a fel- low. She knew how much finery she could buy, how much spending money she could have.
Some of the girls in Katie's class at school were
46
THE EFFORT TO SAVE GIRLS 47
going to a business college to learn stenography and typewriting. But Katie couldn't afford either time or money for more schooling. She must get into the market-place with what she had. But here again Katie was quite content. She had thought it all over, and decided that a big store offered the best chance of fun. If you're a stenographer, you see only the few persons who frequent one office. If you're a factory girl, you work all day and every day among the same people. But if you're a clerk in a depart- ment store, you get to see all the styles ; you're Johnny- on-the-spot when the openings come off; there are heaps of things to do at noon hour; and among so many thousands of customers passing through the aisles, there's no telling what moment a swell fellow will notice you and, having noticed, fall a victim to your charms.
Katie got the coveted job. The other girls behind the counter to which she was assigned were very " swell " and they made Katie feel " as green as grass." But she tried to win their favour by the sincere flattery of imitation. They were delighted to show off before Katie, so they allowed her to over- hear their talk of dances and theatres, of suppers in restaurants where orchestras play; to see their silver mesh purses and their willow plumes. These girls " must earn awful much." Katie earned four-fifty a week. She had to give her pay envelope to her father. Out of it he returned her a dollar. This was
48 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
all she had for her every expense except her board.
Things were stirring in Katie that she did not un- derstand. Her little head was whirling with romance. Her young body was waking to Life. It was Spring- time for Katie. Nature, that designed her to mate and to perpetuate her kind, was far from caring how she did it. She filled Katie's mind with dreams about a Prince; she made Katie scan every youth she met, questioning if this be not he; and she tampered — for her own purposes — with Katie's vision, so that Katie saw things not at all as they were, but as she was wistful to believe them.
One day a young man did come along who noticed Katie. He might not meet your ideas of a Prince, nor mine; but he met Katie's. He "made a date" with her to see her after the store closed; he was on the curbstone waiting for her when she came out the employes' door. It was the first time that any one had waited for Katie, and she was very proud. She scanned the scores of men and youths who were waiting for girls and found hers. He " walked a ways " with her and asked her if he couldn't take her out sometime. Of course he could! Katie couldn't ask him to her home. There was no place there to entertain a fellow. The family had four rooms, and one of them was nominally a parlour, but it had divers other uses also and it was never avail- able for the exclusive use of one member of the fam- ily. And anyway, Katie had misgivings as to the way
THE EFFORT TO SAVE GIRLS 49
her pa might receive a fellow. So she said nothing at home about the Prince.
When she went out, after supper, evenings, no one questioned her particularly as to her destination. Everybody went out, if the evening were at all pleas- ant— even Katie's ma. There was always something in the streets to divert a person ; and there was never anything in the house.
The first evening Katie spent with her new " friend/' he was a model of propriety. If Katie had ever heard any tales of " fresh guys " with whom it is not wise for girls to go, she had every reason to assure herself that she knew better than to " pick up with anythin' like that." This fellow was a swell, all right. His father was rich; his mother was a society woman. They wanted him to marry " one o' these here society girls. Nothin' to 'em! I never liked 'em. But the minute I seen you, it was all off with them fer keeps. It was love from the word ' Go/ with you, Kid ! "
Katie's heart nearly burst with gratification. How could he pick her out from all the world to love ? She was so shabby and " green " ! It was like the story- books. It was real romance. And there were per- sons— grown persons, old and sour and unbelieving — who said such things never happen in real life. Katie knew better.
The second or third evening Katie and her Prince spent together he suggested going to a hotel. Katie
50 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
did not understand. He explained. She was fright- ened, shocked, inexpressibly hurt. She had heard of such doings, but she associated them solely with " fresh guys " and not with heroes of romance. And in high dudgeon because she " misunderstood " him, he left her — to go home alone.
Katie cried all night, and for several nights; and pined and watched all day, hoping he would come back to her. In the story-books, the hero always came back to the girl who had been good and true, and besought her to forgive him. But this hero didn't come. Katie's days became flat, stale, and un- profitable again. Then another Prince appeared.
But he, too, was like the first. Katie's melancholy had now become so deep that she could not conceal it. Myrtle asked her: "What's ailin' yeh, Kiddo?" And Katie, in a burst of woe, confided her bitterness to Myrtle. Myrtle was sympathetic, but amused. " Why, yeh poor kid ! " she cried. " Ain't yeh got a bit o' sense ? Don't yeh know there ain't no feller goin' t' spend coin on yeh f er nothin' ? Yeh gotta be a good Indian, Kid — we all gotta ! "
So ! That was it ? Assured that " everybody " did it, Katie concluded it was useless for her to hope for anything different. The next time a fellow took her out and gave her a swell time, then asked her to go to a hotel, she went.
Katie is typical — not of department store girls as a class, but of a class of girls, some of whom work
THE EFFORT TO SAVE GIRLS 51
in department stores and some of whom are trained nurses; some of whom sing in choruses and some of whom sing in church choirs; some of whom are stenographers and some of whom are " stars." Wherever a girl's desire for ease, luxury, and gay times exceeds her ability to provide these for herself, and her preference for virtue is exceeded by her de- sire for these other things, we find the Katies — and the distinctions are without a difference, whether they call themselves Katie or Kathryn or Kathleen.
Social science calls this thing " occasional prostitu- tion," to distinguish it from the two other main classes of prostitution — clandestine and professional. The clandestine class comprises the " kept " women and girls — kept temporarily by one man. The profes- sional class is composed of women who ply a public trade in vice.
It is possible to estimate the numbers in this latter class; in the two former classes no estimate is pos- sible, but all students of the social question agree that occasional prostitution is practised by a number of girls infinitely greater than any one would believe if the figures could be made known.
Under pressure of many different kinds, girls yield ; infatuation for a man who makes them believe all girls do it and it is " the only way"; low wages and meagre comforts ; love of little luxuries and gay times —these are the main causes. Some girls who are in it for gain pick up any chance that comes their way
52 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
to earn extra money. Others set apart stated portions of their time for it. Many girls give their noon hour to this. The cheap hotels and other places of public assignation (among which are reckoned to be eighty per cent, of saloons) house at every noon hun- dreds of girls — many of them no more than mere children — who sell their dearest treasure for the price of a rhinestone pin or a string of blue beads. Many girls who work in offices and stores spend one or two or three nights a week in some " resort," and earn the difference between shabby insufficiency and the ability to compete with, or even to dazzle, the girls who work beside them. A department manager in one of Chicago's largest and finest dry goods stores recently told Dean Walter T. Sumner, head of Chi- cago's Vice Commission, that of the ten girls under him, seven — to his definite knowledge — spent either two or three nights each week in houses in the Red Light district.
Probably they all began, like Katie, by trying to " be a good Indian ! "
It is the girls of this class who are engaging the most serious attention of all who have the nation's welfare at heart. The United States Government, through the Department of Commerce and Labour, has been investigating conditions among these girls for years. Many municipalities are waking to the girls' needs. And much of the religious and private
THE EFFORT TO SAVE GIRLS 53
benevolence which used to be directed toward the pro- fessional prostitute class is now exercised to far bet- ter purpose in trying to keep girls from getting into that class. When they are once in, it is exceedingly hard to get them to come out; or, if they come out, to get them to stay.
The situation of greatest moment to students of the social question to-day is just this: Economic evolution has brought about a state of affairs wherein the world's labour mart has actually come to depend on the work of women outside the home. It is useless to rail against this development — to ask the march of progress to turn back; the condition is here, and it is here to stay and to increase.
The girls come into the market young and, for the most part, unskilled. Not many of them expect to stay. It is an adventure. Partly it is, as with Katie, necessary; and largely it is, as also with Katie, quite voluntary. A girl goes to work, now, as eagerly as a boy does — but with different purpose. She has sel- dom any idea of developing high proficiency — I am not speaking now of the trained, professional girl, but of the great mass of girl labour — but is in the mart for two reasons: pleasure and matrimony. She wants a good time; she wants to approve the world, to find life thrilling and satisfying; she wants to be where there are others like her, loving laughter, wist- ful for romance, ardent for adventure, eager to flaunt attractions. She is a young thing, palpitant with all
54 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
that makes youth wonderful. There is almost noth- ing that she will not dare if her sensitive pulses are stirred. Nature made her that way, for her own purposes. Maternity calls for a sublime daring. Nature takes care of that daring, jealously.
Now, the thing that this young creature can do to earn money is little likely to interest her. There isn't a great deal of place in a girl's interests, when Spring- time reigns in the heart, for packing soda biscuit or tucking shirtwaists or selling curtain rings or pound- ing out endless repetitions of " Yours of the tenth inst rec'd and contents duly noted." It isn't that she doesn't like working; only, she is uninterested in the work.
Some very dull routines — like stitching and sorting and packing and riling — provide less entertainment than may be had in other occupations. But no matter what the surroundings, it soon becomes apparent that the Romance of which Katie is in such eager quest lies somewhere beyond; at a dance, maybe; or at a summer park. Occasionally Katie meets him in her work; but oftener she must seek him outside.
Where? Well, anywhere that youth finds oppor- tunity for sport, for laughter, for the display of those guiles and graces Nature has given it to make it at- tractive. The female creature may be ever so able to take care of herself, but she loves a male creature with a longer reach and a stronger grasp than her own — some one to provide for her. She is thrilled by the experience of being with some one who will show
THE EFFORT TO SAVE GIRLS 55
her repeated evidence of his ability and his desire to provide for her. If she is accustomed to a modest scale, she gets the thrill in successive ice-cream cones and nickel shows and in drinks after every dance — gets it just as deliciously as others do whose " tokens " come from the florist's or the jeweller's.
And the male creature, driven by an instinct just as strong, loves to dazzle, to " show off " ; loves to be led a chase ; loves to overtake at last her whom he has singled out for his mate.
Yet there are excellent people who wonder, sadly, why youths will go to White Cities and nickel shows and dances, and why they will not sit contentedly in " classes " for the improvement of their minds or the inculcation of domestic arts!
The life these girls will enter upon when they marry is unromantic enough — full of toil and poverty and pain and severe renunciation. It is well for the future that Nature's power to dazzle is so strong; for, otherwise, what girl would have the courage to take that burden up? Some one has said of youth and play that, as the sunlight of one age goes into the earth to come out in energy for a later age — meaning, of course, our coal deposits — so the laughter of youth becomes in due process transmuted into power. All those of us who build for the future — and no one has truly lived who has not in some wise so builded — should be exceedingly tender of the gaiety of young girls, especially the gaiety of the little daughters of
56 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
the poor. The children of to-morrow ought not to have mothers who never knew Romance.
In other days, play was better managed than it is to-day. In the folk-dances on the village green; the splendid pageants which celebrated ducal weddings and victories in war; the processions of the Saints' Days; the inter-township choral contests; the festivi- ties of the fair and the competitive exhibitions of the great guilds, many people took part. This is the wholesomest kind of play. But it was supplemented by much arena entertainment — gladiatorial contests succeeded by tournaments; bullfights in countries where Spanish feeling swayed; athletic games in countries where the Greek spirit survived.
We offer our youths far too few occasions of com- ing together in play. One class of our young people has splendid opportunities to enjoy the pleasures of concourse, in the football games of every fall. But these scarcely touch the girls who toil. The Ameri- can boy has baseball to engross him from the time he is three years old. It is magnificent for him when he plays it, and it is great for him when he sees a spirited game played. In a vacant lot my window overlooks, some boys are playing as I write. They are young fellows of twenty or thereabouts, and they come every Sunday morning to that lot to play. The wine-sap air their lungs are drinking in, this golden October morning, is invigorating enough to offset all the dust-laden air they may have breathed through-
THE EFFORT TO SAVE GIRLS 57
out the week in shop or office or factory. The exer- cise they are getting is glorious. Once in a while an unusually lusty yell breaks forth as the fringe of on- lookers screams encouragement to some player who is making a good run. What a thing that yell is! When that same youth sits on the bleachers at the Ball Park and yells himself hoarse over some pretty play of a favourite, he is getting the fun of the con- course, and it is doing him a world of good. But here! Here he is himself, for a brief, breathless mo- ment, the hero who wins applause. And I exult with him in the yells that acclaim his prowess.
But where is his sister, this wonderful morning — his sister who has toiled in shop or factory just as many hours of the week as he has? Where was his " girl " yesterday afternoon when he spent his half- holiday on the " bleachers " ? It is possible she was with him; it is more probable she was not.
On one point, nearly all persons who have had wide experience with girls agree ; and that is, that few girls incline naturally to vice, and most girls incline nat- urally to folly. For their tendency to folly we must not blame them. We must remember why they yearn to deck themselves, to attract attention, to laugh and dance and be gay. And because we see through Na- ture's design in dazzling them, in making them mad — quite mad — with the madness of springtime and the mating season, we must not try to check their folly,
58 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
only to direct it. They must have their fling. But they ought to have it wholesomely. We owe it to them and to the future that they should have ample opportunity to laugh and to attract and to be courted, in conditions that do not menace them. They don't want to go wrong. When they go, it is because we who ought to be so infinitely concerned about them have neglected some simple safeguard.
And safeguard the innocent we must. For after innocence (by which I emphatically do not mean ignorance) is gone, there is woefully little we can do to repair the loss.
The safeguarding is being done in three ways : by law, by protection, and by warning. Our national laws are, within the last few years, fairly well designed to take care of immigrant girls. >
But these laws apply chiefly to aliens. A much- needed law for the protection of our own girls is re- cently operative in the Mann Law, which provides for the punishment of persons who transport women or girls from one State to another for immoral purposes. Practically every State in the Union has a strict law against the detention of females in immoral resorts against their will. But the detention continues. A law is worth just exactly what the overpowering major- ity of citizens wish it to be worth. We have laws, too, that regulate employment agencies, compelling them to operate under license and making it a misdemeanour for them to send girls unwittingly into vicious places.
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Girls should know these laws, and they should know that there is redress for them beyond what their own feeble powers can accomplish. Every city, every State, has its associations for the prosecution of any who seek to wrong girls. A girl has only to tell her grievance, and competent pleaders will put it before the law. The nature of these associations differs in different States and cities. Some States have branches of the National which is itself a branch of the International Vigilance Association which exists solely for the protection of girls; and nearly every city of considerable size has a Women's Legal Aid Society and a Young Women's Christian Association. One branch of the Vigilance Association's work is in acquainting girls and their parents with the dangers that beset girls; and with the places where they may apply for direction or protection.
In our country the organizations known as Travel- lers' Aids are under Government direction only at ports of entry and in behalf of immigrant girls. The safeguarding of our own girls journeying from coun- try to city in search of employment, is done only by private philanthropy. In some cities it is a depart- ment of the Young Women's Christian Association; in others, it is a distinct organization. But no girl need go friendless into a strange city. There are scores of persons in every place where girls go for work, whose business it is to befriend them. If a girl leaves home to answer an advertisement, she may
60 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
send the advertisement in advance of her to the Secre- tary of the Vigilance Association or to the Employ- ment Director of the Young Women's Christian As- sociation, and have the advertiser investigated and reported upon. The same sources will yield her addresses of reliable places to board and to seek em- ployment. If a girl has not written before leaving home, and made arrangements about where she will go, she should lose no time, on arriving at the railway station in the strange city, before asking for the ma- tron of the women's waiting room and telling this matron that she wants the Travellers' Aid. If a woman representing this organization does not happen to be at the station, she will come at once on the matron's telephoned request. She will advise the girl where it is safe for her to go to look for lodgings and for employment, and will warn her against all the pitfalls of the city.
The great lack is not of organizations to help girls, but of knowledge that such organizations exist. The ignorance not only of girls themselves but of their parents is the thing that is hardest to overcome.
The story is current that some employers, so far from taking any care like this, openly encourage im- morality among their girls. Government investigators have found, for one thing, that nearly every city has its whispered legend of a department store manager who tells each girl when he hires her that it is expected she will have " a friend." In other words, that the
THE EFFORT TO SAVE GIRLS 61
store does not suppose any girl will try to live on the wages it pays; that it takes either clandestine or occa- sional prostitution for granted. Stories of these managers are told in circumstantial detail; but no actual case has ever been found against any of them. This may be because they are innocent of the charge, or it may be because evidence in such cases is always hard to secure. Another widely current tale the Gov- ernment has tried hard to investigate relates to em- ployers who discharge all girls not found complaisant to the demands of manager, floor-walker, stock-buyer, or the like. There is one thing sure about this: no employer in his senses discharges a thoroughly com- petent girl for defending her honour. If a girl is incompetent— as such a terrible majority of them are! — she may be forced to hold her place by sacrificing her virtue; an incompetent girl who is acquiescent may be preferred over an incompetent girl who is not. But in a day when the demand for skill so far exceeds the supply, it may safely be taken as axiomatic that efficiency is one of the best protectors a girl can have. Efficiency doesn't preclude immorality — but it helps to preclude it. For it usually means an interest in work ; and if a girl has that and the wage that efficiency brings, and wants to be good, she can get along with- out any such severe temptations as beset the girl whose hold on her job is tenuous and whose wage is inade- quate to more than the barest subsistence.
The two great safeguards for a girl are knowledge
62 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
of the pitfalls and skill to earn herself, independent of favour, a decent living — these, and the opportunity to engage in recreation that is lively, romantic, and wholesome.
There are persons who deplore the necessity of set- ting girls on guard; who declare with loud lamenta- tion that the sweetness of life is gone when fear enters in. " Fools, and slow of heart! " How can there be any who so misremember their own youth?
I once took to the park to see the zoo a very small cousin of mine. In a moment when my slow wits were returning from some wool-gathering, she was under the railing and close to the bars of the bear cage, endeavouring to poke a sleeping grizzly with her wee foot. " Baby ! " I cried. " You mustn't do that ! The bear will bite you." "WhufTor?" she asked. When I explained, was her joy in life — and in bears — gone, do you think? Why, long before she could either walk or talk, she had loved the thrill of danger — loved to be " boo-ed " at. Every normal creature is still rich in feelings handed down to him by his forbears, who lived the primitive life with all its instincts of self-preservation. We spiritually blind- fold any one when we ask that one to walk through life unseeing, uncomprehending, the dangers that beset the way. Every soul is entitled to the thrill of picking a safe path through dangers. Our ardour for adventure must have expression somehow. It is in us all to yearn to do battle against our natural ene-
THE EFFORT TO SAVE GIRLS 63
mies. Any wise parent teaches the young first of all how to feed ; then how to go in search of sustenance ; then how to avoid enemies or, having met them, how to give most effective battle. A field mouse does this much. Shall a human parent do less?
So much for safeguarding. When more of it is done, we shall have less salvage work to do. Just now, the rescue of wreckage is a most necessary activity.
Little by little, the efforts to reclaim girls have been tending to centre in two kinds of helpfulness. One branch reaches the young girls, under age, who trans- gress the laws against juvenile delinquency. The other branch reaches the girls who have been betrayed and are about to become mothers.
What most surprises each investigator newly en- tered upon the study of girls' reclaim is that, with the exception of houses of correction to which girls are committed from the courts, nearly all the effort ex- pended on unfortunate girls is in what is called ma- ternity work. This is excellent work. It gets hold of great numbers of girls of the clandestine and occa- sional classes, and offers them refuge at a time when they are cast off not only by their associates in evil- doing but, all too often, by their own kindred. These girls are cared for during a period usually of several months; are taught to do some useful work, to forget the past, and to look hopefully toward the future. And when they are ready to leave the Home, there is always a place waiting for them to go to.
64 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
Almost without exception these workers believe in keeping mother and child together if it can possibly be done. Experience has taught them, they say, that a greater per cent, of girls who keep their fatherless children than of girls who let them go, are restored to the self-respecting life, become good women, and marry good men. On the other hand, there are work- ers no less earnest who deny this; who believe the struggle awaiting the girl-mother will be hard enough for her alone, and that it is asking too much of frail human nature to ask her to keep with her the father- less child. There are points to be considered in each argument.
For the girl who wants to keep her child with her, there is but one class of work open — and that is house- work, which is usually the last work on earth that a pleasure-loving girl who has fallen from virtue wants to do. Yet every year hundreds of girls, in real hero- ism and beautiful mother love, go out of maternity homes into strange families where their shame is known, and take up the burden of life as domestic servants. And the demand for them always exceeds the supply — partly because they work cheaply; partly because most of them go on farms where female labour is extremely difficult to get; and partly because there are in the world many truly good people who are happy to do what they can toward giving somebody's daughter another chance.
The greater number of these brave girls marry, and
THE EFFORT TO SAVE GIRLS 65
those who keep affectionately interested track of them say that on the whole they marry quite as well as the average girl who has not fallen. The Florence Crit- tenton work is nearly all maternity work; so is the girls' salvage work of the Salvation Army and the Volunteers of America, and of the Baptist and Meth- odist Deaconesses ; and nearly every city has its other maternity homes unaffiliated. with any order, but nearly always under religious influence.
All of these workers would welcome the girl of the streets, of the houses of shame; but she seldom comes, and when she does come she seldom stays. The rea- sons for this are many. One of them is that there is scant welcome anywhere in the industrial world for the one-time prostitute. Some persons are afraid of her diseased body, and some are afraid of her polluted mind; some are pharisaical; and some are fearful lest she betray confidence reposed in her and seek to undo some innocent one with whom she is thrust into association. Usually she is unskilled in any kind of labour; and if she has been any length of time in the life of public shame, she is almost sure to be mentally unbalanced by drink and drugs and dis- ease, and by the constant occupation of her mind with vile things. For lewdness gets to be a disorder of the mind and is hard indeed to eradicate. Also, the inability to earn at any form of honest industry more than a starvation wage soon discourages the girl who has been used to " big money." She may or may not
66 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
have learned to like the life of public prostitution — some do, and some do not — but she has never learned to love the life of self-respecting toil, or she would not be where she is. And when she comes out of the dis- ordered life and attempts to go back into the decently ordered, she finds that ordered life even less to her liking than it was when its humdrum monotony so palled on her that she fell an easy prey to sin.
And yet, the public prostitute is not a wholly hope- less creature. She does reform, sometimes; and sometimes she does stay reformed. But she requires an almost superhuman patience in her would-be re- formers, and an almost superhuman knowledge of human nature. She is nearly always emotional; she will weep hysterically at the mention of home and mother, and may respond with gratifying eagerness to the urging to repent. The amateur reformer grows excited as she tells him how hard the world is on fallen women, and how she would love to do better if she could only get a chance. Perhaps he gets her a situation among people who have no knowledge of her past. And the chances are that she either puts him to shame by declaring herself for what she is (it is a part of the psychology of depravity that it loves to boast) or brings a hornets' nest of just in- dignation about his ears when it is discovered that she is so diseased as to be less safe, physically, than a leper. After one or two failures, the amateur gets discouraged. After scores of failures, even the wise
THE EFFORT TO SAVE GIRLS 67
reformers grow disheartened. The girls lie pro- digiously— drugs make them lie, and the criminal per- version of their minds makes them lie — and their easy emotionalism hardly lasts beyond the appeal. Their minds have got beyond the power of any concentrated thought but one. Industrially they are worthless; they seem not only to lose power to think, but also to lose manual dexterity. Even the simplest tasks to which they can be put, are often beyond their power to accomplish. As one discouraged reformer said: " If you put one of those girls in a mahogany-lined library with nothing to do but answer the telephone and paid her twenty dollars a week, she wouldn't stay." But only a very unwise reformer would put a girl fresh from a life of public prostitution into a mahogany-lined library with nothing to do but answer the telephone.
There is only one possible cure for the girl who might be reclaimed, and that is work — as hard work as she can gradually and with infinite patience be made capable of, and as interesting, fairly-remunerative work as can be found for her to do. A great deal has been said against those industrial homes to which girls are committed for correction. It is the belief of some persons who might reasonably be expected to know, that more girls graduate out of these institutions into total depravity than graduate out of them into decent self-restraint. If this is so — which is open to doubt and perhaps to proof in denial — it is sometimes the
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result of ill-management, but quite as often the result of poor diagnosis. The fumbling diagnosis of med- ical doctors puts many patients in their graves. But also — diagnosis being a science yet in the infancy of its development, and the doctors doing the best they can — they often strike it right and effect a cure. So- cial diagnosis is an even more undeveloped science; and in this dawn of our consciousness that there can- not always be one just law for many men, we are in- evitably " fumbling." It would be strange if we did not often commit to an institution some girls for whom an institutional life, or that institutional life, is almost predestined to bad results. But if we fail to cure some, it is no less certain that we do great good to others. And the proportion of failures is not greater than that among parents, and probably not in excess of what it would be if the erring girls were parcelled among amateur philanthropists.
In hospital and clinic work, nowadays, the wise physician has learned that he fumbles unpardonably when he tries to treat a patient of whose living condi- tions he knows nothing. We have learned the same regarding the sin-sick; and some day when the spirit of social service, of social responsibility, is awakened in us all, we shall have so many persons of the edu- cated and earnest classes interested, each in some little group of the erring and the neglected, as shall make it possible for them to get their other chance in the world.
But chiefly, as we have learned the value of hygiene
THE EFFORT TO SAVE GIRLS 69
and of sanitation and of a pure food and drugs law, in the world of material health, in the domain of spiritual well-being we are also awakening to the realization that an ounce of prevention is worth a great deal more than a pound of cure. The hand of help, of rescue, of remedy, must never be stayed. But the hand of good guidance must be offered far oftener than it has been ; and it must be so offered that the ardent, adventurous young creatures who need it so, will accept it — confident of the love and under- standing that hold it out.
Now for a few words of suggestion as to what you and I may do. Charity — which is love — begins at home. Do you keep a domestic servant ? Do you employ a clerk or an office girl? Do you hire sea- sonal help to aid you in harvesting hops or picking prunes? Have you girls in your employ, few or many, in any sort of capacity? Do you know where they go to look for fun, and what they find? Does it ever occur to you that their innocent pleasure is any part of your obligation? Does it ever occur to you that, all other considerations aside, their every oppor- tunity for wholesome gaiety and recreation makes them of more worth, not to the community alone, but to you? Many employers realize this. Many more do not. But each year sees an increase in the num- ber of the wise.
Know something of the moving-picture shows your maid-of-all-work loves to frequent. It will give you
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another topic of common interest with her, and also an opportunity to satisfy yourself if the films are all they might be, if the conditions of the theatre are safe if a fire or panic should occur, and if the ventila- tion is sufficient. Go, once in a while, to the hall where your little office-girl dances. Make up your mind if it is a good place for her to go, or if there are not others where she could have as much fun with less menace. When you are coming home on Sunday nights, next summer, from your little place up the Sound or down the bay or across the lake, investigate conditions on the steamboat. And if you jfind — as you doubtless will — that the staterooms are largely used by young excursionists for assignation purposes, present your protest to the navigation company, to the Juvenile Protective League, or to anybody and everybody who will give it heed. Know what the laws made for girls' protection are, and whenever you see one infringed " holler " ! The laws, as we have said before, are worth exactly what the majority of citizens manifestly desire them to be worth. Every one of us can do as much as any other one to pile up the majority on the right side.
Find out what your community is trying to do, and " get in on it." Chicago, for instance, has her mu- nicipal pleasure halls — beautiful big rooms with floors like glass, many of them decorated with palms and ferns from the park conservatories, all of them with the most up-to-date cloak-room arrangements. There
THE EFFORT TO SAVE GIRLS 71
are about fifteen of these, scattered over the city in the small parks and playgrounds. They are free. Any society or individual may have the room on a desired date by speaking for it long enough in ad- vance. There is no charity about it. - Every one un- derstands that the hall is a Park Board property, and feels entitled to use it if he cares to. And thousands of young people every week have their good times here, who used to have no other meeting-places than in the halls run by saloons.
A post-card sent to the Superintendent of Small Parks, South Park Board, Chicago, will bring you a detailed history of how this movement has been financed and what it has accomplished. Perhaps you can start a similar movement in your community.
Investigation proves that the girls who frequent Settlements seldom patronize the dangerous resorts. Perhaps you can do something to help " get up " things at a Settlement, and keep more girls entertained there. There is no one who cannot do something to help keep one little girl happy and safe. The cheap labour of these little sisters has brought within the reach of multitudes of us such luxuries and gratifica- tions as only the very rich in another age could afford to enjoy. Shall we not make them some affectionate return? If the laughter of youth to-day becomes the energy of the world to-morrow, do we not owe to posterity some investment in glee and the possibilities of Romance?
Ill
WHERE THE TROUBLE BEGINS
SIDE by side at the rail they stood, the American parents and the mother who was foreign-born. It was in the room of the Assistant Chief Pro- bation Officer of the Chicago Juvenile Court, whose business it is to hear complaints and issue warrants for bringing children into court.
The American family group was composed of father, mother, and young man son, the latter perhaps twenty years old. They were people of more than comfortable circumstances — well educated, well man- nered, well dressed. The father, who gave his occu- pation as that of travelling salesman, was so overcome that he could not conclude his testimony, but had to retire. In his stead his son tried to do what had to be done. The mother grasped the railing for support, and bit her twitching lips in an effort to keep an out- ward calm. She was full of solicitude for " Papa " — as she called him — and was evidently trying des- perately to keep up for his sake.
They were there to entreat the arrest of the only daughter of the household, on the charge that she was " incorrigible." She was not quite sixteen, and
they hoped that she might be committed to some insti-
72
^ bo •O
WHERE THE TROUBLE BEGINS 73
tution where she could be reclaimed from those last depths of degradation to which she was now slipping. They acknowledged their powerlessness to restrain her. Unless the law would intervene, they could see no hope.
Beside them, waiting their turn at the listening ear, stood the foreign-born. The mother was a beak- faced, thin woman, with a curiously crooked, thin- lipped mouth, and small, bead-like eyes. Her head was wrapped in a dirty veil that had once been white. Her hands, gripping the rail beside those of the other mother, were toil-roughened and looked as if they had not been washed in a week. (The hands beside them were neatly kid-gloved.) This woman's sag^ ging, dragging clothes exhibited not one last, linger- ing trace of that feminine pride of appearance which dies so late and so hard; they covered her nakedness and therewith they served their sole purpose.
She had brought her daughter to the court. She needed no officer with warrant to enforce her will — one look at that thin, crooked mouth made this fact evident. The daughter was a rather handsome girl — or she would have been but for her quite terrible ex- pression, compounded of bold defiance and black sul- lenness; in her masses of dark puffs (which suffi- ciently marked her status; she was still wearing an
•*j
effect like three pounds of frankfurters at the back of her head, instead of the newer effect of a row of buns all around it) were two large combs glittering
74 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
with rhinestones. She had no head-covering except the frankfurters (which in truth were plenty!), but she wore at least three " gilt " rings and her red dress had an indefinable air of having been chosen less to gratify her sense of beauty than to attract a certain kind of attention. She looked as irreclaimable as it is possible for a girl not yet sixteen to look; and yet she was still under a certain terror of that mother with the thin, crooked mouth.
There they stood, neat suit of gray brushing non- descript garments of dirt-bespattered black; grimed hand with inky finger-nails, not a foot from shapely hand in well-fitting kid; face of flint, and face of putty — invoking the law against their young daughters.
That was a week ago. In the meantime the cases (with many scores of others) have been investigated. Here are the results of investigation :
Myrtle Taylor is a high school girl. Her father's salary is forty dollars a week, and his expenses are paid when he is on the road. His wife knows exactly how much he gets, but she has no fixed and depend- able part of it. They have a good many unpleasant hours every time he is at home — nearly always about money matters. He has some ideas of saving, she has none; when he talks about it, he indicates that it should be done in the household expenditures; w.hen she makes reply, she retorts that it could better be done out of his liberal allowance for himself. They live in a $35.00 flat. Some of the time they keep a
WHERE THE TROUBLE BEGINS 75
servant. They sent their boy to high school until he was eighteen, and then to business college for a year. He has had three " jobs," but he kept none of them, because they " weren't much." Just now he is " looking for something " — not too tirelessly. The mother belongs to that fast-growing class of American women who are committed to the belief that their young can do no harm and that the world should ask no better boon than the happiness of conforming to the wishes of their youngsters at least as slavishly as their mothers have done. Mrs. Taylor is mildly but inflexibly of the opinion that her children are the handsomest and cleverest and engagingest ever born; that any pleasure they are unable to attain without effort on their part, is withheld from them by an un- kind fate; and that any one who does not instantly fall captive to her children's charms, without waiting to ask that cause be shown therefor, is warped by envy or embittered by inferiority.
Secure in her conviction that Myrtle's charms out- class those of every other girl in school, Mrs. Taylor has never been able to see why Myrtle should not have clothes at least as good as any other girl has; why she should not give parties of a superiority commen- surate with her own. In the high school Myrtle goes to, the girls " put on a lot of style." Not to own a silver purse is to be cheap indeed. Not to wear silk stockings is to show that one has none of the instincts of a lady. Not to be taken to parties in a carriage
76 THE WOKK-A-DAY GIRL
is to prove that one is not Considered worthy of two dollars of a school boy's pocket money — whereas, to be taken in a carriage for two, instead of one shared with another boy and girl, is to flaunt one's self as a belle indeed; one who can make a boy spend four dollars if he wants the honour of escorting her. Myr- tle did not have long to suffer the (degradation ofjteing silver-bagless. And her silk stockings (although they were only " boot-silk," meaning that all was cotton except the part that "showed") were of such an extra-ladylikeness that from a little distance Myrtle looked as if her feet were thrust bare into her pumps. As for the carriage! Mrs. Taylor glowed with tri- umph when she heard that Myrtle was going to a party with the only boy in the class who disdained to share his hired carriage, and the cost of it, with another fellow. Mrs. Taylor didn't know much else about that boy, but she felt signally honoured in her motherhood when he asked her girl to a party; and she got Myrtle a new dress for the occasion. She showed the dress, sorrowfully, to the woman investi- gator from the court, as a proof of her thorough- goingness as a mother. It was a " tunic " effect with a white satin foundation and an overdress of gold-beaded white net, edged with gold bead fringe. With it Myrtle had to have white satin slippers and white silk stockings and long white kid gloves, and other finery of the same order. Mrs. Taylor's tearful manner was as if she would say : " Can you under-
WHERE THE TROUBLE BEGINS 77
stand why Myrtle would do wilful, wayward things, when I have tried to give her everything she wanted ? "
What she called Myrtle's " incorrigibility " had " developed suddenly," according to the weak-minded mother, who did not know that she herself had sown the seeds and coaxed along the harvest.
Myrtle was "very popular," she said, with pride; she went to a great many parties, and to shows and amusement parks. " She always has lots of beaux." Her mother was gratified by this, and encouraged it all she could. But Myrtle began staying out very late — later than her mother thought was " ladylike." Myrtle resented any criticism of these late-returnings. When the criticism persisted, she began stopping away from home — with girl friends, she said. Her mother had some vague mislike of this, but did not see how she could do anything about it. " I didn't want to make her mad — I was afraid she'd run away or do something dreadful." Myrtle showed some signs her mother rather deplored; she was rather coarse and common in her speech; she was loud and rude in her frequent laughter; and her mother often caught her in lies ; but she thought " girls always get that way for a while, when they're growing up." No; she didn't always know where Myrtle was — Myrtle resented having to give account of herself. No; she didn't know much about Myrtle's friends; "they're lively young folks and don't spend much time around the house — there's nothing to do here." No; she had
78 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
never asked Myrtle to do any housework, or to learn to sew; " she may have to do these things by and by, and she can only be young once." And when it was brought home to her, so she could not deny it, that Myrtle was leading a fast life with boys, Mrs. Taylor blamed the boys — but she never blamed Myrtle, nor herself. It was only when Myrtle eluded home vigi- lance and, being caught, defied home authority, that Mrs. Taylor told her husband, on the occasion of his next being at home. He was outraged; he blamed her; he took matters into his own hands; he forbade Myrtle to go out of the house except with her family. When she disobeyed, he essayed to whip her; her mother intervened and Myrtle ran away.
That is Myrtle.
Tina, whom her mother had brought to court, is a garment-maker; one of those who, by the infinite sub- division of labour, make one small part of a man's coat. (About 140 pairs of hands are engaged upon every " ready-made " suit.) Tina's father is an un- skilled labourer. That means, he works, now here, now there, not as he needs the work but as this or that work temporarily needs him. Just at present he is employed at the Stock Yards, where he gets $1.75 a day. There are eight children. Tina's mother has had to earn money to help keep them alive; she is a " home-finisher " on men's coats. By using her chil- dren as helpers, she manages to make sometimes as high as seven dollars a week. But this means the
WHERE THE TROUBLE BEGINS 79
neglect of her house ; her own weariness — unto exas- peration; and the sacrifice of the children's playtime. But what else can she do? Last year, as nearly as they are able to remember, her "man" worked 210 days and earned about $350 — less than a dollar a day to house, feed, and clothe ten of a family! No one could question the mother's urgent need to work, and even to " impress " the services of her little chil- dren. But also, no one could question the pity of it all from the children's point of view, and from hers. The ten of them live in four small, dark rooms. Most of the sewing is done by lamplight. The air is bad (and they don't realize what effect bad air has on tempers), the crowding is bad (and wears on strained nerves), and they are all habitually underfed (under- feeding makes any creature snarl). Tina's mother is what almost any well-fed and well-housed woman would call " cruel " to her children. But life has certainly not been kind to her. Her own youth was hard. So far as her experience has taught her, all life is bitter for the poor. If she were just a little less driven, she might be sorry for her children. But she isn't sorry for them — she is just exasperated by them. Like all foreign-born parents, she expects Tina to hand over to her an unopened pay envelope. Tina, when she went to work in a shop (at fourteen), had never dreamed of doing otherwise. But when she got among other girls, some of whom had slightly less cruel pressure at home, slightly more indulgent
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mothers, and saw them flaunting small fineries she could not imitate, her heart grew bitter. One Satur- day she steamed open her pay envelope and abstracted a dollar. (Being a piece-worker, as nearly all gar- ment-makers are, her earnings vary from week to week.) Then she gummed the envelope again, and changed one of the figures marked on it. With the dollar she bought herself a rhinestone comb which she passionately coveted. She told her mother a lie about her slim pay. She had to keep the comb at the shop. Once, she forgot and wore it home. Her mother de- manded to know where she got it. Tina said she had bought it. Her mother beat her, and broke the comb. She was infuriated, but she was too weary to know whether her fury was caused by fear that Tina had sold her virtue to get the comb, or by resent- ment that she had spent a dollar for it. Tina was made rebellious and deceitful by this experience. It was some time before she again tampered with a pay envelope.
But she got another rhinestone comb! She was careful to keep the new one out of sight. But the first experience had planted a suspicion in her mother's mind. It is a mind that has little " usage of reason." Tina's youth, her inevitable love of adornment, of gaiety, do not plead for her with her mother. Life is bitter and bread is scarce; what right, then, has Tina with a rhinestone comb? As if stripes would beat out the love of finery, Tina's mother laid them
WHERE THE TROUBLE BEGINS 81
on Tina unrelentingly. Tina is accustomed to being beaten; all her life she has paid the penalty for exas- perating her mother's nerves or her father's sullen- ness, by chastisement varying from a cuff on the ear to a whipping with a stick. Any beating that should be memorable to Tina must, in her mother's reasoning, be severer than the ordinary outbursts. Thus she hoped to cure Tina of a weakness for adornment and to prevent her from gratifying it by wrongdoing. By way of further precaution, she put sharp restric- tions on Tina's going out evenings and Sundays. She demanded that Tina come home from the shop, eat a few morsels of hastily-prepared supper, and sit down in the crowded, noisome rooms, to do " finishing " on coats. She thought thus to keep Tina " straight." Tina began to tell lies about " working overtime " — so she might go to a nickel show, or for a walk on the bright and busy streets. Once a fellow invited her to go to an amusement park. She did not get home till midnight. Her mother heard her, de- nounced her " overtime " story as a lie, beat her still more cruelly, and next day took time from her " fin- ishing " to go to Tina's shop and inquire how much night work she had been doing. After that, Tina was obliged to be at home every evening before sup- per, unless she could bring her mother a card from the boss showing that he had detained her for overtime work. Tina was growing more and more sullen, but she came home regularly at six-thirty. Her mother
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was satisfied that she had " cured " Tina. Then one day a neighbour asked : " Ain't Tina workin' no more ? " and when answered that Tina was, de- clared that she had seen Tina " to the park, yeste'day, with a fella." Tina denied this; the neighbour per- sisted, and the truth finally came out: Tina was " sporting " in the daytime, and leading a double life. She left home mornings at the regular hour for going to work. She came home evenings before supper; she brought home a pay envelope which she bought, every Saturday afternoon, from a girl she knew who had no parents and was glad to sell a $5.00 en- velope for $5.50 or $6.00. Her time Tina spent in the cheap stores, at the parks, and in any low, vicious lodging house where she could get a fellow to take her.
That is Tina.
On adjoining benches in the waiting room of the Juvenile Court, Myrtle and Tina sit. Myrtle's face is swollen with much crying ; Tina's is black with sul- len hate. Myrtle's mother is " overcome," and has frequent outbursts of hysteria which a woman friend tries to hush. Mrs. Taylor is surcharged with bitter- ness against the Law because it will not allow her to recant her plea and take Myrtle home, until the case has been given a hearing. Tina's mother fumes as she thinks of the coats she might be finishing — that she should be finishing, now that Tina is to be " put away " where she can contribute nothing to the family
WHERE THE TROUBLE BEGINS 83
support; she is enraged at Tina. After all the starva- tion years, just when she could ease the pinch of pov- erty for them all by nearly as much as either of her parents earned, that she should " go an' do like this " proves conclusively to her mother that " she is no good."
Now, what's to be done with Myrtle? With Tina? Who can devise anything that Society may do for them, in its utmost tenderness for their sad fortune, whereby they may be absolved from further paying the penalty of their parents' insufficiency ?
The court may send them to reformatory institu- tions. Yet, every year we live and struggle to do justly, our social conscience rebels more and more against taking young people out of active life and segregating them with numbers of others who have all suffered like misfortune. It is a poor substitute for justice to Myrtle, to Tina, to brand them (how- ever gently and however reluctantly) on the county records as " incorrigible " ; to send them to the Women's Refuge or the Girls' Industrial School or the House of the Good Shepherd, to pass those years that should be their sweetest (from now till they are eighteen) in the exclusive company of other girls who have suffered moral shipwreck. Yet what may be hoped for them if they are sent back to their homes? What control over Myrtle can that weak-minded, vacillating mother establish at this late day? What realization of youth's needs, and of its rights, can
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be brought home to that harassed mother of Tina in whom cruelty might well be diagnosed a3 nerves starved and strained to continuous exasperation?
Not all the Myrtles, by any manner of means, get into court. Their misdemeanours are oftenest " hushed up " ; their segregation is determined upon by their own families, and its nature is according to the family income. Thousands of Myrtles just ap- proaching ungovernableness, are sent away to schools in the hope of being made amenable to discipline. Hundreds of them are shifted to a distant locality — anywhere from visiting a relative in the country to making a tour of Europe — in the usually vain hope that removal from " contaminating company " (it always seems certain to weak parents that contamina- tion must come from without!) may miraculously de- velop a strong moral character. Change frequently makes it easier for an individual to start upon a new plane; but only if he has the strong desire to take advantage of fresh surroundings. Shift from one scene to another ought not to be depended on to create a moral impulse, nor to evoke a careful self-govern- ment out of a chaos characterized by years of gov- ernment by whim.
Nothing is so certain about any of us as that we must live under the Law. We may live under it willingly, intelligently, approving its wisdom and glad to live by it ; or we may live under it sullenly, grudg- ingly, accepting its dictates only because the strength
WHERE THE TROUBLE BEGINS 85
of many is greater than our puny single strength. It is the business of parents to know the laws of nature and of the commonwealth, and to teach their children the wisdom of those laws, the necessity for them, and the sovereignty of upholding, the slavery of defying them.
Now, consider the preparation Myrtle has had for entering upon a world where no one has any tender- ness for her except as she wins it ; where she must con- tinue to subsist either as a wage-earner or as some man's household director and the mother and in- structor of his children; where her failures in duty cannot be condoned by a mother " love " complacent in its sloppiness, but must be measured by society's standards and condemned out of society's resentment.
Myrtle has been brought up to earn nothing — not even respect. She has been nurtured in the belief that she deserved the world's best and that if " the best " recognized its duty, it would arise and come to her.
Poor Tina, on the other hand, has been reared in an almost complete denial of her rights. Undoubt- edly she must continue to live without many of her rights; but she will not yield to this hard condition (she should not yield to it!) without making what effort she can to be happy. And who has ever taught her wherein happiness lies — even such meagre happi- ness as she may hope to grasp?
As between the two girls, sympathy goes out most naturally and most abundantly to Tina. Few parents
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of the well-fed, comfortably-housed classes are guilty of cruelty to their children — at least of such cruelty as Tina has suffered; for that is largely an outcome of nerve-destroying conditions of work and rest and of life in general. It not infrequently happens that an overworked parent of the well-to-do or wealthy class, is occasionally harsh or unkind to a child in a moment of exasperation; but the liability to this de- creases as comforts increase; and the wrong from which too many children of the comfortable suffer, is the neglect that comes from full-fed sloth.
So, let us consider Myrtle a little further. If the court commits her to an institution, she will be under restraint of regulations that are necessarily pretty severe. She cannot continue as she has been doing, because she will be shut away from all such opportu- nities, and unremittingly watched. But no institu- tional directors would be so benighted as to imagine for a moment that mere restraint from doing wrong is going to eradicate in Myrtle all those pampered propensities which have been developing for sixteen years. Locking her away from evil is not going to make her good — that is why so many parents fail sig- nally when finally they are awakened to the need of correction; they simply deny and prohibit and curb; they do not substitute and build up and encourage.
The worst thing that could happen to Myrtle in an institution would be to give her time to dwell on the fact that she is under restraint. The restraint is
WHERE THE TROUBLE BEGINS 87
there, and she will feel it every time she goes beyond certain bounds; but the effort, now, is to keep her from wanting to pass those bounds — to keep her interest- edly busy inside of them. And this, of course, is just what her parents should have done for her; and did not do.
The bounds for a girl like Myrtle, living at home with her parents, ought to be firmly fixed once and for all — not shifted and altered according to the parental " nerves " on different occasions nor yet according to the " nuisance " of withstanding Myrtle's teasing or pouting or storming. But if Myrtle can be kept busy — continuously busy — she will have a minimum of time in which to think about her bounds and long to break them. Idleness is the curse of the Myrtles, as overwork is the danger of the Tinas — idle- ness and indulgence, as against exhaustion and denial. Both extremes are full of peril.
Myrtle should have helped in the housework from the first day when she was able to serve by saving steps for her mother. She should have gone to the store for purchases, and been entrusted with steadily increasing responsibility in buying, so that she might learn the great business of being a careful and wise spender. She should have been dressed out of a stated portion of the family income, determined upon after thoughtful consideration; most persons of sound sense would agree that the school-girl daughter of a family of four whose total income is $2,000 should not ex-
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ceed $75 a year; many would put the amount as low as $50 or $60. By the time she is sixteen, Myrtle should have learned enough about money values and about her own needs to be given a monthly allowance for dress and all other expenses. It is little less than a crime against Myrtle to allow her to make demands beyond what the family income warrants, and to ac- cede to those demands. She must not and she cannot carry this demandingness beyond her parents' home. Why should they weakly encourage her to do some- thing which will inevitably bring her sorrow when she tries it with others than themselves? All her life Myrtle, no matter what she attains, will have to con- tent herself without many things that she sees other people enjoying. What preparation for this content- ment is it to buy her a silver bag or a gold-beaded dress which are not only unbecoming her years and her station but are a gross pampering of the prepos- terous notion that Myrtle must have what " other girls have " ?
Myrtle is young and eager to be attractive and to be happy. She has a right to be attractive, and she has a right to be happy. She has a right, too, to such bringing-up as shall teach her how to be attractive without being tasteless and wantonly extravagant — a gaudy little puppet instead of a winsome, sweet young girl. And she has a right to be taught from her baby- hood to find pleasures well within the bounds of safety and of possible criticism. She has, too, a right to
WHERE THE TROUBLE BEGINS 89
be useful. Huxley declares that the sense of useless- ness is the severest shock which the human system can sustain, and that if persistently sustained, it results in atrophy of function. Conversely the sense of use- fulness is the foundation of happiness. What excuse can any parent plead who has not given his child the ecstasy of earning approval, of feeling his usefulness to the world, of glimpsing the larger fields of useful- ness toward which his eager feet may press?
There's the crux of the thousands of cases which Myrtle typifies ! Lack of systematized industry in which girls can take an interest and which, by its regu- lating influence, may hold in check propensities to overleap the bounds. That is why the household, the home, directly contributes more than twice as many female offenders as all the new industrial pursuits to- gether; because, when a girl gets under the discipli- nary influence of the world of work, of usefulness, she loses a very great deal of whatever liability she may have had to become a lawbreaker. Even in condi- tions like Tina's, she is less likely to go wrong if she works in a factory than if she stays at home. It is the home, deficient in industry or in leisure, that wrecks Myrtle and Tina.
IV THE INDICTMENT OF THE HOME
0
A)ULL session of the Women's Night Court, in New York, was wearing on toward midnight. Since eight o'clock, there had been little va- riety in the deplorable procession that filed past the magistrate : one wretched, tawdry, and apparently un- moved girl after another denied the charge of the officer who had arrested her; and some were fined, some were given sentences, a few were put on proba- tion to Alice Smith, the strong and gentle woman who knows more about erring girls, perhaps, than any one else in the world.
Any one of these cases would be a heart-breaking tragedy if the facts about it could be known. But the facts are usually undiscoverable. Nothing is cer- tain about the girls except that they are lying, and will continue to lie. One might easily pardon the poor creatures for not understanding that the Law would be able to deal more intelligently and more mercifully by them if they could be induced to tell the truth. But one finds it hard not to lose patience with them when, knowing perfectly well — as they do — that finger-print evidence of their previous convic- tions is on file in an adjoining room and will infallibly
90
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THE INDICTMENT OF THE HOME 91
be brought into refutation of their statements, they stand stolidly before their judge and swear that they have never been arrested before.
Hour after hour, with little variation, these cases continue, night after night, year in and year out. The futility, the hopelessness of it weigh like a pall on magistrate and assistants, and on the sentient spec- tator. It is a dreadful clinic to which few come until they are incurably diseased. That is why the grind- ing of the mill grows dull. Despair is in every heart, from that of the judge, raging against his ineffective- ness, to that of the most wretched girl, sullenly resent- ful of this interference with what she considers her personal rights, and that of the soul-sick onlooker who feels himself arraigned with the rest of the social order, and yet doesn't know what to do to check that dreadful procession.
On that particular night which I'm describing, there had been little variety, as usual, in the cases called, till toward midnight. Then a girl named Lily was arraigned. Lily had been arrested on complaint of her father. She was over sixteen, so her case was beyond the jurisdiction of the Juvenile Court; but she was under eighteen, so she was still amenable to her father. He complained that she stayed away from home ; that he thought she was " going to the bad " ; that he could do nothing with her, and wanted her put under restraint. He was a brutal-looking little man; bullet-headed, cruel- jawed; and he was vindictive, not
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sorrowful, in mannef. His wife was called to the stand. She was a frightened creature who kept her fear- full eyes on her husband rather than on the judge as she made her replies. Once, when she hesitated, a threatening glare from her husband caused her to go on quickly, repeating what she had evidently been ordered to say: that Lily spent a good part of her earnings on dress; that she " went to dances with an Eyetalian "; and that for two weeks she had not been home at all.
Then the judge questioned Lily, who was crying heart-brokenly. She was a slight little thing who looked to be hardly more than sixteen. Asked why she left home, she said because her father beat her if she did not " give in " all her earnings. No one who had seen the father could doubt that.
" Where do you live now, Lily?" the judge asked.
Lily told him : at a rooming-house on the East Side.
"Who do you live with?"
" With a girl— Violet."
" Violet who ? What is the rest of her name? "
" I don't know — just Violet."
"Where did you meet Violet?"
" To a dance."
" And you went home to live with her without knowing even her last name? "
Lily's blue eyes opened wide in surprise at such a question.
" Why, sure ! " she answered.
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" How much do you make, Lily ? "
" About six a week."
" Where ?"
" In a fact'ry."
"What factory?"
Again the surprised look.
" Why, dif'rent fact'ries — anywheres."
The judge conferred with Alice Smith. Lily's case was held over for a half -hour or so, until Miss Smith could talk with the parents and with the terrified child.
When it was re-called, the judge said, sadly :
" Lily, I'm afraid I shall have to send you away for a little while, where you can learn how to take care of yourself. I'll have to send you to the House of the Good Shepherd "
There was a scream of anguish from Lily that made every heart in the courtroom stand still. If the child had been on the torture-rack of ages we condescend- ingly call " Dark," she could not have cried out in greater agony.
" Oh, Mamma ! Mamma ! " she implored. " Don't let them send me away. Mamma! Mamma! "
The judge looked as if he would gladly exchange his job for that of any care-free street-cleaner. Alice Smith's face was a study in indignation and compas- sion. The spectators showed varying signs of dis- tress, nearly all acute. And as Lily was led away, doors had to be closed behind her, that her cries — rising above the roar of the Elevated and the rattle
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of trolley cars — might not drown the hearing of the next case.
Only Lily's father was unmoved, and apparently satisfied. Her mother wept convulsively, despite the threatening glare of the bullet-headed little brute who hustled her out of the courtroom. Nearly every one else was bordering on actual physical sickness : the nausea that comes to the witnesses of torture.
" But what," said Alice Smith, sadly discussing the case, " could be done ? Lily hasn't good judgment enough to be living alone; and nothing could be so bad for her as to send her back to her home. Lily ought not to be in a correctional home ; she ought not to be ' shut away ' from her world ; she ought to be guided, and guarded, and taught to understand. But there are so few places for the poor little Lilys. The world will never make up, to most of them, what their parents have caused them to suffer."
This is the prevailing impression, now, among stu- dents of the Juvenile Court system, where cases like Lily's are the regular order of every court day. The feeling has been growing, for some time, that the homes of delinquent children are, in many, many cases, the last places in the world to which the children should be remanded with any hope of their reform. For three years, the Social Investigation Department of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, aided by the Russell Sage Foundation, has been gath- ering and compiling data concerning the family condi-
THE INDICTMENT OF THE HOME 95
tions of children brought before the Chicago Juvenile Court.
The records of ten years have been used as a basis, and a corps of trained investigators has probed, as deeply as persistent effort could make possible, into the vital facts about those cases which could be traced.
1 quote from the proof-sheets of this volume, which will probably have been published before mine is. With the many problems presented by the delinquent boy it is not possible to deal here. This is a brief con- sideration of the delinquent girl as a direct product of the home.
More than half of the boys who come into the Juvenile Court are charged with offences which may be grouped as violations of property rights. This means, in the case of boys, window-breaking as well as stealing coal from the railroads, fence-burning as well as cutting lead-pipe out of empty houses; and so on. In the case of girls, only 15 per cent, of whom are charged with violation of property rights, it prac- tically always means stealing, and nearly always the theft of wearing apparel or of money to buy it with.
More than 80 per cent, of the girls come into court on charges of immorality; "because their virtue is in peril, if indeed it has not been already lost." Only
2 per cent, of the boys are charged with immorality. More than half of the girls brought to court are
committed to institutions; because, as the report says, " the girl is not brought into court until her environ-
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ment has proved too dangerous to be rendered safe by the services of the probation officer. She is in peril which threatens the ruin of her whole life, and the situation demands immediate action; her only hope of rescue seems to lie in prompt removal from her old surroundings and associates."
Now, in connection with these statements, I ask you to consider some of the recent findings of the Government investigation into the Relation Between Occupation and Criminality of Women.
There seemed to be a widely prevailing idea that modern industrial conditions, which take girls and women out of the home, are responsible for a great increase in criminality and immorality. The Govern- ment investigation shows that exactly the reverse is true. The traditional pursuits of women — housework, sewing, laundry work, nursing, and the keeping of boarders — furnish more than four-fifths of all the female criminals, compared with only about one-tenth furnished by all the newer pursuits, including mills, factories, shops, offices, and the professions ! And the number of criminals who have never been wage-earn- ers in any pursuit, but who come directly from their own homes into the courts and penal institutions, is more than twice as large as that coming from all the newer industrial pursuits together.
The Chicago investigators gathered vital statistics concerning the occupations of 310 girls committed to the State Training School at Geneva. 53 of
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these girls had never worked; 76 either could not or would not tell anything about their occupations (the Government Report says : "It is not uncommon to find a girl who has been at work for a few years who is really unable to give any coherent account of her industrial career; she has been into and out of so many places that she cannot if she would tell just what they have been"), 115 had been domestic serv- ants, 23 had been waitresses, and the small remainder had been in offices, stores, and factories.
The Government found that nearly three-fourths of the women criminals come from among domestic servants and waitresses, although less than one-fourth of our gainfully employed girls and women are in those two occupations. They had more than three times their proper proportion of offenders; and the cash girls, saleswomen, bookkeepers, stenographers, telephone and telegraph operators had less than one- third of their " fair share " among the wrongdoers.
I might go on and on, multiplying evidence in care- fully collected figures. But I am sure these are enough Tor our purpose — which is to show that the unintelligently directed home is giving the powers of Law and Order more grievous concern than any other agency in American life to-day; and that, so far as our girls are concerned, the greatest safeguarding a very great many of them get is what they get in the disciplinary training of the industrial world.
What is the relation between domestic service and
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criminality and immorality? Between erring girls and their own homes as nurseries of weakness and wilfulness? It is this: housework, as a sad majority of women perform it, is the most unsystematized, un- standardized, undisciplinary, unsocial, and uninterest- ing work in the world. And family relations, as a sad majority of our citizens comprehend them, are the most unregulated relations in the world to-day; there are a few standards below which the social con- science of the community will not allow a parent to fall in the treatment of a child, or a mistress to fall in the treatment of a maid; but they are standards so low that almost any other human relationship is better regulated by law and by public sentiment. The home is the most haphazard institution of our day.
Not your home, in all probability; nor even, per- haps, the majority of homes you know. But of the twelve or fifteen million homes in the country, prob- ably not one million would pass an efficiency test based on the way they are run and the quality of their output.
Years ago, every home was a factory where many things were made — everything that was needful to sustain life for its family-group. To-day, nearly every branch of what used to be household labour has been taken out of the home, put into a specializing fac- tory, and standardized. Homes now have but one product: citizens! And every year, the State has
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to take more and more spoiled and spoiling products out of slipshod, ignorant, ill-governed homes, and try to repair or reform them in citizenship factories : in- dustrial and parental schools, asylums, refuges, and prisons.
There is no other product comparable in importance with the product of the home. And every home that unloads a poor or bad product upon the community lowers the average of the whole, and complicates the problems of those who are earnestly and intelligently doing their full duty. That is why you women whose homes are not under indictment must help to solve the problem of what's to be done with the women who are unloading spoiled human product on the nation far faster than you are able to bring your chil- dren to your high standard of efficiency and useful- ness.
The plain truth about a child is that it is not a possession, but a trust : a citizen of the world, to be prepared for life in the world. And the plain truth about a home is that it is a place where persons are rested and refreshed after sharing in the world's work, and made more efficient for re-entering upon it each day.
But how many of our hundred millions accept these truths and live by them?
The mother of Lily, for instance, is not at all im- probably a " home-finisher," one of the tens of thou- sands of women in New York City who go to factories
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and get bundles of partially prepared work which they carry home, perhaps to finish, perhaps only to add one process of manufacture. Bullet-headed brutes like Lily's father incline to despotize in inverse ratio to their industry and earning ability; usually their wives as well as their children are made to work for them. Imagine, then, the mother of Lily to be a finisher of men's pants, at which she may earn as much as five cents an hour if she has one of her children to help her. If she gets her work from a shop that makes any effort to obey the law, she has first to show a card indicating that her living conditions have been in- spected by the State authorities and pronounced fairly sanitary; if any member of her household or other dweller in her tenement contracts a contagious or in- fectious disease, she violates the law if she finishes pants under such conditions; if she takes her work to the factory and it is not up to the standard, she must do it over again; if she has spoiled the material, she must pay for it. Home-finishing is the worst-regu- lated of all industries, but, even at that, Lily's mother almost certainly finds the regulations about finishing pants more exacting than the regulations governing conditions in which she may rear Lily. When she has spoiled Lily, or suffered Lily to be spoiled by her father's brutality and tyranny, we take Lily away, and ask the Sisters of the Good Shepherd to patch up the botched job if they can. But even this we do, not of our own initiative, because we are fearful for Lily's
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safety; but on complaint of her father, because he is being defrauded of Lily's earnings.
The Juvenile Courts and Juvenile Protective Asso- ciations show our disposition to interfere on behalf of some children who are being badly dealt by. But they have shown us, also, that we are poorly equipped with proper kinds of institutions to care for children whom we must take away from their parents ; and also that it is at best a sorry business when a child must be segregated from the world it should be taught to live in : the world of home, of play, of industry.
A child who cannot observe family life is being poorly equipped to create and sustain family life. Before we go further than the most urgent necessity demands, in taking out of these homes like Lily's their last and greatest labour, let us see if something cannot be done to standardize the conditions under which parents may be allowed to bear and to rear children, as well, even, as we have attempted to standardize those under which they may finish pants.
Here is work for you women who read this; you women who write me the fine, eager letters, saying: " I want to help. What can I do? "
Some few of you are now voting. In a little while we shall all be voting — voting, not a party ticket, as a majority of men have voted, but for a specific princi- ple, a specific benefit. The suffrages of this nation have too long been cast each in the self-interest of the voter. With your advent into law-making and
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law-enactment, will come either a tremendous new spirit or a tremendous impetus to an old one. And one of the first of the great problems to which you direct yourselves will concern Lily and her ma — millions of Lilys and their ma's. For they also will hold suffrages. And in their ignorance, their fear, their complete unenlightenment, they will cast those suffrages against your most spirited and splendid effort to improve their condition, to make the home a safe and sane nursery for citizens.
I entreat you to begin now on Lily and her ma. I ask you to do your utmost now to guard against their votes nullifying yours. I beg you to start now upon your study of their needs, so that you may be ready when the time comes for you to say what social and economic and legislative changes must be wrought for them. You may believe that Lily and her house- hold need your vote, or you may not; but you cannot believe other than that they need you. Much of all that must be done for them cannot be done by public processes, at least until those processes are more adaptable than they are now; and if they are ever to be more adaptable, you must point the way.
I ask every honest, earnest woman to undertake one family as a study. None of you will have to look very far. If you can find a family with whom you have some sort of economic relations, so much the better. " Sound " the womati who does your wash- ing; feel your way into the confidence of the butter-
THE INDICTMENT OF THE HOME 103
and-egg man, the grocery boy, the scissors-grinder, the milkman, the janitor, the iceman, the remover of garbage, or the purveyor of vegetables and fruits. Every woman has a " back-door world " which might well engross her. If the tailor who presses your hus- band's clothes had a daughter like Lily, would you know it? If the man who exchanges you new pots and kettles for old garments and shoes was a brutal husband, a cruel and neglectful father, would you know how he could be legally restrained? If your " odd-jobs man " had a drunken and vicious wife who was letting her little girl grow up to be like her, would you know what you could do about it?
The work of maintaining an efficient home of your own probably leaves you with leisure either scant or indeterminable in advance. You sigh, sometimes, be- cause so many of the " big " endeavours are beyond your reach.
I wish you might spend even a single hour, on any ordinary evening, in some such whirlpool of big en- deavours as, say, Hull House. You would find it to be nothing more than an amplification of your " back-door world.'* Hundreds of people come and go; they bring problems, and they take away counsel. Sometimes there is a known remedy for their trouble ; sometimes the need they present demands a new sort of relief — legal or economic or social — and the resi- dents, when they feel this demand, set about whatever agitation is necessary for its fulfilment.
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You can run a Social Settlement of your own, at your back-door, no matter where the back-door may be. You can learn what conditions are in your own immediate bailiwick ; and you can discover what reme- dial possibilities exist, what others must be created. I have done this for*a dozen years; and I know!
Begin with one family. First step of all, divest your mind of any lingering traces of the notion that Social Service consists in the giving away of things you don't want. It consists in helping people to know their rights and to get them; to know their obligations and to discharge them.
Let us suppose, for the sake of illustration, that instead of sighing over the piteousness of Lily's story, and wishing you lived nearer to the Night Court and could do something for that particular girl, you have sympathetically investigated your own immediate sur- roundings and discovered another Lily — as any woman only too infallibly may, if she will look!
Consider the questions you are confronted with: What are the laws of your State regarding a father's rights in the earnings of his wife and children? Are they just? What proportion of girls like Lily are probably required to hand over unopened pay en- velopes ? How many of them are getting a fair deal ? How many are being taxed beyond their moral strength? How common is it for girls like Lily to drift into and out of nondescript employments, gath- ering no jot of efficiency as they go? What ought to
THE INDICTMENT OF THE HOME 105
be done to prepare such girls for self-support? What ought to be done to protect them from moral dangers ? To fit them for probable matrimony and motherhood ? How much does the State save when it allows Lily's ma to toil as a pants-finisher, and pays the Sisters of the Good Shepherd to take care of Lily? Why is Lily's mother in such abject terror of her husband? Does she know that he can be restrained from abusing her and Lily? If Lily were to be sent home instead of to the House of the Good Shepherd, what oppor- tunities for a wholesome social life would she have in their tenement ? What " advisable " pastimes are open to Lily? Where is she to meet young men? Who is to safeguard those meetings? Lily is one of the mothers of to-morrow — probably. What is any- body doing to help her make a desirable marriage, or to insure that she will become a better parent than hers have been?
I could go on and on and on. There is literally no end to the questions that Lily raises, to the prob- lems that she presents. So far, the world that Lily was called into has not given her a fighting chance. When you have fairly begun on her case, her day of hope will have dawned.
Don't switch off; don't sidetrack; don't lose heart; keep after Lily. It may be all the better if you haven't a cent to give her ; charity is a poor substitute for justice. If you can effect any actual betterment in Lily's home, any improvement in her outlook, you
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are to be envied the happiness that will give you. But even if you can't do that, you can at least learn from that home a hundred lessons, get from it a new under- standing of our complex social relationships. Do for it what you can; but don't be dismayed if this does not seem to you to be considerable, or productive of results. Remember that the wrong conditions which made that home possible (if not inevitable) have been of long, slow growth. You cannot hope to change them in one onslaught — nor in a hundred. Rest con- tent with having got to the root of great matters when you have got to the study of home conditions that are responsible for the production of spoiled and socially- dangerous humans.
If most men have been selfish in public affairs; if they have sought only such government as would fur- ther their own interests; so have most women been selfish in the affairs of their Kingdom. The day of social blindness is passing. We know, now, that self- interest is suicidal except it keep in line with com- munity-interest. There cannot be a law which is good for your husband's business and bad for the business of his competitors. There cannot be safety for your home and your children, while millions of other homes are disgorging a stunted and misdirected output.
You are the wise woman who looketh well to the ways of her own household. But some of you, surely, have wisdom for that, and to spare. Won't you spare a measure of it for Lily's household?
V
HER DAILY BREAD
EUGENIA did not "suddenly find herself obliged to seek a livelihood," like the story- heroines of two and three decades ago. No " crash came " in her family affairs. Her father did not die, their investments did not " prove worthless "; it was not necessary to raise the mortgage — because they had no mortgage to raise.
She was eighteen years old and had graduated from high school. There were three younger chil- dren. Her father was a small-salaried man who earned no more now than he had earned when Eu- genia was a baby ; and there was no human probability that he would ever earn any more. He carried two thousand dollars' worth of insurance, which would yield them almost two dollars a week if he should die. He had no savings. The cost of living was going up by leaps and bounds. The needs of four children between the ages of twelve and eighteen were a great deal harder to meet than the needs of the same four had been when they were little. Young people in their 'teens presented new demands — very just demands, too — which went beyond the filling of their stomachs and the covering of their feet and backs and heads.
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There were a score of reasons why Eugenia should go to work. She was perfectly aware of them, and for at least five years she had looked forward to the day when she might be able to " do something " about the eternal problems of the family budget, " instead of just lamenting." That she should lend a helping hand, when she could, seemed quite as inevitable to her as if she had been a boy. There was not nearly enough work in the home to keep three pairs of hands busy; and even if there had been, there was no further possibility in that household of earning a dollar by saving one. They had reached " rock bottom " on that, years ago.
Eugenia must sell her labour where labour brought a price. And she faced this necessity far from reluc- tantly. She was generously eager to help. She had a sturdy desire to do for herself — to be adequate to her own support and able to gratify some of her long- repressed desires. And she loved the adventure of it. There is no reason in the world why every young soul should not crave the adventure of seeking its fortune; or, rather, of making it. And they all would crave it, as fledglings demand to learn the joy of flight, if we did not warp and twist their natural desires with our false social ideals and our false education.
Eugenia hailed the opportunity of going to work, and as there seemed no place for her in their small home town, she went to the nearest big city.
No one at school had ever inquired of Eugenia as
HER DAILY BREAD 109
to her purposes. No one seemed to feel that it made any difference whether her twelve years of schooling had or had not a definite aim ; whether it left her with some specific ability or with only the vaguest notions of its adaptability to the world's needs.
It happened, however, that — their town being too small to support a business school — there was a de- mand for instruction in stenography and typewriting, and a course was instituted in the high school. Eugenia took it. So did a great many other girls who were similarly circumstanced — so many that there were a dozen applicants for each stenographic job in town; and as a consequence, some girls worked for $2.50 a week, while $3.50 and $4.00 were excep- tional salaries for the inexperienced.
Eugenia decided to go to the city. Her parents were a little apprehensive over this venture; but Eugenia had a lot of good sense and good principle, and they specially fortified her as well as they were able, with warnings against such dangers as they knew of.
She must go to the Young Women's Christian Association; she must avoid making chance acquaint- ances; she must be careful what places of amusement she attended. These were the principal burden of the parental charges ; the school gave her no warnings or suggestions of any sort.
She went to the Association House, or Home. She found that if she shared a room with another girl — the
110 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
cheapest room in the house — she could board there for $4.00 a week. She found that the labour market was glutted with inexperienced stenographers eager to work for $5 and $6 a week. She found the general, almost the universal attitude, toward her to be : " You ought not to have come here."
Half-a-dozen employers to whom the Association sent her refused to take her because she did not live at home.
" We can get beginners at $6.00," they said. " But $6.00 will not keep you. We make it a rule not to hire for less than $8 girls who do not live at home. You would not be worth $8 to us. Sorry ! "
Eugenia reported this at the Association employ- ment office, and was told that the employers were quite right. There was a decided opinion in that of- fice that inexperienced girls should not come flocking into cities, hoping to live on what they could earn.
" What are we to do ? " Eugenia cried. " There isn't work at home for us all. What are we to do? "
The head of the employment office had no idea — except that the girls should not come. She was be- sieged by them, and every day it was getting harder to place them.
Eugenia studied the Help Wanted columns. It was true that not many of the ads. called for beginners. But she answered the few that did. For some reason not at all clear to her, they nearly all read : " Ad- dress, stating full particulars and salary expected,"
HER DAILY BREAD 111
So-and-So, at the newspaper office. This necessitated a delay of at least two days, besides giving no clue to the location of the advertiser, nor to the nature of his business. She received several letters asking her to call.
It did not occur to Eugenia to show these letters to the manager of the Association employment office. She was a little resentful of that lady's attitude. Nor is it at all certain that, if she had shown them, any- thing would have resulted save perhaps a general counsel to " be careful/'
Eugenia did not know that it was necessary to be careful in seeking employment. All the adjura- tions with which she was familiar had to do with the need of care in seeking amusements or making ac- quaintances.
The first place to which she found her way was in one of the older and dingier office buildings of a dis- trict where innumerable " skyscrapers " of recent erec- tion had almost emptied the old structures or left them to a precarious class of tenants who could not take long leases. The elevator was an " afterthought," put in when the building was no longer new. The stairs were wooden. The halls were gloomy. The air was heavy and bad.
Eugenia found Room 52. The lettering on the door said : " The Union Novelty Co." Inside were two men. The office was scantily furnished. There was a cheap roll-top desk of " golden oak " ; a giant
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cuspidor; a swivel chair, and two others that looked like stray members of an erstwhile dining-room set. Smoking, and aiming at the cuspidor, seemed to be the only business of the place; and while the smoke was voluminous, the other half of the enterprise evi- denced some lack of expertness. When Eugenia an- nounced her errand, the man in the swivel chair gave the other man a meaning look. When the door had closed on the retreating one, he who remained faced Eugenia with a grin.
" Si' down, Kiddo," he urged, nodding at the chair just vacated. " So you're a green one, huh ? Just from the country, ain't you ? "
Eugenia was uninstructed, but she was no fool. Her fear of this man was as instinctive as that of any wild creature for one of its natural enemies. All that troubled her was to know how to get out.
She ignored the urging to " si' down."
"I— I don't think I'd suit you," she faltered. " You see, I haven't had any experience at all. I ought to begin in a — in a place where — where "
She floundered hopelessly, not knowing how to make a polite evasion.
" Oh, that's all right ! " he encouraged. " I can soon learn you all you need to know."
Something in his manner made Eugenia forget her effort to be polite. She backed toward the door. He rose to his feet.
Without waiting for more parley than if he had
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been a tiger of Bengal, Eugenia leaped for the door, jerked it open, and fled. When she got to the elevator shaft, the antiquated car was at the bottom. Eugenia ran down one flight of the wooden stairs. Then, hearing no sounds of pursuit, she sat down, weak and trembling. It was some minutes before she could gather strength and resolution to go on.
She tried to reason with herself; to make herself believe that a dreadful thing like that might not hap- pen again "ever — in a lifetime"; to tell herself that she must be " plucky," and not easily dismayed.
The next place she tried was some distance from the first. (One of her difficulties was that she did not know the city, and could not " group " her applica- tions.) It was in a large building tenanted by many small manufacturing concerns. The one she sought was " The Sovereign Remedy Co." The first door on which she found this read : " Private. Entrance, Room 112." In Room 112 there was considerable and varied activity. Two girls, neither of whom looked to be more than sixteen, were seated at type- writers. One of them was half-engaged with her ma- chine, which she used awkwardly and unaccus- tomedly: her interest was obviously not in what she was doing, but in the banter being exchanged between the other girl and a coatless, vestless, stoop-shoul- dered, narrow-chested, anaemic-looking youth, who lolled like a jelly-fish, on the end of the second girl's desk. At one table, a little girl with short dresses
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was pasting labels on bottles containing the Sovereign Remedy, and at another table, a boy was painting an address upon a wooden box containing one-half gross of bottles of the Sovereign Remedy. In a corner was a roll-top desk, half-closed down over a disorderly litter of papers.
Everybody present turned an inquiring — not to say an inquisitorial — eye upon Eugenia.
" Is the manager in ? " she asked.
" Nope," answered the anaemic youth. " Wha' d'ye want?"
" I came to see about a place — I answered the ad- vertisement."
Just then, the door behind her opened and the manager came in. Eugenia dreaded being inter- viewed in the hearing of these " guying " employes, almost as much as she could have dreaded another tete-a-tete; but she rebuked herself sharply for her timidity, and tried to feel that she was adapting her- self to " business ways " when she answered the ques- tions which he " fired " at her without asking her to sit down — likewise, without removing his hat from his head or his cigar from the corner of his mouth. The other occupants of the office listened more at- tentively than most juries.
Eugenia's voice shook; but she tried to be " brave." She had her reward. She was engaged — to replace the bantering young person, who was leaving to take an eight-dollar job.
HER DAILY BREAD 115
There were many things about the place that Eu- genia did not like — many even at the outset, and more as she got to know it better — but she told herself that she must not be " silly." She wanted experience; everybody told her that beginners were like beggars in that they also could not be "choosers"; and " at least " this place was " safe," she thought, because there were so many employes. (In addition to the second typist, the labeller, the office boy, the anaemic youth, and herself, there were two girls, also very young and inexperienced, who worked in the room marked " Private," under the casual direction of the anaemic youth, compounding the Sovereign Remedy.).
Rendering any help at home was out of the ques- tion on six dollars a week. But Eugenia meant to apply herself so earnestly that she would not have to work long at that wage. Her first concern was to " make good." And after that, she was not a little exercised to know how to live on her earnings.
At first, she paid her $4.00 a week and stayed at the Association. She was given a light luncheon to carry with her; and when the weather was good she did not mind walking to and from work, a mile each way. She had clothes enough to do her for a while ; and by resisting nearly every temptation that involved spending a nickel, she got through, somehow.
But as the fall wore on, she began to need things. Her shoes were nearly " impossible " — they had long been shabby ! — and she must have a winter coat, and a
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pair of gloves, and some overshoes, and a makeshift of some sort for a winter hat.
She told her plight at the Home. And she was re- minded of what they had warned her when she came : the city is no place for girls without homes, who cannot command more than $6.00 a week. She was advised to go home and work for what she could get there.
" I could earn my keep at home," she reflected ; " but that is about all — and there wouldn't be any prospect of doing better. I may have it hard here, for a while; but when I can earn more, there are plenty of places that will pay it."
So she stayed. She asked to be directed to a cheaper boarding-place, and was given the addresses of several Homes for self-supporting girls. Some of these gave board, and dormitory lodging, as low as $3.50 a week. But they were all full.
Eugenia decided to rent a furnished room and " manage " her eating as best she could. Again she had recourse to the ad. columns, and spent two Sun- days in disheartening quest. Any room that she could get, even for two dollars a week, was in a tene- ment. And if she were to keep the cost of food down to the same amount, or less than thirty cents a day, she would be little better off than she was now, at the Association.
After trudging weary miles in what seemed an insanely futile quest, Eugenia grew desperate. She
HER DAILY BREAD 117
went to a newspaper office and handed in this "ad.":
" Board Wanted : — By a young girl from the coun- try. Earns only $6.00 a week, and must live for $3.50 at most."
It cost her the price of the needed overshoes; but she was hopeful that it would lead to economy in the long run.
Her replies included several from ladies who said that they had " lovely " homes, but that their husbands were " away a great deal," and they would be " more than glad " to have a young lady boarder " for com- pany."
This seemed perfectly natural to Eugenia, and she discarded in favour of these all the others — written, for the most part, in cramped penmanship and as cramped language, and emanating from districts which she was beginning to know as poor and mean.
The first " lonesome lady " she called upon (it was in the evening — Sunday was four days off) seemed to be making fair feint at beguiling her desolation. Her flat, in a good residence section, was brightly lighted; a burst of ear-splitting ragtime, of the " canned " sort, was uninterrupted by Eugenia's ring. A coloured maid opened the door and summoned her mistress into the hall.
" Hello, dearie ! " the mistress cried, as if Eugenia were an old familiar friend. " Got my note, did you ?
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Well, some o' my young friends are tryin' to keep me from gettin' blue. Come on in."
Eugenia felt timid about confronting a roomful of laughing strangers.
" I'll come again, when you haven't got company," she pleaded, hanging back.
"Don't be a goosie!" she was adjured. "You'll meet them sooner or later — and it might as well be now. They want to see my new boarder."
So Eugenia followed her in. The young people present, four in number, seemed very well acquainted with one another, and with their hostess. One of the young men, who said his car was outside, proposed a ride, and invited Eugenia to join them. She was tempted. The thought of a ride, in jolly com- pany, was an attractive alternative to going home and to bed in the cheerless little room she shared with a girl whose losing fight with the world had made her morose. But she had not notified the Association office that she might be out late. It was nearly nine o'clock now.
" Thank you — I don't believe I can — to-night," she murmured.
" You'll ask her again, when she comes here to keep me comp'ny; won't you?" the hostess said.
And, assured that he would, she left her guests and showed Eugenia the room that was to be hers.
" Where are you stopping now ? " she inquired.
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When Eugenia told her, a peculiar expression came into her face.
" If you tell 'em you're comin' to live with me, they'll prcb'ly try to poison you against me," she said. " I got my opinion o' them women — chargin' such money for board an' callin' it charity — an' I told 'em so, once. They got it in for me."
" I don't have to tell them where I'm going," Eu- genia declared, with a flare of pride. " I'm not under any obligations to them."
" That's right," her prospective landlady approved. " Well, will you move to-morrow ? "
Eugenia said she would, " to-morrow evening." She had a vague uneasiness about the new home, but tried to tell herself that she was getting as suspicious as her room-mate. Of course, the lady she was going to live with did not have gay company every evening ! If she did, she wouldn't want a quiet working girl to keep her from " getting blue."
Eugenia began packing her few belongings as soon as she was in her room. There was no time in the morning, and she wanted to move early in the follow- ing evening. Her room-mate was not there when she began to pack, but came in while Eugenia was about her preparations for bed. She knew that Eugenia was looking for a cheaper place to live.
" Find a dump ? " she inquired, semi-interest- edly.
" I found a very nice place," Eugenia answered,
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rather stiffly. Her manner invited no questions, promised no confidences.
The other girl caught the defiant note, and shrugged.
" All right. Only I hope you're on to the kind of ' nice ' places that'll take a girl to board for what you can afford to pay."
" I don't know what you mean/' Eugenia said.
" I thought you didn't. Well, you better be care- ful."
Eugenia's anxiety overcame her pride. She begged the other girl to explain, and her face was a picture of horror as she heard how nearly she had been caught in a trap. The older girl was moved by Eugenia's terror. She had felt that way, too, once on a time; now she was not frightened — only morose.
" If you want, I'll take a room with you somewhere — a room we can get for a dollar each, or so. It's just about impossible to get dinners you can eat under twenty cents; but we can skimp on breakfasts and lunches, and maybe get through on three-and-a-half."
" I've just got to ! " Eugenia cried. " And even at that, I don't see how I'm going to get any winter clothes until it's nearly spring."
' You can get clothes on easy payments, if you have to," the older girl said. " They soak you three prices, and hound you to death — but if you've got to, you've got to, I suppose."
They found a room, within walking distance of the
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business centre. It wasn't a " nice " room, but it was the best they could get for their price. And Eugenia got a hat and coat on " easy " payments.
Meanwhile, at the office of the Sovereign Remedy Co., Eugenia was making very fair progress. She took most of the manager's letters, now, and the other " stenographer " did little more than addressing, bill- ing, filing, copying, and such work.
There were things about the Sovereign Remedy Co. that Eugenia did not like ; but as they did not concern her, she thought she ought to ignore them, for the present. The " Remedy," for instance, was quite} frankly a " joke." Eugenia's heart and conscience both protested against the fraud; against the hilarity with which sick persons' too-confidential letters were read and passed from hand to hand; against the methods of getting "testimonials"; against the manager's slogan : " You can sell anything to any- body, if your ad. dope is right." He even thought well of himself, in comparison with some of his com- petitors, because there was no " knock-out " in his stuff. He boasted of this to Eugenia, when he felt the protest that she durst not speak. And when he saw that he was not able to extenuate himself, he laughed, and called her " Miss Green," and prom- ised her that she would have " city sense " some day.
In other ways, though, he was rather " nice " to her: he could tell by the look in her eyes when she
12S THE WOKK-A-DAY GIRL
had one of her blinding headaches, and would send her home; he was fairly patient when she made mis- takes; and he taught her a good many things the value of which she could not but recognize. He had been an ad. writer for others, before he embarked with his modest capital on this business of his own; and he had a crisp, pungent style. He laid great stress on punctuation, always naming the " point " he wished used. And, although his office was without dignity or proper business decorum, it was not without a pre- vailing good nature which was friendly, if " fresh." Eugenia described conditions faithfully to her room- mate, Sarah, of whom she was becoming quite fond; and Sarah advised her to " stick." For Sarah, in her varied experience, had found many places that were worse.
One evening, Eugenia did not get back to their room in time to go out to dinner. She came in about ten o'clock, explaining that Mr. Ledyard had been out all day and couldn't get his letters done; so he asked her to work in the evening.
"Did he take you to supper?" Sarah asked.
" Oh, no ! but he gave me fifty cents for supper money. I was glad to get it."
The night- work grew to be almost a regular thing; and in consequence of it, Eugenia was allowed to come down late in the morning. Her salary was not raised, but her " supper money " brought her income up to at least eight dollars.
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" Does anybody else work, except just you and Mr. Ledyard ? " Sarah demanded.
" No. But he's perfectly all right — I mean, as far as that goes."
" I don't think any man is ' perfectly all right ' who wants an eighteen-year-old girl to work nights in an office alone with him," Sarah declared. " If he has so much night-work, he should get a middle-aged woman — there are plenty of them that work cheap."
" Well, if I knew where I could get eight dollars in a safer place, I'd go," Eugenia replied. " But I don't know."
''' That's all right, then. But keep your eyes open," Sarah counselled. " Look out for the time when he suggests that you might as well eat together. That never means but one thing."
The time came. Eugenia, fortified by Sarah's ad- monitions, declined the invitation as tactfully as she could, but was not able to conceal her dismay.
" I'm surprised at you ! " he cried. " You, who pretended to be such a sweet, unsuspecting little girl. But I can tell you that you misjudge me ! I'm sorry you have such an evil mind. But I do not see how I can have a girl go on working for me, that thinks such things of me."
"Yes; that's the familiar spiel— that's what they always say," was Sarah's comment when Eugenia told her about the loss of her job.
Eugenia could not use Mr. Ledyard's name for ref-
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erence when seeking another place. Sarah told her to keep her tongue in her head about why she had been discharged. " Those that tell mostly bring sus- picion on themselves," she said. " You get the credit for having tried to lead a perfectly good gentleman astray/'
" But what shall I say when they ask if I've had any experience ? " Eugenia wept.
" Say you have, but "
" But I can't get any references ! Won't that be a nice thing to tell ? "
" Well, you're a girl — and you're up against it. I don't know any way that you can get a fair show. Some girls, when they get up against this, think there's no use trying to fight it. I've fought it — but I'm a failure. I don't know whether IVe got any right to recommend you to do as I've done."
Eugenia's eyes flashed. " You don't need to recommend me to be decent! I've got something in- side me, I hope, that will keep me pointed straight."
Eugenia did " keep pointed straight." She did have something in her that enabled her to endure and to resist.
But if that " something " had not been in her — what then?
Girls like Eugenia ought not to be obliged to trust their own intuitions when looking for employment.
They ought not to feel that they are " up against it " when they have angered a man like Ledyard.
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To give them protection is not so difficult as many another task of conservation which we unhesitatingly undertake; and few tasks could be more important.
In some of the best-governed German cities, all boys and girls under eighteen, who go to work, are placed in positions by the school board and may quit or be discharged only by permission of the school authorities after the reasons for the change have been thoroughly investigated. Edinburgh has a similar system. Lon- don is beginning to assume some responsibility for the early industrial experiences of its children. Cincinnati is doing a notable work in this line. Chicago is taking some first steps toward such guardianship. It is bound to come, everywhere, as people wake up to the great need for it.
Nothing helps on a general awakening so well as making a beginning of showing what can be done. In some communities, a handful of earnest women have carried on experiments in safeguarding young workers, blacklisting unscrupulous employers, and rendering like service so successfully that the authorities were impelled to take over the work and make it a depart- ment of the public service. Women's clubs ought to concern themselves with this. They could not pos- sibly be more importantly engaged.
There ought not to be in any community containing even one sweet, good, earnest motherly or sisterly woman, a girl like Eugenia, who feels that she has no one to whom she can turn for counsel, for direction,
126 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
for defence. And with the growth of organization among women, the rapid development of their sense of social service, they will — one feels sure — soon see to it that their daughters and the daughters of other homes are given every protection necessary in their quest of daily bread, of sane, safe amusement; of those things that sustain life, and of those that transfigure it.
VI THE GIRL WHO EARNS $6 A WEEK
"\\ THAT could you do if I was to let you
w ^r £® ^ "
Mrs. Burkhart's tone was not so chal- lenging as it might well have been; it was merely plaintively inquiring.
" Why," Hazel answered, her confidence undimin- ished by the indefiniteness of her reply, " I could do what Minnie does, I guess. She don't know any more than I do — or she didn't when she went away."
" Don't she say at all what she's workin' at? "
Hazel referred to the opened letter in her hand.
" No ; she don't say what she does. On'y that there's hundreds of girls workin' where she does, an' she's almost sure she can get me took on."
" Wouldn't it be better if she was to find out for certain before you go?"
Hazel looked the scorn she felt for her mother's ignorance of the world's ways.
" How could she ? Who's goin' to hire a girl they've never seen?"
"I guess that's right," Mrs. Burkhart acquiesced, meekly. "But," with sudden spirit, "I'd hate for
127
128 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
you to be a fact'ry girl. Clerkin's all right; but I'd hate for you to work in a mill or fact'ry."
There were a few manufacuring industries in their own small town, and the girl operatives — mostly East European — were looked down upon as " tough " by the town folk, especially by the mothers who thought themselves and their offspring " nice."
" It ain't likely Minnie would work in a fact'ry," Hazel retorted. " If she had been willin' to do that, she could have stayed home an' done it. She says she's earnin' six dollars a week, an' that if I come I can get as much, an' we can live awful nice by clubbin' together."
" Well, I should hope you could ! " her mother ejaculated. " That's more'n fifty dollars a month for two girls to live on. Your pa didn't make more'n that when we was married an' had two children. Fact is, he don't spend no more'n that on us now. Whatever else he earns don't go on our backs, nor into our pleasures ! "
Hazel recognized at the outset a wearisomely fa- miliar theme; she was in sympathy with it, but whereas her mother seemed to find satisfaction in reiterating her grievances, Hazel was tired of talking and eager to do something.
She was sick of the home atmosphere; of its bicker- ings and its pinch-penny restrictions and denials. And, too, she was young and so eager for adventure that she would have left a far softer home-nest for
THE GIRL WHO EARNS $6 A WEEK 129
the chance to try her own wings. What we are pleased to call our educational system is such that, while we ply our adolescent things with theory upon theory, we sedulously seek to keep them from testing any of the theories in practice. But Nature is not easily outwitted; she provides younglings, human and otherwise, with a deep desire to test life for them- selves; with a tingling to do and dare, which no cer- tainty of hardship can overcome.
It seemed to Hazel that her parents had made a squalid failure of life. What compromise they had effected with their youthful dreams they never hinted to her, and it was not possible, yet, for her to guess. She wanted to get away from the home frets and into the great, free world where one might fly and soar, looking on at life, fetterless, and occasionally dipping down into a bit of it that invited. She wanted move- ment, nights. She wanted to earn money. And she wanted social opportunities. She told herself that it was natural for her to want to be with Minnie; be- cause she and Minnie had been good friends for years. But there was a stronger urging, though Hazel did not recognize it : Minnie might have thrived, forgotten, in the city if the home town held a hope of romance; but it didn't. Hazel did not know a young man about whom she could build a dream. Minnie said that hundreds of young folks, girls and fellows, worked where she did. The statement made Hazel's pulses leap. What infinite possibilities for good times, for
130 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
new acquaintance, for selecting " Mr. Right " from among a host of eligibles!
Mr. Burkhart expressed no fearfulness about Ha- zel's going to the city to join the wolf-packs of the unskilled. He had been an inefficient, less-than-half- equipped worker all his life and had grown dulled to the miseries and the dangers of the condition. It did not even seem to him vital that any of them should discover what Minnie was working at, or how she was living. He took it for granted that Hazel should accept the chances of her class, and bear with what she did not like — unless, by some chance, she could better it.
A woman who was a fellow-member with Mrs. Burkhart of The Friendly Workers' Aid called when she heard of Hazel's intended departure, and told of some magazine articles she had read about " the girl and the city." She warned Hazel against speaking to any one on the train; against going with any one who came up to her in the depot offering her employ- ment; against answering advertisements that offered large salaries and said " no experience required." She seemed horrified that the Burkharts knew so little about what Hazel was going to do. Unfortunately, she was the sort of person whose cravings for the dramatic led her always to make things out very grave : when any one had the measles she always told of a large list of persons who became permanently blind or deaf or weak of heart as a result of that
THE GIRL WHO EARNS $6 A WEEK 18.1
malady; when any one bought a navy blue suit, she could be counted on to tell of many navy blue suits which had " faded something shameful." Cassan- dras are still being discredited, and always will be.
Hazel laughed at the warnings; her father swore at them, good-humouredly, because the Cassandra was a spinster and had never been to the city, and he was one of the many men who feel sure that an unmarried woman cannot possibly know anything in general and that no woman can possibly know anything she has not personally experienced. Mrs. Burkhart was faintly perturbed, but allowed herself to be overborne.
So Hazel went to the city, having advised Minnie on what train she would arrive. She did not know enough to be fearful that Minnie might not be there. She had Minnie's address, plainly written on a strip of paper, in her purse; and she felt confident of find- ing the place if she needs must.
As it happened, Minnie was able to meet the train. Hazel was a bit dismayed when she reached what Minnie called " home " : a windowless wee room off the kitchen of a cluttered, unclean, sour-smelling four- room flat. But Minnie explained that when they " clubbed together " they could have a room twice as good.
Hazel had an uncomfortable night, trying to sleep on half of Minnie's cot, whose mattress was so thin that the woven-wire springs seemed to be pressing into Hazel's weary muscles. She was not loath to
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get up at six; and though she was tired and sleepy, it seemed " fun " to go out to a cheap little restaurant and order a fifteen-cent breakfast.
" This is a celebration," Minnie said as they sat at their fried eggs, coffee, and rolls. " We dassent do this again — ever."
" Dassent we ? " Hazel echoed. " What dast we do other times ? "
"Well, it's like this," Minnie went on: "we gotta plan awful careful. Say I get you a job like mine, as I'm hopin' to: we each have six a week. Now, here's what we got to choose from : We kin board in a Home; there's enough of 'em, but they're all fierce. You kin sleep in a dormitory with five other girls, an' get two meals a day, fer three-fifty a week. With a ten-cent lunch a day, and mostly with sixty cents a week carfare, that's four-seventy — leavin' you one- thirty a week fer clothes an' amusements an' every- thing. Maybe you could stand it if they wouldn't always be tryin' to improve you. You come home at night dead tired after sellin' brass tacks or makin' paper boxes, and they set you up in the parlour an' have a missionary woman tell you how the Chinese girls bind their feet. It's awful — when what you're dyin' for is a chance to shake a leg. You have to get a permit to stay out after 10:30. And you gotta pray before you eat and pray before you sleep, an' give an account of everything you do. Then the matrons or superintendents or whatever they call 'em are the
W
w £
•§
THE GIRL WPIO EARNS $6 A WEEK 133
limit. The rich dame that gives the most money to furnish the Home with elevatin' pictures, or some- thing like that, always has a Cousin Maria that's the family Jonah — that nobody can stand, but somebody's got to support. So the rich dame says : * Ah, ha ! I'll put Cousin Maria into the Home as matron.' An' she does ! Cousin Maria has an easy way of knowin' right from wrong: if you ever want to do anything, it must be wrong; if you hate it, it's sure to be what you ought to do. You kin try one o' them places if you want to — I've had enough o' them."
" I don't want to try," Hazel hastened to declare. " Why don't we live in some nice boardin'-house where we can do what we want to?"
Minnie laughed. " Say, but you're green ! " she said. :' There ain't no nice boardin'-houses where six-dollar girls can live. I don't know of one — not a nice one, but any old kind — where you can get room an' board for four a week. If you gotta board that cheap, it's a cinch you have to pay some other way — give some flossy dames the fun of bossing you around and kidding themselves they're doin' good. Nobody that really respecks you is goin' to board you for four a week. Now, what we kin do is this: We kin get a pretty punk room in walkin' distance for about three a week ; or we kin get a better room, far out, for maybe two-fifty. That means one-fifty each for the punk room, or one-eighty-five each, countin' carfare, for the decent one. If we want to live on four a
THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
week, so as to leave something for clothes, amuse- ments, and emergencies, we gotta eat twenty-one meals every week for two-thirty-five or two-fifty. If the meals cost ten cents each, we'll have a few cents over for times when we're extra hungry. Or we could have fifteen-cent dinners. But breakfasts have got to stay at ten cents or below, you bet."
" Maybe," ventured Hazel, whose appetite was healthy and whose expenditure for clothes and amuse- ments had never reached anything like so large a sum as two dollars a week, " we won't need so much for clothes."
Minnie regarded her scornfully. " You wait and see," she admonished.
Another thing which she had no right to expect hap- pened to Hazel: she got work at Minnie's place for six a week. It was a factory; but she and Minnie were employed in the offices where they filed letters, addressed envelopes, and did like work — which was better than going into a department store, Minnie ex- plained, " because you don't have to buy black clothes an' look like you was gettin' at least fifteen."
For two or three evenings the girls did a little desultory room-hunting, then returned to their sour little hole where they could sleep, fitfully, only because they were so tired, and where they woke almost as- phyxiated because one of the members of the family from whom they sub-let was a " fresh guy," and they had to keep their door closed (it wouldn't lock) and
THE GIRL WHO EARNS $6 A WEEK 135
tilt their chair so that the back served as a catch for the door-handle.
They inquired, vainly, among their fellow-employes about rooms to rent ; scanned advertising columns, and visited a variety of lodgings all distinguished by dirt and smells, but differing in such details as price of room, extra charge for use of kitchen stove, and so on. Finally they decided to " commute/' as Minnie called it : to take a room far out, in one of the newer build- ings which, if they smelled of the present tenants' un- cleanness, at least did not cherish the smells of un- counted past inhabitants. This meant a forty-minute ride, night and morning, in a jammed elevated car which was invariably full when the girls got in, so that they had to sway, strap-hanging, for both prelude and postlude to their day's work which kept them almost constantly on their feet.
However, they got a decent little room, with a fairly comfortable bed, for ten dollars a month; and their landlady was kind about letting them boil their coffee on her gas-stove in the mornings and selling them a penny's worth of milk from her own supply. They brought rolls in with them when they came home at night, and sometimes a couple of eggs or of apples. This kept their breakfast cost down to about five cents each, on an average. At noon, they could go to a bakery lunch-room and have coffee and rolls, or coffee and pie, or coffee and doughnuts, for ten cents. The coffee was invariable; and usually what went with it
136 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
was a sweet something far from filling. At night they were voraciously hungry, and the temptation to spend more than they could afford had to be fought down almost every dinner-hour.
Minnie always resisted this temptation because she was clothes-crazy, and resented the demands of her stomach as taking so much from what might else have gone on her back. Hazel was a little slow in accus- toming herself to insufficient food; when a fifteen- cent dinner failed to fill her, she went recklessly on and ate another nickel's worth; she was even known to supplement her luncheon by five cents' worth of jelly-roll or doughnuts which she carried in for sur- reptitious consumption in mid-afternoon. Minnie's scorn of this improvidence had less effect than Min- nie's exemplification of the other course: Minnie was able to " blow herself " to an enormous bunch of new hair, which had transformed her from what she called " a back number " to " something dead swell." Ha- zel watched the transformation at home; she watched its effect among their f ellow- workers ; she tried the hair on her own head, and was fascinated by what the mirror showed her. Then, moved by Minnie's sudden bloom into " style," and by the manner she put on along with the new hair, a youth in their department asked Minnie to a dance. At once, Hazel's attitude toward her stomach changed, and she began to regard its demands resentfully. No more surreptitious jelly- roll; no more twenty-cent dinners; no more eggs for
THE GIRL WHO EARNS $6 A WEEK 137
breakfast, at three cents each. She would have a " bun " of hair, and a broad ribbon bandeau, and be taken to a dance.
Meanwhile, Minnie's beau was causing complica- tions. He called one evening soon after the dance. It was a rainy evening. The parlour of their land- lady's flat, which served also as sleeping-room for her two school-girl daughters, was in use : the school- girls were entertaining some school-boys. Minnie took her young man into her room. In a few min- utes the landlady knocked peremptorily at the door. When it was opened, she stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
" I can't have nothing like this in my house," she declared with virtuous indignation. " I got my girls to think of, and anyway I'm a respectable lady myself, and, even if I wasn't, the other tenants would be sure to make trouble if they knew I let to girls that ain't partic'lar."
Minnie's cheeks blazed, and her eyes flashed fire. The young man looked uncomfortable, but said noth- ing except : " I guess I better go."
Then Minnie's tears came. She would lose him! He would never come again! He would go back to the office and tell everybody about this call, and they would all laugh !
" You ain't any more respectable than I am ! " she cried. " I can't entertain my comp'ny in the parlour when it's full o' kids."
138 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
" You ain't payin' rent for no parlour," the land- lady retorted. " It belongs to my family."
" Well, then, I guess I can have who I want in the room I am payin' rent for."
" Not in my house, you can't ! "
" Can't I ? Well, so long as I'm behavin' myself, I don't take no sass from you nor the likes of you. We'll move to-morrow."
;< You're lucky I don't make you move to-night," was the parting shot of the landlady.
" Say ! " burst from the young man, when the in- vader had departed, " you got spunk ; you're a dandy!"
So Minnie was mollified. She had not lost her young man; rather, she had established herself still further, it seemed, in his admiring regard.
She sent word by Hazel next morning that she was " sick" and could not go to work; and when she in- spected rooms that were for rent she was careful to ask about where she might have her company. In no place within their means was the parlour available. In flats, if the parlour was not rented, it might be shared, occasionally, with any member of the family who chanced to be sitting in it, although it must be vacated when the persons who slept in it wanted to go to bed. In lodging-houses the parlour was inva- riably rented ; it had to be, to make ends meet for the landlady. Some places were particular about men company in girls' rooms; some were not. Minnie
THE GIRL WHO EARNS $6 A WEEK 139
hired a room in a lodging-house whose keeper assured her, " What ain't none o' my business I don't see." This soon became evident.
They moved in the evening. The new room was not inviting, but they thought that perhaps they could make it a little more so. At any rate, it offered " freedom," and to girls looking for mates that seemed worth any price. There were other girl room- ers; and it was not long before Minnie and Hazel had to admit, between themselves, that " things were kind of queer." Still, they argued, " so long as we don't do anything wrong, it ain't goin' to hurt us what some other girls do." But apparently it did. Minnie's young man friend who had been attracted by her " bun " of hair, and aroused to enthusiasm by her de- fiance of conventions, jumped to the not unnatural conclusion that Minnie had no scruples of any kind. He gave Hazel half a dollar one evening when he was calling, and said: " Here, Kiddo! chase yerself."
Surmising a proposal of marriage, Hazel reluc- tantly withdrew. She went alone to a nickel theatre, ' wandered about the streets for an hour or so, then returned to their room. Entering cautiously, she heard Minnie sobbing. " He — got fresh," was Min- nie's anguished reply to her entreaties. " An' when I said I wasn't that kind of a girl, he was mad and told me I was playing him for a fool."
Minnie cried all night. She was incensed at hav- ing been so misunderstood; she was desolated by the
140 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
loss of her young man whom she mourned, in true feminine fashion, not as he was but as she fancied him; and she was mortified, because she knew he would treat her sneeringly before all their fellow- workers, and when called to account for his change would not hesitate to tell the reason. Any consoling moralist could have told her she ought to be proud of the reason; as, indeed, she knew without being told. But better fortified persons than poor little Minnie have quailed, if they did not waver, when their virtue was made sport of.
It took real courage to go back to work next morn- ing; but Minnie went. One thing that helped her was her woman's hope that, when he came to think things over, he would understand, and be sorry for what he had done, and love her better than ever. All our early counsels advise us that this is virtue's re- ward. Or at least that is the way we interpret them. When experience fails to verify this expectation, we are very philosophic indeed if we are able to remind ourselves that the commonest and most natural effect of virtue upon lack of virtue is a fine pretence of con- tempt. Maybe it is pretence and maybe it isn't. But bravado demands a show of contempt; if we break a rule, we must make it appear that we break it, not because we haven't strength to keep it, but because we hold ourselves too clever to be bound by it. So what is there left for us to do toward those who still abide by the rule but look down upon their inferior
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intelligence? Even if, in his heart, Minnie's young man was forced to respect her, the hurt to his pride would never let him acknowledge it. And Minnie hoped in vain.
She was very sore of spirit for a while. Then her bravado asserted itself. Their fellow- workers knew that something had happened between her and Ray; not many of them credited her with making the break. She must show them! Must let them see that she could get another fellow, and a better one than Ray. Then maybe they would believe that she had thrown Ray down!
As soon as they could, she and Hazel moved. This time they avoided uninquiring landladies, and delib- erately bound themselves to entertain no men in their room. " I don't care," Minnie said. " The kind of a fellow I want is the kind I wouldn't want to have know I lived like this, anyway. If he's any good, he can find places to take me to when he wants to enjoy my society. The kind of fellow that wants to sit around in a parlour is a cheap skate, and I don't want none o' them. What we gotta do, though, if we want to be taken around by fellows that ain't afraid to spend, is to get ourselves some clothes, so a swell fellow won't be ashamed to be seen with us."
To this end, they took the least desirable room on their list of possibilities; because they could get it for two dollars a week. It had no heat, except such as came in from the kitchen, and no light but that of a
THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
small glass lamp, and no closet (of course), and there was no bathroom ; the toilet was down three flights of stairs, in a dark closet at the back of a black hall. Furthermore, the woman of whom they rented had a sickly baby that cried almost incessantly, and a hus- band who drank with nearly the same persistence. But the place was within walking distance of their work — not a short walk, but still it could be done — and they could spend on clothes just as large a part of five dollars weekly as they could induce their stomachs to do without.
It was getting late in October, by this time, and every air the girls breathed was full of " winter clothes" : the office girls gathered in the washroom to discuss ulsters; the girls who sat across the table from Minnie and Hazel at the bakery lunch place joked merrily about cutting their food allowance to the limit, because they were saving to buy new furs or velvet shoes or a swell purple hat; the shop win- dows, which were one of the chief sources of enter- tainment and delight to Minnie and Hazel, were an endless display of gaily caparisoned wax ladies with velveteen suits and plumed hats and furs whose be- comingness was more alluring than their cold-defy- ingness; the girls and women in the streets were be- ginning to flaunt their winter gear; there was no get- ting away from the thing.
But the best compromise they could make with their stomachs did not leave them quite three dollars a week
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for clothes. Of course they did their own washing and semi-occasional ironing; for the former they had to buy naphtha soap, because only cold water was available; for the privilege of doing a bit of the latter at the landlady's range on Sunday mornings, they paid a dime. Their daily and Sunday newspaper — which, obedient to one of the wisest of her instincts, is among the last things a working girl will deny her- self— cost them eleven cents weekly. They limited their indulgence in nickel shows to two a week; their candy allowance to rare half-pounds from the five-and-ten-cent stores; their carfares to nothing at all. Yet the clothes funds grew slowly — very slowly. One week Minnie had to have shoes. She bought velvet ones, which were what her heart craved; but even to her far-from-finicky taste, they mocked her battered hat and shabby suit, heart-breakingly.
" By the time I get me a suit, or a ulster, and a good hat, the shoes'll be frights," Minnie wailed. " I can't get a hat fit to look at under $4.98 — that's two weeks off; and by the time I've got twelve or fifteen dollars saved for a coat or suit, it'll be Christmas ! "
This dilemma, disclosed in a burst of washroom confidence, led one of the other girls to ask Minnie why she didn't try the installment plan. Minnie was dumfounded, because she had never thought of it.
[< The ninny I am ! " she cried. " An* me starin* them ads. in the face every day I live. Where's a good one o' them places ? "
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The girl recommended several, but one in particu- lar. " I get everything there," she went on. " It's a reg'lar department store — that one is. Some is only for ready-made clothin'. But at Weffler's you can buy shoes an' gloves an' veils and jew'lry an' toilet articles, and anything. You have to tell 'em where you work, an' how much you get. I guess they rub- ber around some, to make sure you ain't stringin' 'em. Then you pay a dollar down, an' a dollar a week, or
so."
A dollar a week! And wear your clothes while you're paying for them ! It was a " cinch," as Minnie said.
That evening she and Hazel could hardly think of eating — they were so excited. They had a hasty " supper " of coffee and doughnuts, and hurried, their hearts beating deliriously, to the big " emporium " where, on the payment of only " a dollar down," they would be able to select a winter wardrobe.
Hazel had determined on a suit, a hat, a silk waist, a pair of kid gloves, velvet shoes, and possibly a set of furs. Minnie was charmed with the new ulsters — double- face cloth with self -trimming, and big buttons; she could see her outfit in her mind's eye : gray ulster, with purple cuffs, revers, and sailor collar; purple hat to match; purple kid gloves; and a purple messaline dress.
They spent nearly three hours in the emporium — hours of pure ecstasy. And they tried to be prudent
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in the face of so much temptation. Minnie sacrificed a velvet hat for a quite plain one of felt, and forced herself to turn from a purple messaline with gold lace trimming to one adorned simply with cream-coloured net. Hazel vacillated a long time between fur and feathers, feeling that she hardly dared have both. She had on her blue velveteen suit, pinned for altera- tions; and she tried the effect of furs and a plain hat, feathered hat and no furs, till Minnie declared Wef- fler's would charge her for wear and tear on them all.
The salesgirl tried to help. " Are they for best or everyday wear?" she asked.
" For both," Hazel laughed.
" Then I b'leeve I'd take the furs an' the plainer hat. An' I dunno but I'd git me a cloth suit. They ain't so dressy; but if you wear velveteen to work in, it gits awful mangy-lookin'."
"That's right," Minnie counselled. " An' the woman that calls you down if you wear too flossy things might tell you you couldn't wear that suit to work. Then you'd be sore ! "
" I hear they're doin' that now in some places," the salesgirl said. " O' course they do it in the depart- ment stores. But wouldn't it jar you when they get t' doin' it in f act'ries ! "
" We work in an office," Minnie declared with dig- nity.
But Hazel accepted the advice given her, and though the department manager demurred about put-
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ting the pin-marked velveteen back in stock and tak- ing a double amount of fitter's time to pin a cloth suit, he finally yielded. And Minnie and Hazel, feeling that they had been very prudent indeed, were not so dismayed as they might well have been, when their respective purchases footed up to $41.75 and $42.47.
On these amounts they must pay at least $1.75 a week, and of course they understood that the longer they took to pay the more their interest would mount up. They hadn't thought about interest; but they didn't say so. They agreed, however, to pay $2.00 a week each. That meant that by April, when they needed spring clothes, they would have the winter ones paid for. It seemed providentially kind and simple — this " Weffler's Way " that they were learn- ing.
" And if we get up against it fer underclo'es, we can get 'em here — can't we ? " Minnie asked.
" Surest thing you know," was the response ; which so assured Minnie that she added fifty cents to her bill, and ordered a bunch of artificial violets to put the finishing touch of elegance to her ulster. Hazel refrained from a similar extravagance; for Hazel had not yet bought her new hair, and her hat would " look fierce " until she got it.
The new clothes were turned over to them on Fri- day evening, and worn to work on Saturday — with effect electrical: two of the best-looking fellows in
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the mailing-cage asked Minnie and Hazel to go to sup- per with them that evening " and take in a show."
:< You see," said Minnie when they were back in their little room at midnight, " what a difference a few good clothes make ! If you want to get any no- tion took of you, you gotta have some style about you. And anyway! Them clothes has saved us some money a'ready — got us free dinners an' free shows — an'll save us more. Say! that hamburger was bad — huh? My! I didn't know there was anythin' in the world as good as that and them German frys. Hon- est, I didn't."
The attentions of the young men continued — not often to the extent of suppers and twenty-cent shows, for the young men earned only $12 a week, and they knew nothing of such self-denying frugalities as Min- nie and Hazel practised; but often to the extent of nickel shows and sometimes to the extent of a Satur- day night dance. But it was impossible to stay longer than an hour at a moving-picture show; the November nights were far too chill to permit of much comfort out of doors; and one cannot dance every night and work every day, even if one had the price of so many dances. Of Social Settlements and their classes Min- nie and Hazel knew nothing. Minnie had a bitter aversion for all benevolence, born of her experiences in " Homes " that were ill-managed. Hazel had no prejudices, but she shared Minnie's apathy with re- gard to self-improvement. They had no yearning to
148 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
join any kind of a " class." They craved pleasure, and opportunity to exercise their feminine wiles to charm a mate. They would dearly have loved a hay- ride or a sleigh-ride, a candy-pull or a men's hat-trim- ming contest with its shrieks of superior feminine glee. They could have giggled coyly through " kiss- ing games," or played merrily at tableaux or charades; have bobbed for apples at Hallowe'en, or stalked in sheet and pillowcase, mystifying their best friends by comic devices. But none of these innocent gaieties came within their range. So they did what they could.
When Joe and Walter took them to a nickel show, and they were out in the street again at eight-thirty, there was just one place, or one kind of place, that the boys knew of where they could go : into the back or side room of some saloon. If they went to a soda fountain they were expected to drink hurriedly and give place to others. But in one of these " family " rooms, reached through the " ladies' entrance," they could have a table for quite a while for the price of four beers. The room was warm; usually there were a number of other young people at the other tables; almost always there was " something doing " in the way of music : a phonograph or piano-player with an inexhaustible repertory of ragtime and popular songs; sometimes there would be a little impromptu dancing, or some fellow who had, or thought he had, a voice, would sing to the " canned " accompaniment. It was
THE GIRL WHO EARNS $6 A WEEK 149
gay; and at first it looked as innocent as a country school-house spelling-bee. The girls did not touch the beer at first. Later, to avoid " bein' kidded," they drank a little.
Their semi-starved bodies responded pleasurably to the least bit of alcoholic stimulant; the glow felt won- derfully good to them; and by and by they craved it — found themselves looking forward to " a glass of something " when their day's work was done.
At dances it sometimes happened that a fellow with whom they had taken a drink " got fresh " ; but the girls "called him " in no timid tones, and nearly al- ways he laughed it off, and no offence was taken. Once in a while some unknown, on the street, or at a nickel show, would chance a " Hello, Kiddo," but with no response. Minnie and Hazel were happy, as girls incline to be, with Joe and Walter; every work-day was fun, because the boys worked beside them; sev- eral evenings a week were red-letter evenings, spent in a gay quartette; Sundays nearly always had some little pleasuring. Two dollars a week went regularly and quite ungrudgingly to WefHer; and things were going very well indeed, according to the girls' idea of things, when business went into its January slump, and Minnie and Hazel were both " laid off."
Things were dull everywhere. There is always room at the top, but seldom at the bottom for all who crowd there with their meagre efficiency. Minnie
150 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
and Hazel were totally unskilled; they had neither special ability, nor general intelligence. It was a fore- gone conclusion that unless some intercession were made for them, some powerful influence exerted in their behalf, they would not be re-absorbed into the world's work until another seasonal rush created a de- mand for cheap " extras."
But they did not realize this. Their experience was exceedingly limited, and no part of their colossally futile " education " had dealt out to them the most fundamental, kindergarten ideas about supply and demand, the uncertainties of the market for unskilled or semi-skilled labour, or anything like that ; although it had caused them to struggle with cube-root and to memorize a vast number of grammar rules which had no relation to language as the persons of their sphere used it to express themselves, and had held it shameful not to know the date of Brandy wine and the gist of the Monroe doctrine.
So Minnie and Hazel stumbled more and more de- spairingly on; hunting for work as best they knew how to hunt, and picking up what few crumbs of in- formation they could get about the labour situation from other girls only a degree " wiser " and bitterer than themselves. They knew of no one they could go to for advice or for help. Joe and Walter " staked " them to a dinner now and then ; the land- lady was willing to wait as long as there seemed any hope of the girls getting work and paying her up —
THE GIRL WHO EARNS $6 A WEEK 151
but if she let their debt grow too huge, the probability of their ever discharging it would be remote; and she, poor creature, had her main subsistence off what they paid her. Quite promptly, on the failure of their weekly payment, Weffler's collector came, employing the time-honoured methods of " bawling out " and threatening. His manner made the girls apprehend nothing less than State's prison if their payments were not made. And no one had ever instructed them as to their rights, nor as to their wrongdoing, in a case like this. The same smirking complacence which had taught them cube-root, but not usurers' interest and their ways of collecting what the law does not allow, had taught them to pronounce the names of places on the field of Waterloo, but not to reckon what is and what is not a justifiable debt to incur or, having in- curred a debt, what is the legal and what the moral responsibility therefor.
Because Weffler's collector was so terrifying they began to hate Weffler; to feel as if he had entrapped them. They forgot how eager they had been about " Weffler's Way," and how foolhardily they had reck- oned their ability to pay. They were hungry. They cooked coffee, mornings, on the landlady's stove, and ate dry rolls for breakfast. Luncheon they tried to forget about. Dinner was more coffee and dry rolls unless the boys bought them a meal. Hungry crea- tures snarl easily; and the girls resented the pathetic eagerness with which the landlady, her wailing baby
152 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
at her flabby breast, would question them as to the result of their day's seeking; they thought she was trying to press them, and they overlooked her need to be pressing. Nothing made life even briefly endur- able except the occasional " glass of something " which the boys provided in those back or side rooms.
Hungry creatures snarl easily, and they breed rap- idly. Cattle perishing of hunger on the plains, hu- man beings dying of famine in India or China, multi- ply like rabbits. There are two extremes that affect the passions: hunger and over- feeding; but want gnaws wildly, and repletion tends to somnolence. Nature has no morals as we define morality; and Na- ture in these girls was crying for food and crying, too, in the interests of the future — crying that, whether they lived or whether they died, life should go on, and on.
No part of their " education " had taught them to recognize that cry or how to answer it. Blindly they fought Nature in their waking hours, and while they slept she tormented them in dreams. No one stood by to tell them what it all meant, to fortify them for this so unequal fight.
One evening when they came in from their fruit- less seeking they found their landlady sobbing, her head buried in her arms outstretched upon the kitchen table. It was Saturday; " he " had been paid off at four o'clock, and she had gone to his place of em-
THE GIRL WHO EARNS $6 A WEEK 153
ployment, hoping to get some of his wages before he reached a saloon with them.
" The rent's due, and I asked him fer it. He cursed me awful, an' yelled out that I should git it from youse," she sobbed. " I don't want to press you girls. I was in your fix a lot o' times before I got married — that was why I took a chance on him. Good God! We're in fer it, whichever way we turn — us women ! "
Sullenly the girls boiled their cheap coffee and ate their bread. They were going to a dance with the boys, and they hoped that some one, during the even- ing, would buy them a little food along with " a glass of something."
When Hazel and Walter were ready to start home they could not find Joe or Minnie. ... It was cold winter dawn-light when Minnie came in.
"For God's sake where you been?" Hazel cried, wildly.
Minnie flung herself on the bed without un- dressing.
" Where I never thought I'd be ! " she laughed hys- terically. " I've given up, Hazel ; there ain't no more fight left in me. I gotta eat, and I dassent be particu- lar how I do it. I gotta have a bed to sleep on, and I dassent be particular who pays fer it — because / can't. Joe says he'd ask me to marry him, but he can't — on twelve a week. So we're — goin' to do the next best thing."
154* THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
There was a moment's silence. Hazel understood, but no immediate reply came to her.
"You're shocked," Minnie taunted, self-defen- sively.
" I'm not," Hazel retorted. " I don't feel like I'm any better'n you, or you're any worse'n me. That ain't got nothin' to do with it, as I can see. We're up against it — you see yer way out an' I don't see mine — I don't blame you. I know it ain't what you would of done if you could of had a show. But — well, I guess it's just the way you feel; you feel like it was worth that to live; / don't. That's all."
Minnie melted. " It's on'y to see me through," she wept, her head on Hazel's shoulder. " I ain't goin' to stick to it a minute longer'n I have to. When the spring rush comes on I'm goin' back t' work. But I can't live on hopes an' virtue."
"Minnie!"
Hazel was on her feet, staring wildly, as if some- thing had suddenly run amuck in her poor, dazed brain.
In the tenement hallway, as they talked, they had heard the stumbling, drunken footsteps of their land- lord. As Hazel jumped to her feet, they heard his wife's shrill scream of terror.
Hazel clapped both hands to her ears, but there was no drowning out the sound of blows. She toppled faintly toward the door, opened it, and was gone.
" Hazel ! He'll hurt you," Minnie screamed. But
THE GIRL WHO EARNS $6 A WEEK 155
Hazel did not answer. Fear-frozen, Minnie sat on the edge of their dingy bed, and waited. In a minute or two, which seemed like an eternity, two frowsy, semi-attired men from the floor below, came carrying Hazel. They had picked her up, a limp bit of human wreckage, in the dark hallway, four floors below.
VII MINIMUM WAGE
THE last article written by William T. Stead for his own publication, The Review of Re- views, and so far as we know the last thing he wrote before going down to his death in the Ti- tanic, was on the outcome of the recent coal strike in England, and the passing of the Minimum Wage bill. The concluding paragraph of that valedictory ar- ticle is this:
"When the Minimum bill was passing, a Scandinavian ob- server in the Lobby said: 'This is the greatest event that has happened since the French Revolution.' And a vision of a new Heaven and a new earth has undoubtedly begun to dawn on many darkened eyes all over the world."
Therewith a trenchant pen concluded an advocacy of more than forty years in the passionate service of humanity.
What is this vision of a new earth which is dawn- ing on darkened eyes all over the world ? It is this :
"The body is not one member, but many. . . . And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it."
Or, as a decree of the United States Supreme Court
reminds us, the welfare of the whole nation is " no
156
MINIMUM WAGE 157
greater than the sum of all its parts " ; for " when the • individual health, safety, and welfare are sacrificed or neglected, the state must suffer."
We have endeavoured very valiantly, especially in the years since the French Revolution, to palliate the suffering of some members of our social body. We are waking to a realization that most of our earnest charity is no better than an opiate : it deadens pain but does not cure the cause; and it breeds, like all opiates, a horrid habit.
For a long time we handed out this palliation more or less unquestioningly ; it eased our consciences, and it seemed to ease a little of the world's want and pain — for which we felt so comfortably irresponsible!
Then we advanced in diagnosis; we saw that what we have been doing is a weak evasion, as if we were keeping down the pain of an ulcer with morphine and disregarding the practical certainty of blood- poisoning. We have learned, too, that circulation in the social system is as circuit-completing as in the physical.
And now, because we know we are one body with many members, we are alarmed by the number of impotent poultices we wear, and by the danger of blood-poisoning. We demand that these poultices be stripped off; we look, not without nausea, at the sores; and we cry to Science for a cure.
Science repli.es to us that a cure cannot be local: it must reach back to prime causes; that the outward
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sore is but the indication of impure blood, and to attack the sore without purifying the blood is only to leave the evil germs to make a new attack. We have known this for some time in physiology; we are only waking to it in sociology. And that is the vision of a new earth which has begun to dawn.
People used to believe that disease was a dispensa- tion from God. When they learned that it was, very largely, a penalty of dirt and disorder, we will hope that they apologized to the Deity for their former im- piety. They used to think that pestilence was " a visitation," and that it could not be cured. Now we know that it can flourish only through gross negli- gence— and it is practically eradicated from the civ- ilized world. There are still some people who think that poverty — other people's poverty! — is either by the will of God or because the poor " have got all they deserve "; and that insanity and immorality and crime are devastating disorders that must be endured. But they are NOT ! They are the outcome of gross negli- gence; and they can be as nearly eradicated as is smallpox, from which, also, the world suffered through many centuries until we learned how to pre- vent it!
And that is why the passing of the Minimum Wage bill was understandingly pronounced the " greatest event that has happened since the French Revolu- tion." Because it proclaims our discovery that, just as there was once a degree of filth which bred small-
MINIMUM WAGE 159
pox that rotted kings on their thrones as well as peas- ants in their huts, so there is a degree of poverty which breeds grievous disorders that we have no right to bear and every right to eradicate.
England has realized that when the father of a family delved in the bowels of the earth for the coal which is the essential basis of England's prosperity, and got for his long day of fatiguing, life-endanger- ing labour less than five shillings ($1.20), he was not being paid enough to sustain himself and his family in decency and safety; enough to maintain them in health and in surroundings which might encourage self-respect and discourage vice, crime, and other dis- orders of poverty. What standard of human effi- ciency it is possible to maintain on $7.20 a week, without obliging the wife to become a wage-earner, to the neglect of her children, or sending the children to work at the earliest moment the law will allow, it is not the purpose of this one small article to discuss.
This is an attempt to state the urgent economic necessity of a minimum wage law for women workers in these United States; of laws, rather — for each State must, of course, make its own.
In 1900 there were in the United States, according to the reports of the census, 4,833,630 women bread- winners of 16 years and over, or one out of every five in the population. The Government has under- taken to find out all it can about the earnings of those millions of women; how many of them are com-
160 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
pletely self-supporting; how many are the partial or sole support of others besides themselves; and so on. And on the nth of May, 1911, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts authorized its Governor to " ap- point a commission of five persons, citizens of the Commonwealth, of whom at least one shall be a woman, one shall be a representative of labour, and one shall be a representative of employers, to study the matter of wages of women and minors, and to report on the advisability of establishing a board or boards to which shall be referred inquiries as to the need and feasibility of fixing minimum rates of wages for women or minors in any industry." The com- mission presented its report in January, 1912.
The Massachusetts census of 1905 gave the total number of females gainfully employed in that State as 380,675. Many of these were in the cotton textile industry, which was admirably covered in the Fed- eral investigation, and the Massachusetts commission made use of these figures and added to them its own investigation of three others : retail stores, candy fac- tories, and laundries. " Thus altogether, informa- tion, more or less detailed but all of a thoroughly re- liable character, being based upon payrolls and first hand inquiries by trained investigators, was gathered covering 15,278 female wage-earners engaged in four different occupations in the Commonwealth."
They found that 41 per cent, of the candy workers, 10.2 per cent, of the saleswomen, 16.1 per cent, of
MINIMUM WAGE 161
the laundry workers, and 23 per cent, of the cotton workers earn less than five dollars a week; and that 65.2 per cent, of the candy workers, 29.5 per cent, of the saleswomen, 40.7 per cent, of the laundry work- ers, and 39.9 per cent, of the cotton workers earn le$s than six dollars a week.
The Government found that considerably more than a fourth of the store girls and women and just a third of the factory girls and women investigated earn less than six dollars a week ; and that more than two-thirds of them earn less than eight dollars a week.
The Government figures show that more than one- fifth of these girls and women are completely self- dependent and in many cases the partial or whole sup- port of others (on an average wage of $7.33, which high average more than a fourth of them do not come within $1.33 of touching) ; and of those who live at home, more than four-fifths contribute their entire earnings to the family fund.
" What," asks the Government report, " has this condition to do with the faith current among so many employers and accepted by the public that the girls who have homes work only for ' pin-money ' ? "
And what constitutes the right of the employer to make his wages to women on a pin-money basis, smugly replying to all criticism that he knows girls cannot live on the wages he pays but that he " endeavours to employ only girls living at home " ?
If a girl worker is a member of a family of five
162 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
who all work (the mother as housekeeper for the group) and they live in five rooms for which they pay $3.25 a week, her share of the rent will be 65 cents. If the heat and light cost $1.50 a week, her share will be 30 cents. If the furniture cost $300 and the annual upkeep is $25, her share of the in- terest on the investment and of the repair and re- placements will be 15 cents a week. If the cost of food for five is $10, her share will be $2. And if the services of the mother are reckoned at $8 a week (based on rates for housework, with board) the girl's share will be $1.60. This totals $4.70 which a girl living in a decent home should contribute as her share of its support.
The same authorities (30 prominent social workers in conference on " what it would cost a woman of average ability, initiative, and intelligence when liv- ing at home, and also when living away from home, to secure the necessary comforts of life ") estimated the fair personal expenses of such a worker to be:
Carfares .......... $0.52
Clothes .......... 1.92
Dentistry, doctor's fees, medicine, oculist ..... 52
Recreation and vacation . . ...... 54
Education (papers, magazines) ....... 07
Church . . ......... TO
This would put the minimum wage for such a worker at $8.37 a week exclusive of savings or in*- surance, and taking for granted 52 weeks of pay —
MINIMUM WAGE 163
which only a small fraction of all these workers receive.
So that if an employer hires a girl or woman, a member of an average family who live in a tenement even as decent as can be rented for $14 a month, and knows that she is one of four wage-earners none of whom contributes less than $4.70 a week to the family support, he can justify himself in paying her less than $8.37 a week ^only by denying her right to spend $100 a year on clothes, or $27 a year on the preservation of her health, or a little more than that on a two weeks' vacation and fifty weeks of such recreation as can be bought for twenty-five cents a week. Yet few girls working for a low weekly wage live in families where there are three other continu- ously employed workers none of whom contributes less than $4.70 to the family budget. And 57.5 per cent, of store employes and 74.3 per cent, of factory workers earn less than $8 a week.
For the girl or woman not living at home, the fol- lowing estimate was made:
Rent and carfare $3.00
Food 4.60
Laundry .&5 ftyjjjj^
Clothes . ... .... 1.92 *
Dentistry, doctor's fees, medicine and oculist's fees . . .42
Recreation and vacation 54
Church 10
Education (newspapers) 07
Total $10.60
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Here, again, is no margin for unemployment, sick- ness, accident, nor for saving toward old age; nor for those contributions to needy relatives which almost every self-supporting woman makes.
In determining what rent a woman should be able to pay to maintain her efficiency and her self-respect, the conference decided that:
" She should have a window in her room.
" She should have a room larger than a hall bedroom because this room is her home, where she receives her friends of both sexes and passes her leisure.
" She should have a heated room, and not have to rely on an oil or gas stove for heat, on account of her health.
"The standard should not require her to live in one room with another woman. She may prefer to do so, but most wage- earners over twenty-five, where they can possibly do so, room alone, showing a willingness to sacrifice other things for privacy."
Rooms of this sort, comfortably furnished, lighted, and heated, in respectable rooming houses within walking distance of industrial centres, are hard to find for less than $3.00 a week.
" The principles considered in determining a standard of food were that it should be sufficient in quantity, quality, and variety, to preserve health."
Four dollars a week for food allows 15 cents each for breakfast and luncheon, and 25 cents for dinner, with 15 cents a week for fruit or other extras.
" Board and lodging with heat and light would be $7.00 a week at the lowest in a decent boarding house with a standard room." (This was based on Boston prices. They are hardly lower in any of the principal cities, although they would be considerably less in small communities.)
MINIMUM WAGE 165
The laundry allowance is based on the presump- tion that the girl will wash her own handkerchiefs, stockings, flannels, and send away principally shirt- waists and a limited supply of muslin underwear.
With one hundred dollars a year to spend for clothing a worker who refrains from the tax on her strength of more sewing at night than is necessitated by mending and remodelling will have to be an intel- ligent buyer to make a good appearance on that dress allowance. The St. George's Working Girls' Club of New York City estimated $65.85 as the smallest practicable yearly expenditure for clothing for a self- supporting girl in New York. But they reckoned on two pairs of $2 shoes, which is insufficient for most girls ; and their allowance was based on such items as " i flannel petticoat, 25 cents; 4 corset covers at 25 cents, $i ; 2 combination suits at 50 cents, $i ; and so on — including two hats at $2.50, $5." Whereas in the Working Girls' Budgets tabulated by Mrs. Clark and Miss Wyatt ("Making Both Ends Meet") few girls were found who were able to dress themselves for $65 a year, even when they earned much less than the $8 a week which the St. George's Club estimated as the smallest wage on which a girl could live in decent comfort and have a margin of $65 for clothes.
And this brings us to the question propounded: "Who pays the deficit?"
From $8 to $10 is the variously computed mini- mum at which a woman or girl worker may maintain
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efficiency by affording herself " the necessary com- forts of life." Less than a third of our women or girl workers earn so much as $8 a week. Who pays the deficit?
If the underpaid girl lives at home, and contributes less than her fair share of the family expense, her father — if she has one, and he is working and paying all that he earns for day-to-day family upkeep — pays part of the deficit, either by having to forego saving for his old age, or by a continued denial of his desire for comforts.
The average workingman has reached the zenith of his earning powers long before he has a child old enough to go to work. He has probably, while sup- porting a wife and three or four or more children, been able to make no provision for those days of declining industrial worth which set in so comparatively early for him. When his daughter goes to work, she should be able to relieve the strain by a little more than the cost of her keep; but she should be able to do it without those hardships of renunciation to which so very many of our young workers are driven by their parents' desperate desire to save against old age.
The girl's mother pays part of the deficit if the household budget is too small to provide her with a share of unchallenged income for her personal de- sires.
The girl's younger brothers and sisters pay a part
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of the deficit if they have to be hurried into the wage- earning ranks the moment the law will allow, re- gardless of whether they are fitted to take a place in industry that may give them a good opportunity for competence. (About 90 per cent, of the boys and even more of the girls who leave school at or under fourteen to go to work enter industries whose av- erage weekly wage for all employes is under $10. And so great a commonwealth as Massachusetts has to admit that only 2 per cent, of her army of child- workers are in high-grade industries where they can hope to maintain themselves and, eventually, their families in decent comfort.)
And the girl herself pays the deficit in many ways. She almost undoubtedly pays part of it in too-crowded living quarters where she has no parlour to which she can bring her friends (obliging her to have her social life in the amusement parks and dance halls and skating rinks and on the crowded streets, all beyond the guardianship of her parents) and where she sleeps in a small, perhaps unventilated, room with one or two other members of the family. The phys- ical drain of modern industry, with its constantly in- creasing tendency toward " speeding up/' is frightful. And the recuperation so desperately needed is hard to get in such sleeping quarters as the vast majority of underpaid working girls are herded into. She pays it in insufficient food, quite certainly. (Pro- fessor Frank Underhill of Yale estimates that of
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families with less than $600 income 76 per cent, are underfed; they eat actually less than enough to repair the waste of tissues and supply heat and energy.) Or, if she does not pay in hunger for food, she must pay in hunger for pretty clothes and for girlish pleas- ures, as Well as in foregoing a vacation and probably in neglecting her teeth or other things necessary to her health.
And when the girl is idle (as the " seasonal " nature of many industries causes so many thousands of girls to be for weeks out of every year) the family pays the deficit in supporting the girl whose inadequate wages have left her nothing to save. If she is ill, the family pays if it can — if not, the community pays with its clinics and hospitals.
The " girl adrift," as the Government characterizes the girl not living at home and solely dependent on her own resources, pays the deficit in hunger of some sort, if not of many sorts. Most commonly she pays it in hunger for food. If she does not do this, she denies herself many little indulgences in dress and pleasure, which denial is more than likely to make her bitter in heart.
She pays in health if she tries to save in the price of lodging; if she wearies herself by working at night, washing and ironing, mending and making, to present a decent appearance without sacrifice of sufficient food; if she neglects her eyes or her teeth because she cannot afford to have them attended to; if she
MINIMUM WAGE 169
cannot give herself a restful vacation; if she is ner- vous, yet forces herself to keep down her room-rent by having a room-mate whose tastes clash with hers; and so on.
Sometimes she pays that deficit in morals; not because she is weaker than she should be, but because the pressure upon her is much stronger than it has any right to be. Where she resists, she shows a sturdy power far, far beyond what I dare to believe I should have under equal pressure, to be met with equal advantages. When she falls, it is seldom if ever for clothes, or even for food — in the first in- stance. She falls because she thinks some fellow loves her; and the strongest desire in her is, by Nature's ordering, the desire for love. Afterward— when she feels that, having begun, she may as well go on — she may cold-bloodedly acknowledge to her- self, and even to you, that she is " in it " for fun or for feathers. But the vilest vulture that preys on the weakness of girls will admit that they must prac- tically always be wooed to the downward path with some pretence of love.
And, lastly, the community pays that deficit — in part. The community helps to ease the mind of many employers every time it contributes toward the support of some Home where girls adrift may board for $2.50 or for $3 a week. There are never enough of these places to house one in a hundred of the girls adrift. But without troubling to find that out, or to
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remember it if the fact has been called to his atten- tion, the salary-paring superintendent, eager to make a great showing for his hundred-million-dollar boss, goes on hiring girls at wages no girl can live on; and, if reprehended, retorts that "there are plenty of Homes where they can get board for $2.50 a week."
The community pays the deficit of those girls in other ways ; in fresh air charities and vacation funds ; in tubercular asylums; in clinics and hospitals; in Homes for the Aged Poor, and for the friendless ; in Juvenile and Night Courts; in Maternity Homes and Erring Women's Refuges; in industrial schools; and sometimes in prisons and houses of correction. Only 8 per cent, of the women in our penal institutions are serious offenders; the others are what are known as " accidental or occasional " criminals, and those that have come out of the industrial world have come, almost without exception, out of the ranks of the poorly paid.
For an employer to answer his workers, and you and me, that he cannot afford to make up any of this deficit is no excuse. As the report of the Massachu- setts Commission says : " If an industry is perma- nently dependent for its existence on underpaid labour, its value to the Commonwealth is question- able."
But few, if any, industries are so dependent. The cost of labour in a pound of chocolates which whole-
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sale at fifty cents is from 4 to 5% cents. What part of the other 45 cents may be charged to the cost of materials, overhead charges, and cost of doing busi- ness I do not attempt to say ; although it seems doubt- ful that a manufacturer would let them total much more than four times the cost of labour — which would still leave him a net profit of 100 per cent.
A company owning a number of five-and-ten-cent stores, and wishing to increase its capital stock, assured prospective shareholders that:
" Five-cent articles cost $2.50 to $5.50 per gross, and ten-cent articles $5.50 to $11 per gross, showing a profit of 33 per cent, to 188 per cent, on the cost.'*
Yet there is almost no other labour in the country so poorly paid as that of the overworked girls in the five-and-ten-cent stores.
Boston finds that more than 12 per cent, of its girls and women employed in retail businesses receive help from organized charity. The percentage would probably be higher in some other cities. Think of this, the next time you pride fully escort a country cousin through one of your city's many-million-dollar department stores. Think of it, you in the small town, the next time you gloat over a " bargain " in your five-and-ten-cent store.
The man-of -many-millions who owns an ocean-to- ocean chain of five-and-ten-cent stores cannot answer you that, out of his hundred per cent, gross profit, he is unable to pay his girl employes a living wage. He
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must answer, if you can get him to answer at all, that while the wage he pays f( may not be " half enough to subsist on, it is all the girls are worth to him, and that he never has the slightest difficulty in getting plenty of girls to work for it.
And as long as the Law allows him to so do, he may take advantage of its latitude and try to cut the throats of such competitive merchants as have seen a vision of a new day and are endeavouring to live by it. Even in the days when sea-piracy was at its worst there was a preponderance of men whose consciences were infinitely above such villainy. But it was grimly enforced Law on the high seas that put down piracy — and not the example of the conscientious.
A noble example of enlightened and high-minded merchandizing has recently been given in Boston, where the following circular was issued :
MINIMUM WAGE SCALE
EFFECTIVE BEGINNING MARCH I, IQI2
Much work has been done by our employes, by the Filene Co-operative Association, and by the Manage- ment to increase the efficiency of our force. In view of this and also of the needs of our coming New Store, we believe the time has come when we can justly and for the benefit of the business make the following announcement :
MINIMUM WAGE 173
The study of conditions has convinced the man- agement that a female must have a wage of at least $8.00 to pay her way, living even very moderately. While a great part of our female force now receives more than $8.00 a week (our saleswomen, for in- stance, averaging $10.00), we have apprentices, bun- dle desk girls, examiners, etc., who now get less than $8.00 per week.
With this in mind, and believing that every one in our employ can make themselves worth $8.00 a week, beginning March i, we shall establish a Mini- mum Wage of $8.00 a week for females, and, on a sliding scale, a Minimum Wage of $6.00 a week for males (boys, etc.), under the following votes of the Board of Managers
That beginning March first, 1912, no female in our employ shall receive a fixed wage of less than eight dollars ($8.00) per week. Any tem- porary female employe hired for a period of less than a week shall receive a wage of not less than $1.50 per day.
No male employe shall receive a fixed wage of less than $6.00 per week for the first six months of employment, of less than $7.00 per week for the second six months, nor of less than $8.00 per iveek if employed for one year or longer. Male employes engaged for a period of
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less than one week shall receive a wage of not less than $1.00 per day.
BOARD OF MANAGERS,
F. W. TULLY, Chairman.
This is an answer better far than any argument you or I could make to the reiteration that four and five dollar wages are all that it is practicable to pay, in view of competition among employers and of the over-supply of cheap help; and that such wages are all that the girls who receive them can possibly make themselves worth to the firm.
Kindly note the declaration of the managers of this big department store, that they believe there is no apprentice, bundle wrapper, or other girl in their employ who cannot make herself worth $8.00 a week ;
AND THEN NOTE THAT AS A FIRST STEP TOWARD SUCH EFFICIENCY THEY PAY HER THE EIGHT DOLLARS!
They do this not because they want to make a noble test of a noble theory; but because their experience in the results of fair treatment for their workers jus- tifies them in their expectation that this announce- ment will be " for the benefit of the business."
That is enlightened common sense. It is, however, too much enlightenment to expect from some, save under compulsion.
So, when your Association of Commerce, or your City Club, or your Federation of Women's Clubs, or whatever agency for social betterment is yours, gets
MINIMUM WAGE 175
before your legislature a bill to establish a Minimum Wage Board, you write to your assemblyman and to your state senator, and say:
" I'm tired of paying my share of the deficit. I am tired of seeing working women and their families paying their far heavier share of it. / want that bill passed"
And when your assemblyman or your senator dis- regards your plea and argues in defence of his act that the appointment of Minimum Wage Boards is "of doubtful constitutionality/' reply to him by the next mail that you will welcome any amendment to the Constitution which may make it more conform- able to the spirit of the times.
If, then, he hedges by declaring that such wage arbitration cannot be made practicable, refer him to what has been accomplished in Australia and New Zea- land, and in England even before the coal strike.
Then, when you have helped to get such a law passed, do not think to rest! The making of laws is comparatively easy; the enforcement of them is enormously difficult. The success of such a law will lie with the number and the vigilance of the volun- teers who will make its enactment their business. Don't let it become another of those dead-letter laws for which humanitarians have fought valiantly.
Your power and mine seem dishearteningly lim- ited against some abuses, but here at least we can do a good deal. To a producer or a merchant every
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purchaser is sovereign; every buyer's good opinion is courted; no customer is affronted if he can possibly be pleased. It is a long way from us to the repre- sentatives who make our laws — and much lies be- tween. It is a short way from us to the man who wooes our wages and courts our trade. Good lusty public opinion will reach him promptly.
See to it that the minimum wage board bill is passed in your State.
If you are not benevolent, do this because you are selfish. If you are not selfish, do it because you are benevolent.
Remember that "whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it."
Or, as Jane Addams says : " The best speculative philosophy sets forth the solidarity of the human race; the highest moralists have taught that, without the advance and improvement of the whole, no man can hope for any lasting improvement in his own moral or material individual condition."
The seers have had this vision from aforetime. But now, as Stead declared with his final words, it " has undoubtedly begun to dawn on many darkened eyes all over the world."
BEING PREPARED TO EARN THEIR LIVING.
These little girls will never wander about looking for " Girl Wanted " signs. They are heing taught, in a public trade school, to make straw hats. They will probably have jobs awaiting them, and they will not have to start on apprentice pay.
VIII MAMIE'S DEFICIT
ON the way home from school in the afternoon Mamie met Rose Smulska, who used to live " upstairs of " Mamie.
" Ain't you workin' ? " Mamie asked.
" No; I'm laid off. It's fierce. My pa's sick all winter."
"Can't you git you another job?"
" I'm lookin'. But this here's a slack time ; there ain't hardly nobody hirin'. I chase aroun' all I can without spendin' carfare. But gee! you git sore when you been turned down about ten times a day."
" I'm goin' to be fourteen by May," Mamie said. " I hope they'll be hirin' good then."
" You can't never tell," Rose answered. " I s'pose you'll stay in school till June ; won't you ? "
Mamie didn't know. Some one had told her that it would be better to hunt a job as soon as she was fourteen and could get a " stif'kit," because at the end of June there are thousands of fourteen-year-old girls looking for jobs — either vacation or steady jobs.
"That's right," Rose agreed, gravely. "I'll tell you what, though! If I was you, I'd stay in school
177
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up to sixteen, if you can. I b'lieve you git better
chances."
, Mamie shook her head.
" I don't know's I can," she said. " But in some ways I'd like to. I'm pretty good at learnin'; I'm in seventh grade already. Teacher's awful nice; but the eighth grade teacher ain't — the kids hate her; maybe I wouldn' learn good next year, anyways."
Rose looked at her as one old in experience looks at the young who are so blissfully ignorant. Rose was sixteen and had been a wage-earner for two years.
" Take it from me," she counselled, " there ain't no teacher that's in it with most foreladies fer bein' mean. Teachers dassen't be as mean as foreladies dast!"
" Dassent they?" Mamie echoed, apprehensively.
"You bet not!"
This was putting upon wage-earning a new aspect for Mamie, who had thought of it as a delightful ad- venture, even apart from the crowning feature, the pay envelope. She was still pondering when she reached home.
Mamie's father was a teamster. He earned twelve dollars a week when he " was on reg'lar," and he was a bit more than ordinarily steady in his habits and successful in getting jobs and fortunate in the posses- sion of health. Once he had had pneumonia, and since then he had to be a little more careful about
MAMIE'S DEFICIT 179
exposure ; and every winter he was more or less both- ered with rheumatism. But he was a perfect tower of health and strength compared with most of the men of his age in their tenement, their neighbour- hood. In consequence of this, and of the compara- tively small amounts he spent on beer and tobacco, his family lived on a far more even plane of comfort than most of the families they knew.
They paid eleven dollars a month for their four rear rooms. That was more than they could afford; but Mrs. Costello (Mamie's ma) could not find a three-room flat, and though there were four-room flats to be had for nine dollars, they were few and highly undesirable — in damp basements, in old frame houses impossible to heat in winter, or at great dis- tance from Joe's work. (This was in Chicago, where rents, especially tenement rents, are very much lower than in New York.) So they took the eleven-dollar rooms and sub-let one of them, or a part of one, as they could. Mrs. Costello had tried various kinds of lodgers and boarders. Sometimes she let the room, without board, to a man, for two dollars a week. This would have been an ideal arrangement if some of the lodgers had not been obstreperous when they were drunk, and some had not been lecherous when they were sober, and some had not been bad pay — and so on. Two or three experiences had made Mrs. Costello think fearfully for Mamie and Nellie — and she let her room, next, to " a widow lady " who paid
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only a dollar and a quarter a week and, having few interests of her own, had too many of her neighbours' and was in consequence exasperatingly " incompat- ible." Sometimes she had a boarder — a boy earning small wages, whom she lodged in the room with her own two boys, and fed for $2.50 or $3.00 a week; or a working girl who roomed with Mamie and Nellie and paid a like sum.
The flat was like most four-room flats in tenement houses of the cheaper class : it had two fair-sized rooms and off each of them a small bedroom. One of the fair-sized rooms was the kitchen; the other was " the rentin' room." The disposition of the family in their available sleeping-space depended on " who had the rentin' room," because (as is usually the case) the small room off it had no communication with the kitchen and other small room, except through the " rentin' room." If there was a man lodger, Mrs. Costello put Joe and the boys in that " front " bed- room, took Nellie and Annie in with her, and made Mamie a shake-down in the kitchen. If the lodger were female, she and two of the girls would move into the " front " room and leave the kitchen bedroom to Joe and the boys. If they had a boy-boarder, it was awkward and unpleasant because either Mamie and Nellie, or Mrs. Costello and Annie, had to go back and forth through the boy's room to the kitchen. A girl boarder was better, for some reasons, but still a disturber of family life, because Mr. Costello was
MAMIE'S DEFICIT 181
separated from his wife and relegated with the boys to the kitchen-quarters. Mrs. Costello was usually, now that all her children, except possibly Annie, were of age when the decencies should be considered, at her wits' end to know how to parcel out her flock and get from that " rentin' room " something con- siderable toward the rent.
This may seem like a good deal of consideration to devote to the Costellos' housing problem; but in reality it is far too little — as I hope presently to help you to see.
When Mamie came in from school, her mother was ironing. The day was damp and chill — Winter was lingering in the lap of Spring. Mr. Costello's thick woolen underwear had not dried out of doors, and it was hanging on a line in the kitchen, along with Annie's " galatea " dress, and Mrs. Costello's gray cotton-flannel petticoat, and sundry other slow- drying things. The room smelled of soap-suds — of those that had " boiled over " onto the stove, and of those Mrs. Costello had dumped on the floor when her washing was done, to give it a " broom scrub- bing"; the boards were still wet and reeking of suds.
Annie (who was seven) had not gone to school that day because she had a sore throat; for the same reason, her mother was afraid to let her go out to play; so she was confined to the kitchen — the only room that had any heat in it — and she had Bessie Cohen in to play with her.
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" Wash them dishes, will you, Mamie? " her mother said, nodding toward the sink where the lunch dishes were piled.
Mamie took off her hat and coat and got out the dish-pan.
" I seen Rose Smulska when I was comin' home," she said. " Her pa's been sick all winter, and she ain't got no work."
" Her pa ain't never goin' to git no better," Mrs. Costello declared, not unsympathetically yet with that matter-of-fact acceptance of such situations which comes from much experience of them. " He's got the con; I could see it comin' when they lived here. I'm thankful your pa ain't no tailor — not that it's a real man's business, anyhow! Teamin's hard, but it's healthier. I wonder what them Smulskis'll do — nine of 'em ! Lord ! "
" Rose says if she was me she'd try'n' stay in school till I'm sixteen," Mamie said — more intent on her own prospects than on the Smulskis'.
"Why?"
" She thinks you git on better if you got more edu- cation. It's hard to git took on in a good job when you're on'y fourteen, she says."
" Well, if you was learnin' anything in school that might help you — but land! seems to me you'd be learnin' faster if you had almost any kind of a job — an' be drawin' pay besides! I'll be awful glad when
MAMIE'S DEFICIT 183
you can earn enough so's we can pay the rent without havin' no lodger."
Yes; Mamie would be glad of that, too. Even if she could only get three dollars or three and a half a week, it would be enough to pay her carfare, buy her shoes and clothes, and help the family dispense with a stranger in the house.
Mamie's pa, when the matter was broached to him, couldn't see what Mamie might hope to get in two more years of schooling that would recompense her for staying on and him for keeping her there.
"If they learned you anything you could earn a livin' with, I wouldn't care," he said. " But, like it is, I don't see it. I'll be glad when you can earn your keep. I'm forty, an' it won't be no matter of a hundred years before bosses git to thinkin' I'm too old to drive a team, or my rheumatiz'll be that bad I can't git the best of it. I ain't never laid up a cent of all I've earned — ain't got a ' red ' between me and the poorhouse. Strikes me you might as well fall to, when the time comes."
So Mamie went to work in May; she got a job as errand girl in a cheap department store, at a weekly wage of three-fifty. The store was fully a mile and a half from her home, and as she was on her feet all day the walk to and from work seemed a hardship; but she usually endured it, because fifty cents was all her mother gave her back, each week, out of her pay envelope. A dollar of the three "went again' the
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rent," a dollar " again' food," and the third dollar for clothes and shoes — principally, it seemed, for shoes; Mamie had to have a pair at least every six weeks, and several pairs of ten-cent stockings.
She carried her lunch with her — a couple of pieces of bread and a piece of pie or cake, an apple or a doughnut. But it was hard to save anything from supper for the next day's lunch — the boys would always eat up everything in sight — and in the morn- ing there was little time to stop and buy a bke of something. Moreover, dry, cold lunch did not " taste good " to a growing girl who was making heavy de- mands on her energy; and most of the other girls bought lunch in the store lunch-room, or outside. Mamie was " crazy " to buy lunch ; to sit at a table or counter and have things served to her order. She liked the food and she liked the sensation of choosing. It made her feel blissfully important to " order " — and get what she ordered ! But the cheapest " meal " of currant buns and coffee or baked beans without bread, or rolls and cream-slice, was ten cents. And out of which of those three dollars could Mamie hope to requisition sixty cents? She asked her ma, and her ma agreed to give her thirty cents weekly out of the food-allowance; the rest she would have to make up out of her fifty cents for carfare.
Alternately, Mamie trudged and bought lunch, rode and ate " three bananas fer a nickel " or, on very hot days, tried to sustain life and (what is equally dear
MAMIE'S DEFICIT 185
to the heart of youth) delight, on a " five-cent soda." Sometimes she " fell fer " a nickel show — at the ex- pense either of food or feet as she chose. Once — on Fourth of July — she went to an amusement park and " blew in " thirty cents, which crippled her finances all the rest of the week.
During the intense, humid heat of the " dog-days," Joe Costello suffered a sunstroke and narrowly es- caped more serious injury by falling off his wagon. He was laid up for ten days; but that was, as re- garded suffering and loss of pay, nothing compared with his fear that he might thereafter be considered less " safe " to trust with horses and loads than he had been before.
It had long been his custom to give his wife nine dollars of his weekly twelve, keeping three for his lunches, beer, tobacco, clothes, and Union dues. Out of her nine dollars she paid rent, bought fuel, and paid gas-bills, fed seven, and clothed six. Mamie's wages helped to the extent of nearly three dollars a week. That didn't pay Mamie's way, but it was "something," and it seemed to her parents to be urgently needed.
At the end of three months, Mamie was " raised to four " dollars. But she got a dollar a week of it for carfare, lunches, and spending money, and very nearly a dollar more for shoes and clothes. She was eking out the family income by not more than ten dollars a month. Still, that nearly paid the rent.
186 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
Mamie had deep longings for pretty things, but in the main she stifled these longings — although once in a great while she " fell " (as she phrased it) for a ten- cent string of beads or a red ruching or a new hair- bow, or some other thing that was not necessary to cover nakedness of body; she had more or less con- tinual hunger, like all young, growing things, for food — not merely that which fills the stomach but that which satisfies the cravings of the " sweet tooth " and of the eye — but in the main she stifled this hunger, too, although she indulged it to the extent of spend- ing her ten cents on two sweets, sometimes, instead of on rolls and milk which would have been better for her; she had her full share of youthful ardour for excitement, for entertainment, for romance in life, but she resigned herself with fairly good grace to the idea that these things were, in the main, impos- sible to her.
One day, a girl in the store who had taken quite a liking to Mamie, asked Mamie to go to her house for supper on Sunday evening. Mamie had never been to anybody's house " to eat " except to the houses of some of her relatives. She was shy about going, but her eagerness was greater than her shy- ness.
When she came home, her eyes were shining.
" Oh, Ma ! " she cried, " they live grand. They got six rooms — a parlour an' a dinin'-room an' a kitchen an' three bedrooms. We et in the dinin'-
MAMIE'S DEFICIT 187
room. They had ham an' potato salad an* bread an' butter an' choc'late cake an' tea an' canned peaches. It was swell. An' after supper we set in the parlour, an' they have a phonograph. There was another girl there besides me, and two real nice boys — they go to her church. Say, Ma ! How much d'you suppose six-room flats cost ? "
" More'n we'll ever be able to pay," her mother answered. " Your pa ain't never goin' to make no more'n he does now, an' it's on'y a question o' time till he gits to be an ' extra,' on odd shifts an' no tellin' what he'll git for a week's work. I used to have dreams of a sittin'-room, an' all that goes with it; but I've give 'em up, long ago."
" I can't never ask Myrtle to come here" Mamie declared.
"No, you can't — an' I'm sorry fer it! I'd like fer you to go with nice folks, an' be somebody! I'd be willin' to work my fingers to the bone if I knew how I could git you them things. But what kin / do ? An' what kin your pa do? He's a good, steady, hard-workin', reliable man. But he don't earn no more wages now'n what a boy of eighteen kin earn at drivin', an' hardly any more'n he earned when we was married. Yet he's took care of seven, an* I can't say as we've ever been what you could just call hungry, once! I'd hate fer him to think we was complainin' — he might git discour'ged. An' I'd hate fer you to git discour'ged, neither. I'll tell you what
188 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
I'll do: If yer pa'll agree to it, he kin take the kitchen bedroom with the boys, like he used to do sometimes, and me an' you three girls kin have two beds in the other bedroom, if we don't try to have nothin' else in; an' I'll try to fix up the front room for a parlour, so's you kin have a place to ask yer frien's to."
"Will you? Oh, Ma!"
Mamie went to bed that night happier than she could remember ever to have been in all her life. She dreamed wonderful dreams — her own little Apoca- lypse— of a stuffed parlour suite and a carpet with red roses in it, and " worked " sofa pillows and pic- tures with " drapes " on the corners of their frames, and a centre-table with a fancy lamp on. Yes, even of a phonograph. Myrtle's ma had said she never knew the like of the phonograph for keeping the young folks in and giving them a lively time. They sang with it and danced to its gay ragtime and laughed at its minstrel jokes. You could get them " on time," Mamie knew; and even in her sleep she wondered how much you have to pay " down," and how much a month.
The next night, after supper, she and her ma and Nellie and Annie went over on the Avenue and wan- dered blissfully among the furniture " emporiums," admiring and pricing and planning. But when they came to " figger," Mrs. Costello was dismayed. Carpet and stuffed suite and centre table and lamp and a couple o' pictures couldn't be had under forty
MAMIE'S DEFICIT 189
to fifty dollars — three dollars " down " and two-fifty a month.
" Why, that ain't much," the clerk assured her. * Two-fifty a month ain't even nine cents a day. An* how could youse spend nine cents a day an' git you as much f er it as what this here swell parlour'll be ? "
True! Mamie thought that the parlour would be so sustaining that she could forego some nickels, weekly, from her lunch-money. So they " ordered it"; but could not pay the three dollars "down" until the next Saturday, because last Saturday's pay envelopes (Mamie's and her father's) were already depleted by reason of last Saturday having been the first of the month — rent day.
However, one could spend a quite endurable week with such anticipations. And on the way home they stopped in a paper-hanger's to ask the prices of wall paper and of a fresh coat of calcimine. The next day, at lunch hour, Mamie " priced " phonographs, in the store where she worked. Of course, she couldn't hope to get one yet; not until the furniture was paid for — unless, of course, she should get a raise.
When she thought how pretty that parlour was go- ing to look, and how she would have Myrtle and the nice boys " over to see " her, if not for supper — yet awhile — at least to spend the evening and have " re- freshments," she was so happy she wanted to skip and dance and sing. Myrtle told her that she knew
190 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
a boy who had a machine that you could stick picture post-cards in and show 'em up grand, on a sheet, like a magic-lantern. And this boy had promised to bring it over " by " Myrtle's house some evening. When he did, she would ask Mamie to come. Mamie had never supposed there could be so much pleasantness in the world.
But the sword fell! On Saturday evening when the papers were to have been signed and the three dollars paid that would have insured the delivery of " the parlour " on Monday, Joe Costello had to tell his family that he was " let off." He had had sev- eral " spells " of giddiness, since his stroke. One day that week, when his head went queer, he had not pulled up in time to keep his wagon-pole from scrap- ing a fine limousine; the chauffeur, to save himself from censure, reported Joe as drunk; the owner of the limousine complained to Joe's boss and demanded from him the price of the repairs to his car. So the barn-boss discharged Joe. No, not "just for that"; but because he had been a little fearful, anyway, since Joe had the stroke ; if Joe " was to let one o' them valu'ble horses git injured, who'd have the blame?"
It was the beginning of the end! Joe looked for another job. He got one, after a while; but it wasn't " steady." When it was finished, he looked for an- other. He had reached that dreaded state of " odd jobs," intermittent work. . . . There was no par- lour, let alone any phonograph! The rentin'-room
MAMIE'S DEFICIT
had to go to a lodger. Mamie " got ashamed," after a while, to go to Myrtle's house and never ask Myrtle to hers. And the crowded, noisy kitchen irked her as it never had before she knew anything better.
Her mother was afraid to " leave her go by dances," because of the inevitable " bar " ; nickel shows were an expensive luxury, impossible except maybe once a week; the weather was too cold to per- mit of pleasant lingering in the parks; and it was a mile and a half to the nearest small park with a free dance hall — pretty far to walk often, after walking home from work, and not to be thought of if carfare must be spent. Mamie went to it, sometimes — when her shoes were good — and came home unescorted, because she had to promise her mother that she wouldn't " pick up nobody, nor go no place with 'em, nor leave 'em bring you home, nor get you nothin' to drink." Several times some nice boy, circum- stanced much like Mamie's self, wanted to take her home ; but she was afraid. A girl who lived " up- stairs of " Mamie, where Rose Smulska used to live, had gone terribly, flagrantly wrong, so wrong that she got arrested; and it was said that the dance halls had done it. Mamie's mother was afraid to hold Mamie in too tight; but she filled her with fear-full caution.
When Mamie was sixteen, she was getting five dol- lars and a half ; she was a bundle wrapper, called " an inspector." Nellie went to work, then; she started
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at three-fifty, as Mamie had done. But Joe Costello was not averaging nine dollars a week, now; and the family lived in terror lest his discouragement lead him to drink. His wife did all she could to keep him in that crowded kitchen at night, and away from its alternative, the saloon; she encouraged him to bring his men friends there to play cards and smoke their pipes and drink beer. The present lodger was a man; a good-natured, decent, kindly chap who worked in a barn where Joe sometimes got a job at driving. The lodger was a hostler. He had few places to go and no particular predilection for saloons ; so he and Joe used to spend most of their evenings at home, sometimes with friends, sometimes without. Mrs. Costello and the three girls slept in the tiny bedroom off the kitchen, and they often woke up in the morning with headaches which lasted all day. But anything was better than having Joe in a saloon wasting his bit of money and making himself drunk. Mamie and Nellie acquiesced in this, and did what they could on their mother's urging, to hide their repugnance for the " smelly " barn-men with their rank pipes and loud talk and vocabulary none-too- nice. But after a long day in a store so " close " and with air so vitiated that two hours of breathing it leaves most shoppers " tireder than if I'd done a hard day's work," the reeking kitchen and crowded wee bedroom still further sapped the two girls' energy and tried their spirits. Their mother couldn't blame
MAMIE'S DEFICIT
them for wanting to go out, evenings. ... So Mamie and Nellie sought diversion where they could, and had no one to scrutinize it in their interests and tell them what promised real happiness and what threatened to destroy. They had to use their own undeveloped discretion as to how their mother's cau- tion should be applied. And if they were not always successful, is it any matter for surprise? Not one semblance of the old social intercourse between young persons of their class, remains. Gone are the may- pole and the village green, the public rejoicings when kings married or queens gave birth to heirs; gone the pageants and most of the great games or rights for the equal enjoyment of both sexes and of all classes; gone are the sleigh-rides and the barn-raisings and the spelling matches and the husking and quilting bees — gone, at any rate, out of the lives of these mil- lions, herded in city tenements; gone is all the old neighbourhood life, and nearly all the old social life of schools and churches. What per cent, of the little Mamies and Nellies live in flats of more than four rooms? What per cent, of them have any possibili- ties of social life in their homes, under the guardian- ship of their parents? What per cent, of them have ever known the simple happiness of asking young friends to their home to eat a meal, or of being asked to sit at the table of a girl like Myrtle?
Mamie and Nellie went to Wonderland, one night in the summer after Mamie's seventeenth birthday.
194* THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
(Mamie was getting six a week now, and Nellie, four; and though the family income was no better than it had been years ago, because Joe Costello's jobs grew fewer and farther between, Mrs. Costello allowed each of the girls to keep two dollars a week for carfare, clothes, lunches, and amusements.) And in the dance hall at Wonderland, Mamie met a fellow. She danced with him, and he bought her lemonade; later, when they left the dance hall, he treated her, and Nellie, to ice-cream cones and to rides on the scenic railway. He wanted to " see them home," but they thought they'd "better not." But he learned where Mamie worked, and the next day he came by her counter and said Hello to her in her perch aloft; and that night he was at the employes' entrance when she came out. Mamie thought it wouldn't be any harm to let him walk home with her " before supper," and she was delighted to let the girls she knew see that she had a beau. He was " real swell-looking," and she was loath to let him know how mean a street she lived in ; also, she felt she must make some excuse for not being able to ask him " to call." So she told him her folks thought she was too young to have company, and excused herself at a distance of several blocks from her home. He took her to lunch, next day, in a grand place with men waiters and an orches- tra. Mamie was entranced. And he asked her to go to a show at a " reg'lar theaytre," a down-town one, and see a show such as Mamie had never seen.
MAMIE'S DEFICIT 195
Mamie just had to tell Nellie these things; she felt as if she would burst if she couldn't tell somebody. But they agreed that it would be better not to say any- thing about Ralph to Mrs. Costello — yet.
" Ma^s always scairt we'll fall fer some fresh guy," Mamie explained to Nellie. "But Ralph ain't like that, at all. He's as nice an' gen'lemanly as he can be. And oh, Nellie ! I love him like everything ! I don't know how I used to live, before this. And if anythin' was to happen between him an' me, I know I'd die."
It being summer, and very hot, there was no ex- pectation at home that Mamie would sit in the Stirling kitchen, evenings; so her absence, in the parks or at the beaches or the Magic Cities or Wonderlands, excited little comment. Sometimes she said where she had been, sometimes she didn't. But she never mentioned Ralph; because she knew that if she did, her mother would want to see him, and the idea of bringing Ralph to that stewing kitchen was intoler- able— she might lose him! Ralph loved her dearly, she told Nellie; and she believed she loved him more than any girl had ever loved any fellow in all the world before. There were some things she did not confide to Nellie.
In September there were several days of intense heat ; scorching, withering winds blew clouds of dust ; the store was like a furnace. About three in the afternoon, Mamie fainted and fell forward, limp and
196 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
ghastly white, across her wrapping paper, paste pot, and pneumatic carriers. She was carried to the store's hospital-room, and " brought to." The nurse questioned her sharply. Mamie denied the imputa- tion. That night she told Ralph what the nurse had suggested. . . . She never saw him again. She had no idea where to look for him; she could only wait, and wonder, and pray, in an agony of fear and shame. On Sunday she got on a car and rode miles, then hunted a doctor to whom she gave a false name. He confirmed her fears.
Mamie came out of his office and walked and walked, in a daze. She would lose her job! She couldn't get another for — a long while. She would disgrace her family. She would never see Ralph again. Her brief bliss was over. There was noth- ing left but misery and shame. . . . Somebody called her by name. Startled, she shook off her trance.
" Say ! you look as if you'd lost your last friend." He was one of the men in the store; he came around, several times a day, pushing a box on wheels and collecting packages for delivery. Mamie knew him to speak to, to chaff with as she tossed bundles to him; but that was all. She made an effort to appear gay. He asked her to go to a show. Grasp- ing at anything as an escape from her thoughts, Mamie went. After the show, he invited her to a chop suey place. And after they left the chop suey
MAMIE'S DEFICIT 197
place, he begged her to go to a " hotel." Mamie hesitated.
" I'll be good to you, little girl," he urged. And Mamie, her eyes tear-filled, pressed his arm in voice- less assent. . . .
Mamie never went home again. She never went back to the store. The store's nurse told Mrs. Cos- tello what she surmised.
" Why didn't she tell me? " the mother moaned. "Oh, God! it's terrible. If on'y we could of had some place at home fer her, where she could bring her friends an' leave us see what they was like ! "
Nellie told what little she knew about " Ralph " ; but it was very little, and led to nothing. . . . But how tell, in a paragraph, of the months that followed? Of the unending search, the undying hope, the un- ceasing prayer? They could not understand how Mamie could so doubt their love as to stay away. They could not realize that somewhere, somehow, lit- tle Mamie was in bondage — in bondage to threats, to force, or to persuasion that she was an outcast and in the only kind of place where she would henceforth be tolerated.
As those months of anguish in the Costello home wore on, something happened in Mamie's city: The Senate of Illinois, stirred by reports of the prevalence of white slavery, and confronted with a bill to make a minimum wage for any female worker in Illinois
198 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
two dollars per day, appointed a Commission to probe the connection, so repeatedly alleged, between low wages and vice. The Chairman of this Commission is Barratt O'Hara, recently elected Lieutenant-Gov- ernor and, as such, presiding officer of the Senate.
After taking the testimony of a great number of fallen women and girls, most of whom attributed their descent into the evil life to their inability to earn in any other wise enough to live on, the Commission determined to call before it a number of employers, to see what they had to say as to the wages they paid and their ability or inability to pay more. The first employers subpoenaed were the heads of two large mail-order concerns, one big clothing house (men's and boys' clothing) and nine department stores.
On Friday morning, March 7, at ten o'clock, the Commission met for the public hearing of witnesses. The sessions were held in the red banquet-room of the La Salle Hotel — heavily gilt and crimson, flag- decorated and " gilt-chaired." On that platform where, usually, the speakers' table is, sat the Commis- sion, Lieutenant-Governor O'Hara in the chair. At four tables in front of the Commission sat reporters, " covering " this dramatic and pregnant story for the press of the city and of the nation. A squadron of newspaper photographers hovered on the fringes of the scene, busy with their flashlight apparatus. The gold chairs were filled with eager auditors — a class of auditors (or classes, rather!) clearly indicating what
MAMIE'S DEFICIT 199
kinds of persons feel intense concern in white slavery and low wages. Here sat a deaconess from the Red Light district, there a group from some prominent woman's club; here a representative of a chain of homes for underpaid working girls, there a well-known magazine editor from New York; here a "welfare worker " in the employ of a big corporation, and there a wealthy woman specially devoted to the work of the Immigrants' Protective League. In the in- tensity and almost complete unity of interest, every- body felt akin with everybody else; everybody ex- changed views with everybody else. It was a re- markable audience, considering the occasion. Almost every one in it was more or less deeply informed on economic questions and more or less unified with regard to many of them.
The first witness called was a public-spirited gen- tleman who is a generous contributor to a major pro- portion of the worthiest charities in his city, and to a great many outside of it. He was a member of the Chicago Vice Commission which returned its report two years ago. This report said:
" Let us do something to give her (the girl who gets six dollars a week, or less) at least a living wage. If she is not sufficiently skilled to earn it, let us mix some religious justice with our business and do some- thing to increase her efficiency which through no fault of her own she has never been able to develop."
Nevertheless, he testified that his payroll for that
200 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
week included the names of 4,732 women drawing an average weekly salary of $9.12. Some salaries of from $2i to $60 brought up the " average." 1,465 girls in his employ are paid less than $8.00 a week, which sum he admitted was probably the least on which a girl not living at home should be asked to subsist. But he contended that it was the rule of his house not to employ for less than $8.00 a week any girl who does not live at home. Asked how he knew those 1,465 girls lived at home, he said he had only their own word for it; that his firm made no effort to verify the statements of girls seeking work. He declared his belief that there is practically no connec- tion between low wages and immorality; that the home conditions of girls are the determining factor in their ability to resist temptation. No one asked him if he thought there was a possible connection between low wages and home conditions. He testified that the profits of his company in 1911 were " approximately " $7,000,000. The company is capitalized at $50,- 000,000. Senator Juul figured rapidly, as the exami- nation proceeded, and announced that something like a quarter of a million dollars, or one-twenty-eighth of the annual profits would bring all those 1,465 girls up to the " bread line " where they would not have to depend on the assistance of their families or of any charity. Witness admitted that this could be done without materially affecting the dividends; but he did not admit that he thought it necessary, nor that he be-
MAMIE'S DEFICIT 201
lieved it would keep any girl from vice. " A girl who gets $10 a week is just as likely to use that as a subter- fuge," he declared, " as a girl getting any other wage." The second witness testified that his store employs 1,866 women and girls at an average wage of $9.86. Sixty girls get $5 and under. He was not aware that any girls in his employ were of other than the highest moral character. He was not aware that floor-walkers or others attempted to persuade girls into occasional or professional prostitution; he was not aware that any girl seeking employment in his store and complaining that the wages were too small to live on, was told that she could have " a gentleman friend." He was con- vinced that wages have nothing to do with the morality of women. He did not cause the girls' liv- ing conditions to be investigated. When a girl said she was living at home, he believed her. Asked to submit an estimate of what an entirely self-dependent girl might live on, he gave the following:
Clothes, including shoes $1-00
Laundry 25
Room and board 4-oo
Carfare 60
Lunch 7O
Church 10
Sickness, dentist, oculist and emergencies . . . .1.25
$7-90
He did not know where a girl could get room and board for $4.00, but he had " heard that there are places." He did not know how $52 a year can be
THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
made to keep a girl neatly dressed in black and white — when $15 of it at least would have to go for shoes and stockings. He did not consider that amusements or a two-weeks' vacation trip might be any part of " living." He did not believe that girls were worth $6 a week as beginners; he refused to tell his firm's earnings, but admitted that the $26,000 a year neces- sary to lift all his girl employes to the $8 " bread line " would not cripple his business.
The third witness represented a store which employs 4,222 girls and women at eight hours a day, and 440 others at short hours. The lowest wage of the " regu- lars " is $5, the lowest wage of the waitresses and other " short-hour " help, $4. The full average is $10.76, and the average of the 1,895 wno se^ mer~ chandise (exclusive of department heads) is $12.33. (" Department stores out here," whispered a New York woman with great knowledge of the wages and conditions in New York stores, " must be the nearest thing to Heaven! ")
This witness admitted that he had no idea on what wages a girl who was not partially supported by her family, her friends, charity, or vice, could live; but he had " heard it asserted by good authorities that $8 was about right." He has 1,035 gi^ employes who get less than $8, including 163 women of over 18 years who receive only $6. He refused to give any figures showing his firm's earnings — even when reminded that he was liable to be cited for contempt
MAMIE'S DEFICIT 203
of court. He was sure that wages have nothing to do with morals. And he thought that it was " the business of parents " to board young workers and to shield them from temptation.
Next witness testified that his firm employed 1,200 girls " at an average of $8.56," but about 500 received less than that average. He said " morality is a state of mind. Our girls are model girls. ... A good, honest girl will not resort to anything immoral to eke out her salary. . . . Girls do not become immoral be- couse of low wages. They turn in such a direction because they have immoral minds."
The vice-president of a firm employing 1,973 women and girls, 1,140 of whom average $9.25 a week, con- tended that employers were relieving, not oppressing, families when they paid $5 a week to inexperienced girls living at home. He shared the belief of most of the witnesses (if not all!) that a girl is entitled to support by her relatives and that whatever she gets in wages is a sort of " velvet." The old idea dies hard! He does not believe that girls tell " the entire truth " when they blame low wages for their downfall.
The testimony, as a whole, was marked by these conclusions :
None of the employers had given any thought to the purchasing power of the wages they paid, further than to make a rule (which hard-pressed girls might break, unchallenged, if they wished) that the low-paid workers must be girls living at home. None of the
204 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
employers had thought of a girl's continued depend- ence, in part, on her family as tending to make the overburdened poor households subsidizers of busi- nesses that pay 30 per cent, to their stockholders. None of them believed in a probable connection be- tween low wages and immorality. None of them denied that they could pay a good deal higher wages and still do business at a more than fair profit. None of them ventured to say that a self-dependent girl could sustain life in any sort of tolerable com- fort, for less than $8 a week.
The most interesting points in the general discus- sion provoked by the hearings are:
First, the notion that some unthinking persons got, that the moral characters of all low-paid girls are impugned. Nothing could be further from the truth. A very great majority of those girls are straight, sturdy souls with a resisting power far beyond what you or I dare to say we would have in their places. But ought they be obliged to wage so fierce a battle between pinching want on the one hand and the art- fully-covered lure of the white-slaver? Has any em- ployer a right to take eight, nine, ten hours a day out of youth in service more or less uncongenial and per- formed under conditions more or less undermining to health, and pay for it a wage so small that the worker is continually semi-starved either for food or for recreation? Can society do much toward regulating and diminishing the social evil, whilst it allows thou-
MAMIE'S DEFICIT 205
sands of little girls in the first flush of physical awak- ening and of mental excitability, to live on or under the dry-bread line?
Another curious misconception that many persons got, was that when a girl may be said to have suc- cumbed to the evil life because she could not get along on the wages paid her, she rose one morning and said: " I'm tired of the struggle. I'll go to the devil." They argued that a girl would not do that " once in a thousand times." Of course she wouldn't. That isn't the way they go ! That isn't the kind of relation there is between low wages and going astray. That's why I wanted to tell about Mamie. Mamie was better protected than most girls on low wages; poverty had not wreaked its worst on her home. Consumption had not sapped the life of their bread- winner, industrialism had not crippled nor poisoned him. Her mother was less disheartened than many poor mothers are. Their tenement was less crowded, and left some show for the maintenance of modesty, of decency! There was no drunkenness. There was no quarrelling of the hungry- wolves sort. But neither was there " a fair show " for Mamie. Some girls survive valiantly in conditions no better, or even worse. But ought anybody to be surprised when they don't?
Thirdly, but by no means lastly, it was argued that few girls are worth $8 a week when they are begin- ners. Senator Juul's reply to this was that such
206 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
girls are apprentices; that $8 a week no more than houses, feeds, and decently clothes them; and that apprentices have always been reckoned " worth their keep." What might further have been argued is that expenditure for the development of an A-i working force is one of the most legitimate items of business upkeep; it may as fairly be charged to the necessary running expenses as advertising — more fairly than that lavish " entertaining " which most firms charge to the " cost of doing business." One of the men who testified spends thousands of dollars annually giving free automobile rides to country customers; this is reckoned legitimate expenditure, for which his firm gets a good return. Why might not wages that would enable a girl's family to have five rooms instead of four, to have a room for social life instead of leav- ing that social life to the streets and nickelodeons and dance halls, be also a good economic, not merely sen- timental, investment? The Chicago Telephone Com- pany finds it remunerative, not philanthropic, to give its girls, free, a good, hot luncheon. Why might it not " pay " to give every girl who works eight, nine, ten hours a day, in more or less nerve-racking condi- tions, wages enough to assure her a room to herself at night, a room with a window, a room where she might have recuperative sleep and nerve-relaxation? Considering her as probably one of the mothers of to-morrow, might it not actually save money now outlaid on repair and reform institutions? The em-
MAMIE'S DEFICIT 207
ployers said they could pay for this without materially affecting profits, but they all expressed solicitude lest there be some " smaller concerns " that could not do it. As this is probably the first time they have ever been solicitous about those " small concerns," nobody need feel too terribly harrowed by this sympathy.
It is not likely that any State will pass a " $12 mini- mum " law. It is not at all desirable that any should. That would be going too fast. The immediate results would be very disastrous. Thousands of the neediest little girls and young women would be " dispos- sessed," with no hope or chance of getting back or going elsewhere. A Minimum Wage Board, of Ar- bitration, is better. . . . Failing that, the minimum wage should not be over $8, until things have been worked out on that basis. It would better be raised a second time, than put too high at first.
One result of a minimum wage will be to discon- tinue the employment of fourteen-year-old girls; to force girls to undergo a longer, a more thorough, and a more specific preparation to get $8 jobs. This will seem hard in many families, where the pressure of poverty is very great by reason of the death or deser- tion or incapacitation of the adult wage-earner. But it were better that some of our present philanthropy be applied to the " tiding over " of such cases (pend- ing the general adoption of mothers' pensions by the States), thereby saving money from what is now spent on the reclamation of industrial wreckage.
208 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
There must be longer childhood, to store up energy for the frightful drains of modern industrial and commercial life. There must be better-directed edu- cation. There must be far more abundant opportu- nities for healthful, wholesome play — during child- hood and in youth. There must be a tremendous reform in housing conditions — in the interests not alone of physical but of social well-being. There must be a check — not in sumptuary laws such as are actually. pending now in some States, but in the edu- cation of taste from the top stratum downwards! — on the riot of extravagance and unfitness to which dress has gone in this country as in no other. But there must be a check on the ever-widening inequality between the richest and the poorest, or our social structure will not endure; we shall have revolution, not evolution; cataclysm, not growth. Revolution destroys indiscriminately; years are required to re- cover from its devastation. It is only about a hun- dred and eighteen years since Thomas Paine brought to George Washington the great key of the Bastille, symbolizing the attitude of the new French Republic toward these colonies which had given France the encouragement of an example. It is a great deal less than half a hundred-and-eighteen years since these United States ceased to exemplify such sim- plicity and sincerity of true democracy as made even the dreamers of Utopia, in the Old World, marvel and admire. Those men are not yet old men who in
MAMIE'S DEFICIT 209
their boyhood knew a social structure that now seems as remote as the Golden Age. In some of the Old World countries the inequality is of such long growth that one can hardly imagine its breaking-up without violence. With us it is not yet so adamantine. Pray God it never may be!
IX GIRLS' SCHOOLING
F OOK at her ! Eighteen years old — never had A a year's schooling in her life — and earning $225 a week; not merely getting it, but earn- ing it ! "
"Never a year's schooling? Why, she's been schooled for sixteen years to do this thing: ever since she could toddle across a stage and lisp a sentence or two. After sixteen years of concentrated application to any trade or profession, one usually begins to realize fair rewards from it. Of course, on the stage $225 a week doesn't mean $1.1,700 a year. Acting's a seasonal occupation — very! But this girl is em- ployed for as long a season each year as almost any one in the business: she averages thirty-two weeks. That puts her annual income at about $7,000; which is not extraordinary after sixteen years of well-directed study. One reason more professions do not net their practitioners so well after a like term of service, and that this girl's earnings are very exceptional even in her profession, is because most persons begin their special training so late in life that by the time they have given sixteen years to it they have reached, if indeed they have not passed, their meridian of life
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GIRLS' SCHOOLING
and of energy. This girl will enter her ' glorious twenties ' splendidly equipped not only in her calling, but in general culture and understanding; most girls enter them in a state of unpreparedness which is ap- palling. The average girl wage-earner of eighteen gets under six dollars a week. At least eight years of her ' schooling ' have been years of sheer waste; from four to six years she has wasted her youthful adapta- bility, her energy, her precious time, at the expense of the payers of school taxes; and from two to four years she has cost the public quite heavily in increased cost of living, because her complete lack of skill or efficiency makes her a waster of good material and a consumer of unearned wages while the industrial world endures her apprenticeship."
As statements of a sane and thoroughly-informed student of social, educational, and industrial condi- tions, these could not easily be denied; they challenged investigation — and they sustained it!
The average girl who goes to work for a living when she is sixteen has spent probably about 1,800 days in school, or not far short of 9,000 hours, ex- clusive of home study hours which are now quite im- perative. And when she has finished this she is the merest apprentice at earning or at spending, or at applying her energies in any direction. If she be- comes a mill or factory operative, she may hope to reach the high level of $8.48 a week after about ten years of work, or when she is twenty-six. After ten
THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
years in a department store she may hope to be earn- ing $9.81 a week, with a possibility of rising to $13.33 a week after sixteen years of service, or when she is thirty-two years old; subsequent to that, the average saleswoman will earn less and less. The average factory woman's earning ability also begins to de- crease after about twenty years of service.
It takes ten years of schooling and ten years of application to reach a living wage (this is for the average, of course; some do better, some never do so well) and if a woman has not married by that time she may hope to hold her own for ten years; then " old age " begins to set in for her, at thirty-six, and her earning abilities wane steadily — certainly if she is in mill or factory, and almost certainly if she is in office or store. If she marries about the time she is reaching her full earning powers, and comes back (as so many do) into the working world after four or eight or twelve years of domestic life, she does not resume where she left off, nor even where she might have been by this time if she had never quit; she enters as worse than an apprentice, usually, and her dire necessity is preyed upon until she is made to work for pay which any sixteen-year-old girl may well scorn. Yes; and so far from hope of increase, which spurs and sustains the young apprentice, the burdened woman of thirty-odd, who returns to wage-earning to support helpless dependents, has to face the cer- tainty of steady decrease in her money-making pow-
GIRLS' SCHOOLING
ers. A surprisingly large proportion of those who marry are widowed or deserted or become the sup- port of maimed, insane, drunken, rheumatic, or syphi- litic husbands, as well as of their children. No girl leaves the industrial ranks to marry without facing the probability of becoming again a wage-earner and probably a handicapped one. Consider! Fifty dollars a month is unskilled workers' pay; it will buy necessities for a family, but it will not pro- vide comforts. Yet no girl who marries and brings children into the world has any kind of certainty of being able to keep herself and them in necessities un- less her husband has insurance or property to the extent of about twelve thousand dollars. This means that practically every girl who leaves the wage-earn- ing ranks to marry takes a wild chance on the health and fidelity of her husband, on his ability to keep employed, on his immunity from accident, and on a lot of other things over which she has little or no control.
Now, what are we doing for this girl who goes to school until she is fourteen or sixteen; works for her living until she is twenty or twenty-five; marries; be- comes the mother of to-morrow's young workers; and in many cases is herself again forced into the wage-earning ranks?
Education comprehends many things, but perhaps most of them fall within one or the other of four categories: Self -discipline; intelligent — not coercive
THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
— acquiescence in the laws made by the majority for the government of all; efficiency for participation in life; and appreciation of the beauties of life and of conduct, with direct reference to the growth of ideals for oneself and for one's community or generation or species, as the case may be.
That is to say, an individual in process of education is learning to understand and to govern and direct himself in both his public and his private relation- ships ; he is improving his usefulness to himself and to the community; and he is growing in his perception of ideals for himself and for others through him — ex- panding in knowledge how to raise his family, his city, or all humankind, to a higher plane made possi- ble, in part at least, by his efforts. " Schooling " is not to complete, but only to set in motion these en- deavours ; the truest education is the most continual — it can never stop. But are we setting in vigorous motion those energies that make for continued alert- ness, for eager self-improvement? That is the one great gift we may give to our young people: zest. Such knowledge as we hand on to them can become theirs only in so far as they test and approve it. Zest to make the tests is the supreme essential.
What quality of eagerness are we inspiring in them? To keep within the special bounds of this article, what attitude toward life characterizes the vast majority of girls between fourteen and sixteen years of age, who leave the fostering care of educa-
GIRLS' SCHOOLING
tional institutions, and dump themselves as sore " problems " on employers, on social and economic students, and too often on the State as delinquent or dependent wards?
Catechize any of these girls, and be surprised. Catechize hundreds of them, day in and day out, year in and year out, as some do whom I have interviewed —and be dumfounded at the blind inadequacy of their foster-parent, the State; the incredible selfishness or stupidity of their actual parents. What a girl of fourteen knows is not much; it couldn't be. But what she is eager to know is the test of her worth to herself and to her world.
If her eagerness is to know how to dance the tur- key trot, how to marcel her own hair, how to buy silk stockings on a five-dollar weekly wage — in short, how to catch a beau — she is indeed only following the dictates of her nature in its passionate ado- v lescence. But even a lower animal has a further function than to reproduce; the most rudimentary life is woven of two strands; the struggle for life and the struggle for the life of others. A girl is less intelligent than any other animal, from the lowest up, if she trusts to the presumption that mating and motherhood will absolve her from further struggle for life. She may be that exceptional woman who will never again, after entering wedlock, have to earn a dollar for her own support or for the support of others ; but she will be a less efficient mother than any
216 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
she-wolf if she cannot give her children better in- struction than they can get elsewhere, in how and where to forage and when and how to fight. And if she were as effectively trained as a she- wolf is, she would have eagerness for self-sufficiency; indeed, she would be such an able self-provider, that a Mr. Wolf would have to make himself specially personable if he wanted to attract her. It is reserved for the compla- cent human species to provide the only female in na- ture who tries to get her living by her charms rather than by her intelligence. It is nature that makes the girl of sixteen eager to mate and to mother; it is not nature, but perverse education, which makes her confine her eagerness to that.
Let us consider a typical girl of sixteen about to enter upon a more or less self-dependent existence. She has had an extraordinary period of " infancy," of complete economic and moral dependence — almost a quarter of a long lifetime. Let us see what has been done in those sixteen years to prepare her for self -sufficiency.
Suppose we say that Molly graduated from the grammar school when she was fourteen, and has had two years in high school. That means that she went along, taking a grade a year for ten years, as the school board intended an average child should do. And here she is, after ten years of schooling, looking for a job.
She will continue to live at home, and, like nearly
GIRLS' SCHOOLING
four-fifths of the working girls who live at home, she will hand over to her mother each week her unopened pay envelope. By and by this will become very irk- some, and the irksomeness will be fraught with dan- ger. But just now, Molly thinks it will feel delight- fully important to have a pay envelope for handing over. She is confident that when she is earning money her mother will " not be stingy " with her when she makes requests for things she would not dare to ask for now.
Molly has no idea what she wants to do — except that she wants to earn money. Investigations have shown that a majority of girls drift into this or that employment because they have a friend or friends in it; their notion of the number and variety of possible employments is usually limited by what they know of the occupations of their acquaintances.
Molly knows a girl who went to business college and is now a stenographer. She knows another girl who did not go to business college, and is now a filing clerk in a mail-order house. They are each getting five dollars a week. It takes six months to learn stenography and costs, with tuition, carfare, lunch money, and etceteras, about a hundred dollars. But the stenographer retorts that whereas her present pay is no better than the filing clerk's, her prospects are infinitely better; to which the filing clerk answers that in the huge concern where she works department managers are always on the lookout for efficient help
218 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
and if a girl shows promise, they will see that she gets a chance to learn whatever will improve her use- fulness.
Of other girls that Molly knows, one is a sorter in a candy factory. She left school when she was four- teen, after finishing the eighth grade, has been work- ing a year, and she earns five dollars; another puts shoe laces into the finished shoes in a factory where her father is employed — she has been doing this for one year, or since she was fifteen, and she gets $5.50 a week on an average, working by the piece; a third works in a neighbourhood dry goods store and gets only four dollars a week; she has no carfare to pay, and can go home to lunch and supper, but she has to be at the store evenings until ten, except Wednesdays and Fridays. Molly knows that she doesn't want a job like that; she is not attracted by the shoe factory, either, because her liking for the girl who works there is " nothin' extra," and Molly would rather work where she can " see more " ; she would like to be a saleslady, so she could " dress nice " and be down- town. The opportunity to watch many people, and see pretty clothes, makes a stronger appeal to her than working in any factory or office where her observa- tions would be limited to her fellow-workers.
So Molly makes application for a position as sales- girl, and finds that inexperienced salesgirls of sixteen years, living at home with parents, are expected to start as low as four dollars a week. The family
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incline to think that Molly ought to do better; that she might more profitably take factory employment anywhere near home where unskilled help is needed. But Molly does not want to be a factory girl, and she has her own way.
There isn't any class of goods that Molly is less ignorant of than she is of others. So far as her employer is concerned, she is just one of the ordinary " chances " : she can read and write and add simple figures; she can understand and speak the prevailing language; she appears to have a normal complement of senses ; presumably she can be taught to make out a sales-check and to acquire a fair knowledge of her stock — also to be reasonably civil and attentive to customers. She has had ten years of schooling; but in so far as it is available for her employer's uses, she might have learned all that is of service to him in a single year.
For her own uses, what has she learned that will enable her to recognize Opportunity when she sees it? To analyze her abilities and her limitations, so that she may know where to apply herself, and how, with greatest probability of success?
Side by side with Molly works a girl who does not live at home ; who has no one to decide for her, either helpfully or arbitrarily, what she shall do with her money. This girl has a great many problems, nearly all of which deeply concern her efficiency; but she has little realization of them as bearing on anything but
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her immediate comfort. She has to decide whether she will live close to her work, in the congested lodg- ing-house districts, or seek board with some family living out where rents are cheap; whether strap-hang- ing for forty minutes morning and evening is com- pensated for by decency of surroundings and some one to take a friendly interest in her; whether it is wise or unwise for her to try to make her own shirt- waists and trim her own hats, evenings after her long day in the store (her washing and mending she must do, of course) ; whether she will profit most by " keeping her hand in " on sewing, or by going out of doors and filling her dust-laden lungs with fresh air. She has to make momentous decisions, daily, about companionships and pleasures, and occasionally about incurring debt and social obligations which she cannot pay.
Now, what relation to the present and future prob- lems of Molly and that other girl have those 9,000 hours of schooling which the tax-paying community provided ?
I do not attempt to say. But I do urge that some- where in the curriculum now considered " educa- tional/' there be a little elimination or combination, or what-not, to the end that one hour of every school day from the first to the last may be devoted to studies which have a direct bearing on equipment for self-sufficiency.
This is, perhaps, not the place to set forth a detailed
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plan for such instruction, but I have made a plan which might serve at least suggestively for educators or for parents in their urging for educational reform. Of this plan, which covers the eight years of compul- sory school life, I will try to make a digest which shall suggest the scope of the whole, and something of its details. Some of the needful instruction is comprehended in the best kindergarten courses; bits of it are contained in grade school study, either by authority of the school board or at the personal dis- cretion of the teacher. But so far as I have been able to discover, the teaching, where it exists at all, is desultory and not systematic. Not being an edu- cator, I have not presumed to make a plan which could be considered more than a probable basis for a prac- tical working plan. But such as it is, here are some of its main features :
There are four general subjects under which may come all the most necessary instruction. And in making the plan, I have tried to keep in mind all the difficulties which teachers encounter the moment they touch on " questions at issue." Ethics, to be publicly taught, must be fundamental indeed. But there are fundamental ethics! And as for physiology, many parents who do not object to having their children told how to distinguish their cerebrum from their cerebellum fly into frenzied protest against having them taught the origin of life or the rudiments of social hygiene. Very well! Chicago is getting
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around this, now, by having classes for the physio- logical instruction of parents, with a view to teaching them how to tell their children what children ought to know. Where there's a will there's a way. But no really grave objections need be raised by a wise, temperate handling of any of the subjects I advocate. These are : comprehension of law, protective and pro- hibitive; understanding of the body; ways of sustain- ing life; and ways of making life gladder and more useful.
Does this sound " highfalutin' " for first grade? It isn't; it is very simple.
A child who is old enough to go to school soon learns that she must be punctual; and almost imme- diately thereafter she learns that she must not whis- per or create any distraction. Why must everybody get to school at a certain time? Why may she not come when it is convenient? What difference does five or ten minutes make ? Why must she keep quiet and not disturb other little girls who are trying to learn their lessons ? A very little instruction on these elemental points will give her, for her first year in school, an excellent beginning in comprehending the necessity of one rule for many who work together.
In physiology for that first year, I would recom- mend only the simplest instruction in taking such care of a baby as a majority of six-year-old children are obliged at times to take. It is enough for this year to teach a little girl how to hold a baby to make it
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comfortable and protect its spine; to caution her against making it sit in its buggy facing a too-strong light; to warn her against letting injury befall the "soft place in baby's head"; and to urge upon her that she must not let baby get anything to eat or to put in its mouth, except what her mother orders. A very few minutes once a week will serve for this; but it might well be supplemented by a little talk about the babies of the households represented; leading the children to tell about their wee brothers and sisters, what they have observed about them, and so on. " Our baby, when he don't git what he wants, he yells somethin' awful," can be made the starting point for a tactful talk on wilfulness. Children can be taught from a very early age to observe traits of character and to draw conclusions therefrom.
With regard to ways of sustaining life, beginnings must be made with food and clothes — for most per- sons must consider clothing first as a necessity and only secondarily as ornament or luxury. " Who has been to the store to buy something for her mother? What did she buy? A loaf of bread? How much does bread cost? What is it made of? What is flour made of? Where does wheat grow? What part of the wheat is flour made from? How is it made? What is yeast? What does it do to bread? How much did the coffee cost? What did it look like? Where does it grow? What is done to it be- fore it is good to grind up for drink ? " And so on,
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including such simples as sugar and potatoes and but- ter and eggs. Pictures, and narrative skill, may make all this absorbingly interesting. Prices are in- cidental, now, but should be mentioned and kept in mind. Then as for clothing, a few bits of ordinary muslin (or domestic, or cotton cloth, or whatever may be the local name for it) in different degrees of coarseness and bleaching, may serve for many lessons. What is it ? How much does it cost a yard ? Where do we get it? What do we use it for? After it grows in its Southern field and bursts its boll, all fleecy white, and the negroes pick it and get paid for it by the pound, and it goes to the gin to be cleaned and to the compress to be squeezed into flat bales, and onto boats or freight cars, what happens next? And so on. Then, a piece of wool cloth and its story from sheep to shop.
And in training in perception of beauty, that first year, an occasional hour spent on the child's first beauty-sense : colour. " Is this a pretty colour ? Is this? Do they look pretty together? In a flower? Yes. In a dress? No. Why not? They are too bright. Angelina's mother has a red-and-yellow shawl which she wore in Italy? Ah, yes! In Italy there are many wonderful colours: the sky and sea are so very, very blue; the fields a vivid green; the globes of oranges and lemons hang thick in myriad trees. A red-and-yellow shawl there, on Angelina's mother, would be beautiful. Here, where the skies
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are often gray and the houses are gray and the streets are gray, we should be very conspicuous if we wore red and yellow. And one does not like to be con- spicuous.
For law in the second year, we might deal with the policeman as the child sees him. What is the police- man for? Who pays him? He is there to keep things safe for everybody. He is there to take care of you. As long as you obey the laws, he is your servant. When you break a law it is his business to take you to the judge; because when you break a law, you are hurting some one else, manyt others, whom it is his business to protect. Why does he arrest the peddler? Because the peddler had no license. Why must a peddler have a license? And so on.
Health instruction of this year should deal with cleanliness of person: why we must be clean to be healthy and to look nice.
For food, a year may well be spent on those aspects of meat and its by-products which a child of seven to eight can understand. Who knows the names of any kinds of meats? What animals do they come from? Where do we get them ? Where does the butcher get them? What becomes of the skins? Of the bristles and hair and wool? Of the bones?
In clothing, varieties of woollen and cotton goods and of mixtures, may be learned; simple tests taught for the detection of cotton threads in cloth that is sold as " all wool,"
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In the third year, the discussion of clothing might be based on what the girls are wearing : shoes, stock- ings, garters, underwear, dresses, hats, hair-ribbons. What they are made from, and how; what it would cost to buy new ones; what kinds they would like to buy. And so microscopic a thing as a glass bead the size of a pin head, may lead the talk 'way to Murano in the Adriatic, where black gondolas glide across the blue waters to Venice, laden with great baskets of these coloured beads. A yard of ribbon may lead to Asolo, and Pippa singing in the fields at dawn. There's a world of romance and of poetry in the dull- est clothing, if only one knows how to find it.
And food studies for that year would do well to follow such lines as : " Who can tell what she had for dinner last Sunday? Where did each article come from ? What would you like to have for dinner to-day? Where would you go to get it?"
The fourth year might profitably deal with store- keeping. " How does the storekeeper know how much to charge for things ? He adds to what he pays for them the price of his rent and all other costs of doing business, allows for the percentage that spoils or deteriorates, and then figures in what he considers a fair profit, a fair return on his investment and recompense for his time. If we telephone our orders and ask for things several times a day, who pays the wages of his telephone clerks and delivery boys, his purchase of many wagons and his stable-bills? If
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many of his customers charge things and some do not pay, who loses? We who do pay! When we get premiums on trading stamps, do we save anything? Would a storekeeper give us anything? Who sees to it that his weights and measures are just? Who pays the City Sealer ? " And so on.
Girls in the fifth grade average ten to eleven years. They are old enough to understand some of the fun- damentals about property rights: why we must re- spect those rights of others and they must respect ours; and to be taught pride in public properties, such as parks and playgrounds and schools and monu- ments.
The girl of ten to eleven is old enough to be taught some simple principles of digestion and its part in headache and other common ills. She can be made to appreciate the uses of fresh air if her knowledge of fire is employed in analogy: if she lights a fire in an air-tight receptacle, will it burn? If she opens drafts and doors, why does the fire burn so much brighter? If she neglects to clean out her grate, lets clinkers accumulate, what effect does that have?
About this time she begins to be insistently curious about the beginnings of life. She should learn the simple facts, preferably from her mother.
And about this time, too, she begins to have more to say about her clothes. Suppose she is to get a new winter coat; what must she consider? First, if she has to wear it in all weathers and for all occasions,
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or if she can keep it for best. Then, what colours are becoming and suitable ? If she selects brown, will it go well with her best and everyday dress, and with her hat or hats? If she cannot pay enough to get an all-wool cloth, well-made, would it be better to get a semi-shoddy cloth cut by expert cutters and pretty well tailored, or to buy good cloth and try to have it made? What are the advantages or disadvantages of each? What cheapens clothing? This paves the way for consideration of the pay of mill and garment workers. Discussion of hats introduces millinery as a trade; of shoes, the girl operatives in shoe factories. On a piece of underwear she considers purchasing is a label of the Consumers' League. What is this doing for factory conditions? If she buys a lingerie shirtwaist, how much will it cost her to have it laun- dered? Why so much? What do laundry .workers get? Does any girl know a laundry worker? How does the worker like her job?
In the sixth year, let us rent a place to live, and furnish it. How many in family are we? Must we be near father's business? If there are four or five to pay carfare, is it economical to live far out? Or do we prefer what we get for twenty dollars' rent and ten dollars' carfare to what we could get in walking distance for thirty dollars? What proportion of in- come is it considered wise to pay for rent? Is it economical to buy furniture on the easy-payment plan? Is it foolish to try to furnish all at once?
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Isn't it "more tony" to get a little at a time, and get it good? And so on.
By the seventh year we shall have come to such questions as : If we spend a fifth of our income for rent, how much ought we to spend for clothes? for insurance? for amusements and improvements? for savings? We can learn some simple banking laws here; be taught how to open a savings account, how to compute interest due us, and what kinds of banks are safest for us to deposit in. The eighth year is the last of schooling for many. In this year they ought to learn something of the elemental laws be- tween employer and employe, with regard to contract, liability for damage, etc.; something of the laws re- garding debt, with reference to " easy " payments, chattel and salary loans, rents, and the like; and something about their personal rights, what agencies exist for the legal protection of women and children ; what they should do if they chanced to be arrested.
By this time, too, their studies of law (which I have not been able in so brief a space to outline for each year) should have taught them their share of responsibility for the high or low standards of the community, and inculcated an interest for the stricter enforcement of our good laws and eagerness for the making of needed new ones. They should know who makes the laws, and what voice each of us has in the making of laws for all.
In physiology they ought now, preferably through
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their specially instructed mothers, to have instruction in the fundamentals tending to self -protection, care in choice of a mate, and jealousy for the health of their probable children.
And more than an hour a day would be well spent asking and debating such questions as: How many girls here are going to work next year? How will you look for it ? What would you like to do ? What do you think you can do? Why do you think you can do that? Have you any idea what the prospects are? What advantages and disadvantages that work has? What the pay for beginners is ? What is the best you can hope to earn at it? If you answer advertisements in the papers, how would you select ads. for answer- ing, and how would you answer them? Do you know that some ads. are misleading? Would you ask your friends about work? Would you apply to an agency? Would you go about asking for employ- ment? What wage would you be satisfied to begin with? If you could not live at home, how much would you have to earn? How do you think you could live most cheaply, satisfactorily, and safely? Would you go in debt for clothes? Would you en- tertain men callers in your room? Would you go out to dinner or theatre with the boss?
The questions that a girl of fourteen, probably fin- ishing with qualified instruction and going into the world to make her own way, ought to be made to ask herself and answer for herself, are so numerous that
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I cannot begin to set them all down. But at the risk of sacrificing some cube root and the date of the battle of Brandy wine, I do maintain that she should be encouraged to ask and answer them.
During one school year in Chicago 12,538 children under sixteen years of age were granted working cer- tificates. Of these children, 4,560 of whom were girls, 8,985 were only fourteen years of age, and 1,557 had not yet reached the fifth grade. They came from homes where the stress was no greater than the ignorance of how these children were to bear it.
Supported by a grant from the Russell Sage Foun- dation, the Social Investigation Department of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy undertook a study of this situation. The findings with regard to boys are beyond our present scope. But with re- gard to girls their report was that " in many cases — one might almost say the majority of cases — the girls under sixteen seemed hopelessly unfitted for any good place." And yet, effort to induce the girls to stay longer in schools is often futile. What do the schools teach them that recognizably enhances their effi- ciency?
The haphazard way in which these thousands of girls annually drift into employment with little or no thought of their fitness for it, its promise of future advancement or even of present safety, is alarming. Especially so when we reflect that the irregular em-
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ployment of young workers at the beginning of their industrial careers is one of the most insidious evils that they have to combat in their ignorance and in- adequacy.
So, in June, 1911, the investigators undertook — by way of an experiment educational to themselves as well as helpful to a few children — " to interview and to place all of the children who were planning to go to work at the end of the school year in the Wash- burne School, one of the largest on the West Side. Office hours were kept in a neighbouring settlement, and the principal was glad to cooperate by sending the children to us and by giving his personal advice. Besides interviewing the children, the homes were all visited, and when the parents seemed able to keep the child in school longer they were strongly urged to do so."
Of the 254 children interviewed, 80 were girls whose ages were as follows:
Age Number of girls
14 years . 23
15 years 21
16 years 23
over 16 years 13
80
Of these girls, 7 were persuaded to take fur- ther schooling; 4 found work for themselves or through parents or friends; 49 were placed in posi- tions; 15 are still on the waiting list — idle; neither at
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school nor at work, and in the gravest moral danger —and 5 were given up as hopeless, " for whom noth- ing could be done."
The industries in which the 49 girls were placed included sewing trades (5), engraving (9), bookkeeping (18), office work (10), millinery (2), weaving (3), sample work (2).
Many things were considered in placing a girl; her preference, the kind of ability she had shown in school; her health; her family circumstances, and so on.
The result of the experiment is that Chicago is waking to the need of vocational training and to the duty of the school board not only to fit young persons, definitely instead of vaguely, for life; but to help them find their earliest industrial associations, and to give them, during the first years of their struggle to apply what they have learned, benevolent oversight and advice and even intercession.
Vocational training — special instruction through theory and practice, in some specific work for which the student has taste and ability, and at which she may hope to make a living — for the years between fourteen and sixteen is so urgently demanded as to leave no room for debate. But it is a sub- ject far too great to be taken up here in a para- graph.
What I beg to emphasize here, is the recently published Government report on " The Relation of
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Occupation to Criminality and Immorality Among Women."
It finds, as every investigation into the subject must find, that efficiency is the greatest moral safeguard we know; and that specific efficiency is like armour- plate in a woman's defence against crime and im- morality : there may, indeed, be lances that can pierce its joints, but that is no reason for sending any one into the fight without it.
With regard to women in prisons and other penal institutions, the investigator found that " the ma- jority are usually unintelligent, and their training, or rather their lack of training, has left undeveloped what capacity for clear thinking they may originally have possessed. In the overwhelming majority of cases a distant acquaintance with the three R's was the limit of intellectual culture. But the low scholastic training is of infinitely less importance than the lack of training in self-control, in the domestic arts, in a realization of the rights of others, in a sense of social interrelations; in a word, in the science of living. . . . Everywhere the officers were agreed that the prison woman is in the main a woman who does not know how to do anything well. They are, for the most part, untrained and unskilled, women without a trade, who, if they work at all, drift from one low grade of employment to another." She quotes an authority on women in prison, who says: " Our girls as a class are antisocial. It is very hard
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for them to see their conduct in its relation to the lives of those around them. They are individualistic in the extreme."
The industrial status of most of the girls received into maternity homes for unmarried mothers, " seems to parallel closely that of the women found in the courts and prisons."
In a study of thirty typical girls from the " red light " district of New York, some significant facts were disclosed. One girl had left school at 9 years of age, two at 10, three at 12, six each at 13, 14, and 15, four at 16, and two at 17; but one who had gone till she was 15 had not reached the first gram- mar grade, and one who had gone " off and on " until she was 16 could not remember what grade she had reached, but had difficulty in reading simple prose. Most of them idled for a while after leaving school. Only 2 of the 30 had any industrial plan or preference, let alone any skill. The other 28 had taken up and dropped, in the course of very brief industrial careers, more than three different varieties of work each, on an average. '' There was no trace of any idea that one occupation could be used as a training school for something better, no slightest sign of any general purpose, underlying their work. . . . Apparently they are simply untrained girls, with little knowledge of how to do anything well."
Merest self-interest should teach us to do better than we are doing. If Chicago alone annually
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dumps twelve thousand children under sixteen into the labour mart, what must be the total for the whole country? Of what are we thinking, even with ref- erence to our own selfish protection, when we try to assimilate such a mass? And if we have any vision of the future, any sense of our solemn re- sponsibility for the youth entrusted to us to prepare for their work in continuing and improving the race, are we not mad — stark mad?
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WEARILY, resentfully, Mattie set the table for supper: one, two, three, four stone- china plates from which the stencilled pat- tern was all but obliterated in thousands of washings ; one, two, three, four knives at the right of the plates and forks at the left; one, two, three, four cups and saucers of the same faded sort; the sugar-bowl and the glass spoon-holder; two sets of salt and pepper shakers; four saucers for the spiced plums. Then she fetched the butter and the cream ; set the cake on the table in the spot where it was always set; sliced some cold meat left from dinner; looked into the oven to see if her biscuits were browning; stirred her skilletful of frying potatoes; and drew the boiling coffee back from the front of the stove.
Mattie was small and slight. Her hair was a pale brown, and her face was nearly the same hue — rather muddy than pasty. Her eyes were gray-blue; there was a vertical line between them, witness to repeated puckers which I hate to call scowls. And her mouth was set in the mould of fretfulness. Mat- tie was twenty-six.
237
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The back door opened, and her mother came in. She had been feeding her chickens.
" That quilt didn't get dry. I knew it wouldn't ! "
Mrs. Williams was fifty-two, and twice as much of everything as Mattie was, except twice as small; but she was more than twice as tired and twice as resent- ful of something — she didn't know just what.
" Well," Mattie answered, as if it wasn't her fault that the quilt didn't dry, " you can leave it hang there till it does; there ain't no hurry."
"Leave it hang there for the Portuguese, you mean! I guess not! "
The neighbourhood had been invaded, in recent years, by several families of Portuguese who seemed to be provided with none of the necessities of life except innumerable children. These people had rented small abandoned farms which they were proceeding to cultivate almost without any other equipment than the family muscle; they all scratched and dug and planted and weeded, and cut grain with sickles, and did other archaic things — but they bought the farms, eventually, and got a living out of them for the numerous progeny, and had money in the bank, be- sides. People like the Williamses, whose forbears had tilled this valley for a hundred years, bitterly re- sented the Portuguese invasion; and most of them professed a belief thart the foreigners " got on " not merely by industry and frugality, but by supplying their needs out of back yards and chicken-coops and
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orchards, and saving their money to put in the bank.
So Mrs. Williams brought in her quilt, still heavily damp, and hung it in the summer kitchen and wash- house.
She and Mattie kept the rambling old farmhouse in a condition of speckless cleanliness and rigid order- liness which would have appalled the Portuguese women, to whom a house was little more than a shel- ter for sleeping in. They made layer cakes with fancy fillings, and hot breads every day, and white and graham loaves twice a week, and twenty-odd kinds of sauces and jellies and preserves, and pies or pudding for every dinner, and ice cream on Sun- days in summer, so that it was nearly always time either to bake something or to set forth a meal or to clear away and wash up. No wonder the Portu- guese, who " ate out of their hands " and spent little time on the preparation of food, could work all day in the fields!
" Your pa's late," Mrs. Williams observed, return- ing from the wash-house. " He gets to gossippin', down there, and never thinks that we might like to eat an' get through."
Eben Williams had long ago given up general farm- ing, and had become a specialist, a milk farmer. He kept forty cows, and once a day he drove with his cans of milk four miles, to the milk depot in High- port. He kept a farm-hand, a Bohemian boy; and the boy was sent, sometimes, on the trips to the vil-
240 THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
lage — but not often; Eben liked to go; he liked to get away from the company of the stolid Bohemian lad, who spoke little English, and to mingle with men of his own sort, who had interests in common with him and a companionably similar outlook. He had never known any other life than farm life; and he was not conscious that he had ever actually desired any other. Yet he knew what his boys meant when they rebelled against its " monotony.'* He had given his two boys more schooling than he had had; but it was not the kind of schooling which inspired, or fostered, any enthusiasm for farming. Eben was " old-fashioned " ; he had found it hard to believe that "perfessers can teach farming"; he couldn't "see the sense " of sending his boys to a school of agri- culture ; he felt sure he could " learn 'em more about farming 'n what any perfesser can." So he sent them to study things of which he knew nothing — that was what he called " giving them advantages " — • and the consequence was that they acquired tastes and interests which divorced them utterly from farm- ing: one was a skilled mechanic, with a wanderlust; he could earn his way wherever he went — and he went far and wide ; the other was a clerk in a Chicago mercantile house, married, the father of two children, and getting along on $75 a month — but content to live " cooped up " (as his parents phrased it) in four small rooms of a great barrack-like flat building, be- cause he believed that in the city, in mercantile life,
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he was in the path of progress. The elder of the two Williams girls had married a farmer, a young scien- tific farmer, who knew a lot about irrigation and soil- enrichment and like lore, and was turning all these things to profit out in Idaho, whither he had mi- grated. Eben had a good many different kinds of news to retail among " the gossips of the port." When he was at home, going about his work, he felt very desolate — because he could not see what was to become of the ancestral farm when he could no longer work it for a living. But when he was sitting on the platform of the milk depot, telling his old ac- quaintances how much his children were getting out of life, he felt somehow recompensed.
" It don't make so awful much difference when we get through," Mattie answered her mother. " All there is to do afterwards is just go to bed."
This was by no means a new plaint, but it never failed to cause Mrs. Williams' heart to yearn sym- pathetically. Mattie felt that life was cheating her unpardonably; and her mother felt so, too.
It seemed impossible to spare Mattie from the farm, to let her go away seeking, as her brothers had gone. It seemed impossible even to let her go out to Idaho, where Annie would have welcomed her help pending the time when one of the neighbouring farm- ers should woo Mattie and make her his wife. (Wives were as scarce in Idaho as husbands were in New York State.) Mrs. Williams felt deeply cha-
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grined to have a twenty-six-year-old daughter who had no beau, nor any prospect of one. For other families round about were little different from the Williamses: there had been a scattering, particularly of their young men. Some of the old settlers de- clared that the Portuguese had driven the native sons out and away; but of course they hadn't — they had only come in to fill the void.
If Mattie were to go away, her mother could not do the work of the farmhouse alone — not unless she closed her memory to the parlour and the spare room as if they did not exist; not unless she eliminated layer-cakes and pies and puddings and hot biscuits and twenty-odd kinds of jellies and sauces and pre- serves, from her menu; not unless she reduced life to a mere matter of keeping alive, and forswore all aspirations engendered by women's magazines and mail-order catalogues. There was one alternative! She might have hired a girl to help her, as Eben hired a boy to do for him what one of his own sons might have done had he stayed at home. But the idea scarcely occurred to her as a serious one — it was just a wild, impractical notion she entertained for brief moments when Mattie's revolt was acutely bit- ter. Eben had grudged paying anywhere from thirty to forty dollars a month in cash, besides giving board and washing, to a boy to help him take care of the cows; but he consoled himself for having to hire help, by the reminder that he got pretty good money
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for his product, and got it regularly. It would have been impossible to reconcile him to the idea of hiring house help for his wife, because he conceived it to be her " business " to run the house, and would have refused to spend any money on household labour on the ground that such labour is unproductive.
The two women pored over the magazines to which they subscribed out of the only money they ever han- dled or could call their own: the egg money. They pondered the huge catalogues of the mail-order houses. Mattie yearned to buy pretty things to wear. Her mother yearned to buy pretty things for the house. But they were seldom able to satisfy their yearnings. They could work wonders in fashioning, but they could not create. They could make remark- able shift with odds of this and ends of that, but they could not make something out of nothing. Just now, Mrs. Williams was exceedingly anxious to have some new dishes; but she couldn't make dishes — long ago that industry, originated by women, was taken out of the home and appropriated by men. Just now, Mattie was exceedingly anxious to have a suit. She might have made one, of a sort, if she had the cloth. But sheep-raising has moved to the great open wastes, and shearing, combing, carding, spinning, dyeing, weaving are no longer home industries; men have taken them over, and specialized them, and although women work at them, no woman works at all of them nor at all the processes of any one.
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A primitive household had to be entirely sufficient unto its own needs. As men grew civilized, they did fewer things — each inclined to do what he could do best, and sold his product to supply his wants. And as man's original share of the world's work was hunt- ing game for food, and fighting his human and brute enemies, he had — when those occupations were no longer so demanding as to keep all the males busy — to take over women's occupations, one by one. But each man tended to take over only one, that he liked to do, and to leave his women all the rest.
Women were the first tillers of the ground. They were the first tanners and weavers and spinners and dyers; the first millers and potters. They invented the processes, and the instruments for carrying them on. They were the first architects and the first deco- rative artists. They tamed the first wild animals and made them domestic helpers. They were the earliest physicians, and the first priests and prophets. If the theory of the matriarchate be not denied, they were the first lawgivers.
Little by little, man has taken woman's work, spe- cialized it, and made himself an independent economic factor. Even to the extent of making her hats and clothes and cooking her food and teaching her chil- dren, he has invaded the last of what she supposed were her inviolable fields, and has made money and won distinction by doing things that, when she did them, were considered as much a part of her business
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of self-sustaining (and therefore as little entitled to reward) as respiration and sleep and digestion.
Eben Williams did fewer kinds of work than his father had done, but it seemed to him that he worked as hard as his father had ever worked. Mrs. Wil- liams and Mattie did as many kinds of things as Eben's mother and sisters had done ; but because some of the things his mother and grandmother had per- formed unquestioningly were refused by his wife and daughter, Eben thought that women nowadays are determined to take life easier. He could not realize that although his womenfolk did not " milk/' they had a great deal of work with the cans and pails and strainers of an " inspected " dairy farm beyond what his mother had ever known; that although his mother had made her own soap and lard and candles, she had not made iced layer-cakes or embroidered centre- pieces for her table. He felt that women nowadays make fewer of the things they need, and want to buy more and more. He knew that he himself bought many things which his father would never have thought of buying; but he argued that he was justi- fied, because his concentration in industry paid him a cash profit. The women were not justified in want- ing to buy, because (he argued) their diffused indus- try paid no cash profit.
Williams wasn't a hard man; he was only " slow." He knew that Mattie was discontented, but he sup- posed that it was more or less natural for a girl to
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feel bad if she hadn't any beau. That there might be any way for a girl to feel tolerably satisfied with life other than by getting married, did not occur to him as possible. That he " supported " his two womenfolk, it never occurred to Eben Williams to doubt. Just what they might be said to do for them- selves by their unremitting labours, he had not trou- bled himself to define — not even as he drove home to his supper this evening that I have described.
" Joshua Winter's most desp'rate," he announced, at table — looking meaningfully at Mattie, as if here was something to silence a girl that was afraid she might not always be took care of — " he says he can't seem to get nobody that's worth her salt, to keep house for him." (The Bohemian boy had bolted his supper and gone out.)
Joshua Winter was also a dairy-farmer. He was sixty-five; his only son was ranching in Oklahoma; his daughters were married, and lived at some dis- tance; and his wife had died six months ago. He was amazed to find that nowhere among the unat- tached females of his connection and acquaintance was there one who was willing to come and run his house " for her keep." He was more than amazed — he was indignant.
" He's had to let that last woman he got, go," Eben went on. " She wouldn't do but just so-much, and she had to be drove over to Highport every little while because she said she was lonesome an' needed
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a change. And he had to pay her twenty dollars a month! Upshot of it'll be, Joshua'll have to get married again. Too bad he's such an old one, Mat- tie!"
Mrs. Williams' eyes flashed.
" If Mattie's goin' to work to save some man payin' wages, she might's well do it here. It's about what marryin' mostly comes to, anyhow ! "
Eben looked at her in astonishment.
" How you talk ! " he answered, reproachfully. " When folks belong in fam'lies, they all work to- gether, for each other. You work an' I work. But do I get any more out of it than what you do? Do I get a better bed or more to eat an' drink than what you do ? "
"Bed an' board ain't everything!" his wife re- torted. " I work as hard as you do, but I don't get to decide when we need some new dishes! Mattie works as hard as either of us — but when she wants a suit o' clothes she's got to ask you if you're willin' for her to have 'em! If we're all workin' for each other, why is there only one of us that says what the others shall do an' have? If I'm earnin' my way, same as you're earnin' yours, why don't I have any- thing to say about the earnin's? Why are you the only one that says if we're to have a new thing now an' then to make the house decent? "
" Because," Eben answered, trying to keep his tem- per, and growing quite judicial in manner, " there
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has got to be a head to everything, and I'm the head of this house. It's my house, and my land. I'm sharin' with you all I can. Most women'd call me a mighty good provider. Women ain't got sense about money — they don't know what 'tis to earn it, and their one notion is to spend."
" They know what 'tis to earn it, all right ! " Mrs. Williams declared. " But they don't know what 'tis to get it."
Eben Williams considered such talk profaning to the home. His mother had never thought about " wages " and " rights " ! She did what there was to do, and if she wasn't grateful for the opportunity, no one (that he was aware!) had ever heard her com- plain.
He couldn't see what ailed Euphemia and Mattie: but he believed it was reading about the ranting, rav- ing creatures that wanted to vote, that had put crazy notions in their head. Lord knew he was no tyrant. But he sometimes thought women would be better off if they didn't know how to read. There used to be a lot more contentment among 'em; and they worked harder and had more children. His mother had given birth to eleven. If he had had six sons — as his father had — he wouldn't need to be hiring a Bohe- mian boy for thirty dollars a month! . . .
Thus and thus the Williamses! And it came to pass that presently they left the farm and moved to Chicago. The reasons were many. One was that
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Eben had a good chance to sell the farm. Once upon a time Eben would not have considered that that was any reason at all. But what with his boys' distaste for farming, and with the practical certainty that the farm would be sold after his death, and with the in- vasion of the Portuguese, and the unsatisf actor iness of hired help, and the growing dissatisfaction of the women, AND the offer (secured by Bob) of a good job in Chicago as general indoor man at a branch depot of one of the big milk companies, with a salary of $65 a month, he decided to go. Everything worked together for the move. Some things about it were hard — leaving the old home; parting from the live creatures, even to the beloved Collie ; turning their backs on everything familiar, and facing a world all strange — and the wrench was more severe than any of the Williamses had anticipated it would be. But by that time it was too late to turn back; the money for the sale was in the bank " against " Eben's and Euphemia's old age and their children's inheritance, and the future must be faced.
The transition was less sharp than it might have been. The neighbourhood in which Eben was to work was a semi-suburban one, and they were able to find a five-room flat on the first floor of a detached frame house. There was ground enough to give Mrs. Williams some opportunity for flower-garden- ing. There was electric light and a gas-stove. They would have to depend on stove-heat for warmth in
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winter, but as they were accustomed to that it was no hardship. There was a bathroom, which was a luxury. They paid sixteen dollars a month for rent. Bob's wife (Bob was the Williamses' son in Chicago) seemed to feel that they were subject to commisera- tion because they had no steam heat and no janitor service. But Mrs. Williams and Mattie laughed, and declared that even as things were, they did not know what to do with themselves.
They still baked bread, and on Saturday mornings Mattie made a cake and a couple of pies. They did their washing and ironing. They kept the five small rooms clean and orderly. They got ready three meals a day. But time hung heavy on their hands. At first, it seemed to them that they could never tire of the shops, the crowds in the streets, the parks, the sights. But the only truly zestful holidaying is that which is snatched, as 'twere, from demanding work; the moment leisure loses its " all-too-brief-ness," that moment it begins to become irksome or, at least, only measurably joyful. Moreover, it requires a consid- erable mental equipment to make loafing without spending, enjoyable; it requires a stoic philosophy to look on at a never-ending display of attractive things and be content to possess none of them.
At first, Mattie regarded the " stylish " girls and women, the overwhelming displays in the shops, as quite apart from herself. She was a delighted, be- wildered onlooker at a glittering parade. If she felt
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that it would be " lovely " to be in the parade, she felt it only as a child does who looks on at a circus-parade, trying to imagine herself part and parcel of such a splendidly unreal life, but never quite believing in the possibility of her entering it. In those days, Mattie looked upon it all with hardly an idea of ap- propriating any — the Robespierre collars any more than the diamond necklaces, the silk stockings any more than the paradise feathers, the boutonniere bou- quets any more than the French gowns with their slit- skirts and rat-tail trains and glitter of rhinestones. Then, gradually, she began to differentiate, to select. The girl who lived upstairs wore silk stockings on Sundays, with her Colonial pumps; little shop-girls who were not even " salesladies " wore Robespierre collars ; Bob's wife wore a boutonniere on her tailored coat. Mattie began to feel herself " unnecessarily countrified." Her last summer's hat, which would have answered perfectly well for another summer in the country, "wouldn't do, here, at all"; it was not only not in style, but it was conspicuously out of style. It was one thing to be an unobserved onlooker at the show, and it was quite another thing to feel that you were yourself "a show" — of an unenviable sort. Mattie wanted a new hat. She found that it would be cheaper to buy a Robespierre collar than to get the materials and make one, and she wanted some money for that. She wanted some gloves. She wanted to buy lace and embroidery and ribbons and patterns,
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and try to make herself some lingerie like that dis- played in the cheaper department stores.
But Eben Williams was not prepared to meet these demands. He was willing, he said, to provide Mattie with what she needed — but he felt that his idea of need, and not her notions of want, ought to determine what she should have. He was alarmed at the way money had, apparently, to be spent in a city. It was hard to get used to buying chickens and eggs and fruits and vegetables and butter and milk and even cottage cheese. The idea of paying twenty cents a pound for salt pork instead of pulling it out of the pork barrel; of having to give fifty cents a peck for apples of the sort he had been wont to feed to his pigs; of paying forty cents a peck for potatoes and forty cents a pound for butter and nigh onto a dollar for a sizable chicken, was paralyzing. No wonder it made him feel that money for clothes must be kept to the minimum ! No wonder he felt that for people in their circumstances, " a hat's a hat " !
Mattie, however, could not be satisfied merely to be fed and housed and clothed. Food and shelter meant comparatively little to her because she had never suffered for lack of either. Clothes would probably have meant no more to her if she had had anything else to fix her mind upon, and if the rest of the world — in so far as she was able to see it! — had found anything else to fix its mind upon. But Mattie had no great preoccupation. She had no splendid
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absorption which rendered dress, like food and lodg- ing, merely incidental. She had no driving ambition at whose behest sacrifices of trifling gratifications be- came sweet. She was just an ordinary little person, living along from day to day, " somehow,'"' on what- ever interests the day provided — and they were neither many nor worthy.
She was not analytical. She did not realize that it was her uselessness, her superfluousness, which made her restless, miserable. In the country she had cer- tainly not been useless; she had felt that her mother could not get on without her. And while it did not seem to her that she was fully recompensed for her toil, she had (although she was not aware of it) a deeper source of self-respect than getting all you earn — which is, earning all you get !
Here, she was instinctively, if not reasoningly, con- scious of being a dependent. There was nothing to look forward to but the chance of getting married. And that seemed to be a poor chance. Mattie thought it was a poor chance because she was " not pretty " and because she could not buy attractive clothes to enhance her appearance. Many girls as plain as she, and plainer, married; and Mattie sup- posed they must have had the wherewithal to make themselves attractive. It was one of the articles of faith in Mrs. Williams' rules for bringing up a daughter, that beauty is only skin deep, and another that housewifely arts are prized by " sensible " young
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men when they go a-courting. But nothing in Mat- tie's little experience seemed to impress her with the desirability of qualities deeper than the cuticle, or even than the " peekaboo " dry goods wherewith women now cover their skin without concealing any more than they have to. She met the young people who were Bob's and Ida's acquaintances; most of them were young married folk, struggling mightily to make five-thousand-dollar-a-year appearances on thousand-dollar salaries. Mattie had no reason to suppose that these young wives had been chosen for their ability to keep house and sew and save money. Perhaps their talk was deliberately misleading; but they seemed to think that the more they proclaimed their uselessness as housewives, the more evident it would become that they had been wooed and won on a plane of high romance. As if romance moved in inverse ratio to suitability.
Mattie listened to the talk at Ida's, and to her mother's counsel, and drew her own conclusions. She was not especially eager to get married, but she was eager for adventure, for something that might, even briefly, transmute existence into life; and she was now convinced that demure apprenticeship to the housewifely arts is not, whatever it may once have been, the woman's one straight road to happiness, to safety, to well-being.
After a family council, it was decided that she might " go to work." Her father felt a little shame
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in allowing her to go, because the traditions of his family were that the men always managed to support their womenfolk ; also, he had heard tales of the dan- gers which beset working girls. But he yielded to the weight of contrary opinion. Bob declared it would " do Mattie good, sharpen her wits, and show her what life is." Ida pleaded that she had been a bread-winner before she was married, and she was sure it hadn't hurt her — that, as for temptation, she had heard of more than one girl being led away from prayer-meeting. Mrs. Williams smothered her re- gretfulness at the prospect of long, lonely days, and urged that it was a pity for Mattie not to be able to have things like other girls had, and she didn't see why Mattie shouldn't earn them as other girls did.
So it was agreed that Mattie should go to work. All that remained to determine was what she should do. Eben had been able to find a place in the com- plex city life, and to find it quickly, because he knew a great deal about an important article of universal consumption: milk. If he had been a "general" farmer, with no specialized knowledge, the city would less easily have assimilated him. Mattie was hard to place because she was a " general " manufacturer, or houseworker; she did not know enough of any one branch of domestic manufacturing to enter it as an expert; and of the two demands for general house- workers — i.e., wives and maids-of-all-work — she did
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not know where to find a place as the former, and did not fancy the terms of the latter service.
Bob and Ida were strongly opposed to the idea of Mattie's " working out," on the grounds of the social stigma. Mrs. Williams was opposed to it because it would oblige Mattie to live as well as to work away from home. Eben Williams objected to such service when it was explained to him that, contrary to such custom as he had known in the country, his daughter if she hired herself out to do for strangers such work as she had always done at home, would have to go in and out by back doors, to receive him and her mother at a back door if they went to call upon her, and to eat her meals alone, apart from the family she served. Mattie wanted to live in her home. She wanted to have her parents' companionship in the evenings and on Sundays. She couldn't bear the thought of sitting down alone in a kitchen bedroom, after her day's work was done; of having no one to talk to, to listen to her account of the day's adven- tures, to sympathize with her over its unpleasantness. She wanted to live where she could entertain young people she might meet. Her social hunger, which had become almost starvation in the country, was per- haps the strongest impulse of which she was con- scious. She yearned to be among people ; to work in company and in competition with others of her own sort; to feel the thrill of the race to excel. She was told that she could get six dollars a week and her
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board and lodging, if she went into domestic service. But she had never learned to reckon board and lodg- ing in terms of compensation; she had a home in which she preferred to live; and she could get six dol- lars a week as a beginner in factory, office, or store. Further to strengthen her resolution, Bob reminded her that whereas, in domestic service, it was seldom possible to get more than seven dollars a week for general housework, in other kinds of work it was " up to you how much you earn." He did not tell her (because he did not know) that the average clerk or factory-hand or store-girl is not so well paid as the average domestic worker. But he was quite within the truth in saying that to a girl who hopes to reach above the average, one branch of service offers little if any chance, and others offer chances limited only by the workers' capabilities. Not many girls rise from the position of stock-girl to buyer, from office girl to private secretary of the firm's president, from machine operator to forewoman; but some do — some are always unmistakably so rising. Whereas no girl, in all probability, ever rose from general house- worker to become a high-priced chef, or a high-sala- ried managing housekeeper, or a club steward, or anything that might satisfy the ambition of one who worked harder than " the average " and developed more than average skill.
Mattie didn't know what she could do, but she wanted to work at something that held rewards if
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she could earn them. Whatever she went into she must enter as an unskilled worker, practically an ap- prentice. It was difficult for her to say what kinds of specialized labour might attract her, for which ones she might develop an aptitude; because there were so few kinds of which she had any knowledge. She could not compare office, factory, and store, be- cause she knew nothing whatever of the two former. She knew a little about retail selling in that she had at least seen it done. So, inasmuch as she lived " at home, with her parents " and seemed to think $6 an entirely satisfactory wage for a beginner, she was given a position to sell certain kinds of kitchen hard- ware in the housefurnishing section of a big depart- ment store.
Thus Mattie Williams became a wage-earner; one of those " restless " girls so censured and decried by the short-sighted old aunties and the bewildered grandmas. Her father was earning enough to house her and feed her and cover her nakedness : " she should have stayed at home ; this traipsing off to work gets girls into all kinds of trouble, and rubs the bloom off them. But they must have fol-de-rols, and ex- citement. I'm sure I can't see what we're com- ing to ! "
These agitated persons are quite earnest, and quite unaware that they are seeing no further than the ends of their noses. They see Mattie selling tack-lifters and screw-drivers and door-hinges, and she typifies
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to them potential wifehood and motherhood and home-management, perverted to strange, unsexing occupations. They hear of the five-room flat which could not continue to contain Mattie because it could not keep her self-respectingly busy, and they weep over Mattie's faring forth " in quest of gewgaws." Not even though Mattie, interrogated, were to swear that it was to get gewgaws she went forth, would that make gewgaws anything but a confusing inci- dent of her wage-earning. There was a time when women who went beyond their homes to earn their living, felt ashamed of the necessity (they never thought of it, then, as Opportunity!) and lied, feebly, about wanting " pin money." There is some of that spirit left; there are still some women who feel that while it would be derogatory to work for bread, it is perfectly lady-like to work for cake — or that, if bread must be earned, it preserves the nice traditions of femininity to pretend that the work is being done for " sweets." Girls like Mattie, whose fathers were alive and well and working, used to feel that they re- flected, somehow, on the " natural breadwinner " of the family, if they admitted that they went to work for any other reason than to get " spending money." And in their silly pride, these women and girls con- fused themselves, and others. Such notions still flourish in England, to a considerable extent, and in the Southern States of our country. But they are dis- appearing so rapidly that it is easy to foresee a day,
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not distant, when such strange concepts of dignity and propriety will be as difficult to understand as to-day it is difficult for us to appreciate how a " fe- male " in the eighteenth century preserved her sense of delicacy by feigning not to eat and by swooning easily and frequently.
Women — barring the parasites among them — have always worked; they have always worked wherever (that is to say, in whatever fields) the labour of their hands was most urgently demanded. They have never created the conditions under which they la- boured; they have always adapted themselves and their work to conditions created for them.
" The women of no race or class," says Olive Schreiner, " will ever rise in revolt or attempt to bring about a revolutionary readjustment of their relation to their society, however intense their suffer- ing and however clear their perception of it, while the welfare and persistence of their society requires their submission; wherever there is a general attempt on the part of the women of any society to readjust their position in it, a close analysis will always show that the changed or changing conditions of that society have made woman's acquiescence no longer necessary or desirable.
" In our woman's field of labour, the changes which have taken place during the last centuries, and which we sum up under the compendious term ' mod- ern civilization/ have tended to rob woman, not
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merely in part but almost wholly, of the more valu- able part of her ancient domain of productive and social labour; and, where there has not been a deter- mined and conscious resistance on her part, have nowhere spontaneously tended to open out to her new and compensatory fields. . . . Looking around with the uttermost impartiality we can command, on the entire field of woman's ancient and traditional la- bours, we find that fully three-fourths of it have shrunk away forever, and that the remaining fourth still tends to shrink.
" It is this great fact, so often and so completely overlooked, which lies as the propelling force behind that vast and restless ' Woman's Movement ' which marks our day. It is this fact, whether clearly and intellectually grasped, or, as is more often the case, vaguely and painfully felt, which awakes in the hearts of the ablest modern European women, their passion- ate, and at times it would seem almost incoherent, cry for new forms of labour and new fields for the exer- cise of their powers.
* Thrown into strict logical form, our demand is this : We do not ask that the wheels of time should reverse themselves, or the stream of life flow back- ward. We do not ask that our ancient spinning- wheels be again resuscitated and placed in our hands ; we do not demand that our old grindstones and hoes be returned to us, or that man should again betake himself entirely to his ancient province of war and
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the chase, leaving to us all domestic and civil labour. We do not even demand that society shall immediately so reconstruct itself that every woman may be again a child-bearer (deep and overmastering as lies the hunger for motherhood in every virile woman's heart!); neither do we demand that the children whom we bear shall again be put exclusively into our hands to train. This, we know, cannot be. The past material conditions of life have gone forever; no will of man can recall them. But this is our de- mand: We demand that, in that strange new world that is arising alike upon the man and the woman, where nothing is as it was, and all things are assum- ing new shapes and relations, that in this new world we also shall have our share of honoured and socially useful human toil, our full half of the labour of the Children of Woman. We demand nothing more than this, and we will take nothing less. This is our ' Woman's Right! ' "
XI
THE PRICE OF PROGRESS
"TT'S no use strugglin' on," Fritz Buehlow had declared, some years ago ; " things ain't never goin' to get no better for us. You can't sell preservin' kettles an' Mason jars to women that buy all their fruit, a can at a time as they want it. And you can't sell wash-boilers an' clothesracks and wringers to women that send all their washin' out; nor skillets an' saucepans to women that get their meals from the delicatessen's. We might's well give up."
" Well, 7 say let's give up tryin' to sell what no one wants to buy," his wife agreed, " an' start sellin' something everybody's got to buy. The people 'round here have changed a lot from what they was when we come here. Flats was scarce, then; now it's houses that's scarce. Everybody lives in few rooms; and you see how 'tis: as the neighbourhood gets thicker an' thicker, the flats get smaller an' smaller — fewer rooms an5 littler. More'n half these big new buildin's are four-room flats, an' less; I see one or two signs out sayin' that them buildin's have flats of two an' three rooms. Now, you know 's well as I do, how much housekeepin' can be done in two
263
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an* three rooms! All you got to do is look around you, an* see the way laundries an* dry-cleaners an' bakeries an* delicatessens flourish an' multiply. Any amount o' the women around here work for their liv- in's, same as men do. They make their good money an' hire their clothes washed an' their fruit canned an' their suits cleaned an' pressed an' their bread baked.
" The thing for you an* me to do, Pa, is to start sellin' something that people have got to have. Now, / say that we clear out this store, takin' what we can get for the old stock, an' start a good delicatessen. An' I say, le't's not keep just the kinds o' stuff all the others keep. I say let's keep some things that you an' me could imagine hungry folks wantin' to eat when they come home from a day's work."
That was how the Buehlows started in the delica- tessen business. Mrs. Buehlow had a strong instinct for the value of appearance in the salability of food. She realized that people were getting daily more de- manding as to the looks of what they ate, and also as to the way it was handled; she it was who insisted on having " the place done up white," the store-front painted, the inside oil-finished so it could be washed and kept spotless; she it was who insisted on white enamel paint for the counters and shelves, and who went to other lengths of extravagance which Fritz complained their small savings did not jus- tify.
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" When we're startin', / say let's start right! " she retorted — and went ahead with her expenditures.
She was speedily justified in the shop's success. At first they bought a major part of all they sold, just as did their competitors — every delicatessen dealer buying from practically the same line of " spe- cialists," whose supply wagons stopped daily at his door. Mrs. Buehlow was " feeling her way," learn- ing what people would and would not buy; and as fast as she could, she was substituting the readily salable for the unsalable.
" This here baked macaroni we're gettin' is like a bunch o' rubber hose," she declared. " By the time people take it home an' warm it up in an oven, the wonder to me is they can chew it. I say let's not take any more of it. I'll cook some myself, an' fix it in little pans, all creamy inside an' nice crumbs on top, an' customers can put it in the oven to heat through an' have a Christian dish."
But it was Mary — the Buehlows' only daughter — who laid the foundation of the family fortune.
Mary was eighteen at that time. She lived with her parents and her two younger brothers, in the rooms behind the store. She waited on customers, helped her mother with the family housework and with the ever-increasing manufacture of things to sell in the store. She was alertly intelligent, and deeply interested in the new business, for which she had an aptitude no less strong than her mother's.
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There was this about a delicatessen shop: you couldn't get away from it; it had to be opened in the morning early enough to meet the demands of seven-o'clock breakfasters, and it had to be kept open till nine or ten in the evening, and Sunday was its busiest day — Sunday and holidays. But there were five Buehlows; they all waited on customers in the " rush " times, if necessary, and they took turns in sticking to the job evenings and Sundays and holi- days. And no one felt unduly restricted. The com- ing and going of the various supply men, each day, brought a score of friendly gossips and a constant replenishment of conversational topics as well as of smoked meats and cream cheeses. The customers were nearly all " regulars," and many of them brought bits of news or of opinion which enlivened the business of buying and selling. The life was a social life and the Buehlows had less need than most folks have of going far afield from either home or business to satisfy the craving for human intercourse and fresh interests. They had a large circle of com- mon acquaintances — common to them all. They had an unusual number of common 'interests. The source of the family income was as clearly understood by young Fritz as by his father, by Mary and her mother as by any of the group. Georgie knew as well as his pa what boiled hams ought to cost per pound and what they ought to bring. Young Fritz, who made bicycle deliveries, brought back many
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shrewd reports about the living conditions he glimpsed. Mary kept her eyes open wherever she went, to note what other delicatessen shops purveyed.
And it was Mary, as I have said, who laid the foun- dation of the family fortune.
Mary went out to supper one evening, at the home of a girl friend. Baked beans were served. Mary had never eaten any so good. She got directions for preparing them this way, and without delay she " tried some on the family."
" Those pans of beans, baked hard as stones on top, that we get from Schmulzer, aren't fit to eat," Mary declared. " I'm going to bake a big earthen crock of these, to-morrow — and see what happens."
What happened was that the crockful sold " in no time," and that everybody who bought those beans wanted more. In a little while, people were passing other delicatessen stores to come to Buehlow's for beans, and Mary was baking three and four big crock- fuls a day, instead of one — with very little more work.
One day the driver of a dairy wagon that supplied the Buehlow store, said to Mary :
" I was tellin' one of our delicatessen customers about your baked beans. An' he says, he's so far away from here he ain't no competitor of yours, an' if you want to fix him one of them crocks, he'll take it; and if it goes, he'll order reg'lar."
Mary took counsel of the family, and no one could
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see any objection to supplying a shop in another neighbourhood. So Mary sent the distant delicates- sener a crock ful of beans, and then two crocks, and then three. And soon she had to have an oven built for her. There was " money in beans." There was so much money in them that in course of no great while the Buehlows began to be a " bean supply house," sending their product all over the city; and presently they ceased to be keepers of a delicatessen shop; and as time went on, Fritz Buehlow became a manufacturer, and Buehlow's Beans became a by-word — and Mary was out of a job!
The store was sold, and the family moved into a house — an eight-room house, with a bathroom, and a good, big yard, which speedily became a thriving gar- den under Mrs. Buehlow's loving care.
At first she and Mary did their housework; and the three menfolk ran the business — the elder Bueh- low directing manufacture and his two sons do- ing the buying of raw product and the selling of fin- ished product. Occasionally, Mary went over to the factory and made suggestions about improving the quality of the beans; but her father and brothers did not like this. They felt fully capable of carrying on the business, and they did not care to have their employes get the idea that the business owed in any way its origin to the women of the family and not to the men. Besides, they said there was enough for Mary to do at home.
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There wasn't enough! Not even in the beginning of the new home, when Mary and her mother did all their work except the washing — omitting the latter not because they felt unequal to it but because it would have " looked queer " in their new neighbour- hood for them to be seen in their back yard hanging out their clothes. Mary was twenty-four, now, and splendidly vigorous. She had always worked hard and always enjoyed it. Of course she got tired, at times; of course there were occasions when she sighed for more leisure; but on the whole, she was contentedly busy to a degree which almost any one might well envy. Housework didn't give her enough to do: it didn't provide half enough variety. She missed the social aspect of the store. She missed the stimulus of business. She missed the companion- ship of her menfolk, who left home early in the mornings, now, and came home later and later in the evenings. All these things that Mary missed, her mother missed also. " Progress " had suddenly de- prived them of a great deal that they cherished and enjoyed. Very shortly, it deprived them still further.
" I want you to get you a hired girl, Ma," Fritz Buehlow said. " There ain't no need for you an' Mary to be workin' your heads off "
" But we ain't workin' 'em off, Pa," Mrs. Buehlow interposed. " Fact is, we don't have enough to do."
" That's because you stick around here all day and have no ambition about you ! " Georgie complained.
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"You act like you still had the store. What's the use of getting on, if you're going to do that way? We work hard all day, and when we come home what do we find? You and Mary in the kitchen cooking supper. And after supper, you and Mary in the kitchen washing dishes or setting sponge or soaking the clothes. Then, in the morning, you and Mary in the kitchen cooking breakfast. And all day Sun- day, you and Mary in the kitchen ! "
Mrs. Buehlow looked her natural astonishment.
" Why, Georgie ! " she exclaimed. " What would we be doin'? What you want we should do?"
" Get a hired girl," he answered. " Dress your- selves up nice; go out somewheres once in a while; have some company sometimes; and look like the family was getting on!"
Mrs. Buehlow hadn't a great deal of patience with this demand, until Mary explained to her: the men- folk had made a lot of new acquaintances in business; Georgie and Fritzie had met some nice girls and wanted to appear well in these girls' eyes; it would be a great pity to let the men get ashamed of their home and keep all their social as well as their busi- ness life outside. Mary had been pleaded with by each of the men in turn; she had all their arguments by heart; she could not help seeing that they had a great deal of right on their side; and, too, she was more willing for the change than her mother was — not because she wanted to work less, but because she
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hoped that the new arrangement would enable her to work more, and at something to which she could give a quality of interest like to that she had given the work wrested from her by the factory.
So a servant was installed, and Mrs. Buehlow and Mary set about the tremendously difficult task of find- ing employment. They essayed considerable sewing. Mrs. Buehlow worked her garden till it was the won- der of the neighbourhood. Still the days were long and too scantily filled. The menfolk were not keen about keeping up many of the old acquaintances of store days; and Mrs. Buehlow and Mary found it difficult to establish community of interests with their new neighbours, who had, for the most part, been much more gradually accustomed to regard as the main facts of life those things which the Buehlow women had always regarded as incidentals.
Two women whose wit and wisdom and untiring industry have contributed so much to lift their fam- ily out of failure and despair into success and confi- dence, cannot easily magnify into prime importance the length of their jackets, the height of their hat- crowns, the way portieres should hang, or the multi- plication of doilies; and questions of infant feeding and child rearing could not enter vitally into lives that children did not touch.
Most of the women of the neighbourhood suffered more or less from ennui, although nearly all of them thought they had too much to do. The resort of the
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majority in their leisure hours was cards — bridge whist or rhum or five hundred.
Mrs. Buehlow could not rouse in herself the slight- est interest in cards ; but Mary, yielding to the invita- tions of her brothers' girl-friends, joined a card-and- luncheon club, and a matinee Dutch-treat club.
In the interests of these, Mary tried to develop an absorption in collarless blouses and grape fruit cock- tails and Waldorf salad and leading men and " tri- angle " problems and " finessing " and the simplifica- tion of hair-dressing styles. But the effort was abortive. Nothing really interested her until she be- came, in desperation, a member of a Sunbeam Society whose pet enterprise was the maintenance of a noon- day rest and cafeteria lunchroom for working girls.
The members of the Society took turns waiting at the food counters, the steam-tables, and the tea and coffee urns — thus saving wages and keeping down the price of food.
At once, Mary was in her element and happy. At once she came into a position of command, because she was in a field where she knew — and knowledge is authority. The Sunbeam cafeteria absorbed her, and it rewarded her: it developed and flourished under her direction until it gave her a sense of elation in her usefulness — the most satisfying sense that any soul can ever have.
But Mr. Buehlow was ill-pleased when he heard that Mary was working so hard in a cafeteria, " wait-
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ing on a lot of shop-girls." He couldn't understand such behaviour. " There's some people you just can't raise up or do nothing with! " he complained, bitterly. " My goodness ! Here I am, anxious for Mary to enjoy herself and go around among nice people. And what does she do? Spends her time waitin' in a cheap restaurant ! "
" But, Pa ! " his wife pleaded, " the other girls that go there and wait are fine girls. They don't have to go, neither; they're society girls; they're richer and sweller'n what our Mary is. Doin' things like that is a kind of craze with rich girls now, it seems. And you can't blame 'em! Maybe the poor girls don't need their clubs an' things; but I bet the rich girls need to have 'em! 'Tain't natural for any human bein' to be no use to any one alive."
" Mary should be thinkin' of gettin' married," her father declared. " She's twenty-five. First thing she knows, she won't get any one to have her."
" Don't seem like she's ever seen any one she fan- cied," her mother answered. She, too, felt that Mary ought to be thinking of getting married.
" How can she see anybody she might ' fancy,' dishin' up hash to a lot of shop-girls? You talk to Mary and make her see she should be marrying ! "
Mrs. Buehlow "talked to Mary"; and Mary re- plied that she hadn't seen any one she wanted to marry. But it was evident that Mary had not " looked very hard."
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Her father had — it seemed. He knew a young man he thought would do very well for Mary. He asked him to the house. The young man was not ill-pleased with Mary, and he came quite frequently; he invited her to the theatre; he sent her candy and flowers. Eventually he asked Mary to marry him; and Mary said No. She had accepted his courtesies because he was her father's friend; but her sense of obligation to her father did not lead her so far as to marry his friend; and she defied the friend to say that she had ever given him any encouragement to believe that she would marry him. No; she hadn't! But her father had ! Then her father was exceeding his authority!
" Father " was incensed. " What's the matter with him?" he demanded of Mary. "What's the matter with you?"
" Nothing's the matter with him that I know of," Mary replied; "but I don't love him; he doesn't in- terest me; I won't marry him."
" This's what comes of running around, picking up crazy notions ! " her father raged.
" Well," Mary reminded him, " I wanted to work, and you wouldn't let me. I wanted to keep on look- ing after my beans — but you took them away from me. I had to do something!"
" What you should have been doing was to see how you could get you a good husband and a nice home. What do you think is going to become of you? Are
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you forever going to dish up hash and live off me?"
Mary flushed. " I don't need to live off you ! " she retorted. " I'll be glad enough to go to work and earn my own living. And I'll certainly do it before I'll think of marrying a man I care nothing about."
" I don't want you earning your own living," her father cried. " How would that look for me? As if I couldn't afford to keep you! I won't have it! And I won't have you fooling all your time away with hash, neither. This funny business has got to stop. I'm willing to work for you, but you got to have some consideration for me."
But Mary steadfastly refused to be separated from what her father called " the hash." She clung to it desperately, as she might well cling to the one thing that furnished opportunity for usefulness. She wasn't needed, now, in the family business ; she wasn't needed in the home; and she couldn't bring herself to marry in the hope of creating an occupation, an in- terest ; because her observation did not encourage her to believe that she could be satisfied with the kind of life most young matrons lived.
So she threw herself unreservedly into the work of the Sunbeam Society, not only into the cafeteria part of it but into other things which developed out of that. And she bore as best she could the thick- ening cloud of displeasure under which she lived at home — at least in so far as her father was concerned.
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The thing that hurt worst was that her mother was made unhappy by these strained relations.
There were times when it seemed to Mary that nothing could possibly justify her for refusing to fol- low meekly any path in life that might be laid out for her as helpful to the family reputation and con- ducive to family peace. Apparently, women were but pawns in the game of life : they could " take " nothing; they were for the service of their superiors in whatever way that sendee was demanded. When a father is poor, his daughter is his to work for him; when he's well-to-do, she is his to advertise his suc- cess by her idleness; in either case, it is her duty to marry for the advantage of the family, if she can, and thereafter to further the advantage of a new family at whatever cost to her own desires.
Then, again, she passionately protested against such submission; she felt that women had a right to be something besides daughters and wives and mothers, just as men have the unchallenged right to be something besides sons and husbands and fathers; she saw that many women must needs be something instead of wives and mothers, and that the tendency of modern life is to increase rather than to decrease the proportion of these. She learned why a great many women of to-day who might marry, do not marry. She learned why a great many women are miserably childless. She said little or nothing to her father about these things, but her ideas percolated to
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him through her mother. Mr. Buehlow considered it shocking, disgusting, for a woman to know any- thing about social purity or impurity; and outrageous for her to argue her right to work, to struggle, to be a useful, self-sustaining creature first, and after that, if possible, a wife and mother.
Mary did all she could to preserve family peace; but her father made her feel his displeasure. When he gave her any money, he stipulated that none of it was to go to " your hash-house." He missed no slightest opportunity to revile persons whom he sus- pected Mary of admiring, nor to extol persons whom he suspected Mary of despising.
It was a well-nigh intolerable situation. Mary en- dured it for her mother's sake, as long as she could. Then she got out. She got herself a job as assistant- manager of a big lunchroom; and she and a compan- ionable girl friend rented a three-room and kitchen- ette apartment where they might " live in peace, ac- cording to their lights " — and to their earning powers.
This raised a tremendous storm in the Buehlow home.
" What right have you to disgrace us ? " Mary's father demanded of her.
"Why am I disgracing you?" Mary asked. " What am I doing that is wrong? "
" The place for a decent girl is in her father's home!" he thundered. "When she can't live there no longer, it's a sign she's not decent ! "
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" It's a sign of nothing of the sort ! " she retorted. " You have been very anxious for me to have a home of my own. Why is it decent to leave your home and be supported by a husband, and indecent to leave it and support a home of my own ? "
Mr. Buehlow's answer to this was purely selfish: in leaving his home to make one of her own, Mary reflected on his ability to maintain her, or else on his endurableness as a father and provider. He re- sented her doing this; he resented her having power to do it; he resented her desertion, as he called it, of her mother — although he would have heaped approval on her desertion by marriage, even though the bride- groom might live in Cape Town; whereas her own little apartment was not a mile away.
But there were, Mary found, other objectors. The social code is still rather undiscriminatingly set against young women keeping house within a mile of their parents' homes. If girls who cannot live at home go to distant cities, no scandal is created by their setting up their lares and penates in an abode of their own; their desire to create an atmosphere favourable to their best development, is respected, even reverenced. But the new home, husbandless, close under the shadow of the parental roof, is looked upon askance. It is not much more easily condoned in the case of a man. People seem to feel an instinctive doubtfulness of either son or daughter who cannot come to some tolerable arrangement in the parental
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home. The parents may be intolerable; but they are (unless known to be unendurable) sure to get the benefit of the doubt, and quite likely to deserve it. Society recognizes, now, that the house was never built which was large enough for two families; it concedes the self-preserving wisdom of young cou- ples who leave the most spacious of homes echoing to the slow foot-falls of the middle-aged and aging, and crowd themselves into the tiniest " ownest own " nests in cottage or apartment. But that concession (which probably rocked tribal and patriarchal and feudal society to its foundations, before it was made) is demanded because the new family is compounded of equal parts of two older families, neither of which parts (in the interests of peace and progress) should be required to conform absolutely to the rules, the traditions, and customs of either of the old-estab- lished households; the interests of the race demand constant new beginnings. But a son or a daughter going forth alone (unless to a distant city) seems to the present point of view to be disrupting a family without making recompense to society in the promise of .a new family; and society does not take kindly to this idea. Perhaps it will come — and with less strain than was entailed by the breaking up of patriarchal households. But at present, the young woman who separates herself from her parents' home, to live as a " bachelor maid " in the same city, must do so at con- siderable cost of disesteem; must face the conse-
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quences of that popular judgment which will suppose her to have left her home because she demanded a freedom beyond what her parents could countenance, and must bear with the attitude that is always seeking to see what orgies she will be guilty of, now that she has " bust loose."
Mary encountered all of this. She found people in general no more inclined to look favouringly on her desire for independence than her father had looked. She found that something in the manner of many per- sons, which suggested (often none too delicately) that her idea in leaving home had been to get away from censorship; that what she wanted was liberty to smoke cigarettes and drink highballs and go " slum- ming " — perhaps to " have affairs."
" All I ask is leave to work; to earn my own bread and butter; to be beholden to no one; to maintain my own ideals. Yet people act as if they were always expecting me to do something outrageous ! "
Doubtless she could have lived this unjust but not unnatural suspicion down. Perhaps, but for her mother, she would have tried to do so. But what with her mother's sorrow, and with the general lack of sympathy, she gave up her little flat and went back home. But she kept her position. And when she returned to her father's roof, she insisted on paying her board, just as her brothers did.
In one highly important particular, Mary's situa- tion as a bread-winning daughter living at home,
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lacked an element of difficulty which most working women who live at home have to face : the disposition of her wages. More than four-fifths of the daugh- ters who work, it is estimated, turn over to their parents (usually to their mothers) all their earnings. Sons seldom do this after the first two or three years of wage-earning — after that they usually " pay board," clothe themselves, and begin (supposedly) to lay the foundations of their futures by saving and investing.
" I believe/' writes Cicely Hamilton, " that in all ranks of society there is a pronounced disposition on the part of the family to regard the income, earned or unearned, of its female members as something in the nature of common property — the income of its male members as much more of an individual posses-
sion.'*
This was far less true of Mary Buehlow than it is of most women workers, because the family income was so easily adequate to its scale of living. There was no pressure which Mary's earnings were needed to relieve. But this was true : Mary felt her mother's want of money (in the old days of the shop, the mother had been not only her husband's partner, but the financier of the firm, of the family; now she was a dependent: her household bills were paid; her cloth- ing was paid for; but she had no income that she could feel was hers to spend as she chose) and sup- plied it, gladly, to save her mother the shame of beg-
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ging. And when the servant was ill, or the family was temporarily servantless, it was Mary who, after her own day's work downtown, came home and helped her mother; her father and brothers whose work she and her mother had joyfully shared for so long, showed not the slightest disposition to share in that part of the work of the family which they considered the business of the women.
That Mary, whose earnings were not considerable, was taking from what she might have saved, to sup- ply her mother's perfectly legitimate desires, did not disturb any of the Buehlow men. They were not consciously mean, but it did not occur to them that Mary might be eager to save her money and go into business for herself; they simply couldn't get used to the idea that she was trying to establish herself in life and to insure her future — and not working to gratify some whim, escape from some " peculiar " restlessness. Nor were they deliberate in their atti- tude as they sat at ease (in those servantless intervals which are frequent in most households, these days, whatever their ability to pay for service) and allowed Mary to come in from a hard day's work and go into the kitchen to relieve her mother. Yet, if asked, these menfolk would have declared unhesitatingly that one of the reasons why women are unfitted to compete with men is because women are physically the weaker and inferior vessels.
Once when Mary said something about this, her
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father reminded her that she did not " have to work " ; that helping her mother was her " business " ; and that if she tired herself out doing other things, that was her " own funeral."
" Is it necessary for Georgie and Fritzie to work ? " she asked.
" Sure it's necessary."
" Couldn't you afford to support them if they didn't work?"
"I could afford to; but I wouldn't "do it. What kind of idiots would they grow up to be — living off me and doing nothing for their board but eat it? A man's got to work or he don't have no self-respect, nor no respect from other men."
" That's what I thought," Mary answered, quietly, " because those are the same reasons why a woman has got to work."
" But a woman should work in her house — for her family," her father declared. " I raised you up, a good many years. You owe me something! "
" I owe you a great deal," Mary granted him. " And I owe Ma a great deal more — more than I can ever pay back. But I thought that parents kind of passed the debt on : ' You can't pay me for all you cost me; but you must pay it to your children, or to posterity.' I can't pay you for giving me life — I thought maybe the happiness of being a parent was your compensation for that. But as for my keep! I've worked for it ever since I can remember; and
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it strikes me that I had something to do with found- ing the fortunes of us all! "
Her father stared at her with bewilderment. Mary was startlingly incomprehensible to him, and he felt sure that she was hurrying to some sort of horrible self-destruction.
" I can't think where you got such ideas," he la- mented. " In my young days, if a girl talked that way I don't know what would have happened."
Mary abandoned hope of making him understand. She went on her course, feeling her way as best she could, without chart or compass. Almost every problem she encountered was one which she had to face alone and without the help of rule, precedent, or other woman's experience. Nothing in the history of humanity has in any way foreshadowed this world- shaking movement now going on in the scattered ranks of womankind. Few of the " restless " women themselves are aware of the causes of their restless- ness. Few men are able to realize the inevitableness of this that has now " in the fulness of time " come to pass.
It was woman who, when she suffered unendurably in her children's hunger, and the hunter came not home from the chase, discovered earth-products that could be made to sustain life — and, groping her way, became an agriculturist. It was man who, when woman had taught him how much of the necessary
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sustenance may be planted and reaped, and how wild animals may be tamed and made man's servants, turned agriculturist and drove his mate from the posi- tion of pioneer and commander to that of follower and helper, and finally freed her from field toil so that she began exercising her ingenuity in the utiliza- tion of field products. It was she who began all manufactures, and he who took them from her one by one. This he did because he needed the work. And each time he left to her to devise other kinds of useful labour wherewith to busy herself and, in time, to provide him with more varieties of productive toil. At no time in all this, probably, did men act with con- scious selfishness, or women yield with conscious re- luctance. Those who can create have their greatest joy in creating. Woman's ingenuity was being de- veloped ; it was constantly, as changing economic con- ditions required, finding new exercise, and enjoying, doubtless, the exquisite happiness of being adequate to the demands encountered. But, " as woman's old fields of labour have slipped from her, she must either grasp new, or must become wholly dependent on her sexual function alone, all other elements of human nature in her becoming atrophied and arrested through lack of exercise."
Women who fail to grasp, or to create, new fields of labour, and who sit unresistingly in their gleaned corners, are hastening the decay of their class or kind. Women who refuse to be inactive, unproductive, are
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sustaining the best ideals of their sex and continuing to raise the status of the race.
But because most of us are so utterly ignorant of the industrial and economic history of humanity (is it conceivable that the history of toil should never be taught except in college and university? that the world's toilers should never be given a glimpse of the way over which they have come, nor of the goal toward which they press?) we are confused and dis- tracted by the movement of our times, and misread the signs of vitality for threats of destruction, the signs of decay for pledges of security.
Millions of women to-day, most of them young, are struggling more or less desperately with a vague sense of mislike for the conditions of life as they in- herit it. The mightiest instinct of youth (if not of all life) is self-preservation; and in blind obedience to this they are fighting for the right to perform such a share of the world's work as shall sustain them in self-respect, develop their powers, and bless them with that highest happiness, the sense of usefulness.
Not many men or women are giving these valiant race-preserving strugglers sympathy or help. Some are exploiting them — overworking them, underpaying them, and consigning vast numbers of them to the human scrap-heap. Some are selfishly or stupidly opposing them.
Woman's movement to reclaim not all of what was once her foremothers' but only a share in it, to adjust
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herself to new conditions of labour and of social status, is so tremendous that we may be pardoned if we are awestruck by it, and so unparalleled that we may be excused for ignorance as to what we ought to do. But we can at least have sympathy — and out of sym- pathy grows understanding. Every one of us has daily contact with some of the struggling millions, and our respect is due to all — to the women whom the bread of idleness fails to feed, as well as to the women who must work if they would eat, and who are seeking work and wages where they can find them.
Every one of us, every day, is making life on terms of self-respect either harder or easier for more than one of these millions of women.
The world is waking up to the needs of its women. Here, there, and everywhere, movements are on foot seeking to solve their problems. Most of these move- ments look toward legislation, to stop exploitation, to fix the legal rights of women, and so on. And legislation will come as fast as public opinion demands it; just and protective laws will be worth just as much as the public opinion back of them that demands their enforcement.
If you think that the girl in the mill is there be- cause she " doesn't like housework," or that the girl in the shop is there to earn a new feather, or that the girl in the office is there because she likes to work among men, you are little likely to give any sympathy to movements endeavouring to better her working-
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condition, safeguard her leisure, or increase her pay. But if you know why she is a worker; if you know that not all the powers of all the earth could (even if they should!) re-create for her conditions as they were; if you feel the value to the race of the woman who struggles and endures to keep woman's hold on industry, your contribution to the public opinion which fetters or frees her, will be different — will it not?
HER FATHER'S ASSISTANT.
This fifteen-year-old girl is her father's assistant. She began learning to cobble when five. When ten, she begged to be taught the trade. Father and daughter work side by side. When her father becomes incapacitated she can continue the business.
XII " THE WOMAN OF IT "
I
THE kindly neighbours couldn't understand Sarah's willingness — nay, her evident pref- erence— to stay alone.
" Sure you don't want to come over an' sleep with Minnie to-night ? " Mrs. Joe Darch insisted. " Or have me or Minnie stay here with you?"
" Sure ! " Sarah answered, grateful for the kind- ness shown her, but not dissuaded by it.
So they left her. And for a while she sat on her doorstep, in the April gloaming; a lone-looking crea- ture in sooth, framed against the shadowy interior of a cabin no emptier (actually) than it had been a thousand times before when she sat there likewise, but awesomely empty in feeling, now, because of one who would never return. His blackened pipe was above the fireplace. His wide-brimmed hat hung on its peg on the door. But he was lying out yonder, in the bleak little burial patch, his sandy grave unre- deemed from its full dread fulness by so much as a single flower.
Times without number had Sarah sat here, gazing
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into that area of space — now near, now far — where visions form and flit. She was used to being lonely; she couldn't remember ever having been other than lonely. Occasionally, in those countless other times, Sarah's thoughts had been reminiscent, the things she visioned were back in the way she had come ; but far oftener she had dreamed of a possible future, when life might wear a glory or at least disclose a meaning. The existence she had, seemed to lead nowhither; but Sarah was young, and she could not but believe that some day, by some miracle, or by some energy of her own, the purposelessness would fall away and she would glimpse her destiny.
Always, hitherto, her hope of the future had sus- tained her in her empty present and comforted her for her bitter past. But to-night she was afraid of the future. She knew that her life must make a fresh beginning; but she could see no paths. Her thoughts were busier with the past than with that long-looked-for change which was now imminent.
Sarah's grief for her father was not such grief as shakes the soul; nor even such as bruises the heart. She was full of a profound pity for her father, be- cause she realized that he had failed of happiness, he had failed of any victory in life that might have reconciled him to the toil and hardship of living. It seemed to her as if he must still have been hoping, expecting — as she was — and that before anything came to redeem life, he had to go, into that harsh,
" THE WOMAN OF IT " 291
sandy grave on the outskirts of the mining camp. The piteousness of it kept her tears falling. She could not realize that, in weariness of spirit or in mortal weakness of flesh, he might have been, as the Door swung outward, willing to pass through. It was for him, more than for herself bereft of him, that she wept. If he could have gone out of her life in any other wise, Sarah would have missed and re- gretted him really very little. He was never, in life, an endearing person. It was the coming of the In- exorable that invested him for the first time with an appeal to the heart — the appeal of helplessness.
Sarah had only vague recollections of him in her childhood; of the disquietude he seemed always to bring into their poor little home. She remembered him only as a hard drinker ; as one who was bitterly at odds with the world; as one who frequently made her mother cry, and who — when the discomfort of his creating grew too great for him — went away, in one of his sullen fits, and left them (her mother and herself) penniless. She could recall something of her mother's desperate struggle. And then, in the short interval before she was put in a good school, the child had sensed a mystifying change: her mother had cried more than ever, though they had plenty to eat and to wear; and a great many times when Sarah thought — waking with a start in the night — that her father had come back, she was told that the stranger was " Mamma's brother," and that he had
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left money to buy little Sarah some new shoes. Then Sarah was sent to the school. Once in a great while her mother came to see her. At first, the teachers and the principal were kind to Sarah's mother, and acted glad when she came. But by and by they were much less kind to her, and she came much less often. And one day, Sarah's father ar- rived and took her away. Sarah did not know, then, but she knew, now, that the Law had allowed him to do this, because he was her father and had an indisputable right to her if he wanted her. It was an additional argument that her mother was unfit; but he needed no additional argument, then. Nor was he held in anywise responsible for having left Sarah's mother to become " unfit."
He took Sarah to the mining camp. She was only twelve, and the principal pleaded for more schooling for her. But Jerry Blooclgood had no money to pay for schooling, and he said Sarah had more than she would ever need, now. When the lady principal asked him, apprehensively, if a camp was a good place for a girl of twelve with no woman to look after her, Jerry answered that he reckoned he could keep it safe for Sary.
He had been as good as his boast. The little town was as full of viciousness as most camps; but Jerry had defied it to come near Sarah, and as he was " a bad man to tackle," Sarah had been safe.
She kept the cabin — somehow; she got the simple
" THE WOMAN OF IT "
meals; she washed and mended. There wasn't much to do, and there was a dearth of things to turn to in the long, dragging hours of unemployment. But, after a dull fashion, the years had worn away.
Sarah was twenty, now. There were, in the camp, only three or four respectable girls of ages near her own; there was Minnie Darch, whose hands were full helping her mother care for the big brood of young children; there was Selma Ogreen, who, to escape a situation like Minnie's, had married Manny Ort and had no joy of her bargain; and there was Tillie Myer, who had been on the eve of marrying Newt Evers when a girl in the Coyote Saloon shot and killed him for his intended desertion.
" If I told Al Brady I'd have him, like as not one o' them girls 'd shoot him too," Sarah reflected. But that wasn't the only reason she hadn't accepted Al's attentions.
While she was thinking about him, he came; and for the first time, Sarah felt a terror of him. Some- thing was gone out of her life — something harsh and even, at times, brutal, but something strong to protect her against other harshness than his own. While her father was alive, she had refused Al Brady without a qualm. To-night, she realized that she had no one to sustain her in her refusal; no one to keep her shel- tered and fed and safe until she could find a mate whose call she'd gladly heed.
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"Joe Darch told me you was stayin' here alone," Al said, by way of greeting.
"Yes; I wanted to set quiet an' think," she an- swered, resentfully.
Al ignored the thrust.
" What you goin' to do? " he asked, seating him- self on the step beside her.
" I ain't thought yet."
" There's not much to choose from." He did not attempt to conceal the satisfaction in his advantage that this gave him.
"I know there ain't much!" she retorted, mean- ingfully. " But I ain't goin' to decide until I'm sure I've had all the choice there is."
He enjoyed this show of spirit; because he was sure he would win, and his hunter's instinct made him relish a good chase, an elusive quarry.
They sat in silence for some time, he smoking his rank pipe and already proprietary in his air. Why trouble to court, to please? Let her have her moody little fling of resistance. She couldn't get away.
And Sarah, desperately thinking on alternatives, grew faint of heart. There was no sale in that primi- tive community for the labour of woman's hands, ex- cept in a marriage contract. The women of the camp were of two classes only: those who neither toiled nor spun but were not like the lilies of the field; and those who, in making their bargains with men, in order to keep (as they hoped) a permanent union,
" THE WOMAN OF IT " 295
asked no wages, but accepted, rather, the toil of do- mestic labour without other pay than their " keep."
The situation Sarah faced was this: she could marry Al Brady and keep his cabin for him and bear him children, and in all things do his will or endure his anger; or she could go to one of the saloons and become an attache, and work for money and blows and dishonour ; or she could go away and try to main- tain herself in some place where there was a market for such work as she could do.
The life of shame she would not think of for a single instant. Her mother had accepted it for her sake; but how futile had been the sacrifice! Nothing in her troubled memories nor yet in her scant observa- tion, deluded Sarah with regard to the wretchedness of that living death.
And from the thought of what Al Brady offered her she shrank scarcely less. Nor was there in the community any man whose offer she would have pre- ferred. It was to the idea of getting away that she clung. But she had no money.
Some instinct made her refrain from telling Al that she hoped to go away. She felt that his peace- ableness was due to his sense of security, and although she longed to show her resentment of his attitude, she dared not — for fear of arousing fight in him. She knew — somehow, in her woman's heart — that Al would take what he wanted if he felt the least danger of its slipping away from him. So she put off his
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offer with more gentleness, to-night, than ever before. And he, sitting beside her in the dusk, was gratified; he believed her surrender was near. How could he know the peculiar terror that was hers to-night for the first time in her life? How could he suspect that the speech, fairer than usual, with which she en- treated him, was guilefully fair — in her own protec- tion— and not coyly fair, preparing the way for her yielding ?
Big and brawny and forthright was Al; as ele- mental as some of his prehistoric progenitors. He was tired of living as he had been living : tired of the greasy, " sour dough " cooking of the saloons ; tired of buying the expensive favours of the saloon women and having no one to wait upon those other wants than passion which every creature has. He had come to a time when he fancied having a cabin of his own, and a woman to keep it comfortable for him. Sarah was the " likeliest " girl he knew, so he had selected her for his mate. He knew, from what he had seen and from what other men had told him, that it was foolish to expect much from any woman unless he married her. " The other kind," as they existed in a place like the camp, were disinclined to the rough labours of housekeeping in a cabin; also, they were more demanding than wives, and less dependable. They could ply their trade and make their living any- where; " you got no cinch on 'em," as Al put it. He wanted a "cinch"; he wanted a woman who would
" THE WOMAN OF IT " 297
feel bound to do her best by him; who would be little likely to run away; whose demandingness (if she developed any) could be ignored without fear of her seeking a better market for her labours. He was not afraid of making a marriage contract in order to secure to himself such a " cinch/' because he had not the slightest intention of allowing it to restrict him in any way; and he knew that if he tired of the ar- rangement, nothing could be easier than for him to move on, to some other mining camp, and make a fresh beginning — alone.
Sarah knew all this; because she had been observ- ant of the common lot of women as she saw it about her, and because Al had not attempted to persuade her that his desire for her was romantic. He felt that " courting " was unnecessary. Instinct, not reason, made him arrogantly aware that Sarah had few alternatives and none so promising as his offer. She " couldn't afford to be sassy," he told himself. And he could! Because if Sarah didn't choose to marry him, there were others who would, even here in the camp with the usual frontier preponderance of males.
Mrs. Darch had urged this fact on Sarah when the girl sought counsel from her, weeks ago.
" He's the best-lookin' an' other ways the likeliest fellow you got to pick from," she reminded Sarah. " An* yer lucky to live where there's any pick or choosin'." In England, she said, girls grew up in
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« the knowledge that for several millions of them there
couldn't be any husband. ' You take what you can get, over there, I tell you! An' say Thankee for the chance at anythin' at all ! "
Yet Sarah's mind clung desperately to the idea of escape. Day after day she planned and hoped — as the bacon and meal and sugar and coffee dwindled in quantity on her cabin's shelves. Al came around sev- eral times, and good-humouredly asked her if she wasn't ready for him to " move in " ; and srie con- tinued to put him off without arousing his suspicion. Then, one night when Jerry Bloodgood had been more than a fortnight in his sandy grave, Bud Button came lurching up the path to the cabin door where Jerry's similarly unsteady feet had so often brought him. Sarah was in bed and asleep, when Bud knocked at her door. She threw her shawl about her shoulders and went to the door.
"Who's there?"
Bud announced himself.
"What do you want?"
" Wanta see you, Dearie."
" Well, I don't want to see you, Bud Dutton ! You get off my place. What do you mean by coming around and annoying a decent girl ? "
" Thought you might be lonesome," Bud answered, suggestively, from his side of the barred door.
" If I was, that wouldn't make you welcome ! " Sarah retorted, from her side.
« THE WOMAN OF IT ' 299
"Ain't you goin' to lemme in?"
" Not in a million years, you hound! "
Sarah was shaking with fright and with anger — and with weakness, too; for she had kept to herself (lest the news reach Al Brady's ears) how meagre her supplies were.
Bud put his weight against the door; but it was a stout door, and he was enervated by drink. Then he went from one to the other of the two windows. Sarah snatched down her father's old hunting-piece and pointed it at Bud's leering face. In his alcoholic idiocy he laughed, and did not desist in his efforts to climb in. Sarah pulled the trigger, and Bud fell back, cursing.
Her first impulse was to flee to the Darchs' and tell them what had happened. They would believe her, she thought. But would others, when the story got around, as it was sure to do? Some instinct of caution made Sarah hesitate.
She went out and stood over Bud. When she saw that he was helpless, she dragged him into the cabin and looked for his wound; it was in his right shoul- der, and the pain of it was sobering him rapidly.
"Can you walk?"
She helped him to his feet. He cursed her hor- ribly.
" It serves you right," she retorted. " I ain't sorry! If you come here again, I'll aim to get you for good and all. Now you go get you 'tended to,
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and you can explain it as you like; but if you try to blacken my name, I'll kill you. This ain't no idle threat. I'd far rather die for havin' killed you than live most o' the ways that's open to me."
The next evening Al Brady came. His humour was not so tolerant as it had been; his supper " set " badly.
" I'm gettin' tired o' this fool business," he de- clared. " Now, you name the day — an' make it soon —or I'll get Till Myer to do it."
Sarah had not been bred to be exacting, but she felt the insult none the less. She had been thinking, all day, of this and her few alternatives; and more than once, in her hunger and her despair, she had looked up at her father's hunting-piece and — won- dered; but the memory of that sandy grave restrained her.
:f You can set it when you like," she answered faintly.
" That's a good girl," Al commended, taking her into his arms to kiss her with a sudden access of new tenderness, now that she was his. And Sarah, catch- ing the protective note, yielded herself unresistingly to his embrace, closing her eyes in an effort to shut in her flooding tears.
II
Sarah's marriage proved quite as productive of sat- isfaction as many another much more romantically
" THE WOMAN OF IT " 301
inaugurated. Al was a very good sort, as men went in Conchita Camp. He worked more steadily and drank less excessively than most. And in return for Sarah's unquestioning obedience to his will and for her unremitting service in behalf of his comfort, he gave her shelter and food and protection against all such as Bud Button, and clothes sufficient for her needs.
From Al's point of view, the situation had only one drawback: the meekness of Sarah's submission. He had really liked her better, in a way, in those days when she had rather contemptuously refused him.
Sarah felt this. She felt that she had just two kinds of hold on him, one through his passions and the other through his comforts; and she was not long in realizing that the former is a poor hold, because there are so many who can, and will, gratify a man's passions, and also because it is so natural for him to fail of gratification in a creature that cannot escape from him. The instincts of the chase die slowly; perhaps they do not die at all, but in an age when men pursue sustenance in every other way than the primitive hunter's, the game of life is played on the same old principles. At any rate, woman's necessity has always been, viewed in one way, her bitterest mis- fortune. She has had to live with a hunter and to keep, somehow, a hold on him in spite of his realiza- tion of her captivity. But woman's guiding Provi- dence has made her necessity serve her progress;
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made her, in her seeking to throw around her lord those meshes that might hold him when the lure that drew him to her failed longer to pique his interest, develop her ingenuity, her wit, her manifold capa- bilities.
At first, Sarah gave Al only such degree of comfort as, lacking her, he could have got from any other woman. And it was not long before she felt that he was not only lightly bound to her, but growing restive. And Sarah knew, then, that she must hold him if she could, because of one-who-was-to-be.
It was then that she began to make her simple housekeeping unusual; to improve the quality of her cooking; to increase the cosy look of the cabin.
In those countries where Nature provides a kindly climate and an abundance of food to be had for the reaching, women have neither been able to establish any very firm hold on the loyalty of men, nor to develop any considerable independence of them. But where there is more natural rigour, more discomfort, woman has come more measurably into her own, by catering to her lord's needs and making him content with her ministrations. Comfortable habits are hard to break; and as men grow older, they form a stronger bond than passion — always fickle, always dy- ing of its own satiety — has ever formed between a man and a woman for any length of time.
Like millions of her predecessors, Sarah felt, in- stinctively, that she must hold Al with a snare of
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creature comforts. And in obedience to this prompt- ing, she became quite remarkably adept in making the most of her simple resources.
When the baby came, Al manifested not much more paternal delight than most male animals show for their offspring. A lion will eat his cubs, but his mate guards them with a ferocity more terrifying than any he has ever displayed as " King of beasts." Sarah realized that Al had little sentiment for the tiny creature who meant so much to her. Al would not cling to her for the baby's sake; but for the baby's sake she must hold Al!
In the weeks before the baby came, and the weeks following his birth, Al spent a great deal of his leisure away from the cabin; and it was in the first flush of her maternal ecstasy that Sarah learned of Al's return to the female society of the Coyote and other saloons.
Sarah had entertained few ideals. She knew what Al was, when she took him. He had not made her any promises, and she had not asked him for any. A wisdom deeper than that of the women who con- tinually ask for protestations of undying love, made her realize how little promises and protestations are worth; made her feel that, in spite of the marriage troth before the justice of the peace, her hold on Al would be just what she could make it, and no more. She had no knowledge of the Scarlet Women as dis- seminators of the plague which rots homes as it rots bodies; she had none of that fear which makes hun-
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dreds of thousands of recently-enlightened wives re- gard the husbands returning from " primrose " dal- liance with no less dread than if they were coming to their homes from lazar houses. She was not wounded in her ideal, nor made fearful for her health and her baby's; but she suffered, none the less.
Mrs. Joe Darch essayed to comfort her.
" Don't take it too hard, dearie. So far as my knowledge o' life goes, this happens to most women. It's one o' the things that make you believe we're cursed, like the preachers say. Otherwise, why should child-bearin' be so hard on us an' so light on him, an' yet the children held to be his'n — if he wants 'em — and not ourn, although we faced death to give 'em birth, while he was at tavern, drinkin' and makin' gay with girls?"
But Sarah, although she lived practically untouched by the thought of her day and generation, did not in- cline to accept the theory that women are expiating the sin of Eve ; and Mrs. Darch's evangelical consola- tion fell short of its mark.
Sarah was not " modern " ; she was primitive. But she was too primitive to be good soil for Mrs. Darch's mid-Victorian orthodoxy. Al Brady was her boy's father. The honour and the responsibility sat lightly on Al? She must make it a pride and a delight, so Al would stick to them, and work hard for the boy, and keep steady for the boy, and give the boy schooling and a chance to get on in life.
« THE WOMAN OF IT ' 305
Thus Sarah's maternal passion, instinctively refus- ing the doctrine of woman-accursed, became the foun- dation of her power.
She taxed her ingenuity to the utmost to make the cabin attractive to Al; to make his meals so tempting that he could not bear the thought of the greasy, un- palatable saloon food; to make herself pleasing to the eye; to keep herself in happy humour. She taught the baby to hold out his little arms to Al, and to crow delightedly at sight of him.
Her little garden of lettuce and onions and rad- ishes had cucumbers this second summer, and squash, and string beans, and a few stalks of corn. The day when she served Al, for his dinner, sweet corn on the cob was a day of triumph; he not only praised it loudly to her, but bragged of it even more loudly among his mates at the mine. Sarah was able to sell some of her " truck " that summer, and buy a few prettifying trifles for the home and for baby and her- self.
The men in camp told Al he had been " d
lucky " when he got Sarah. And Al thought so, too. But he didn't tell Sarah!
However, Sarah knew that she was giving Al more comforts than most of the women in camp were giv- ing their menfolk. She knew, too, that he was grow- ing very fond of little Al, and very proud of him. But money which should have gone toward insurance (life, sickness, and accident) kept going into the tills
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of the Coyote and its competitors. Al's occupation was a hazardous one. The chances of his disable- ment or death were high, and he had made not the slightest provision for his family in the event of dis- aster to him. Sarah urged such provision. She felt entitled to it. Al ignored the urging.
One night he squandered, at the Coyote, his month's wages — on gambling and girls and drink. When he came home, he was penniless, and drunk.
Sarah waited until he was sobered, and then up- braided him.
" It's my money," he retorted. " I earn it. I can spend it as I choose."
Sarah did not know how to reply; but she did not feel convinced because she was silenced.
It was about this time that the mine-manager's wife died. The best-equipped house in camp was without a mistress. Sarah knew herself to be the most capa- ble woman in the community. She could run that house, and earn good wages for it, over and above her board and keep — and the baby's! She didn't need to go hungry, and see her child only half-fed because Al, careless of responsibility toward them, squandered their substance!
She reminded Al of this. He promised to do bet- ter. But when, in answer to the bantering of the Coyote's proprietor, Al said " the Missus is hollerin'," that past-master in the turning of a deaf ear to wives'
" THE WOMAN OF IT ?: 307
protests counselled : " Let 'er holler. She can't do nothin'."
" She says she'll quit me."
" An' leave the kid ? Not on your life, she won't!"
" No— take the kid."
The Coyote's proprietor laughed at Al as an in- credible " softy."
" She can't take your kid away. You can get the law on her ! "
"That'll hold her!" Al declared, grateful for the advice.
It did " hold her." And, since stay she must, she put forth effort more intense than she had hitherto deemed possible. She became expert in the arts of cajolery.
Al had little or no ambition. To have a comfort- able bunk to sleep in, and plenty of appetizing, hearty food ready for him when he wanted it ; to have a few clothes, and those kept mended and washed, tobacco enough for his pipe, and money enough to buy the "fellowship" that saloons purvey; these were the sum of his desires. It was difficult to get him to aspire further. But Sarah overcame the difficulty. Somehow, by some sorcery of her own invention, she contrived to rouse ambition in Al. She appealed, adroitly, to his vanity, his desire for prowess. She felt her way, driven by her maternal love, guided by her woman's instinct, which ages of maternal love
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have made so much more divining than the instinct of the self -protective, self-seeking male.
Roused to the pleasurability of preeminence, Al coveted foremanship of a mine gang — and got it. Heretofore, he had worked as a slave works — because he must work or die. Now he began to work with a master's zest; to know the pride of power, and to covet more of it. It was an awakening indeed. And Sarah, in her cabin, crooning her boy to sleep and waiting for the coming of " Baby Sister," was prais- ing Providence for the miracle — and taxing to the uttermost her woman's wit, to keep Al spurred and encouraged.
One immediate result of his better wages was the increased effort (at the Coyote and among its com- petitors) to get the wages away from him. Sarah had to fight against the whole wolf -pack — and to keep him from suspecting that she sought in any way to restrain him. Her success was by no means abso- lute; but it was measurable enough to make her quite happy. She had made some pretty clothes for Baby Sister — prettier by a good deal than the clothes which commonly awaited babies in Conchita Camp — and one evening when Al was at home, some of the neighbour women came in to see the tiny things. They praised Sarah's cleverness; but Sarah turned the credit all to Al, who made it possible for her to buy what she wanted.
" THE WOMAN OF IT v 309
" It's a grand thing, bein' married to a man with gumption," one of the women sighed enviously.
Al smoked, and made feint of reading, and listened " with both ears," as men almost invariably do when women are talking among themselves. And he be- gan, then, to feel a pride in making his wife and his children still more the envied of their community.
When Baby Sister came, Al hired Minnie Darch to take care of " Buddy " and do the housework and wait on Sarah, for two weeks. He paid her ten dol- lars. This set all the women in the camp to talking of " what a grand husband " he was. He was held up as an ideal of a man both " able an' willin' " to do handsomely by his family. Al knew this — and he liked the feeling!
Things went increasingly well for a year : Al's am- bition growing; Sarah's adaptability developing. Then came a time of suppressed excitement on his part, of suppressed anxiety on hers. Al quitted his job. He said he was thinking of going ranching, in Southern California, and he wanted to go out there and look things over. For some reason, no one be- lieved him— Sarah least of all. Her heart was heavy with misgiving; but she couldn't hold him.
When the time for parting came, she clung to him in an agony of apprehension in which fear lest she be losing her provider and the babies' was lost sight of in a greater dread — that of losing the mate who had become endeared to her by just so much as she had
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suffered and toiled and hoped and planned for him. He was her child (in a way that she was as far as he from realizing) as well as her man. Her life was wound about him infinitely. She could get her sus- tenance, if he left her now; she could keep her babies from want. But that was no longer what she thought of as life.
" You'll come back?" she pleaded, her arms around his neck, her tear-wet face against his breast.
" Why, of course I'll come back. What do I want to go for except to find a better place for you an' the children?"
" Take us with you ! " she entreated.
" I can't. I'll tell you, Sarah, there's something about this that I don't want nobody around here to get wind of — or they'd be trailing me. But I've heard of — well! I ain't goin' to tell you what I heard of, for fear it'd slip out o' you when you didn't mean it to. You trust me, girl — trust me an' wait. I'm leavin' you enough to live on. And when I find what I'm after, I'll send for you. If I don't find it, I'll come back."
He found it! A month after leaving home he wrote her that " the hunch was a good one. But don't say nothing to nobody." At the end of another month he wrote : " Things are pretty rough. But if you want to bring the kids an' come along, I'll be mighty glad to see you. I guess you've got me spoiled for camp-cooking."
" THE WOMAN OF IT ' 311
So Sarah took her babies and a few of the most necessary household articles, and went into the wil- derness, where Al had located " pay-dirt." And there she made him comfortable and happy for five years. There she gave birth to two more children. There she watched a tiny community grow around Al, obedient to his mastery; and the triumph was sweeter to her even than to him.
She was sorry when he said they ought to leave camp; to go where their children could have schooling and other advantages, and where they themselves could buy luxuries and pleasures with the money that was now theirs. There, in the wilderness, she was everything to Al: creator of all his comforts; com- panion; wife of his bosom, mother of his children, architect of his fortune. He came to her in every perplexity and in every triumph. She was loath to adventure, with her golden galleon of happiness, into an unknown sea. But she told herself that she must not be selfish; must not stand in the way of those she loved.
In the city where they took up their residence, Al bought his family a handsome house. Sarah was appalled at the idea of having to buy so much furni- ture, and to create a home out of so much new ma- terial. This new life had grown out of neither her needs nor her desires ; it was thrust upon her, and she had to make what shift she could not only to adapt herself to the new life but also (because she was a
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woman who had long known the happiness of feeling that the conditions of her life were largely of her making) to find some coign of mastery from which she could shape and direct and serve as she had been wont to do.
She struggled heroically to meet Al's idea of the way he wanted his house to look, his wife and chil- dren to appear. They went through the regular course: first they acquired the things that seemed to be needful — the furnishings, the clothes and jewel- lery; then they strove for the manner which seemed to make some people's possessions dignified and en- viable— education for the children, " cultivation " and travel for the adults.
Al was interested in the family progress; but he was also very deeply interested in the progress of the mine. He travelled back and forth a great deal, be- tween the mine and the city where he was investing the mine profits. His world was widening, day by day. And day by day Sarah knew less about it — not because he was consciously shutting her out, but because many of his new concerns were so remote from anything in her experience that he did not think of them as likely to interest her. The days were gone by when, on his telling her " that nasty piece of wall in the east chamber has caved again," she knew exactly what he meant, and the amount of setback entailed upon his plans.
He gave her generously of his earnings; but she
" THE WOMAN OF IT " 313
felt the widening separation between them, and it made her heart heavy.
As in the old days, when he was made foreman of a gang, there was no lack of those who were eager to share his increase. But Sarah had known how to draw him away from the wiles of those wantons and wastrels of the Coyote; she had opposed their lure with the lure of such comforts at home as tended to draw him thither, and such tender cajolery as tended to keep him happy there. Now, there was small question of creature comfort. He could buy himself a high degree of comfort for a tithe of what he gave her to keep her house. The hunger he felt, now, was not the primitive man's hunger for satisfying food, for refreshing sleep, and for absolute obedience to his desires; it was the hunger of the somewhat sated man, filled to repletion with the common satis- factions, and seeking stimulus for new appetite rather than satiety for old ones. The eagerness of young and pretty and elegant women to attract his admira- tion, flattered his vanity. The obsequiousness paid to his money he easily mistook for tribute to those qualities of his by which he made money. Sarah's intuition did not fail her, now; she realized what she had to contend against; but she was sore beset to think how she should plan her fight.
She did what she could to make herself pretty and ''smart" and clever; but, studying the situation to discover what, if anything, held men loyal to their
THE WORK-A-DAY GIRL
wives in this stratum of society where there was so little natural partnership between them, she satisfied herself that it was very difficult for housekeeping skill to hold a man whose business keeps him away from home a good part of the time, and whose income en- ables him to purchase for himself, wherever he is, the highest degree of comfort and service. She sat- isfied herself, also, that it was very difficult for a woman to achieve and to retain a degree of personal attractiveness which could hold secure against rival- ries the admiration of a man for whom a continual succession of fresh young beauties assiduously flaunt their charms. What did hold them? Paternal pride? Sarah scanned her new world for evidence of this. If only she could get confirmation for her fond hope that, notwithstanding all that tends to separate husbands and wives in this complex modern world, their common interest in their children tends still more strongly to hold them together! But ob- servation did not sustain this hope. She saw, as time went on, a good many families go upon the rocks, and in a number of them the parents had each an interest in the children, yet no longer any interest in each other.
The women in this new world of hers seemed to her to be trying desperately to divert themselves. They had a surprising number, but a tragically small variety, of diversions with which they appeared to be " killing time," rather than in any way lessening
" THE WOMAN OF IT ' 315
the gulf between their husbands' interests and their own.
Groping, stumbling, but never despairing, Sarah went on. All around her, women gave up — some in one way and some in another. Some became mothers preeminently and wives only in name; some spent their efforts on attaining social or club distinction; some dallied with the arts; some sought divorce, and entered hopefully upon a new marriage; some settled into neurasthenia or hypochondria; some threw their unemployed energies into Foreign Missions or Chris- tian Science or Suffrage. Sarah considered all these things, successively (except divorce), but not as alternatives for that working partnership with her husband which she had once enjoyed — she considered them as possible paths she and Al might travel to- gether.
At length a way opened to her. Other paths had looked as promising and had led nowhither. Never- theless, she tried this one. It might be the " way out." For her, it was. She joined the City Club. She attended its lectures zestfully. She learned a great deal about social service and civic programmes and the need of enlightened, enthusiastic citizenship. Then, as once upon a time she had roused one kind of ambition in Al and lured him from the debauchery of the Coyote to self-respect and success, so now she roused in him another kind of ambition — the ambition to serve ; to win esteem not for what he could acquire
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but for the good he might do with it. The second conquest was not so difficult as the first, and it ad- mitted Sarah to a partnership even more active than she had known before. It was thus Sarah regained her happiness. It was thus she found her way out.
I ask you to consider Sarah's story as typifying and epitomizing woman's upward struggle through ages of human history. Few women have lived so much of that history as Sarah, in the span of a single lifetime; but for one woman to comprehend it all within her own experience would not be at all im- possible.
However, I have — in writing — had not one woman, but Womanhood, in mind. From the time when woman took, perforce, a protector and defender be- cause life for woman alone was not possible in primi- tive times or conditions, down through the course of the ages her struggle as a subservient creature to im- prove the conditions of living has been the struggle of her race for civilization. What she has striven for, to that has her social order attained.
She strove, first, to make her man comfortable. He was a roving, predatory, fighting animal; none of his instincts impelled him to " stay put," either in place or in fealty. If she wanted to keep him, she must give him something that would bring him back to her each time he fared forth. He had no natural love of his offspring, no natural sense of responsi-
« THE WOMAN OF IT " 317
bility toward them. To hold him to them, to herself, and to their biding place, was a stupendous under- taking; but she addressed herself to it, unflinchingly. She essayed to create meshes of comfort and of cus- tom which might hold her restive freebooter. Think of the task! She was virtually his slave, because so her necessity made her. Against his bestiality or his brutality or his infidelity or his desertion, she had no redress. Because she wanted a home to rear her children in, and a home must have a defender and a provider, she submitted herself abjectly, absolutely to the terms on which man would take her. And yet, she — slave that she had become — undertook to create in her lord and master a degree of dependence on her which would bring him back to her, no matter how far he might roam in the chase or in war or in any other of his roving pursuits; she undertook to make him fond of their children, and proud of them, and eager to do well by them ; she undertook to wean his vaingloriousness from pride of prowess in the hunt, in fight, to pride of possessions which his family shared in his lifetime and inherited at his death. Think of the task!
As fast as she taught herself the domestic crafts, she submitted to his taking them from her and mak- ing them his — because so she kept him at home and bound his interests closet with hers.
Then came those tremendous economic changes brought about by machinery, the centralization and
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specialization of industry; and woman was con- fronted with a thousand new problems of adjustment. The tendency of the new order was separative. Man had developed — measurably — the home instinct; he had come — measurably — to accept monogamy, to re- spect the obligations of husbandhood and parenthood. But these were the developments of habit; under- neath lay the old freebooter instincts; and the new order threatened to give those instincts a chance to throw off some of the restraining habit. Man goes afield again for sustenance; his pursuit of it leads him whither his mate cannot follow. Much of his life is lived beyond her fellowship, beyond her ken. They have no community of interest in his labour — only community of interest in its wages. They have an increasingly small number of common social concerns. They have alarmingly little connection in their children — whose education and whose pleasures and, eventually, whose work in the world, tend more and more to withdraw them from that close association with their parents which a community of working in- terests fosters.
A few years ago, Woman — the daughter of all those generations of mothers who had fought so hard to create homes — faced what seemed to be the stiffest situation in the history of her race : She saw the old idea of home breaking up under the economic pres- sure that drove her husband forth to become an in- dustrial unit ; under the social pressure that drove her
" THE WOMAN OF IT ' 319
children forth to acquire their preparation for life at the hands of specialists in education — teachers; under the domestic pressure which cramped her facilities for performing the labour necessary to sustain her own household, and made her a spender of wages rather than a producer of things needful. The nat- ural tendency of play is for it to grow out of work or out of the conditions and associations that work engenders; in consequence, her husband and chil- dren not only worked remote from her and from her knowledge of their problems and defeats and victo- ries, but they found much of their recreation among those who did have knowledge of their labours and common interest in them.
There stood the housemother — undisputed director of a home which was no more than a lodging-place to her mate and to their brood. If she wanted amuse- ments, she must seek them among her own kind. If she wanted outlet for her unemployed energies, she must find it as best she could.
Hence her much-derided clubs and teas and lunch- eons and study classes; her leagues for the protection of this and the suppression of that and the develop- ment of t'other.
Multitudes of women are still groping their way blindly through a morass of foolish "hen-parties"; others have progressed as far as Browning or Brahms clubs; others are studying Current Events; and some are grappling with " Neighbourhood Improvement,"
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or " The Shame of Our City." Fools laugh at them. But any one who knows aught of human history looks on in admiration too deep for words.
What is she doing, that dauntless creature who for ages endured all things, endeavoured in all things that she might found a home, and who now feels herself mistress of an empire whose glory has departed? She is doing what she has always done: she is strug- gling to turn defeat into victory, to create out of her deprivation, her necessity, a new progress for the race. She is striving to establish a new communion of in- terests with her mate and with their children. If the work of the world must evermore be divided, and dividing, then she must weave her bonds out of other things than those done to sustain life : she must estab- lish her co-partnership in those things which are done to beautify life, and to justify it.
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