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THE LIBRARY
The Ontario Institute
for Studies in Education
Toronto, Canada
A Milliner Learning Straw Sewing
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION .
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
A STATISTICAL STUDY
BY
MARY VAN KLEECK
SECRETARY COMMITTEE ON WOMEN'S WORK RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION
NEW YORK
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
MCMXIV
Copyright, 1914, by The Russell Sage Foundation
THE TROW PRE83 NEW YORK
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PA OB
List of Illustrations . . . . . . . v
List of Tables vii
Introduction i
I. Evening Schools and the Girls Who Attend Them lo
11. Occupations of Girls Who Go to Night School . 38
III. Daily Hours of Labor 61
IV. Schooling of Wage-earning Girls .... 83 V. Relation of the Evening Schools to Vocational
Training 115
VI. Irregular Attendance in Evening Classes . .142 VII. Some Problems of Industrial Education . . 168
APPENDICES
1. Tables 187
1 1 . Memorandum Regarding a System of Evening School
Records 212
111. Investigation of Evening School Pupils in Phila- delphia 228
Index 233
m
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Photographs by Lewis W. Hine
FACINO FAQB
A Milliner Learning Straw Sewing . . Frontispiece
Learning to Make Their Own Hats 14
A Class in Home Dressmaking 14
Studying "Common Branches" 30
Cooking Class 30
Learning Bonnaz Embroidery . . . . . .48
Stenographers Practicing Speed 72
Recreation for Juniors in Evening School .... 72
Sewing Class 92
In The Pattern Drafting Class . . . . . .110
Pattern Drafting 120
Waist Draping for Dressmakers 120
Machine Operating 132
Teacher Instructing in Straw Sewing 132
A Button Sewer by Day 148
Draping a Chiffon Waist 160
Sews Linings in Hat Factory by Day . . . -174
LIST OF TABLES
TABLS PAOB
1 . Public evening schools included in the investigation,
registration, and average attendance of women in these schools during the regular term, and number of women for whom records were tabulated, by location and type of school 7
2. Nativity of women attending public evening schools 21
3. Nativity of fathers of women attending public even-
ing schools 22
4. Ages of women attending public evening schools 29
5. Reasons given by 271 women for enrolling in public
evening schools 31
6. Daily occupations of women attending public even-
ing schools, by principal occupational groups . -35
7. Occupations of women attending public evening
schools, employed in manufacturing and me- chanical pursuits, by main groups of occupations . 49
8. Occupations of women attending public evening
schools and employed in trade and transportation . 5 1
9. Principal occupations in manufacturing and mechan-
ical pursuits, ranked according to number of women employed, for women attending public , evening schools, 1910-1911, and for all women in New York City in 1900 55
10. Normal daily hours of work of women attending public evening schools, employed in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits and in trade and trans- portation 68
vii
LIST OF TABLES
11. Hours of beginning and leaving work in manufactur-
ing and mechanical pursuits and in trade and transportation, for women attending public even- ing schools 70
1 2. Normal daily hours of work for girls under 1 6 years of
age attending public evening schools, employed in selected occupations in trade and transportation . 75
i^: Normal daily hours of work of girls under 16 years of age attending public evening schools, employed in selected occupations in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits 77
14. Day schools previously attended at any time by
women attending public evening schools, by prin- cipal occupational groups 86
15. Last day school attended by women attending
public evening schools, by principal occupational groups °9
16. Proportion of women attending public evening
schools, whose only previous day school attend- ance was in New York public schools, by principal occupational groups 9*^
17. Grade at leaving school for women attending public
evening schools, who last attended day school in a New York public school, by principal occupational groups 94
18. Grade at leaving school for women attending public
evening schools, who last attended day school in a New York public school, employed in five selected manufacturing pursuits 9^
19. Progress made in elementary school by women at-
tending public evening schools, who had attended New York public schools only, by principal occupational groups • -99
20. Years of attendance at day school for women attend-
ing public evening schools, by principal occupa- tional groups '01
viit
LIST OF TABLES
TABLE PAQB
21. Age at leaving day school of women attending public
evening schools, by principal occupational groups 102
22. Reasons for leaving day school before the age of six-
teen, for 108 girls attending public evening schools 109
23. Daily occupations of women attending evening
classes in the Manhattan Trade School by classes. New York City, 1913 130
24. Ages of women attending evening classes in the
Manhattan Trade School, New York City, 191 3 . 133
25. Average weekly wages, by ages, of women attending
evening classes in the Manhattan Trade School, New York City, 191 3 134
26. Women on register in the year, and attendance on
first school night of each month, in 15 public elementary evening schools 151
27. Months in which women attending public evening
schools dropped out 1 54
28. Reasons given by 86 women for leaving public even-
ing schools 157
29. Evenings in which schools were in session each
month, and average number of evenings of attendance per woman, for 1,233 women attending evening high schools and 2,935 women attending evening elementary schools . . . . . 163
APPENDIX I
A. Women attending public evening schools, who were
included in this investigation, and women for whom information is presented in the different tables 187
B. Public evening schools included in the investigation,
registration, and average attendance of women in these schools during the regular term, and number of women for whom records were tabulated by location and type of school . . . . ^ . 190
ix
LIST Ol- TABLES
TABLB PAOB
C. Nativity of fathers of women attending public even-
ing schools, for Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Long Island City, and for each school in Man- hattan and the Bronx 192
D. I ndustries of women attending public evening schools
employed in manufacturing and mechanical pur- suits, by type of school, for Manhattan and the Bronx, and for Brooklyn and Lxjng Island City . 193
E. Length of noon recess for women attending public
evening schools employed in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits and in trade and transporta- tion . . 196
F. Normal daily hours of work of women attending
public evening schools and employed in manufac- turing and mechanical pursuits, by main groups of occupations 197
G. Ages of women attending public evening schools, by
principal occupational groups and by selected occu- pations .... 198
H. Age at leaving day school of women attending public evening schools, employed in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits, by main groups of occupations 199
I . Years of attendance at high school for women attend- ing public evening schools, who last attended day school in New York public high schools, by prin- cipal occupational groups 200
J. Ages, nativity, schooling, and hours of employment by selected occupations in trade and transporta- tion and in manufacturing and mechanical pur- suits, of women attending public evening schools . 201
K. Grade at leaving school, by main groups of occupa- tions in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits and by selected occupations for women attending public evening schools, who last attended day school in a New York public school . . . 207
LIST OF TABLES
TABLB PAOB
L. Months in which i , 1 27 women attending public even- ing high schools dropped out, by principal occupa- tional groups and by ages 209
M. Months in which 973 women attending four public evening elementary schools dropped out, by principal occupational groups and by ages, Man- hattan Borough 210
N. Months in which 1,993 women attending 13 public evening elementary schools dropped out, by prin- cipal occupational groups and by ages, Manhattan Borough 211
a
INTRODUCTION
IN the hope of supplying facts to clarify public thinking and to point the way toward the solution of certain industrial problems, the Russell Sage Foundation has undertaken to make a series of type-studies of the occupations of women in New York. The results of two of these studies have already been published under the titles Women in the Bookbinding Trade, and Artificial Flower Makers.* These volumes represent detailed inquiries into the conditions of women's work in two distinct trades.
The present study, that of Working Girls in Public Evening Schools, is of a different character. It is not an intensive investigation of girls in any one occupation, but an extensive view of the work- ers in the many fields of employment represented among the women who attend evening school. As a study of wage-earning women who are seeking to supplement an inadequate education, the facts secured relate especially to the problems of indus- trial training.
Every year from autumn until spring more than a hundred public school buildings in New York
* Van Kleeck, Mary: Women in the Bookbinding Trade. Arti- ficial Flower Makers. Russell Sage Foundation Publications. New York, Survey Associates, 1913.
I
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
are open four nights a week to pupils of various ages, from fourteen to seventy or older, who can not attend day school. In the year 1910-11, when this investigation was made, 33 of these public night schools were organized for women only, and 42 others admitted both men and women.* Nearly 50,000 women, chiefly wage-earners, were enrolled in the classes, some of whom stayed only one night, while some continued more or less regularly throughout the term.f Owing to irregular attendance and varying dates of entrance, the number present on any one night is much smaller than the enrollment for the year. Nevertheless, in no other public institution in New York, as far as we know, would it be possible to reach simul- taneously so large a group of wage-earning women as are to be found in these class rooms.
We believed that a record of the occupations of a fair proportion of these women and the correla- tion of the data secured with facts about their ages, nationality, hours of labor, and previous schooling, would afford a foundation for further intensive study. We believed, furthermore, that such an investigation would be useful in demon- strating the possible value of the evening schools as experiment stations in education. Similar types of pupils and the same groups of occupations would
* Superintendent of Schools, New York City. Thirteenth Annual Report, 1910-11. Report on Evening Schools for the Year Ending July 31. 1911. pp. 5-6.
t Ibid. Compiled from Table I, pp. 20-24. Detailed statement, Enrollment of Women and Girls.
INTRODUCTION
probably be represented in the day continuation schools, whose development is now being advocated as part of a system of industrial training. At present, few seem to realize how much the public evening schools have to offer in experience and facts as a basis for planning new types of industrial courses.
The method of investigation was to distribute card records containing questions to be answered in writing by women in each class room in the schools selected.* This was done in the autumn of 19 10, under the direction of the teachers, after members of our staff had visited each school and fully explained the plan to the principal. The questions asked are shown on the record card which is reproduced in the appendix. f They included such personal items as age, country of birth, and number of years in the United States, detailed information about schools attended, and a care- fully planned set of questions designed to reveal that elusive fact — the actual occupation of a work- er in our complex industrial system.
For several reasons, no questions were asked about wages. We feared that if we asked how much they earned the girls might raise objections which would jeopardize the whole inquiry, since the wage received is considered by many to be a strictly personal matter. Moreover, it seemed doubtful whether data on this point would be
* See p. 6, for statement of number of schools included, t For facsimile of card record see .Appendix, p. 186.
3
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
accurate, unless the filling of the records could be supervised by an investigator familiar with all the intricacies of wage statistics.
The questions on the cards were answered by 13,737 girls. Some preliminary experimenting had been necessary to make a schedule which would yield reliable information. Realizing the difficulties involved in the method of investigation pursued, — the riskof misinterpretation or misunder- standing on the part of the many thousands who in the class rooms of nearly 50 different school build- ings would be called upon to write their answers, — we determined to test the questions thoroughly before having the cards printed. Through the co- operation of several leaders of girls' clubs in social settlements, typewritten schedules were distributed at club meetings. More than a hundred were returned, and through an analysis of the answers a card record was gradually evolved so simple in form that in spite of the brief schooling of many of the pupils who answered the questions 13,141 of the 13,737 records secured were accurate and complete enough for tabulation. They were carefully read to discover discrepancies or errors, and were classified first by schools, and then by large occupational groups.
For reasons already suggested, it is not easy to determine just how large a proportion this group of 13,000 women forms of the total number in attendance during the year in the schools included in the investigation. The annual report of the
4
INTRODUCTION
city superintendent of schools for that year states for each evening school the enrollment, the register, and the average attendance. Every prospective student who records her application for entrance into an evening class is counted among the number "enrolled." The enrollment of women in 1910-11, as previously noted, was nearly 50,000. Some of these never appeared in a class room. The word "register" is used for the number who actually attend any length of time, whether their stay be one night or five months. The "average attendance" is com- puted by adding together the number of pupils actually present each evening throughout the school year, and dividing by the number of evenings the schools are open. None of these figures shows the actual attendance at any given date.*
Furthermore, although in our investigation we made an effort at first to have all the records filled on the same day, conditions in the different schools made it impossible to carry out this plan. The dates on the record cards show that although all were filled during the autumn, the work was done on different evenings in September, October, and November. In some instances blank records were kept in the principal's office to be filled from time to time by girls who entered later in the term. Because of these variations and because of the
* For further discussion of average register and attendance, see pp. 142 ff.
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
well-known irregularity of attendance in evening classes, a comparison of the number of records secured with the figures given in the annual report of the superintendent of schools for "average attendance" or "register," throws more light on evening school problems than on the scope of this investigation. Nevertheless, Table i is presented to show the number of women registered, the average attendance, and the number who filled records in the schools included in the inquiry.
Thus, the total register of women in the schools included in the investigation in the winter of 1910- 1 1 was 39,242, while the average attendance was 15,665. The number of women filling record cards used in the tabulation was 13,141, 33 per cent of the total register, but 84 per cent of the average attendance. With the exception of the Long Island City Trade School, the only one in- vestigated in the borough of Queens, the inquiry was confined to the three boroughs of Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn, and covered all evening schools in these boroughs except two elementary schools in very remote sections of Brooklyn and three located far uptown in the Bronx. The con- ditions in these latter districts, as in Queens and Richmond, differ markedly from those of the more congested sections of the city.*
In the spring of 191 1 our investigators returned to most of the schools in Manhattan to secure
* For list of schools investigated, register, average attendance, and number of record cards secured in each school, see Appendix I, Table B, p. 190.
6
INTRODUCTION
TABLE 1.— PUBLIC EVENING SCHOOLS INCLUDED IN THE INVESTIGATION, REGISTRATION, AND AVERAGE ATTENDANCE OF WOMEN IN THESE SCHOOLS DUR- ING THE REGULAR TERM, AND NUMBER OF WOMEN FOR WHOM RECORDS WERE TAB- ULATED, BY LOCATION AND TYPE OF SCHOOL^
|
SCHOOLS INCLUDED IN THE INVESTlGAnON |
Women for whom records were tab- ulated |
|||
|
Location and type of school |
Number |
Register of women |
Average attend- ance of women |
|
|
Manhattan and the Bronx: High and trade schools . Elementary schools. |
4 21 |
5.776'' 19.388 |
2.330 7.733 |
2.587 5.059 |
|
Total .... |
25 |
25,164 |
10,063 |
7,646 |
|
Brooklyn and Long Island City: High and trade schools . Elementary schools. |
s 18 |
4.134" 9.944 |
1.599 4,003 |
2,275 3.220 |
|
Total .... |
23 |
14.078 |
5,602 |
5.495 |
|
All schools: High and trade schools . Elementary schools. |
9 39 |
9.910 29,332 |
3.929 11,736 |
4,862 8,279 |
|
Total ... 48 |
39,242 |
15,665 |
13.141 |
* Data appear in detail in Appendix I, Table B, p. 190.
^ In one mixed high school the registration of women was not stated separately from that of men. The number of women enrolled has been substituted, as there is usually no material diflference between the two sets of figures.
'^ The number of women registered was not available for two mixed trade schools. In one case, the number of women enrolled was used in place of the number registered, and in the other, the number of women registered was estimated by assuming that this number bore the same relation to the total register that the average attendance of women bore to the total average attendance.
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
records of the length of attendance of each girl who had filled out a card in the preceding autumn. This part of the work was time-consuming, as in the majority of schools it was necessary to copy the facts about each girl from teachers' roll books, which offered the material in less convenient form than does the card system since introduced.*
To verify the data on the card records, a group of 260 of the girls included in the study were inter- viewed at their homes during the spring and summer of 191 1. The total number of visits to homeswas 331. In connection with other industrial studies made by the same investigators many more of these girls have been visited, some of them during the spring of 191 3. The results of these interviews have been most satisfactory in corrobo- rating the information given in writing on the original cards. f
The investigation in the schools was made pos- sible through the courteous co-operation of Dr. John H. Haaren, associate city superintendent in charge of evening schools, to whom our thanks are due. To the principals and teachers we are greatly indebted for the time given to supervising pupils who answered the questions. We wish to express
* The total number of visits made to the schools, at this time and in the preceding autumn, was 178. As a matter of fact, this figure is an understatement, since in securing records of attendance three or four members of the staff went together in order to facilitate the clerical work. Counting each person's visit as one, the total number was 247.
t The facts about the evening classes in the Manhattan Trade School for Girls, discussed in Chapter V, were secured in the spring of 1913 at the beginning of an interesting experiment in that school.
8
INTRODUCTION
appreciation also to Dr. Albert Shiels who be- came district superintendent in charge of evening schools the year following our investigation, and who, from time to time, has supplied us with in- formation needed in the preparation of these chap- ters.
The members of the staff who took part in the field work were Miss Louise C. Odencrantz, Miss Alice P. Barrows, and Miss Elizabeth L. Meigs. The statistical work, which is so important a part of this book, was done under the direction of Miss Odencrantz.
In reading the chapters which follow, it should be remembered that the subject of investigation was not the evening schools and their methods, but the occupations of the girls and women attend- ing them. We desire to be judged not as school investigators, but as students of the industrial problems represented in a particular group of wage-earning girls who were enrolled for one year in evening classes of the New York public school system.
CHAPTER I
EVENING SCHOOLS AND THE GIRLS WHO ATTEND THEM
THE gay throngs of children who march mer- rily out from the school buildings in the afternoon afford no more inspiring sight than the more restrained and sober groups of older pupils who enter the same class rooms in the even- ing. Natives of Russia, Croatia, Italy, or Tur- key who are eager to learn English; youngsters who have left day school before completing even the elementary grades; grown men and women who never went to school in their childhood; ambitious students preparing for examinations for civil service appointments, for state regents' di- plomas, or for admission to colleges or technical schools; boys who want practice in carpentry or metal work, and girls who wish to make their own hats or dresses, — all come with their varied needs and aspirations in search of more education.* Some of them are desperately in earnest, eager for every crumb of knowledge, making tremendous sacrifices of strength to come every night from
* Attendance in public evening schools in New York is voluntary for all except boys under sixteen who have left school before graduat- ing from the grammar grades; for them attendance is compulsory. See also footnote, p. 74.
10
GIRLS WHO ATTEND EVENING SCHOOLS
Monday to Thursday and every week from au- tumn until spring,* however exhausted they may be after the day's work in shop or factory. Among others ambition shows less persistence and the good resolution which led them to register perishes prematurely. Some have wandered into the school building without any very serious purpose or defi- nite aim in view, and unless the teacher can arouse their interest, they join the ranks of the irregular attendants, who are the despair of the school authorities. Nevertheless, whether they be eager or indifferent, serious or frivolous, studious or lazy in their school work, they are representative of the wage-earners of the community, and, as such, their ambitions and their hopes present to educators a variety of problems as absorbing in interest as they are vital in importance.
The method of teaching English composition to a child in the seventh grade has been more care- fully studied and standardized than has that of giving belated instruction in spelling and writing to a woman whose experience in life has already taught her many things beyond the ken of school children. Consider, for example, the married woman enrolled in an English class, who, besides serving as cook and housekeeper, is enabled by her skill in gold-leaf laying to support herself and her
* In evening elementary schools the term begins the first Mon- day in October and continues for 90 evenings until March or early April, according to the place of Easter on the calendar, in evening high schools and trade schools the session lasts 120 evenings, from the third Monday in September until May. Summer classes in Eng- lish for foreigners are a recent innovation.
II
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
sick husband. Instruction in the English language offered an Italian girl who began work packing olives the day after she landed in New York, in- volves more than a lesson in words, phrases, and grammatical construction. It should include an interpretation of the ways and thoughts of a new land to a pupil who has had no opportunity to find out how much of the United States lies outside of Canal Street. When the class confronting the English teacher includes not only Italian olive packers, but Hungarian vest makers, Bohemian cigar makers, and Russian milliners and shirt- waist makers, the task of giving them a common voice and a common understanding of their new environment demands the insight of a prophet.
Or again, the young American girl whose ways of thinking were more or less clear to the seventh grade teacher in day school last year has acquired a different point of view now that she has become a wage-earner. Instinctively she demands that the change which new experiences have wrought in her shall be recognized when she joins a class in evening school. But perhaps most difficult of all the prob- lems encountered by teachers in evening schools is the restless and undirected seeking after some kind of training that shall enable the wage-earner to find a better job, or to get ahead in the one he or she now has. Thus, not only previous schooling, but age, nationality, and occupation, are important factors in determining the needs of evening school pupils.
12
GIRLS WHO ATTEND EVENING SCHOOLS ENTRANCE REQUIREMENTS AND COURSES OFFERED
It is on the basis of the amount of the pupils' previous education that the regular evening schools at present are distinguished as "elementary" or "high." In addition, there are the evening "trade" schools, this term applying to schools of elementary grade in which trade courses are offered. For ad- mission to an evening high school it is necessary to be a graduate of an elementary school or to have an equivalent preparation. In evening ele- mentary schools no preparation other than the wish to attend is required, and the diversity of mental equipment of the pupils is, therefore, wide.* An effort is made, however, in forming classes, to group together those whose previous training is somewhat similar, especially in the case of boys or girls under sixteen who left day school before graduating. They are enrolled in the classes for instruction in what are known as "common branches." For boys under sixteen who have not finished the elementary grades, the law, as we have seen, requires this kind of instruction.
In general, the courses offered vary according to the demands of the pupils in the different schools. The evening high school curriculum in- cludes such academic subjects as languages and science; commercial courses, like stenography, typewriting, bookkeeping, and commercial law;
* The schooling of the girls investigated will be discussed in Chap- ter IV.
13
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
and, for women, courses in domestic arts and sciences.
In the evening trade schools a greater variety of courses is offered to men than to women. A young man may have an opportunity to enter a class in blacksmithing, cabinet making, carpentry and joinery, electric engineering, electrical installa- tion, gas engine construction, pattern making, plumbing, printing, or steam engineering. For women, the opportunities in trade training are chiefly limited to millinery, dressmaking, and costume designing, although there is manifest a growing desire on the part of school authorities to extend the industrial courses for women to other occupations.*
In the evening elementary schools the subjects taught include English to foreigners, the "common branches," and special subjects similar to those taught in the high schools but planned for students whose previous training would not be sufficient for admission to high school. These courses include shop work, cooking, dressmaking, millinery, draw- ing, stenography, typewriting, and bookkeeping. Some of these, as, for example, stenography, have been introduced into certain elementary schools, not because they can be taught satisfactorily to
* In the autumn of 1913, the New York Evening School of In- dustrial Art was opened to give "courses for men and women engaged in occupations involving the adaptation of art to industries." (Board of Education, New York. Report of the President, January, 19 14, p. 21.) The courses offered included decoration, drawing, book illustration, and designing of costumes, jewelry, stained glass, tex- tiles, wall paper, wood work, and plastic work.
•4
Learning to Make Their Own Hats
A Class in Home Dressmaking
GIRLS WHO ATTEND EVENING SCHOOLS
pupils who have never completed the elementary grades, but because no evening high school is open in the neighborhood to meet the demand from pupils who have the necessary preparation.
The high schools were far apart, and many who would have been eligible for attendance in them were obliged to be content with the nearest elemen- tary school, or to forego instruction in the evening.* In 1910-1 1 the Bronx had one evening high school open to men and women, Queens one, and Staten Island one. In Brooklyn there were three for women only and one mixed school to which women were admitted. Three for women only were in Manhattan, one at 114th Street and Seventh Avenue, one in Forty-first Street near Third Avenue, and one on the lower East Side, on the corner of Hester and Essex streets. The evening elementary schools were much more numerous.
NATIONALITIES IN THE SCHOOLS
The location of the evening schools is determined primarily by the character of the population in different sections of the city and the extent to which the people living in the neighborhood make
* The need for a wider distribution of evening high schools is recog- nized in the report on evening schools for the year ending July 31, 1012, and it is recommended "that evening high school 'annexes' consisting of two or more first-year classes be established in elemen- tary evening school buildings in sections of the city too far removed from the main building, that such classes maintain an organization independent of the elementary school, and, if the attendance allows, continue sessions for the full period of 120 evenings." Superinten- dent of Schools, New York City. Fourteenth Annual Report, 191 1- 12. Ref)ort on Evening Schools for the Year Ending July 31, 1912, p. 44.
•5
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
use of the schools. The very atmosphere of the streets changes as you walk from one district to another.
Thus, in the borough of Manhattan, on the West Side between Fifty-ninth Street and Washington Heights, a district largely inhabited by prosperous residents, the main body of working women are domestic servants whose hours of service do not permit them to be " out " four nights a week. Only two evening schools for women were located in this district, one at the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and Ninety-third Street, the other at St. Nicholas Avenue and 127th Street. Dark desertion at night characterizes certain blocks on the lower West Side, where the streets are lined with closed ware- houses and dingy tenements which were once fashionable private residences. In block after block one finds stillness and emptiness, accentu- ated by the footfalls of an occasional passerby. Below Fourteenth Street on the lower West Side, but two small schools were found. One was in an Italian neighborhood and its attendance suffered from the Italian custom of keeping the unmarried daughters at home in the evening. The other stood but a stone's throw from Trinity church and Wall Street, at the corner of Albany, Washington, and Carlisle streets, in a district peopled by hetero- geneous groups of Syrians, Greeks, Turks, and Egyptians, with a mixture of various other na- tionalities.
On the lower East Side, beyond the Bowery,
16
Public Evening Schools for Women in the Borough of Manhattan, iqio-ii
The dots represent evening elementary schools and the triangles, evening high schools.
17
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
in contrast, the streets at night are ablaze with light and gay with activity. We seem here to be in another city. Open shops Hne the way; noisy voices of push-cart peddlers cry their wares; and men, women, and babies crowd the sidewalk. In this neighborhood the evening schools flour- ish. Of the 50,000 girls and women enrolled in all the schools of the Greater City in the season of 1910-11, nearly 8,000 were in schools south of Houston Street and east of Broadway. Many of the pupils in these schools were Jews, whose desire for scholarship and eagerness for economic advancement bring them to the night schools in large numbers.
No two schools are alike in racial composition. It is these contrasts in nationality, with all the differences that they imply in custom, in tradition, in ideals of education, and early school training, which make the public school system of New York a federation of almost separate educational units instead of a unified, homogeneous institution. In the evening school on the corner of Lexington Avenue and io6th Street, only about one in ten of the girls investigated* were of native parentage, while nearly half were daughters of Russians. In contrast with this was an elementary school on West Twenty-fourth Street, in which only one of the 247 girls who answered our questions reported that father was born in Russia, while 82 fathers were of native and 103 of Irish or English parent-
* Appendix I, Table C, Public School No. 72, p. 192.
18
GIRLS WHO ATTEND EVENING SCHOOLS
age. Or again, the proportion of girls of native- born parentage varied from 1.6 per cent in the evening high school on the lower East Side to 27 per cent in the high school in East Forty-first Street; and from 5.3 per cent in an elementary school in an Italian neighborhood* to 71 per cent in one in West Forty-sixth Street in the midst of a Negro population.
Naturally, the classes in English for foreigners contain only pupils of foreign birth, and here the greatest diversity of nationalities is found. Many have found their way to the schools within a few weeks of their arrival. But it is not only these classes that are attended by pupils of foreign birth. Our records show that many countries are represented, also, in classes in which all the pupils must necessarily be able to understand and speak the language of this country.
It was with the English-speaking girls, whether native or foreign born, that our investigation was primarily concerned, since the method of investiga- tion was to secure written answers in English to questions, and the newly arrived immigrants were not generally able to meet this test. In some cases, however, the teachers of the non-English-speaking classes filled out the cards for their pupils, and in certain of the more advanced classes in the foreign department our record cards were welcomed as an opportunity for presenting an interesting lesson in English. Therefore, it has been difficult in our
* Public School No. 23, Mulberry and Bayard streets.
19
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
inquiry to draw a hard and fast line between the foreign department, which we had intended to exclude, and the classes which predominated in our inquiry. In the great majority of cases, however, the women who filled our records could both speak and write English.
Thus, since not many of the pupils in the classes for recent immigrants were included, our informa- tion regarding nationality does not represent the whole group of women who attend evening schools. We were aiming rather to get a picture of the work- ing girls who had either been born here, or had been here long enough to be fairly representative of American working conditions, and whose desire for instruction in evening classes was significant in its relation to the problem of industrial education. Table 2 shows the birthplaces of this group of girls in the evening schools.
The majority, 68 per cent, were born in the United States. The next largest group, 16 per cent, were Russians, with 5.1 per cent from Austria- Hungary. Among the Russian-born pupils were Lithuanians, Ruthenians, Poles, and many Jews. A large proportion of the girls who are listed as having been born in Austria and Germany were Polish or Jewish. The small group of other nationalities includes Canadians, French, Span- iards, Greeks, Turks, and Syrians. Some of these foreign-born women had been attending the evening schools for several years. They began in the classes in English, and then, after learning
20
GIRLS WHO ATTEND EVENING SCHOOLS
TABLE 2.— NATIVITY OF WOMEN ATTENDING PUBLIC EVENING SCHOOLS a
|
WOMEN |
BORN AS |
||||||
|
Country of birth |
SPECIFIED |
||||||
|
Number |
Per cent |
||||||
|
United States Russia Austria-Hungary b Germany italv |
8,907 2,034 660 346 214 |
68.2 15.6 51 2.6 1.6 |
|||||
|
Ireland . Great Britain Roumania Scandinavia . Other countries |
194 167 160 112 256 |
1-5 1-3 1 .2 •9 2.0 |
|||||
|
Total |
13,050 = |
1 00.0 |
^ Data for selected occupations in trade and transportation and in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits are given in Appendix I, Table J, p. 201.
'^ Includes Bohemia.
*^Of the 13,141 women included in the study, 91 did not supply information.
the language, advanced to other courses— millinery or dressmaking, grammar and arithmetic, or even science or literature in the high schools. In some instances they had had schooling in their native land representing more than the equivalent of our high school courses.
Racial traits persist for more than one genera- tion, and thus it is that we have in the evening schools more of Germany, or Italy, or Russia than the statistics quoted in Table 2 would indicate,
21
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
since many of the American-born girls are the children of foreign parents. Table 3 shows the birthplaces of the fathers of the girls investigated.
TABLE 3.— NATIVITY OF FATHERS OF WOMEN ATTEND- ING PUBLIC EVENING SCHOOLS ^
Country of birth
WOMEN WITH FATHERS BORN AS SPECIFIED
Russia
United States Germany Ireland
Austria-Hungary b . Great Britain Italy
Scandinavia . Roumania Other countries
Total
* Data appear for each school in Appendix I, Table C, p. 192.
^ Includes Bohemia.
*^0f the 13,141 women included in the study, 373 did not supply information.
The United States occupies a less prominent place in this table than in that showing the birth- places of the girls themselves. Only 23 per cent of these evening school girls had fathers who were born in this country, while 23 per cent were of Russian parentage, 17 per cent German, and 11 per cent Irish. The birthplaces of the fathers of 1 1 per cent were in Austria-Hungary. The daughters
22
GIRLS WHO ATTEND EVENING SCHOOLS
of Italians number only 3.8 per cent, although in the general population their rank is much higher.
The principal of one of the evening schools on the lower East Side told of the inspiration she had gained from the thoughtful and earnest foreign girls who came to the classes there. A number were alone in this country, meeting the new con- ditions here independently and with wonderful courage. The preceding year many of them had been leaders in the big strike of shirtwaist makers, but no less important cause could keep them away from class any night in the term. When they had to work overtime in the factories they would come to school straight from work without any dinner. Then they would go home and do their laundry work late at night — the only time when the families with whom they boarded would give them the use of the washtubs. Even after that task the flower or feather makers would spend several hours working on flowers or feathers brought home from the factory. Most of these were Jewish girls from Russia, or Austria, or Germany, eager to learn all they could about America; keen and independent in judgment; and withal, ready to make sacrifices not for themselves alone but for their fellow-workers, to improve the conditions in their trades.
One of the most thoughtful of these women students in the evening high schools was a young Russian milliner who had been in this country six years. She had been observing American condi-
23
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
tions and American characteristics as she had seen them in the wholesale millinery shops, in the evening schools, in theaters, and on the streets. Her conversation with the investigator who went to talk with her about the millinery trade covered many subjects, — socialism, woman's rights, trade unions, Bernard Shaw, the drama in America, the school system, and Russian versus American women. She had been an ardent worker in a little band of milliners who had tried to organize a union, but she had given it up as a hopeless task.
"It took time that we might spend on a book, or studying, or going to the theater. And besides, it's no use trying to organize the American women. They don't care about anything but making dates. It's all men and dances, and they don't care about organizing because they expect to get married and stop working. It's no use talking to them. When you begin on unions they call you a Socialist, and that ends it; or if you talk about woman's suffrage, they laugh at you. Why should they laugh?"
She would like to go home to see her parents in Russia, she said. " But I don't think I should want to stay. There is something fascinating about America. But they are not thinkers here. It's all money. They don't think — but then not many people do in any country. American women are not disturbed enough. You have to be disturbed to think. Russian women seem to me to be the finest in the world, and it is because things have been hard for them."
24
GIRLS WHO ATTEND EVENING SCHOOLS
The Italians who find their way into the evening schools are those who have acquired a point of view quite different from that of their nation. For an Italian girl to be away from home at night un- attended is to oppose custom and to run the risk of unpleasant gossip in the neighborhood, even though she does not thereby incur the disapproval of her family. Furthermore, the leisure time of the wage- earning Italian girl must usually be spent in some home occupation adding directly or indirectly to the family income, in preparation for the time when she shall be married and require a dot. The object of Italian parents is to marry their daughters well and young, and a marriage portion increases the likelihood of their attaining both these objects. Many a time has one of our investigators met with the kindly and courteous, but pitying, comments of Italian men and women who have marveled at her cheerfulness though still unmarried after the ripe age of twenty-five. This deep-rooted conviction as to the destiny of women leaves no room yet for the thought that prolonged education may be of value to a girl.
Maria, a young Italian wage-earner, wanted to join a class in an evening school very near her home. Her family were so far advanced in their ideas of education that they had paid the tuition of her sister in a business school. Nevertheless, Maria went only a few times, when her father and mother, growing solicitous about this defiance of conventional rules, forbade her being out at night.
25
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
Soon afterward she married, and from that time on she went out only to do her marketing, since her husband objected to having her leave the house even during the day. To be discontented did not occur to her. She told the visitor proudly that she was "very pleased" with her husband. Tessa, another Italian girl, actually continued to go to evening school for a winter, but the following year she did not return. She explained that she no longer had time to go out since, after coming home from work in a neckwear factory, she was obliged to wash the dishes and make up all the folding beds for a family of eight.
Others, however, have found the evening classes a great help in their ambition to fashion costumes which might increase their opportunities to get ahead in the world in the traditional Italian way for women. Carmela, a maker of fancy feathers, proudly showed the product of her work in an even- ing class in dressmaking. It was a pale blue silk gown with a "fish-tail" train, a lace bodice, and a draped tunic. She had made it to wear to a wedding in the neighborhood. She had also con- tributed to the family resources by making a blue serge dress for her younger sister, thus saving a dressmaker's bill.
While among some races family custom keeps a girl out of evening school, often the ambition of her parents encourages her to "get more educa- tion." Sarah, a Russian girl of fifteen, told us that she went because her father, a Hebrew
26
GIRLS WHO ATTEND EVENING SCHOOLS
teacher, cautiously advised it, saying, "Educa- tion won't hurt you." Margaret, whose Irish father is a motorman for a New York street car line, went regularly to evening high school chiefly because, as her stepmother expressed it, "The father wants to do the best he can for her." He took a keen interest in " Daisy's" schooling, and the stepmother urged the visitor to find out for her how the child was getting along in her classes. "The father often asks her could he go to the school and see the teacher, because we don't get no reports. But Daisy says nobody can do that. We'd like to know if she's doing well."
Florence was a messenger in a New York de- partment store. It was her mother, an Irish- woman, who encouraged her to go regularly to evening school. She wanted her to get more educa- tion, and then perhaps the family could spare a little money later to train her in stenography so that she could have better work than the store seemed likely to offer. Her mother had wanted her to graduate from day school, but just as she was within one term of it she failed of promotion. " I felt awful bad about it," said her mother. " I went to the teacher and the teacher said she was lazy and better be put to work. She asked me didn't I notice the reports that Florence was poor in arithmetic. I come home and scolded the father that he hadn't paid more attention to it. He was born in New York and went to school here, but I wasn't. I came here when I was fourteen
27
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
and what education I've had I got from reading newspapers and picking it up any way I could. I want my daughters to be educated."
AGES OF EVENING SCHOOL STUDENTS
The opportunity afforded the evening schools for adding to the meager schooling many of these American girls have had, and for interpreting America to workers of foreign parentage and bringing about a better understanding between women of different races is the greater because of the youth of the pupils in the classes. In the year 1911-12, 8,825 women of twenty-one years or older were registered in the elementary schools, as compared with 25,238 girls under twenty-one.* In the high schools the women numbered 3,949 and the girls, 9,294.! Table 4 shows the ages of the women and girls included in this investigation.
One in five was under sixteen and 32 per cent, nearly one-third, were between sixteen and eighteen. Only 2 3 per cent had passed the twenty- first birthday. The figures just quoted for all the women and girls registered in the elementary and high schools in 191 1- 12 showed that 27 per cent, 12,774, were twenty-one or older. The slight difference between this proportion and that of our
* Superintendent of Schools, New York City. Fourteenth Annual Report, 1911-12. Report on Evening Schools for the Year Ending July 31, 1912, p. 16.
In the report for theyear ending July 31, 191 1, the statistics accord- ing to age are not given.
t Ibid., p. 45. In the evening trade schools 452 girls and 459 women were registered.
28
GIRLS WHO ATTEND EVENING SCHOOLS
group in the preceding year is probably due to the fact that in the classes in English for foreigners not included by us, the pupils, many of whom have come alone to this country, are older than in the other classes.*
TABLE 4. — AGES OF WOMEN ATTENDING PUBLIC EVENING SCHOOLS^
|
Age |
WOMEN OF THE AGES SPECIFIED |
|
|
Number |
Per cent |
|
|
Less than 16 years 16 years and less than 18 years . i8 years and less than 21 years . 21 years or more |
2,632 4.184 3,128 3.043 |
20.3 32.2 24.1 23.4 |
|
Total |
12,987'' |
100. 0 |
a Data appear by principal occupational groups and for selected occupations in Appendix I, Table G, p. 198, and by selected occu- pations in trade and transportation and in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits in Appendix I, Table J, p. 201.
bOf the 13,141 women included in the study, 154 did not supply information.
THE PUPILS' AIMS
It is characteristic of evening school pupils that they have joined a class with a practical end in view. They wish to learn English, to study Spanish
* Of the whole group, 931, or 7.1 per cent of the 13,141, were married or widowed. The proportion of married women and widows in the group of non-wage-earners was 2 1 .2 per cent, or larger than among the wage-earners, of whom only 2.2 per cent were or had been married. In manufacturing and mechanical pursuits the proportion was only 1.5 percent; in trade and transportation, i percent; in professional work, 5.2 per cent; and in domestic and personal service, 16.3 per cent.
29
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
in order to qualify as stenographers in commercial houses with branches in Cuba or Porto Rico, to make a hat for Easter, to learn to cook in prepara- tion for marriage and housekeeping, or, if the aim be general education, to secure a foundation for later training for some more attractive occupation than the one at present followed. Among the girls included in our study, the popularity of academic subjects, commercial courses, and classes in hand work was about equal ; 32 per cent were in manual classes, 31 percent in academic, 31 percent in commercial courses, with a scattered few who were studying art or elocution. Ten per cent were enrolled in English classes. In some cases the same girl was studying an academic subject one hour and a commercial subject the second, thus being counted in both groups.
The girls' motives for joining evening classes are interesting. In the course of our visits to their homes, 271 were asked why they attended night school. Table 5 gives their answers.
Obviously, in analyzing the girls' reasons for coming to evening school, we must remember that in a sense these will be determined by what the evening schools now have to offer. At present it is not likely that a girl employed, for example, in a paper box factory or a bookbindery would say that she was enrolled in an evening class in order to im- prove her earning capacity in her day's work. The less the emphasis upon vocational training in the schools, the less prominent will be the vocational
30
Studying "Common Branches" Making up deficiencies
Cooking Class
GIRLS WHO ATTEND EVENING SCHOOLS
motive in the minds of the pupils. Extension of trade classes would doubtless result in a great change in motives for attending. At present, if the group interviewed be typical, three aims rival
TABLE 5.— REASONS GIVEN BY 271 WOMEN FOR EN- ROLLING IN PUBLIC EVENING SCHOOLS
Reason
In order to change to better work
To learn for "home use" .
To obtain a general education .
To help in daily occupation
Went with friends
Thought the law required attendance
"Nothing else to do" ....
To prepare for positions that were offered
To keep up speed in stenography while not
work
"Mother made her go"
Sent by father " to keep her off the streets" Acquaintance with teacher .... "just happened to go" ....
at
Total
Women who enrolled for each specified reason
75
74
72
25
8
6
4
2
271
*0f the 13,141 women included in the study, 271 were ques- tioned as to their reasons for attending public evening school. Of these 271 women, 201 were in evening elementary schools and 70 in evening high schools.
one another in importance, — "home use," as illustrated by the married woman who enters a dressmaking class to learn how to make her chil- dren's clothes; "general education," as revealed in the case of the stock girl in a department store
3«
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
who had joined a class in "common branches" in order, as she said, "to finish the subjects I didn't finish in day school"; and "to change to better work," an indication of the discontent felt by many girls who have a great desire to learn a new trade to enable them to make a fresh start.
Of the need for finishing what was not finished in day school, the spelling on the record cards is a convincing sign. The worker on "ledes dresses" was rivaled in orthographic ingenuity by the girl who made "papar bocses." The "wilomaker" was a match for the "toker," — words which, being interpreted, stand for willow-maker and tucker. "Exzamining" is entirely intelligible, if not Web- sterian, as is also " Ladie's underware." The word operator provided an exercise in versatility. It appeared impartially as aprether, apertergn, up- raitter, apreder, aperater, apraider, ipratair, aperiter, apeirder, opereider, oposeter, aprading, opprerate, opertor, apreider, and opparating. The phonetic method was revealed in the writing of a girl who had reached the 6B grade after eight years in a New York public school. She had been out of work "2 ears" and was now trying to make good her deficiencies in arithmetic and geography by joining an evening class whose subjects, as far as she was concerned, went by the name of "erefnret" and "girgofrie." A girl who had attended New York public schools eight and a half years, reaching the 8B grade, wrote that she was now employed in a "book boundary." Another, who had attained
32
GIRLS WHO ATTEND EVENING SCHOOLS
the 8A grade in an elementary school, described her occupation as "Book binind" and said that her father was born in "Irland." One girl was em- ployed in a "deportment store" and another called herself a "sail lady."
Defective spelling does not always yield to treat- ment and is not always indicative of a lack of general intelligence, but it is not unreasonable to expect that a girl shall know how to spell the name of her occupation. Undoubtedly, however, the spelling books have not kept pace with industrial development. In the interests of industrial educa- tion they should be brought up to date in this respect.
For many of these girls the enrollment in an evening class in 1910 was not their first effort to add to their educational equipment. Two thousand of the 1 3,000 investigated had previously attended the evening elementary schools and 1,100 the evening high schools. Eighteen hundred had had courses in private business schools and a small group of 241 had attended trade schools. That is, 4,902, or 37 per cent of the women investigated, had already proved their desire for additional training by joining some special class since leaving day school.
Evening classes are not new in the public school system. They were organized in New York as early as 1847, and their primary purpose through- out their history has been to meet the educational needs of wage-earners. In early years, however,
33
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
emphasis was placed on general education for "the enlightenment of ignorance." The schools were described as part of "a great crusade against ignorance or vice," and as safeguards against the temptations encountered by young girls and boys who otherwise would spend their evenings on the streets. The present-day interest in industrial education is having an influence on evening schools by changing the conception of the educational needs of wage-earners. School authorities are talking now not so much about a crusade against ignorance as about plans to give definite instruc- tion directed toward increasing the skill of workers. The problem of giving instruction to increase skill in various occupations is not an easy one for either day schools or evening schools to handle. The first difficulty in the way is the lack of ade- quate information regarding industrial conditions. Obviously, if the schools are to meet the needs of working women, the teachers, and principals, and all who have anything to do with planning or carry- ing out the curriculum, must know in detail the occupations which employ girls. They must under- stand the processes into which trades are divided; the training required for them; the standards of wages, hours, and sanitation generally prevailing; the need of the workers for a broader view of their own tasks and of their social and industrial rela- tions; and the methods of co-operation which may be possible between school, employer, and worker. To answer these questions thoroughly it would be
34
GIRLS WHO ATTEND EVENING SCHOOLS
necessary to make intensive studies of each in- dustry. As a basis for such thorough study, how- ever, it is valuable to know certain facts about the large number of working girls already seeking more education in evening schools.
MAIN GROUPS OF OCCUPATIONS
How many and varied are the occupations now represented in the evening schools of New York will be revealed in later chapters. At this point it is desirable to know the proportion employed in the main groups of wage-earning pursuits. Table 6 states these facts for the girls included in our investigation.
TABLE 6.— DAILY OCCUPATIONS OF WOMEN ATTENDING
PUBLIC EVENING SCHOOLS, BY PRINCIPAL
OCCUPATIONAL GROUPS
|
Principal occupational group |
WOMEN EMPLOYED AS SPECIFIED |
|
|
Number |
Per cent |
|
|
Manufacturing and mechanical pursuits . Trade and transportation .... Domestic and personal service Professional service No occupation stated '^ . . . . |
4.5>9 4.505 520 193 3.404 |
34-4 34-3 4.0 ■•5 25.8 |
|
Total |
13,141 |
100. 0 |
^When the questions relating to daily occupations were not an- swered, it was assumed that the women were not gainfully employed. Visits to a few of them indicated that the assumption was correct. The women, therefore, who are included in the group with no occu- pation stated, are considered throughout the report as not gainfully employed. For further explanation, see footnote, p. 36.
35
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
The phrases used to describe these occupational groups are familiar to students of the United States Census. Manufacturing and mechanical pursuits include all factory work. "Trade and transportation" refers not to trades, as might be supposed, but to many diverse tasks which have to do with trading or selling goods to customers. In this group, which is second to factory work as an occupation chosen by evening school girls, are included all who work in telegraph or telephone exchanges, and those employed in stores or offices as saleswomen, stenographers, bookkeepers, clerical workers, and the like.
The proportion of non-wage-earners, 26 per cent, shown in Table 6, may seem surprising.* 1 1 should be remembered, however, that women who are not earning money are in the majority in New York. Of every four women in the city three are not working for wages, while in the evening schools this proportion is exactly reversed, thus indicating that the schools appeal primarily to the working women in the community.
The proportion of non-wage-earners in the
* As the table shows, 3,404 made no report on occupation. In some instances this may have been merely a careless failure to answer the question; but in the majority of cases the remainder of the record was sufficiently full to justify the conclusion that the greater number of these girls were not wage-earners. Further, as shown by the card given in the Appendix, p. 186, we asked not only " What is the business of the firm for which you now work?" but " If out of work at present, what was the business of the firm for which you last worked?" Only those who answered neither of these questions were counted in the group "No occupation stated." The number who answered the sec- ond, thus reporting themselves as out of work, was small, — only 536, or 5.5 per cent of the wage-earners who filled the record cards.
36
GIRLS WHO ATTEND EVENING SCHOOLS
schools varies in different sections of the city. In Manhattan and the Bronx they numbered 19 per cent and in Brooklyn, 35 per cent. In school No. 10 in the Bronx the proportion was 37 per cent as compared with only 5.6 per cent not at work in school No. 177 on the lower East Side. Quite as marked are the variations in different schools in the proportion of workers in each occupational group.
Within the walls of school buildings in New York, then, every night when evening schools are in session are to be found pupils of many nationali- ties and diverse occupations. The national group- ings are to a certain degree peculiar to New York. Splendid material is found among the foreign-born adult pupils. In the spirit of a great people's university the public schools in the evening should be made a center for an interchange of thought and idealism to which each race may contribute its best. The teachers must concern themselves also with vocational problems, which are significant not for New York only, but for every city in which modern industrial conditions are complex. Every- where the schools are hard-pressed to fmd the answers to many questions forced upon their attention by changing conditions. Especially urgent and puzzling are those which concern the education of wage-earning women and girls.
37
CHAPTER II
OCCUPATIONS OF GIRLS WHO GO TO NIGHT SCHOOL
EVERYONE knows that great changes have taken place in women's work in the past fifty years. Few understand the diversity of these changes, nor do they realize how numerous and varied are the tasks by which women and girls now try to earn their living. The girls who gather in the evening schools have come from office, factory, or store. During their working day they have been answering the incessant calls for "central" or for "cash girl"; they have been goffering rose leaves with a hot iron, rolling cig- arettes, putting labels on cigars by the thousands or olives into glass bottles, feeding the ten thou- sandth sheet into a folding machine in a book bind- ery, typewriting office letters, selling "notions," testing electric light bulbs in a dark room, stitching hundreds of yards of ruffling on power machines, trimming hats, or draping fashionable gowns. A long and varied list of occupations, with a high grade of skill required for a few, but with end- less monotony characteristic of many of them, — this is the modern industrial world for women which challenges attention not only in evening
38
OCCUPATIONS
schools but in all branches of the educational system.
As early as 1858 the board of education of New York City called attention to the changing condi- tions of women's work and the need for industrial education. The annual report * of that year estimates "that no less than 80,000 females are engaged in various occupations, mostly in the manufactories which are found in various parts of our city."
"Very little opportunity," the report continues, "is afforded to them for purposes of study, and it is not therefore surprising that of this vast number the com- paratively few who enter our evening schools are in the lower classes. During the past year the improvements made in the sewing machines have rendered them so perfect that they have been in many cases substituted for female labor, thereby throwing large numbers of females out of employment. This has been felt by them to be a very serious evil, as other branches of female labor seem to have as many employed in them as can well be accommodated. What, therefore, can be done for this unfortunate class of our population?
"Your committee believe that the time is rapidly ap- proaching when the male clerks in most of our retail stores will be exchanged for females, who are so well adapted to fill such positions. Already very many em- ployers have secured the services of this class and feel well satisfied with the exchange.
"That they may be qualified in every respect to discharge faithfully and successfully the duties apper-
* New York Board of Education. Annual Report, 1858, p. 189.
39
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
taining to these positions, it is necessary that they should possess a thorough knowledge of accounts and some familiarity with the elements of bookkeeping. Our evening schools are competent to impart this desirable information, and we urge upon all who wish to obtain situations as clerks in stores to avail themselves of the facilities which are now so favorably presented to them."
More than fifty years have elapsed since these words were written, and few of the thousands of girls in the sewing trades in New York now know that the rapid, whirring machines which need so many operators ever threw any women out of work, and the long lines of salesgirls in the huge modern department stores would be even more surprised to hear that the board of education had once offered courses to enable displaced seamstresses to fill the positions of male retail clerks, in the hope that some day many more women might find that occupation open to them.
That wish of 1858 has been amply fulfilled. The census of 1900 told us that in the house-to-house canvass, enumerators found 65,318 girls in Greater New York employed in "trade and transporta- tion," which includes salesgirls, bookkeepers, ste- nographers, office clerks, and all others engaged in the business of selling or transporting goods after their manufacture. But these occupations do not appear to have taken the place of sewing or any other form of manual work, for the same census reported 132,535 women in manufacturing estab- lishments. Of the 169,584 other wage-earning
40
OCCUPATIONS
women in New York, 146,722 were in domestic or personal service, 22,422 in professional service, and 440 in agriculture.*
CHANGES IN WOMEN'S WORK
Technical and cumbersome as the census classi- fication may seem, in its setting of many statistics, it is merely an official description of the modern way of satisfying our social and physical needs. Fundamentally, not the needs but the methods of supplying them have changed. Food, shelter, clothing, and social intercourse, — these are the necessities of life for which men and women have always labored. For modern workers, however, the terms of the day's labor are different. Today we have a long list of occupations grouped under five large heads: mining and agriculture, represent- ing the extraction of raw food and materials from the earth; manufacturing and mechanical pursuits, including all the tasks of preparing for sale in- numerable articles of food, shelter, clothing, and luxury; trade and transportation, with all the diverse schemes of organization necessary to trans- port goods from place to place, and finally, to consummate a sale; professional service, which corresponds roughly to the need which we have defined as social intercourse, including law and government, science, medicine, art, and teaching; and, fifth in these large groups of occupations,
* Twelfth United States Census, 1900. Special Reports, Occupa- tions, p. 640. For figures from the census of 1910, see this volume,
;>. 18}.
41
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
domestic and personal service, embracing alike the service rendered in households by maids to mis- tresses and the more highly organized tasks of cooks and waiters in a hotel, of hairdressers and manicures, office cleaners, and janitors.
This last group brings into prominence the fact that the economic world is still in a state of transition. The methods of performing many tasks are highly organized; while others are still carried on in private households. A great deal of work is paid for under the wage system; while often the worker spends her energies in meeting her own needs or the needs of her family, and receives no money in return. Doubtless many of the even- ing school pupils whom we have classified as non- wage-earners were productive workers at home in tasks not paid for in wages. In such a transi- tional period it is natural that public opinion should grow confused on the subject of women's work. Her employment outside the home is spoken of as a new and abnormal phenomenon, while certain tasks, like domestic service, or dressmaking, or millinery have always been considered her normal occupation, even when carried on elsewhere than in the home. Perhaps this confusion about wom- an's sphere is due to an inability to see the process of change and to face the fact that women are ex- periencing not an enlargement of their field of work but a violent revolution in the method of doing it.
This process has gone on for the most part un- noticed, and not until millions of women had
42
OCCUPATIONS
joined the ranks of wage-earners in this country did the general public begin to realize its portentous character. Even now, in many a city, the majority of the population have but a vague impression of the nature and conditions of industries carried on at their very doors. It was in 1907 that "the first general survey of the women-employing trades of an American city" was undertaken.* Curiously enough, Pittsburgh was the scene of the investiga- tion— a fact which emphasizes the difference be- tween actual conditions and the public impression of them. For the industries of Pittsburgh, even in the minds of Pittsburghers, are not of the feminine type, and as Miss Butler points out in the opening sentences of her report: " Pittsburgh as a workshop for women seems a contradiction in terms." Mines and steel works, the digging of crude ores, and the fusing and forging of them,t do not require wom- en's work. In the city in which these tremendous operations compel attention, it is only the thought- ful and observant who are aware of the more humdrum work necessary to satisfy the needs of a large laboring population. It is precisely be- cause the work of women is often concerned with needs which are not new and therefore are taken
* The investigation was made by Miss Elizabeth B. Butler as part of the Pittsburgh Survey, under the direction of Charities Publication Committee with the co-operation of the Russell Sage Foundation. The results were published as the first volume of the Pittsburgh Sur- vey Series, — Butler, Elizabeth B.: Women and the Trades. Russell Sage Foundation Publication. New York, Charities Publication Committee, 1910.
t Yet the women chain makers of England set up little forges in their own homes, and there hammer out the links.
43
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
for granted without further thought, that the changed conditions of their work are so little understood.
The women workers in the city of mines and steel works were employed in food production, in the stogy industry, — fulfilling the workingman's wish for a cheap smoke, — in the needle trades, in saleswork, in telephone operating, and in the clean- ing industries, — important in a city of smoke and grime. Nothing very unusual or very dramatic appears in that enumeration, but interest is aroused when we are given more details of the picture. It is not commonplace to find "women mold- ing metals, shaping lamps, and making glass," "girl thread makers at the screw and bolt works," and "strong-armed women who fashion sand cores in foundries planned like Alberich's smithy in the underworld." Even "the hill-dwelling wives of the miners" had not escaped the modern dem.ands of industry, since their wooden shacks had become sweatshops to which the garment factories sent out work to be done for a pittance.
Slavic girls and women, sisters and wives of mill workers, are to be found in canneries and cracker factories where they "pack or fill jars at high speed." In tin plate mills they "open the sheets of tin, still warm from the furnaces. They screw nuts or bolts by a fish-oil process, and carry heavy trays in foundries where they have displaced men. They are the packers in glass factories, the riveters and foot-press operators in lamp works."
44
OCCUPATIONS
Chivalry has not made easy the way of women in industry, nor have the Hghter tasks always been accorded to them. Neither have they met with fair play in the terms of the labor bargain. Miss Butler thus sums up her picture: " Many of these women are put to work at wages below the cost of subsistence, for hours longer than the measure of their strength, in buildings and at ill-constructed machines which can not but injure their health, and at processes which must handicap heavily the development of both mind and body."*
What Miss Butler did that year for Pittsburgh the Department of Commerce and Labor was beginning in 1907 to undertake for the whole country with its 5,000,000 women workers. Nine- teen volumes contain the findings submitted to Congress.! They show that the condition in Pitts- burgh is essentially characteristic of many other communities. The government investigators fol- lowed women into the glass factories of 17 states and watched them sorting and packing the ware, chipping and filing the necks of bottles, glazing, etching, and decorating glassware. They found them in the cotton mills tending the big machines and engaged in a variety of minute processes, in air so heated and moist as to be good for the cotton but bad for the women and children employed. In the metal trades of 1 3 states women were impor-
* Butler, op. cit., p. 28.
t Report on the Condition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United States. Senate Document No. 645.
45
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
tant factors. They fed bolts into the presses "at considerable risk" of injury to their hands. As in Pittsburgh, so in many other cities, girls were mak- ing the sand cores for the casting of brassware. In the manufacture of firearms and ammunition they were polishing gun barrels and assembling locks. They were tending machines for making tin cans, an industry in which, the report says, the "accident rate among women is very high."
These are but stray illustrations of the material presented in this nineteen-volume government re- port. The material itself is but a series of views of women at work in certain occupations and com- munities selected for investigation. No large city was completely surveyed. Many industrial com- munities were omitted for lack of time and money to study them.
DIVERSE OCCUPATIONS AMONG EVENING SCHOOL
PUPILS
That New York City is a mirror for the indus- tries of the whole country is vividly demonstrated in the variety of occupations represented in the evening schools. As already shown in the first chapter, of the 13,141 girls who filled record cards in the investigation on which these chap- ters are based, 4,519 were employed in manu- facturing, 4,505 in trade and transportation, 193 in professions, and 520 in domestic and personal service.
So diverse are the occupations within these dif-
46
OCCUPATIONS
ferent groups that the mere naming and classifying of them presents a problem which is at present puzzling even experts in the census bureau of the United States, Manufacturing, for example, de- fies attempts at classification. Shall workers be grouped according to the actual process in which they are engaged, or according to the product of their industry? If we count all who take part in the making of dresses as dressmakers, we have the girl who cuts out embroidery in a large wholesale factory for ready-made clothing counted with the draper in a fashionable Fifth Avenue custom shop. Such a classification would throw light on the num- ber engaged in the dressmaking industry, but tell us nothing about the relative skill or position of the workers. On the other hand, if we should count all machine operators together, we should have those who make bathing suits or shirtwaists, for instance, classed with those who sew straw hats, or flour sacks, or window shades; and the number would not be significant either as indicating those engaged in separate industries, or as an enumera- tion of a group of workers encountering similar conditions. Furthermore, any such plan would make comparison with official figures impossible, as hitherto the basis of classification by the census and the New York State Department of Labor has been the product, not the process. In grouping the evening school pupils according to their occu- pations, we have, therefore, classified those in manufacturing according to the product, following
47
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
as closely as possible the grouping adopted by the New York State Department of Labor.*
The women who were counted as employed in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits were really at work in nine large industries with 82 distinct divisions. When we realize that these 82 minor divisions include such important separate trades as shirtwaist making and bookbinding, and that within these trades are many distinct occupations, we begin to realize that the field of women's work in New York is neither simple nor homogeneous. The nine large manufacturing groupsf represented among the occupations of girls in evening schools are shown in Table 7.
Thus women who attend the evening schools in New York are employed not only in sewing, but in printing and in the manufacture of paper goods. They are not only milliners and artificial flower makers, but workers in the preparation of con- fectionery, food, tobacco, and bakery products, and in the manufacture of goods of fur, leather, rubber, and hair. In the textile industries they are employed in making articles of flax, hemp, or jute, as well as in fashioning braids, passementerie, laces, or veils. The group called "other occupa- tions in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits" includes work on stone, glass, metal, and precious stones, electrical supplies, articles of wood and
* New York State Department of Labor. Annual Report on Fac- tory Inspection, 1910, pp. 361-374.
t The 82 minor subdivisions of these large industries are shown in Appendix I, Table D, p. 193.
48
Lh.VKNING BoNNAZ EMBROIDtRV
OCCUPATIONS
cork, paints and dyes, drugs and chemicals, soap and perfumery, and lamp shades. Here also are counted the laundry workers and the girls em- ployed in establishments for cleaning and dyeing.
TABLE 7. — OCCUPATIONS OF WOMEN ATTENDING PUBLIC EVENING SCHOOLS, EMPLOYED IN MANUFACTURING AND MECHANICAL PUR- SUITS, BY MAIN GROUPS OF OCCUPATIONS^
|
Occupation |
WOMEN EMPLOYED AS SPECIFIED |
|
|
Number |
Per cent |
|
|
Artificial flower and feather making . Making of men's clothing .... Making of women's clothing Work on confectionery, food, tobacco, etc. Work on fur, leather, rubber, hair goods, etc. Millinery Miscellaneous needlework .... Work on printing and paper goods . Work on textiles Other occupations in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits |
292 21 1 1,928 234 344 263 232 4>7 293 305 |
6.5 4-7 42.7 5-2 7.6 5.8 5 ' 9.2 6.5 6.7 |
|
Total |
4.5«9 |
lOO.O |
Data appear in detail in Appendix I, Table D, p. 193.
The list of these industries is based on the girls' answers to the question: What is the business of the firm for which you now work? Their answers to the question: What work do you do for this firm? tell the story of subdivided tasks. Roughly, these latter classify into tasks of supervision and management ; into major processes of manufacture ; minor processes of preparation of goods for sale,
49
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
such as labeling or counting, and odd jobs about the workrooms. For example, in the manufacture of bakery products they did not cook, as some who are unfamiliar with a modern bakery might ex- pect, but they merely packed and labeled, minor tasks which fall to the lot of women in many large industries. In neckwear factories they were designers, operators, trimmers, bow makers, plaiters, lace-runners, preparers, finishers, embroid- erers, packers, and floor girls. In shoe making they reported such diverse processes as perforat- ing, buttonhole operating, back strapping, making linings, fitting vamps, marking leather, cleaning, beading, and the inevitable marking and labeling, wrapping and packing. In the tobacco industry they made and stamped cigars; stripped, bunched and rolled cigarettes; fed cigarette machines, boxed, and counted coupons.
This outline of manufacturing and mechanical pursuits does not exhaust the list of women's occupations. Obviously, after goods have been manufactured they must be sold. It will be re- called that the census calls this process, with all its ramifications, "trade and transportation." Table 8 shows the subdivisions in which evening school girls were at work.
The work of the evening school girls in this group includes stenography, bookkeeping and other clerical work, telephone operating, telegraphy, operating adding machines, proofreading, compil- ing statistics in manufacturing establishments,
50
OCCUPATIONS
serving as cashiers in grocery or butcher shops, buying, shopping, and taking part in various proc- esses of selHng goods over the counters of stores.
TABLE 8. — OCCUPATIONS OF WOMEN ATTENDING
PUBLIC EVENING SCHOOLS AND EMPLOYED
IN TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION
Occupation
WOMEN EMPLOYED AS SPECIFIED
Stenographers and bookkeepers .
Clerks and office workers ....
Employes in stores including saleswomen, packers, cashiers, stock keepers, mes- sengers, etc
Stock keepers (other than in department stores)
Cashiers (other than in department stores)
Buyers, shoppers
Proofreaders, copy holders ....
Miscellaneous (collectors, agents, etc.)
Total
The largest group of wage-earning girls in New York is in domestic and personal service, but among evening school pupils representatives of this group are few in numbers. Principals of evening schools cite cases of girls employed in household work who have not been able to continue in classes, even when they made a beginning. The nature of their tasks keeps them on duty longer hours than are required of workers in any factories, stores, or offices in New York. In view of this fact, not the absence of domestic workers, but the number of
51
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
them in night schools is surprising. But the group of evening school pupils employed in "domestic and personal service" consists not only of maids, cooks, waitresses, and laundresses in private families, but also of office cleaners, janitresses, hairdressers, masseuses, trained nurses, and com- panions, as well as employes in hotels, restaurants, diet kitchens, and institutions. One pupil was an embalmer in an undertaking establishment.
Finally, there is the small group of professional workers who attend evening classes. These are teachers, governesses, musicians, librarians, inter- preters, dietitians, theatrical employes, models, statisticians, and investigators.
A comparison of the occupational grouping of girls enrolled in evening schools with the census figures showing the occupational grouping of work- ing women in the whole population, is necessary to afford a basis for judging whether the public even- ing schools attract typical working women, and whether the material which we have gathered from the schools may safely be regarded as indicative of the conditions of women's work in New York. The results of this comparison are shown in the accompanying diagram.
Domestic and personal service and the profes- sions are not, as we have indicated, widely repre- sented in the evening schools. These draw their pupils chiefly from the groups engaged in manufac- turing and mechanical pursuits, and trade and transportation, with a larger proportion from
52
OCCUPATIONS
Professional service, 6 1
Domestic and personal service, 39.9
Manufactur- ing. 36.1
Trade and transportation, 17.8
General Population, 1900
Domestic and personal service, 5.3
)fi Professional service, ^^— 2.0
Trade and transporta- tion, 46.3
Manufac- turing, 46.4
Evening Schools, 1910-11
Diagram I. — Percentage Distribution, by Main Groups of Occupations, of the 367,437 Women Gainfully Employed IN New York City as Shown by the Census of 1900, and of 9.737 Women in Public Evening Schools in 1910-11
* Of the 367,437 women gainfully employed, 440, or i per cent, were employed in "agriculture." This proportion is too small to be represented on the diagram. For figures from the census of 1910, see this volume, p. 183.
53
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
trade and transportation than the actual numerical importance of this group among women's occupa- tions in New York would warrant. Perhaps it is natural to suppose that girls engaged in clerical work and similar employment would be found in evening schools in larger proportion than the factory workers, since our evening schools, like our day schools, have placed their emphasis on clerical rather than on manual work. Moreover, as will be seen in the following chapter, the hours in offices are shorter than are those in factories.
Within the manufacturing group in evening classes we have noted representatives of every important trade listed in the census as employing women. Furthermore, the relative importance of the various trades is much the same in evening schools as in the general population. We must make allowance here for the difficulties of classifi- cation and the probable differences between our grouping and that of the census. Of the data re- corded in the census, the occupational statistics secured from the house-to-house canvass bear the closest resemblance to our investigation in method of inquiry, since both are based on the worker's answer to the general question: What is your occupation? Using these occupational statistics from the census, therefore, and ranking the trade according to its numerical importance among all women employed in this group in 1900 in New York City, and among evening school pupils in 1910, we have the results shown in Table 9.
54
OCCUPATIONS
TABLE 9.— PRINCIPAL OCCUPATIONS IN MANUFAC- TURING AND MECHANICAL PURSUITS, RANKED AC- CORDING TO NUMBER OF WOMEN EMPLOYED, FOR WOMEN ATTENDING PUBLIC EVENING SCHOOLS, 1910-1911, AND FOR ALL WOMEN IN NEW YORK CITY IN 1900
|
RANK OF EACH SPECIFIED |
||
|
OCCUPATION ACCORDING TO |
||
|
NUMBER OF |
WOMEN EM- |
|
|
PLOYED, FOR |
||
|
Occupation |
||
|
Women |
||
|
attending |
||
|
public |
All women* |
|
|
evening |
||
|
schools |
||
|
Dressmakers and seamstresses |
I |
|
|
Tailoresses on men's and women's |
||
|
clothing, including vest makers |
2 |
2 |
|
Artificial flower and feather makers . |
3 |
10 |
|
Milliners |
4 |
3 |
|
Embroidery and lace makers |
5 |
7 |
|
Bookbinders |
6 |
5 |
|
Paper box makers .... |
7 |
6 |
|
Makers of women's neckwear |
8 |
b |
|
Tobacco and cigar factory operatives. |
9 |
4 |
|
Confectioners |
ID |
12 |
|
Workers on knit goods |
II |
26 |
|
Workers on silk goods .... |
12 |
8 |
|
Workers on hair goods |
13 |
b |
|
Metal workers |
14 |
^^b |
|
Shirt, collar, and cuff makers |
15 |
II |
^ Based on figures in Twelfth United States Census, 190O. Special Reports, Occupations, p. 640.
^ Not listed separately in the census.
The fact that the census computation for New York City is of a period ten years prior to our in-
55
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
vestigation* probably accounts for some of the differences in the rank of occupations which may have grown rapidly in the past decade. Three of the groups of trades named in the evening school records are not separately mentioned in the census, — women's neckwear, hair goods, and metal work, — so comparison is not possible in these cases. Cigar making as an occupation ranks ninth in the evening schools and fourth in New York City. In the case of such a trade a reasonable explana- tion of the small attendance of workers may be found in the long hours commonly prevailing in the industry, and the unhealthy conditions in the workrooms. Thus the proportion from this trade would be lower than among the working population of the city. If, however, we compare the rank of the more important groups, — dress- makers and seamstresses, tailoresses, milliners, bookbinders, paper box makers, and confectionery workers, — the similarity to the census is so marked as to point to the conclusion that on the whole from the point of view of occupational grouping the evening school pupils are representative of women engaged in manufacturing in the city.
This belief has been strengthened by the de- scription of the processes of work carried on by these girls in their trades, and the guide which this gives us in estimating their rank in their
* Early in 1914, the occupational statistics gathered in the census of 191 o were not yet available, because of the inadequate appropria- tion made by Congress for the necessary work of tabulating and publishing census material.
56
OCCUPATIONS
occupations. It has been seen that workers of various degrees of skill and lack of skill are repre- sented. For example, from "owner" of a dress- making establishment to "learner," all grades of the industry appear to be included. In view of all these considerations, it seems safe to say that the industrial conditions described by the girls in thie evening schools whose occupations brought them under the classification of workers in trade and transportation, and in manufacturing and me- chanical pursuits are fairly representative of the industrial conditions of wage-earning women in the largest industrial center in the United States.
FACTS SIGNIFICANT FOR THE SCHOOLS
For educators who wish to equip girls for in- dustry the facts obtained on these 13,000 cards are significant as giving a picture of the kind of work ahead of the thousands of young girls who leave school every year to go to work. Perhaps the most important fact to note is that these even- ing school girls were employed in at least one proc- ess in all but three of the 12 large industrial groups listed by the New York State Department of Labor:* and these three were the manufacture of paper and pulp, as distinct from the making of goods of paper; the building industry; and occupa- tions concerned with supplying water, light, and power in cities and villages. As a corollary, it is
* New York State Department of Labor. Annual Report on Fac- tory Inspection, i^io, p. 361.
57
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
obvious that industrial education for women can not be confined to the so-called traditional pursuits of women, such as sewing and cooking, if the move- ment is to touch the real problems of wage-earning women.
Important also for the schools is a fact which stands out conspicuously in a study of these rec- ords,— that apparently work is so organized that in innumerable processes no skill is required. If it be true that the thing which is lacking is not merely a skilled worker, but an opportunity to use skill, then the schools have a larger problem than that of giving technical efficiency to their pupils. In some way they must supply what the industry does not demand, such an all-round development as shall keep alive the general intelligence of the worker. It seems unfair to heap criticism upon the schools for not equipping wage-earners for work, when the larger task of equipping boys and girls for citizenship may demand a training quite un- related to workshop requirements; a training, in- deed, which shall offset the influence of the present organization of work.
If the details which we have cited as illustrative of conditions seem to compose a dreary picture, it should be remembered that such is the sum total of the impression made by recent reports, especially those issued by the government. Furthermore, these are the facts which we must face, if condi- tions are to be improved. Of the many facts which give investigators courage to believe that
58
OCCUPATIONS
great changes for the welfare of the workers are about to be accomplished in industry, three may be cited: First, in every industry one finds pioneer employers who are proving day by day the com- plete practicability of justice, fair play, and health- ful surroundings for the workers. To cite one instance, the government investigators described the contrast between two factories producing essentially the same class of hardware goods. In one the accident rate among women was 17 per 100 workers, while in the other, with its more careful covering of revolving belts and its safety attachments on stamping presses, the correspond- ing rate was only 1.4 per cent.* Second, we have in increasing numbers investigations like that of the government, affording a basis for improvement through a better conscience in industry itself, and through an aroused public opinion, acting through such established forces as labor legislation and public schools. Third, the fact that women have been tried and not found wanting in so great a variety of occupations indicates that we have in them a great potential force for the material service of humanity, if only we can so change conditions as to give free play to that force.
In New York City, of every four women one is a wage-earner; of every four wage-earners one is a woman; and of every 10 women in the population
* Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United States. Vol. XI, Employment of Women in the Metal Trades, p. 75. United States Senate Document No. 645.
59
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
one works in a factory.* We have traveled a long distance from the days of self-sufficient households, in which all the necessary tasks of feeding, shelter- ing, and clothing the family were carried on at home. The change has profoundly influenced women's lives. The hope of fifty years ago that more occupations might be open to them has been fulfilled. In many and diverse ways they are seek- ing to earn a livelihood for themselves and often for others. How to keep the conditions of their work from being harmful to them, and subse- quently to the race, — this is the profoundly im- portant matter with which the community must concern itself.
* The total number of females ten years of age and over in the city in 1900 was 1,356,737. Of these, 367,437 (or one in four) were gain- fully employed, and 132,535 (or one in ten) were in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits. The total number of persons, male and female, ten years of age and over, gainfully employed, was 1,469,908; and of this number, one in four was a woman. Twelfth United States Census, 1900. Population, Part 11, p. 138; and Occupations, pp. 638 ff. For figures from the census of 1910, see this volume, p. 183.
60
CHAPTER III DAILY HOURS OF LABOR
WITH the increasingly complex organiza- tion of commerce and industry, the length of the working day has become an important labor problem. To shorten it, men and women have gone out on strike at a cost to them in loss of wages which can never be counted. Leg- islators have passed laws and courts have handed down decisions as to the right of the state to restrict the length of duration of the day's labor. Reformers have pointed out the social consequences of violat- ing the wage-earners' right to leisure. Finally, physiologists have added the word of science that fatigue is a menace to physical well-being, a poison- ing of tissue which can be repaired only by rest taken frequently enough to avoid exhaustion.* Meanwhile, a few who argue against the legislative control of hours of labor point to the good old days when the whole household worked from early dawn until after sundown without interference.
These opponents of the new movement forget how greatly time has altered conditions. Speciali- zation has produced monotony. Speed is a new
* See Goldmark, Josephine: Fatigue and Eflfidency, p. 13. Rus- sell Sage Foundation Publication. New York, Charities Publication Committee, 1912.
61
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
requirement which has completely changed the life of the worker. Machine tenders and hand workers alike find that their efficiency is measured in terms of rapidity. The movement toward shortening the day's labor is an effort to counteract the ill effects of monotony and speed by giving nature a few more hours in every twenty-four to repair the human machinery. It must never be forgotten in a discussion of evening classes that they represent the wage-earner's use of leisure hours, when mind and body alike must be rested and refreshed lest the net result of the day be a loss of physical vitality. The conditions of the day's work and the length of time spent in the workshop actually determine the results to be attained in the class room at night. The most efficient teacher in an evening class is the one who understands the effect of fatigue on mind and body, and can so stimulate attention and inspire interest as to refresh rather than to tire her pupils. To know the facts about hours is obviously important for the evening schools. It is even more important that the community should understand the condi- tions as they are reflected in the evening classes, so that greater progress may be made in shortening the hours of labor during the day.
A sixteen-year-old girl in a Brooklyn evening school reported that she worked in a box factory from 7:15 in the morning until 5:30 at night, with a half hour for lunch at noon. Her actual working hours were nine and three-quarters a day. She
62
DAILY HOURS OF LABOR
was Studying stenography and typewriting four evenings a week. Another girl sixteen years old worked in a stocking factory from 7 a.m. until
7 p.m., with a half hour for lunch, going to night school to learn dressmaking after a workday of eleven and one-half hours. A cashier in a store worked from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., with an hour at noon, and studied typewriting and English at night. A machine operator in a silk mill worked from 7 to 6 with three-quarters of an hour at noon. In trades like flower and feather making, in which the girls take work home to do at night, the day's work is often continued after evening school.
Moreover, to the hours of labor in the workroom must be added the time spent in transit, if we would gain any conception of the energy needed to attend night classes. This is the way one girl, a floor hand in a petticoat factory, spent her time. She is typical of many others: Her hours were from
8 a.m. to 6 p.m. She left home at 7:10 a.m. In the morning and evening she swept and dusted the workroom. During the day she ran errands in the factory, except in the half hour allowed for lunch. She reached home for dinner at 6:45 p.m., leaving for night school at 7:15. She returned home again at 10:15. Thus, during four days in the week, she had no leisure time between 7 : 10 a.m. and 10:15 p.m. In November she dropped out of the class. Is it any wonder that school authorities fmd the problem of irregular attendance a baffling one?
63
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
A Russian girl, living in East 121st Street, worked from 8 to 6 every day in a millinery shop in Fifth Avenue near Thirty-sixth Street. She reached home at 7 o'clock and it was impossible to have dinner and to reach the evening school in io6th Street by 7:30. After being late several times she gave up the effort to attend. The year before she had succeeded in arriving on time by going straight to school from work, and having dinner when she reached home at 10 p.m.
A group of more than a hundred of these evening school pupils who were not yet sixteen years old were interviewed at home by our investigators. Among other questions, they were asked how many hours a day they spent away from home, including time in the workroom, in transit to and from work, and in evening classes. Of 104 questioned on these points, 62 spent an hour or more in transit and only eight spent less than a half hour going to and from work. One hundred were in the work- room nine hours or longer, including the lunch period, and 46 did not reach home until half past six or later in the evening, 34 arriving between 6 and 6:30, and only 24 before 6 o'clock. In work, transit, and evening school four days a week, none of these fourteen- and fifteen-year-old girls spent less than ten hours a day, only seven spent less than twelve hours, while 95 were away from home twelve to fifteen hours of the twenty-four. Two others exceeded even that number. These were all mere children who ought to have been
64
DAILY HOURS OF LABOR
spending several hours in the twenty-four in play and healthful exercise. Yet some of them suc- ceeded in taking a full course in evening school.
Many others, a little older than these children, showed similar powers of endurance. For instance, a packer, sixteen years old, in a department store worked from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and on Saturdays until 1 1 at night, fifty-nine and one-half hours a week, yet she was still in evening high school at the close of the session in May. Furthermore, at Christmas time when the evening schools were closed, she endured the fatigue of working in the store until 1 1 p.m. every night, thus prolonging the week from fifty-nine and one-half to eighty-two hours. Another, a salesgirl, sixteen years old, employed in a retail store, worked seventy-eight hours in the week before Christmas. On Saturday night of that week she reached home at 12:15 ^-"i- She was studying bookkeeping, in the hope of getting a better position.
Detailed information of this kind can be secured only through personal interviews with the girls at home. The facts given on the record cards were answers to three questions: What time do you begin work in the morning? How many minutes do you have for lunch at noon? What time do you stop work in the evening? We did not ask for a statement about overtime, since exact informa- tion about so complicated a subject would have been difficult to secure in an investigation based, as this one was, on written reports. Nor were
65
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
the Saturday hours recorded, and therefore the data do not show the length of the working week. The information most significant for the evening schools is the time of stopping work in the evening and the hours of labor on the first four days of the week, when the evening classes are in session.
The hours of work of women in domestic and personal service and in professions were not tabu- lated. It was evident from the records that the working day in domestic and personal service was so indefinite and so varied that accurate statistics could not be compiled. In the professions the number of women was small and their hours varied too much from group to group to make the com- bined data significant. The tables, therefore, show the hours of work in the two large occupa- tional groups — manufacturing and mechanical pursuits, and trade and transportation.
Before the facts about hours of labor in manufac- turing are accepted as showing present conditions, a word of caution is necessary. In 191 2, a year after the investigation was made, a new law went into effect reducing the hours of work of women sixteen years of age and over in factories to fifty- four in a week and nine in a day. The new law, however, permitted under certain conditions a day of ten hours provided the week did not exceed fifty-four hours.* This has resulted in shortening
* The law in effect when the investigation was made limited the working week in factories to sixty and the day to ten hours, with the p)ossibility of extending the day to twelve hours, provided the week did not exceed sixty hours.
66
DAILY HOURS OF LABOR
the day for women in those trades in which the normal schedule was more than ten hours. Be- cause of this change in the law, an investigation of the hours of labor of evening school pupils made after 191 2 would probably give different results from that made in 191 1. Doubtless fewer women would be found working ten hours or longer in factories. The law regulating hours of work in stores was changed in the spring of 1914, provid- ing for a nine-hour day and a fifty-four-hour week.* The same law limited the work of children under sixteen to eight hours a day, forty-eight a week, and prohibited their employment at any time ex- cept between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. If these changes in the law be kept in mind, it is safe to regard the records of hours of labor of evening school pupils as representative in the main of conditions in 191 3. The daily hours reported by these working girls in 1910-1 1 are shown in Table 10.
The table shows a marked difference between the two occupational groups — manufacturing and me- chanical pursuits, and trade and transportation. In manufacturing, only 15 per cent worked eight hours or less, as compared with 52 per cent in trade and transportation. That the better showing in the latter group, including many occupations
* The law in effect when the investigation was made limited the work of girls between sixteen and twenty-one years of age in mer- cantile establishments, that is, stores, to sixty hours a week and ten hours a day, except that in order to make one shorter day the hours might be lengthened on five days of the week. The total must not exceed sixty hours. In 19 13 the law was extended to protect women of twenty-one years or older. In 1914, the hours were reduced.
67
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
TABLE 10.— NORMAL DAILY HOURS OF WORK OF WOMEN ATTENDING PUBLIC EVENING SCHOOLS, EMPLOYED IN MANUFACTURING AND MECHANICAL PUR- SUITS AND IN TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION ^^
Daily hours of work*^
Less than 8 hours
8 hours . . . . More than 8 hours and less
than 9 hours .
9 hours and less than lo hours . . . .
10 hours or more
Total
WOMEN WORKING SPECIFIED HOURS IN
Manufacturing
and mechanical
pursuits
Number
129 401
579
1,950 411
3,470'
Per cent
3-7 II. 6
16.7
56.2 II. 8
100. o
Trade and trans- portation
Number
1.441 646
1,124
760
75
,046b
Percent
35-6 16.0
27.8
18.8 1.8
1 00.0
^ Data for women employed in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits appear in detail in Appendix I, Table F, p. 197.
b Data relative to hours of work have been tabulated only for women who were employed outside the home at date of investigation. Of the 4,519 who were or had been employed in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits, 190 were unemployed, three worked at home, 658 were in an evening school for which the data as to hours were found to be inaccurate and were not tabulated, and of the 3,668 remain- ing, 198 did not supply information. Of the 4,505 in trade and transportation, 317 were unemployed, one worked at home, 22 were in an evening school for which the data were not tabulated, and of the 4,165 remaining, 119 did not supply information.
'^ This table shows hours on first five days of the week, not on Saturdays.
besides sales work, is not an indication of short hours in New York stores is shown by a separate tabulation of hours in sales work.* Only 4.5 per cent of the girls in stores worked eight hours or less, while 50 per cent worked between eight and a
* See Appendix I, Table J, p. 201.
68
DAILY HOURS OF LABOR
half and nine hours a day, 36 per cent between nine and nine and a half, 7.5 per cent working nine and a half hours or longer, and the remaining 2 per cent working more than eight and less than eight and a half hours a day. Of the workers in factories, 68 per cent had a working day of nine hours or more, while only 12 per cent had the much talked of eight-hour day, which has for so long been the goal of the trade unionists. Slight- ly less than 4 per cent reported a working day of less than eight hours in factories.*
In measuring the length of the day only the actual time of work is counted. The lunch period is deducted. From the hour a girl enters the work place in the morning until she leaves at night is thus a longer time than these data show. The time of beginning and leaving work is shown in Table 1 1 .
To watch the crowds as they walk along the streets in New York every morning on their way to work is to have an interesting object lesson. The earliest of all are the factory girls, as shown by Table 11. Eighty-four out of every 100 of the evening school girls in this group have begun work before 8:30 a.m., and 23 of every hundred must
* Data appear in detail in Appendix I, Table F, p. 197. These figures about hours of work are especially important as the informa- tion can not be secured from official reports. The United States census enumerators do not collect facts about hours. The labor department of New York State does not report the hours of work of women separately but includes men in the groups. Moreover, the hours in trade and transportation are not stated in the reports of the labor department for either men or women. The federal bureau of labor now collects and publishes facts about hours but not for all industries nor at regular intervals.
69
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
TABLE 11.— HOURS OF BEGINNING AND LEAVING WORK IN MANUFACTURING AND MECHANICAL PURSUITS AND IN TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION, FOR WOM- EN ATTENDING PUBLIC EVENING SCHOOLS^
|
WOMEN BEGINNING OR LEAVING WORK AT SPECIFIED TIME IN |
||||
|
Hour of beginning and leaving work'' |
Manufacturing and mechanical pursuits |
Trade and trans- portation |
||
|
Number |
Percent |
Number |
Per cent |
|
|
Hour of beginning work: Before 7 a.m. . 7 a.m. and before 8 a.m. . 8 a.m. and before 8.30 a.m. 8.30 a.m. and before 9 a.m. 9 a.m. or after |
3 814 2,201 422 117 |
. I 22.9 61.8 II. 9 3-3 |
3 115 1,036 1,442 1.498 |
.1 2.8 25-7 350 36.4 |
|
Total reporting . |
3.557* |
100. 0 |
4-114* |
1 00.0 |
|
Hour of leaving work: Before 5 p.m. . 5 p.m. and before 5.30 p.m. 5.30 p.m. and before 6 p.m. 6 p.m After 6 p.m. |
75 595 1,090 1.723 86 |
2. 1 16.7 30.5 48.3 2-4 |
168 1.075 1,171 1. 512 179 |
4« 26.2 28.5 36.8 4 4 |
|
Total reporting |
3.569* |
100. 0 |
4.103* |
100.0 |
* Data relative to hours of work have been tabulated only for women who were employed outside the home at date of investigation. Of the 4,519 who were employed in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits, 190 were temporarily unemployed, three worked at home, 658 were in an evening school for which the data as to hours were found to be inaccurate and were not tabulated, and of the 3,668 re- maining, 1 1 1 did not state hour of beginning work and 99 did not state hour of leaving. Of the 4,505 in trade and transportation, 317 were unemployed, one worked at home, 22 were in an evening school for which the data were not tabulated, and of the 4,163 remaining, 51 did not state hour of beginning work and 60 did not state hour of leaving.
^ This table shows hour of leaving work on first five days of the week, not on Saturdays.
70
DAILY HOURS OF LABOR
be in the workroom before eight. Then come the girls who work in offices and stores, of whom 35 per cent must be on duty some time between 8:30 and 9 a.m., while 36 per cent, chiefly clerical workers and stenographers, begin at 9 or a little later.*
In the evening the order of procession is reversed, as the table shows. Of the girls employed in manu- facturing, only 19 per cent, as compared with 30 per cent in trade and transportation, stopped work be- fore half past five. Knowing how long a journey in crowded subway or elevated trains many of these girls must take before reaching home, one realizes the significance of the fact that 48 per cent of those employed in factories and 37 per cent in trade and transportation did not leave work until 6 o'clock. A small number in each group worked even later.
Within these large groups, however, are included many different occupations, with widely different schedules of hours. Consider, for example, the main divisions of manufacturing pursuits.f The proportion working nine hours or more daily varied from 43 per cent in millinery to 68 per cent in the manufacture of textiles, 75 per cent in the men's clothing trade, and 82 per cent in the making of women's clothing. Similar differences are found among the different pursuits grouped together as trade and transportation. This means that as the occupational grouping varies from
* For statistics of noon recess, see Appendix I, Table E, p. 196. t See Appendix I, Table F, p. 197.
71
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
school to school and class to class, no two schools and, indeed, no two classes have exactly the same labor conditions with which to reckon. For ex- ample, in an evening high school in the Bronx, where 219 women and girls were employed in trade and transportation, as compared with 47 in manu- facturing, only 57 of the total of 266 in these two groups, or 2 1 per cent, worked nine hours or more a day, while in an elementary school in Avenue A, where the numbers in trade and transportation and in manufacturing were almost exactly equal, 185 of a total of 373, or 50 per cent, worked nine hours or longer in a day. On the other hand, it is probable that the girls in the Bronx traveled farther to their work, thus counteracting the bene- fit of shorter hours at work. In general, how- ever, the problem of the long day's labor is most serious in the schools in which factory girls pre- dominate.
In manufacturing industries, the proportion working eight hours depends in part upon the proportion under sixteen years of age. Because of the eight-hour law for children under sixteen in factories, a group of evening school pupils in a given occupation with a large proportion of children under sixteen among them will probably show a larger proportion working eight hours or less than would be typical of the same occupation, if all its workers had been included in the inquiry. For example, of the girls in evening schools who were employed in flower or feather factories, 36 per cent
72
Stenographers Practicing Speed
Recreation for Juniors in Evening School
DAILY HOURS OF LABOR
were under sixteen,* as compared with 23 per cent in millinery. The proportion of all the milliners working eight hours or less was 19 per cent, as compared with 37 per cent in flower and feather factories.! The flower trade made a better showing than millinery in the matter of short working hours, because a larger proportion of the flower makers in the evening schools were under sixteen than of the milliners, and not because throughout the flower trade generally a shorter schedule of hours prevails than in millinery shops. Allowance for these differences must be made in studying the sta- tistics. Nevertheless, it should be remembered that the data show the hours of work of girls actually attending evening school, even though in some instances it is probable that other working girls in the same trade, not in the schools, are working longer hours. Naturally, those who are employed shorter hours are better able to attend evening classes.
The hours of work of fourteen- and fifteen-year- old children in evening schools are of special im- portance. A large part of the interest in industrial education today centers upon the possibility of giving so-called continuation schooling to these young wage-earners after they have left day school. The compulsory education law in New York now requires evening school attendance of all boys
* For age groupings in different occupations, see Appendix I, Table G, p. 198.
t See Appendix I, Table F, p. 197.
73
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
under sixteen who go to work before they have graduated from the grammar grades.* While this provision does not apply to girls, its extension to them has not lacked advocates among principals and teachers in the schools, in spite of the fact that other educators and social workers contend that to add evening school work to the day's labor of children of fourteen and fifteen is cruel and un- profitable.
The facts disclosed by the cards of the fourteen- and fifteen-year-old girls in this inquiry will be found to have a bearing not only upon educational problems but upon the enforcement of the labor law. One out of every five girls, 2,632 in all, was not yet sixteen years old. Of these, more than 1,000 were employed in manufacturing and more than 700 in trade and transportation. Table 12 shows the hours of work of the latter group.
Of the 665 girls under sixteen in trade and trans- portation who reported their hours of work, only 16 per cent worked less than eight hours daily and 16 per cent had an eight-hour day, while 41 per cent worked between eight and nine hours, and 27 per cent worked nine hours or more. Of the 98 stenographers and bookkeepers counted in the
*A recent amendment (New York Laws of 1913) provides that these boys may be required instead to attend part-time classes during the day, in cities or districts where such classes have been established. It provides, also, that girls under sixteen may be required to attend these part-time classes by day. University of the State of New York, Bulletin 535, Jan. 15. 1913, Albany, N. Y. Compulsory Education, p. 3. Experiments in such part-time classes are now being made in New York City.
74
DAILY HOURS OF LABOR
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WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
group, 71 worked eight hours or less, while of the 293 other clerical workers, 175, or three-fifths, worked more than eight hours. Among the girls employed in stores, including cash girls, the largest group, 128 worked between eight and nine hours. Evidently the hours in these occupations are not short, even for girls under sixteen. The state law, indeed, at the time of the investigation permitted the employment of these children in mercantile establishments nine hours a day and prohibited their work before 8 a.m. and after 7 p.m.*
In manufacturing establishments the law pro- vides that no child between the ages of fourteen and sixteen years shall be employed more than eight hours in any one day, or forty-eight in a week. Furthermore, the eight hours daily must be between 8 in the morning and 5 at night. Table 13 shows the hours of work of evening school girls under sixteen in factories.
Of 898 girls under sixteen who were at work in factories at the date of the investigation and who recorded hours of labor, 592, or 66 per cent, were working longer than the law permitted. The violations shown in the table_ were not mere technical slips; they were serious and flagrant. Of the 592 girls working longer than eight hours, 393 were working nine^hours or more, as though the
*In 1914, the mercantile law was brought into conformity with the factory law, in the regulation of the hours of children's work, restricting them to eight daily and forty-eight weekly, except that they may work'until 6 p.m. in stores, offices, and so forth, instead of stopping at 5 o'clock, as in factories.
76
DAILY HOURS OF LABOR
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WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
eight-hour law, whose enactment was brought about through the efforts of so many persons in- terested in the welfare of children, had never been placed on the statute books. Six per cent of these children were working ten hours or longer. In a number of instances two or three provisions of the law were violated in a single position, and thus the number of violations is larger than the number of workers experiencing them. Counting each viola- tion as one, as it would be counted in a court of law, the record cards revealed 1,201 violations of the law, of which the offense "more than eight hours daily" numbered 592; "before 8 a.m.," 96; and "after 5 p.m.," 51 3.
This is serious. The New York child labor law is regarded as a model — on paper. But the com- munity's responsibility does not end when the legis- lature passes a model law. The task of enforcement demands sustained public interest and effective machinery to make that interest felt. The state- ments of these girls in evening schools indicated very imperfect enforcement of the law designed to protect them against overwork in factories.
To test the accuracy of the statements made on the record cards, 108, nearly one-fifth, of the girls who reported illegal hours were visited at home. They were questioned about their employ- ment and all its conditions, and no reference was made by the visitor to the eight-hour law. In this way the facts about hours were corroborated. The statements had shown that eight of these 108 were
78
DAILY HOURS OF LABOR
employed before 8 a.m., 77 after 5 p.m., 90 more than eight hours daily, and 79 more than forty- eight hours weekly; 254 distinct violations in the group of 108 girls. Only 16 of these girls made statements to the visitor which failed to sustain the earlier report of violations, and of these, only six revised the report of hours, five were found to be employed in establishments not coming within the scope of the eight-hour law, and the five others were sixteen years old and had stated their age incorrectly on the cards. Of the 108 interviewed, not only did 92 repeat the facts previously re- corded, but 33 reported 107 other violations of this same law in other jobs which they had held. In 10 cases the girls had begun work without employ- ment certificates, an additional type of violation not shown on the record card.
These violations were not limited to any one trade nor to any one type of evening school. While the visits were confined to girls living in Manhattan, these included pupils in all of the evening high schools for girls in that borough, and in 14 evening elementary schools.* Table 13 shows long hours for children in the making of artificial flowers and feathers, women's clothing, millinery, printing and paper goods, and textiles. The chil- dren who were interviewed in order to verify their reports of illegal hours were at work in laundries, paper box factories, bookbinderies, dressmaking shops, and more than two dozen other trades.
* Numbers 4, 13, 14, 19, 23, 29, 38, 45, 59, 71, 72, 92, 96, and 177,
79
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
In exempting girls from required legal attendance at evening school, the danger of overtaxing their strength has been recognized.* The age limit of admittance has indeed been gradually raised during the years since the evening schools were first or- ganized. The board of education in its report for 1865 recommended that no boy under fourteen and no girl under twelve be admitted to evening school. The presence of children kept young men and women away, it contended. At that time children were admitted without regard to age. "The result is," said the report, "that we have every winter from five to six thousand children under twelve years of age in our evening schools."! Many of these were not more than eight years old. A large proportion were at work in stores or factories, and so overtaxed were they by the day's labor that they fell asleep in the class rooms. In 1866 children under twelve were excluded.
Since those days the child labor law has put a stop to the employment of very young children in industry, and the compulsory education law keeps
* Instances were discovered by our visitors in which the parents of girls under sixteen had, unfortunately, been given the impression that girls also are compelled to attend evening school. For example, the following postal card had been sent out by the schools:
"To Parents: Under the provisions of the Compulsory Education Law, all children between fourteen and sixteen who leave day school to go to work must attend evening school.
" Parents are requested to send word immediately to the principal of the day school in which evening school the child has registered." (Signed by a district superintendent.) (Also printed in Yiddish on lower half of card.) The wording, of course, should have been "all boys" instead of "all children."
t Board of Education, New York City. Report of 1865; Appen- dix. Report of City Superintendent of Schools, p. 55.
80
DAILY HOURS OF LABOR
them in day school until they are fourteen, so that the sleepy little eight-year-olds no longer trouble evening school teachers. But the fourteen-year-old wage-earning boy who has not graduated still causes trouble both when he fails to obey the law compelling him to continue to go to night school, and when he fulfils the arduous requirement. In one case he must be kept attending, and in the other he must be kept awake. Each annual report refers with slight verbal changes to "the difficul- ties attendant upon the enforcement of a law ap- proved neither by popular sentiment nor by the wisest educational considerations."* A forward step was taken when in 191 3 the law already men- tioned was passed, giving power to boards of educa- tion in the cities and districts of the state to require children under sixteen who are at work to attend part-time classes between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Before this law can bring relief to children under sixteen in evening schools in New York City, however, part-time classes by day must be estab- lished there. This will bring our educational policy more closely in accord with the real intent of the laws restricting the work of children to hours between 8 in the morning and 5 at night in fac- tories.
Had it been possible to discover the amount of overtime which may have been added to the normal day's work of all girls over sixteen, doubt-
* Superintendent of Schools, New York City. Fourteentii Annual Report, 1911-12. Report on Evening Schools for the Year Ending July 31, 1912, p. 72.
81
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
less many instances of exhaustingly long hours would have been brought to light. It is a common experience in working girls' clubs, as well as in public evening classes, to find the program up- set because some of the members are "working late."* Study of state labor department reports shov/s that prosecutions for illegally long hours have been few in number, indicating lax enforce- ment. Those who watch the progress of labor bills in the legislature know that any attempt to strengthen the law meets with vigorous opposi- tion from employers. Yet protection of women and young girls against overwork is one of the most important tasks before the community. Until these laws are strengthened and enforced, wage- earning girls can not take full advantage of the education which the community endeavors to give them in evening classes.
* In his report of IQ12-13, Dr. Albert Shiels, district superintendent in charge of evening schools in New York City, outlined the result of inquiries which he had caused to be made regarding reasons for irregu- lar attendance. In seven of the evening high schools, 1,362 pupils reported reasons for leaving before the close of the session, and of these, 542, or nearly 40 per cent, said that "night work including overtime," was responsible. In evening trade schools the same rea- son was the most prominent, being given by 299 of 1,006; in even- ing elementary schools, in classes for foreigners, cards sent to 200 who had left broug-ht replies from 159, of whom 105 said that they were working overtime. A group of pupils whose combined absences during the term had amounted to 865 evenings, were questioned as to the reasons, and overtime work was assigned as the cause of ab- sence on 324 of these 865 evenings. — Superintendent of Schools, New York City. Fifteenth Annual Report, 1912-13. Report on Evening Schools for the Year Ending July 31, 19 13, pp. 67-71.
82
CHAPTER IV SCHOOLING OF WAGE-EARNING GIRLS
DISCUSSION of industrial education usually centers about the class rooms of today and the children who are now in school. It emphasizes the need for giving these children adequate preparation for the demands which will probably be made upon them in their future careers as breadwinners. New light is thrown on the subject when this process of inquiry is reversed. Instead of theorizing about the probable future of the present school children, it is possible to dis- cover the past school careers of present wage-earn- ers. By this method we may gradually learn, among other things, whether the length of the schooling and the age when wage-earning began seem to have any bearing on the choice of an occupation. To gather this kind of information, however, is not easy, since it is not to be found in any documents but must be secured from the wage- earners themselves. The fact that so large a group of working girls answered questions about their previous schooling is one of the unique features of this study of evening school pupils.
The questions on this subject were simple and detailed:
83
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
How old were you when you began school?
Did you graduate from elementary school?
What grade were you in when you left?
How old were you when you left?
In what school did you attend first grade? (This question was repeated for every grade from the first to the eighth.)
What day high schools have you attended?
How many years did you attend?
How old were you when you left?
The most important material to be derived from the answers included the number of years in school; the types of schools attended and their location, whether in New York or in other parts of this country, or in foreign lands; the grade reached; and the age at leaving. Such facts show not only the educational foundation on which the evening schools must build, but they reveal certain condi- tions to be reckoned with in the development of a scheme of industrial training.
In discussing vocational education the tendency seems to be to regard the population as stationary for all time; to assume that the wage-earners of today were school children in this community a few years ago, and that the school children of today will be working in the factories, stores, and offices of this city a few years from now.* Yet everyone knows how comparatively rare a specimen is the
* For significant facts on this subject see Ayres, Leonard P.: Some Conditions Affecting Problems of Industrial Education in 78 American School Systems. Pamphlet published by Division of Education, Russell Sage Foundation, No. E 135, February, 1914.
84
SCHOOLING OF WAGE-EARNING GIRLS
native New Yorker who still lives in the city of his birth, and how many of his fellow-citizens have come from the four quarters of the globe. Among the wage-earning women in New York City, in 1900, 55 per cent were born in the United States, and scarcely more than one in six was native born of native parentage.* These figures do not show how many of those who are counted as native born were actually born in New York City, and how many in other sections of the United States. Of course some of those who were born in foreign lands came to New York as children and went to New York schools. Nevertheless, that many receive at least a part of their schooling else- where is shown in the records of evening school pupils. It should be remembered that as pupils in classes in English for foreigners were not as a rule included in the inquiry, the group investigated contains a larger proportion of native born than is found among all wage-earning women throughout the city; 68 per cent in our recordsf as compared with 55 per cent in the census statistics. Never- theless, even in the selected group investigated by us the diversity of schools attended is note- worthy, as Table 14 shows.
According to this table, 71 per cent of the girls
* Twelfth United States Census, 1900. Special Reports, Occupa- tions, p. 638. Of 367,437 wage-earning women, $6,027 were native born of native parents, 128,830 were native born of foreign parents, and 16,155 were colored (chiefly native born), making, roughly, a total of 200,000 native born. Of the girls employed in manufac- turing, 57.9 per cent were native born (76,694 of 132,535).
^ See Table 2, p. 21.
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investigated had at some time attended public schools in New York City, and i8 per cent, private or parochial schools there, while 8.8 per cent had attended schools in other communities of the United States, and 1 5 per cent, schools in foreign lands. These groups are not mutually exclusive. A girl may have gone to school in Russia, Germany, or Italy, then in a small town in Connecticut, and finally she may have been found in a class room on the lower East Side of New York. She will be counted in each of the groups of schools reported. One girl, born in South Africa of German parent- age, went to school first in England, then in South Africa, again in England, and finally in New York. The differences between the diff'erent occupa- tional groups in Table 14 indicate what is perhaps the most valuable point brought out by this study. In trade and transportation and in professional service the proportion who have attended New York public schools is much larger than in manu- facturing,— 83 per cent in trade and transportation, 79 per cent in professional service, and 64 per cent in manufacturing. If we make allowance for the fact that the proportion of native born in this group of factory workers is larger than in the same occupational group in the general population, it seems probable that not more than 60 per cent of the wage-earning girls in the factories of the city have ever attended a public school in New York. The bearing of this on plans to train children in this city for the trades which they are expected to
87
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
enter later is obviously important. Evidently the day schools can not handle alone the problem of vocational training. For a large proportion of our wage-earners the evening schools represent the only opportunity to come under the influence of our system of public education, whether the aim be industrial education or academic instruction. Table 1 5 gives added emphasis to the facts already cited by showing the location of the last day school attended by these evening school pupils.
A New York public school was named as the last day school attended by 67 per cent of the group, and a parochial or private school in New York by 1 2 per cent. Again the differences between different occupational groups are marked. In manufacturing, 24 per cent had had their last schooling in a foreign country and 57 per cent in New York public schools, as compared with 81 per cent in New York public schools in the group employed in trade and transportation. The figures in this table take no account of special courses attended later, as in business schools, art classes, or normal schools. The aim was to show rather where the basic education was secured before any special- ized training was begun.
That the school histories of these girls were varied as their families may have journeyed from one community to another has already been indi- cated. The proportion who received their entire schooling in New York public schools is shown in Table 16.
88
SCHOOLING OF WAGE-EARNING GIRLS
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TABLE 16.— PROPORTION OF WOMEN ATTENDING PUB-
Lie EVENING SCHOOLS, WHOSE ONLY PREVIOUS DAY
SCHOOL ATTENDANCE WAS IN NEW YORK
PUBLIC SCHOOLS, BY PRINCIPAL
OCCUPATIONAL GROUPS
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|
New |
||||
|
Principal occupational group |
York |
Ail |
||
|
public |
Other |
No |
women |
|
|
schools |
schools^ |
school |
||
|
only |
||||
|
Manufacturing and mechan- |
||||
|
ical pursuits |
||||
|
Number |
1,562 |
1,825 |
34 |
3-421 |
|
Per cent |
45-7 |
53-3 |
1 .0 |
1 00.0 |
|
Trade and transportation |
||||
|
Number |
2,948 |
1,447 |
4 |
4-399 |
|
Per cent |
67.0 |
32.9 |
. I |
100. 0 |
|
Domestic and personal service |
||||
|
Number |
59 |
367 |
45 |
471 |
|
Per cent |
12.5 |
77-9 |
9.6 |
1 00.0 |
|
Professional service |
||||
|
Number |
109 |
84 |
193 |
|
|
Per cent |
56.5 |
43-5 |
1 00.0 |
|
|
No gainful occupation*^ |
||||
|
Number |
1,842 |
1,407 |
12 |
3,261 |
|
Per cent |
56.5 |
43 I |
■4 |
100.0 |
|
Total |
||||
|
Number |
6,520 |
5,130 |
95 |
"-745*= |
|
Per cent |
55-5 |
43-7 |
.8 |
100. 0 |
^ Women who had attended New York public day schools and also some other school or schools, are included in this column.
^ For further explanation, see footnote, p. 36.
•^ Of the 13,141 women included in the study, 896 were in evening schools for which data as to all day schools attended at any time were incomplete and were not tabulated. Of the 12,245 remaining, 500 did not supply information.
The New York public school system was wholly responsible for the training of 6,520, or 56 per cent,
90
SCHOOLING OF WAGE-EARNING GIRLS
of the entire group investigated. In manufactur- ing, the proportion educated in New York public schools was only 46 per cent, and in trade and transportation it was 67 per cent.
Because of the diversity of schools attended, throughout this country and in others, it would be unwise to attempt a tabulation of grades reached which would include the whole group investigated. The grading is not uniform even in different cities of the United States, and for other countries no common basis of instruction could be found. Concerning those whose last schooling was in New York public schools, however, some interesting statistics are available.
One of the most baffling problems of industrial training is the fact that many children leave the elementary grades as soon as the law permits them to go to work. The schools are expected to ac- complish so large a task as "preparation for life" in so brief a period as lies between babyhood and the fourteenth birthday. The New York state labor law prohibits the employment of children under fourteen, and requires that those who go to work between the ages of fourteen and sixteen must be provided with employment certificates. To secure an employment certificate, the child must have accomplished satisfactorily a specified amount of schooling. Until 191 3 it was necessary to have reached the 5B grade, the fifth year of school- ing, but an amendment to the law in that year required the completion of the work of the first
91
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
six years of a public elementary school or its equivalent.*
In the sixth grade of New York public schools the children are studying percentage and its applications, the geography of Europe, American history since the war of 1812, English, music, drawing, and if they are girls, sewing. Gymnastic exercises and hygiene are also part of the cur- riculum. Two more years lie between them and graduation, and in that time they would be initiated further into the mysteries of all these studies. In mathematics, for example, the sixth grade children have learned nothing of simple interest, ratio and proportion, equations, and square root, which are taught in the seventh and eighth grades. In history the sixth grade child has not extended his knowledge beyond the United States. The study of European history begins in the seventh grade. f
Of course, these statements taken from the printed outline of the prescribed course of study can not be accepted literally as an inventory of the facts collected in the brain of the sixth grade boy or girl. The content of a simple lesson in English composition may be rich in historical facts, or
* In New York the grades are numbered consecutively from one to eight, beginning with the lowest. Each grade is divided into two parts, designated as A and B, the two together covering the school year. A normal pupil is expected to complete one grade in a year, so that if he begins at the age of six he may accomplish his eight grades and graduate at fourteen.
t Course of Study for the Elementary Schools of the City of New York, 191 1. Department of Education.
92
SCHOOLING OF WAGE-EARNING GIRLS
nature study, or ethical principles, and the cur- riculum can never be more than a series of guide posts. Nevertheless, it is obvious that not a very- large part of the road to knowledge can be traversed between the sixth and the fourteenth years of child- hood,even if eight grades be completed in that time. Table 17 shows the grade reached by 7,854 girls who last attended New York City public schools and who have since returned to evening classes.
The table shows the grade reached in school by women now at work in the specified occupational groups, and reveals great differences in amount of previous schooling between workers in the dif- ferent occupations represented. In professional service 72 per cent were high school graduates; in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits, a small fraction of i per cent (.2 per cent). Among the factory girls one-third left school when in the sixth grade or below, and nearly three-fifths be- fore reaching the eighth grade. In trade and transportation a large proportion, 76 per cent, finished the elementary grades and 28 per cent went to high school, only 2.1 per cent graduat- ing, however. In the ranks of women at work in domestic and personal service only 23 per cent had graduated from elementary school, and only 33 per cent had ever gone beyond the seventh grade. Apparently the child who leaves elementary school before graduating is most likely to earn her living in factory work or in domestic or personal service, while if she graduates she will have more chance of
93
TABLE 17.— GRADE AT LEAVING SCHOOL FOR WOMEN ATTENDING PUBLIC EVENING SCHOOLS. WHO LAST ATTENDED DAY SCHOOL IN A NEW YORK PUBLIC SCHOOL, BY PRINCIPAL OCCUPATIONAL GROUPS
|
WOMEN |
EMPLOYED IN |
|||||
|
•?.^ |
a> |
0 |
||||
|
Grade at leaving scho( |
uring a il pursu |
ll |
> |
3 C :e-b |
c E 0 |
|
|
■0 D. |
E 0 |
.0 |
60 D. o3 |
< |
||
|
H2 *-* |
0 S2 |
0 |
^S |
|||
|
S E |
a. |
|||||
|
Number who left whei |
1 |
|||||
|
In first grade . |
4 |
4 |
||||
|
In second grade |
9 |
I |
3 |
4 |
'7 |
|
|
In third grade . |
lO |
I |
2 |
8 |
21 |
|
|
In fourth grade |
51 |
1 1 |
5 |
33 |
100 |
|
|
In fifth grade . |
196 |
44 |
13 |
96 |
349 |
|
|
In sixth grade . |
397 |
181 |
9 |
.85 |
772 |
|
|
In seventh grade |
528 |
353 |
15 |
3 |
343 |
1,242 |
|
In eighth grade |
196 |
255 |
7 |
4 |
189 |
651 |
|
Elem. sch. graduat |
e 499 |
1,683 |
1 1 |
20 |
682 |
2,895 |
|
High school non- |
||||||
|
graduate |
133 |
901 |
4 |
14 |
524 |
1.57(5 |
|
High school graduat |
2 4 |
74 |
I |
107 |
41 |
227 |
|
Total . |
2,027 |
3.504 |
70 |
148 |
2,105 |
7.854'' |
|
Per cent who left wher |
1 |
|||||
|
In first grade . |
.2 |
c |
. I |
|||
|
In second grade |
•4 |
c |
4-3 |
.2 |
.2 |
|
|
In third grade . |
•5 |
* • . . |
2.9 |
• 4 |
3 |
|
|
In fourth grade |
2-5 |
• 3 |
7' |
1.6 |
"•3 |
|
|
In fifth grade . |
9-7 |
"■3 |
18.6 |
4.6 |
4-4 |
|
|
In sixth grade . |
19.6 |
5-2 |
12.9 |
8.8 |
9.8 |
|
|
In seventh grade |
26.0 |
10. 1 |
21.4 |
2.0 |
16.3 |
15.8 |
|
In eighth grade |
9-7 |
7-3 |
10. 0 |
2-7 |
9.0 |
8.3 |
|
Elem. sch. graduate |
24.6 |
48.0 |
■5-7 |
13-5 |
323 |
36.8 |
|
High school non- |
||||||
|
graduate |
6.6 |
25-7 |
5-7 |
9-5 |
24.9 |
20. I |
|
High school graduat |
e .2 |
2. I |
'•4 |
72.3 |
1.9 |
2.9 |
|
Total . |
1 00.0 |
1 00.0 |
100. 0 |
100. 0 |
1 00.0 |
100.0 |
^ For further explanation, see footnote, p. 36.
^Of the 8,174 who last attended day school in a New York public school (see Table 15), 155 were in two evening schools which sup- plied no further information as to schooling, and of the 8,019 re- maining, 165 did not state grade at leaving. For years in high school, see Appendix I, Table I, p. 200. '^ Less than .05 per cent.
94
SCHOOLING OF WAGE-EARNING GIRLS
employment in trade and transportation, and if she finishes high school she is on the road to some form of professional work. Or again, interpreting the figures from another point of view, we seem justified in saying that it is only in the first seven grades that the schools under present conditions are in contact with the majority of the future em- ployes in factory industries. Nevertheless, in the different branches of manufacturing the schooling of employes varies widely, as Table i8 shows.
Of the milliners, 41 per cent left school before reaching the eighth grade; in dressmaking, 55 per cent; and in the artificial flower and feather trade and in bookbinding, 49 per cent, as compared with 79 per cent in paper box making. The elementary school graduates, including those who went to high school, numbered 49 per cent in millinery, 39 per cent in dressmaking, 38 per cent in flower and feather making, 29 per cent in bookbinding, and only 16 per cent in paper box making.
These figures tempt one to analyze available data showing comparative wages paid in these different trades, as a basis for estimating the com- parative amount of skill required. In 1905, cen- sus enumerators copied payrolls showing actual earnings received by workers in a representative week of the year in a large number of manufac- turing establishments. The facts presented for women workers in New York State* show that the
* United States Census, Bulletin 93, Earnings of Wage-Earners, Manufactures, pp. 98 and 150. 1905.
95
TABLE 18.— GRADE AT LEAVING SCHOOL FOR WOMEN
ATTENDING PUBLIC EVENING SCHOOLS, WHO LAST
ATTENDED DAY SCHOOL IN A NEW YORK PUBLIC
SCHOOL, EMPLOYED IN FIVE SELECTED
MANUFACTURING PURSUITS »»>
|
WOMEN* EMPLOYED |
IN |
||||
|
Artifi- |
|||||
|
Grade at leaving school |
Milli- nery |
Dress- making |
cial flower and feather making |
Book- binding |
Paper box making |
|
Number who left wher |
1 |
||||
|
In first grade . |
•• |
, . |
, , |
||
|
In second grade |
3 |
||||
|
In third grade . |
I |
I |
1 |
, . |
|
|
In fourth grade |
2 |
4 |
4 |
2 |
2 |
|
In fifth grade . |
6 |
22 |
18 |
2 |
12 |
|
In sixth grade . |
19 |
30 |
31 |
14 |
22 |
|
In seventh grade |
32 |
62 |
43 |
21 |
16 |
|
In eighth grade |
14 |
'3 |
26 |
18 |
3 |
|
Elem. sch. graduate |
48 |
65 |
57 |
18 |
9 |
|
High school non- |
|||||
|
graduate |
21 |
19 |
16 |
6 |
1 |
|
High school graduat |
e 2 |
||||
|
Total . |
145 |
219 |
■93 |
82 |
65 |
|
Per cent who left wher |
1 |
||||
|
In first grade . |
, . |
. , |
, . |
. , |
|
|
In second grade |
, , |
I |
. , |
, , |
, , |
|
In third grade . |
I |
, . |
I |
. , |
|
|
In fourth grade |
I |
2 |
2 |
2 |
3 |
|
In fifth grade . |
4 |
10 |
9 |
2 |
18 |
|
In sixth grade . |
•3 |
14 |
16 |
18 |
33 |
|
In seventh grade |
22 |
28 |
22 |
26 |
25 |
|
In eighth grade. |
10 |
6 |
13 |
22 |
5 |
|
Elem. sch. graduate |
33 |
30 |
30 |
22 |
14 |
|
High school non- |
|||||
|
graduate |
15 |
9 |
8 |
7 |
2 |
|
High school graduat |
e I |
||||
|
Total . |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
* Data appear in detail in Appendix I, Table K, p. 207.
** Information was not supplied by 9 of the 1 54 milliners, 10 of the 229 dressmakers, 23 of the 218 flower and feather makers, 3 of the 85 bookbinders, and 4 of the 69 paper box makers, who last attended day school in a New York public school.
96
SCHOOLING OF WAGE-EARNING GIRLS
average weekly earnings of milliners were $7.63; makers of women's clothing, $7.68; artificial flower and feather makers, $6.20;* bookbinders, |6. 13; paper box makers, $5.65; and of women in all manufacturing pursuits grouped together, $6.54.
Only detailed study of these trades would enable us safely to conclude that these averages indicate the comparative degree of skill required in these trades, and it would be another long step in the argument to say that the higher the grade reached in school, the better the chance to enter a skilled occupation. It may be only a coincidence that in paper box making the average wage is lower than in any other of these five trades, while among paper box makers in evening schools the general level of education as measured by the proportion of pupils who have never passed beyond the seventh grade is also the lowest. Nevertheless, the coincidence suggests an interesting line of inquiry to deter- mine the comparative demand in different voca- tions for the kind of training now offered by the schools.
In the records of progress made in day school, it is possible to discover further clues as to an ap- parent connection between the adaptability of a pupil to the present school training and the later choice of an occupation. To avoid the danger of comparing groups trained in different types of schools and different communities, the group dis-
* Given for the whole United States, but as three-fourths of the industry is in New York City, the figures are indicative of wage rates there.
97
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
cussed will be limited to those who received their entire schooling in New York public schools. It will be recalled that this group numbered 6,520, or 56 per cent of the number investigated.* As already outlined, the pupil who makes normal progress in a New York public school is expected to complete one grade in a year. By comparing the number of years in the school life with the grade reached we may, therefore, measure the rate of progress. A pupil who has attended school six years may be rated as normal if she has reached grade 6B or 7A, slow if in a lower grade, and rapid if she has advanced further. Table 19 shows the progress made in day school by women in diflFerent occupational groups.
Of the whole group, 34 per cent showed normal progress, 22 per cent rapid, and 44 per cent re- tarded progress. The proportion of the retarded was highest in domestic and personal service, 74 per cent; with manufacturing second, 59 per cent; and women without any occupation third, 46 per cent. Women in professional service showed the smallest proportion retarded, and the largest pro- portion whose progress had been rapid. Thus it appears to be the girls whose present occupations require pre-eminently the use of the hands who during their school days were least able to keep pace with the curriculum. "There was no larnin' in her," said one mother when asked why her daughter left school.
* See Table i6, p. 90. 98
SCHOOLING OF WAGE-EARNING GIRLS
TABLE 19.— PROGRESS MADE IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL BY WOMEN ATTENDING PUBLIC EVENING SCHOOLS, WHO HAD ATTENDED NEW YORK PUBLIC SCHOOLS ONLY, BY PRINCIPAL OCCUPA- TIONAL GROUPS
|
WOMEN |
N EACH SPECIFIED |
|||
|
OCCUPATIONAL |
GROUP |
All women |
||
|
Principal occupational group |
WHOSE PROGRESS HAD BEEN |
|||
|
Rapid |
Normal |
Retarded |
||
|
Manufacturing and mechan- |
||||
|
ical pursuits |
||||
|
Number |
206 |
369 |
824 |
'.399 |
|
Per cent |
14-7 |
26.4 |
58.9 |
1 00.0 |
|
Trade and transportation |
||||
|
Number |
703 |
980 |
929 |
2,612 |
|
Per cent |
26.9 |
37-5 |
35.6 |
100. 0 |
|
Domestic and personal service |
||||
|
Number |
6 |
7 |
36 |
49 |
|
Per cent |
12.2 |
14-3 |
73-5 |
100. 0 |
|
Professional service |
||||
|
Number |
28 |
35 |
30 |
93 |
|
Per cent |
30.1 |
37.6 |
323 |
100. 0 |
|
No gainful occupation ^ |
||||
|
Number |
307 |
541 |
710 |
■,558 |
|
Per cent |
19.7 |
34-7 |
45.6 |
100. 0 |
|
Total |
||||
|
Number |
1,250 |
1.932 |
2,52q |
5.711b |
|
Per cent |
21.9 |
33.B |
44-3 |
1 00.0 |
^ For further explanation, see footnote, p. 36.
''Of the 6,520 whose entire elementary schooling was in the New York public schools, 809 did not supply information.
The learned in the population have, as a rule, had long school careers lasting, perhaps, from kindergarten at the age of five or six until gradua- tion from college at twenty-one or twenty-two. Following the college course comes frequently some form of professional training. The educational
99
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
process, aside from professional courses, covers fifteen or sixteen years. For those who have had such opportunities it is exceedingly difficult to imagine how different would have been their development in character, mentality, and physical vitality, had their school life been cut short after eight years instead of sixteen. For the majority of wage-earning girls in New York, schooling is a comparatively brief experience. Table 20 gives the facts for the girls investigated in evening school. The table includes all the girls who gave informa- tion on this point and not only those who had attended New York schools.
The proportion who had had nine years or more of schooling was 33 per cent for the whole group, but only 23 per cent for the group in manufacturing and 24 per cent for those in domestic and personal service, as compared with 38 per cent in trade and transportation and 81 per cent in the professions. That many stay in the schools as long as seven or eight years is doubtless due, in New York at least, to the child labor law forbidding the employ- ment of children under fourteen. In studying the records showing the age at leaving school, therefore, the significant year to watch is the fifteenth, the earliest moment when a child may go to work. The data obtained appear in Table 2 1 .
The table includes, of course, older women who went to work before the present law was in force, and others who went to school in foreign lands or in districts of this country where the child labor
100
SCHOOLING OF WAGE-EARNING GIRLS
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102
SCHOOLING OF WAGE-EARNING GIRLS
and compulsory education laws are not the same as in New York. Not all, therefore, were restrained by law from going to work before they were fourteen. Of all the girls considered, more than half, 54 per cent, had left at the age of fourteen or younger, and only 20 per cent stayed until they were sixteen or older. The best showing is made by the professional workers, with 45 per cent having attended school till they were eighteen or older, as compared with i .2 per cent in manufac- turing and 2.2 per cent in trade and transporta- tion. Of the girls in manufacturing, 65 per cent left at the age of fourteen or younger, as compared with 49 per cent in trade and transportation. That many in both these groups stayed until they were fifteen was undoubtedly due in part to their failure earlier to meet the educational requirement, as well as the age test, for an employment certifi- cate.
Once again it is important to call attention to the differences in the various trades and occupations which are grouped together in the table.* As we have noted, of all the girls included in the investi- gation, 54 per cent had left school at the age of fourteen or younger, and in manufacturing the proportion was 65 per cent. Some of the industries in which the proportion reporting this early ending of their school days was larger than the average in manufacturing, were the making of men's cloth- ing, 78 per cent; work on confectionery, tobacco,
* See Appendix I, Tables H and J, pp. 199, 201. 103
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
and food products, 67 per cent; the white goods trade, 70 per cent; textile manufacture, 68 per cent; and paper box making, 76 per cent.
Likewise, differences appear in the diverse occu- pational groups listed under the general name of trade and transportation. For the whole group, the proportion leaving school at fourteen or younger was 49 per cent. For workers in stores this proportion was much greater than the aver- age, 61 per cent; for stenographers and book- keepers it was less, 45 per cent; and for general clerical workers without a knowledge of stenogra- phy, 47 per cent. These figures are precisely what one might expect from a knowledge of the edu- cational requirements now generally prevailing for girls in these various occupations. Desirable as it will be some day to have the rank and file of salesgirls and even cash girls better trained for their work, it is a matter of observation that at present the girl who is to survive as a stenographer must stay in school longer than must a salesgirl. Why the trades listed in the preceding paragraph demand so much less of their workers in the way of previous schooling than do other manufacturing pursuits is not equally clear, although it is a matter of common opinion that these industries offer mainly unskilled and poorly paid work to women.
The occupations in which it is apparently easy for young workers to secure a foothold may be discovered by studying the age grouping in the
104
SCHOOLING OF WAGE-EARNING GIRLS
different lines of work represented in the evening schools.* Those occupations having the largest proportion of workers under sixteen were employ- ment in stores, 38 per cent ; artificial flower making, 36 per cent; textile manufacture, 33 per cent; button making, 33 per cent; paper box making, 33 per cent; the preparation of hair goods, 32 per cent; and the making of confectionery, food products, and tobacco, 31 percent. As might be anticipated, these are also the industries employing a large proportion of girls who left school while in the lower grades.
The groups in which the proportion of girls under sixteen is smallest were professional work, 2.1 per cent; stenography, 6. i per cent; shirtwaist making, II per cent; dressmaking, 15 per cent; clerical work, 18 per cent; manufacturing white goods, 19 per cent; and making men's clothing, 20 per cent. In general, these are occupations which require a special equipment or trades which employ machine operators in large numbers.
At present, children between the ages of fourteen and sixteen are the subject of special discussion by school authorities and investigators in many com- munities. In New York City alone somewhat more than 40,000 children apply for employment certificates in a year, of whom approximately 20,000 are girls. The exodus of thousands from the seventh grade or earlier is a fact so well estab- lished as to receive a special title, "mortality in
* Appendix I, Table G, p. 198. 105
WORKING GIRLS IN EVENING SCHOOLS
the elementary grades." The fact causes concern not only because it indicates premature ending of the school career, but because these are the children who are immediately absorbed by the industries of the city. They are facing at a critical age all the difficulties of transition from school to work. Investigators of industry have been piling up evidence to show that usually the work which fourteen- and fifteen-year-old children do is not educational, nor is it the first rung of the ladder of success. School careers are cut short for an industrial experience which proves later to be a positive handicap in the effort to find a really good job. But quite aside from the industrial condi- tions which a fourteen-year-old wage-earner en- counters, her employment raises the question: Is it best for the child and the community that she should go to work at all before the sixteenth birth- day, and what conditions are driving young chil- dren into the labor market?
Naturally the first answer which comes to mind is that children go to work because their families need their earnings. Much time has been spent by several investigators* to discover how many
* Diversity in the findings of investigators indicates the difficulties in the way of accuracy. Among other reports on this subject may be mentioned:
Flexner, Mary: A Plea for Vocational Training. The Survey, XXII: 650-655 (August 7, 1909). No estimate made by the author. Apparently 380 out of a total of 530, or 72 per cent, left school be- cause of economic pressure.
Adams, Jessie B.: The Working Girl from the Elementary School in New York. Charities and The Commons, XIX: 1617 (February 22, 1908). — "That 'money was needed' was voluntarily given as a reason
106
SCHOOLING OF WAGE-EARNING GIRLS
children who leave school for work at the age of fourteen do so because of so-called economic pres- sure. The determination is a diificult one, pri- marily because no one yet knows just how to measure economic pressure. Presumably it is the difference between the actual income and the amount necessary to maintain an adequate stand- more often than any other, and a real