THE GIRL'S WORK (Continued)--CLASSIFICATION OF OCCUPATIONS
It is well at the outset to recognize that vocation choosing is at
best a complicated matter which, to be successfully carried out,
demands not only much information, but information from different
viewpoints. It is not enough to insure a living, even a good living,
in the work a girl chooses. We must take into consideration the girl's
effect upon society as a teacher, nurse, saleswoman, or office worker;
and no less, in view of her evident destiny as mother of the race,
must we consider society's effect upon her, as it finds her in the
place she has chosen. In other words, will she serve society to the
best of her ability, and will her service fit her to be a better
homemaker than she would have been had no vocation outside the home
intervened between her school training and her final settling in a
home of her own making?
This double question must find answer in consideration of vocations
from each of several viewpoints. We may classify occupations open to
girls (1) from the standpoint of the girl's fitness, physical and
psychological; (2) from the standpoint of industrial conditions, the
sanitary, mental, and moral atmosphere, and the rewards obtainable;
(3) as factors increasing, decreasing, or not affecting the girl's
possible home efficiency or the likelihood of taking up home life; (4)
from the standpoint of the girl's education; (5) from the standpoint
of service to society.
Our first classification concerns the girl's fitness for this or that
work. The everyday work of the world in which our girls are to find a
part may be separated into three fairly well-marked classes: making
things, distributing things, and service. The first question we must
ask concerning a girl desirous of finding work is, then: Toward which
of these classes does her natural ability and therefore probably her
inclination tend? Natural handworkers make poor saleswomen; natural
traders or saleswomen are likely to be uninterested and ineffective
handworkers. The girl whose interests are all centered in people must
not be condemned to spend her life in the production of things; nor,
as is far more common, must the girl who can make things, and enjoys
making them, spend her life in merely handling the things other people
have made, as she strives to make connection between these things and
the people who want them. Then there is the girl who is efficient and
who finds her pleasure in "doing things for people." Service--and we
must remember that service is a wide term, and that no stigma should
attach to the class of workers which includes the teacher, the
physician, and the minister--is clearly the direction in which such a
girl's vocational ambition should be turned.
It would be idle to assert that all women are suited to marriage,
motherhood, and domestic life, although there is little doubt that
early training may develop in some a suitability which would otherwise
remain unsuspected. When, however, early training fails to bring out
any inclination toward these things, we may well consider seriously
before we exert the weight of our influence toward them.
Home-mindedness shows itself in many ways, and it should have been a
matter of observation years before the girl faces the choice of a
vocation. It is usually of little avail to attempt to turn the
attention of the girl who is definitely not thus minded toward the
domestic life. On the other hand, the girl who is naturally so minded
will respond readily to suggestions leading toward the occupations
which require and appeal to her domestic nature. The great majority of
girls, however, are not definitely conscious of either home-mindedness
or the opposite. They are in fact not yet definitely cognizant of any
natural bent. It is these girls who are especially open to the
influence of environment, of what may prove temporary inclination, or
of false notions of the advantage of certain occupations in choosing a
life work. These are the girls, too, who are likely to drift into
marriage as they are likely to drift into any other occupation, and
whose previous vocation may have added to or perfected their
homemaking training or, on the other hand, may have developed in them
habits and traits which will effectually kill their usefulness in the
home life. These, then, are the girls who are most of all in need of
wise assistance in choosing that which may prove to be a temporary
vocation or may become a life work. The temporary idea must be
combated vigorously in the girl's mind. Many an unwise choice would
have been avoided had the girl really faced the possibility of making
the work she undertook a life work. The temporary idea makes
inefficient workers and discontented women.
There is in most cases, especially among the fairly well-to-do, no
dearth of assistance offered to the young girl in making her choice.
Much of the advice, unfortunately, is not based on real knowledge
either of vocations or of the girl. Knowledge is absolutely necessary
to successful judgment in this delicate matter.
From a large number of letters written by high-school girls let me
quote the following typical answers to the question: Why have you
chosen the vocation for which you are preparing?
"Ever since I could walk my uncle has been making plans for
me in music."
"My first ambition was to be a stenographer, but my father
objected. My father's choice was for me to be a teacher, and
before long it was mine too."
"My ambition until my Junior year in High School was to be a
teacher. From that time until now my ambition is to be a
good stenographer. My reason for changing is due partly to
my friends and parents. My parents do not want me to be a
teacher, as they consider it too hard a life."
"I have been greatly influenced by my teacher, who thinks I
have a chance [as a dramatic art teacher]. I am willing to
take her word for it.".
"Mother says it is a very ladylike occupation"
[stenography].
"My music instructor wishes for me to become a concert
player, or at least a good music teacher, and I now think I
wish the same."
These answers all show the customary ease of throwing out advice, and
also the undue significance attached by girls to these probably
inexpert opinions.
Parents often fail in their attempts to launch their children
successfully. Sometimes they attempt unwisely to thrust a child into
an occupation merely because "it is ladylike," or the "vacation is
long," or "the pay is good," regardless of the child's aptitude or
limitations. Quite often they await inspiration in the form of some
revelation of the child's desires, regardless of the demand of society
for such service as the child may elect to supply or the effect of the
vocation upon the child's health or character. Undue sacrifice on the
part of parents has without question swelled the ranks of mediocre
physicians and lawyers and clergymen. It has doubtless produced
thousands of teachers who cannot teach, nurses who are quite unsuited
to the sick-room, and office workers who have not the rudiments of
business ability.
It would seem that truly successful guidance in a girl's search for a
vocation can come, like much of her training, only from wise
coöperation of school and home. Teacher and parent see the girl from
different angles. Their combined judgment will consequently have
double value.
As the time of vocational choice approaches, school records should
cover larger ground than before, and should be made with great care,
with constant appeal to parents for confirmation and additional facts.
The record should cover:
1. _Physical characteristics_: Height; weight; lung capacity; sight;
hearing; condition of nasal passages; condition of teeth; bodily
strength and endurance; nerve strength or weakness.
2. _Health history_: Time lost from school by illness; school work as
affected by physical condition when the girl is in school; probable
ability or inability to bear the confinement of an indoor occupation;
any early illness, accident, or surgical operation which may affect
health and therefore vocational possibilities.
3. _Mental characteristics_: The quality of school work; studious or
active in temperament; best suited for head work, handwork, or a
combination; ability to work independently of teacher or other guide;
studies most enjoyed; studies in which best work is done; evidences,
if any, of special talent, and whether or not sufficient to form basis
of life work.
4. _Moral characteristics_: Honesty; moral courage; stability; tact;
combativeness; leader or follower.
5. _Heredity_: Physical statistics in regard to parents, brothers,
sisters, grandparents, uncles, aunts; occupations followed by these,
with success or otherwise; family traditions as to work; special
abilities in family noted.
6. _Vocational ambitions_.
7. _Family resources for special training_.
Without some such record as this--and it need scarcely be said that
the one given here is capable of wide adaptation to special
needs--teachers, parents, or other friends of the girl are poorly
equipped for giving advice as to the girl's future. And yet it is
common enough for such advice to be thrown out in the most casual
manner, with scarcely a thought of the ambitions awakened or of the
future to which they may lead.
"You certainly ought to go on the stage," chorus the admiring friends
of the girl who excels in the work of the elocution class. And
sometimes with no other counsel than this, from people who really know
nothing about the matter, the girl struggles to enter the theatrical
world, only to find that her talent, sufficient to excite admiring
comment among her friends, has proved inadequate to make her a
worth-while actress.
"Why don't you study art?" say the friends of another girl; or, "You
like to take care of sick people. Why don't you train for nursing?"
or, "You're so fond of books. I should think you would be a
librarian"--quite regardless of the fact that the girl advised to
study art has neither the perseverance nor the health to study
successfully; that the one advised to be a nurse lacks patience and
repose to a considerable degree; or that the one advised to be a
librarian is already suffering from strained eyes and should choose
her vocation from the great outdoors.
Knowledge of the girl must, however, be supplemented by a wide
knowledge of vocations to be of real value to the teacher or parent
who is preparing to give vocational counsel. Final choice may be
reached only after the girl and the vocation are brought into
comparative scrutiny, and their mutual fitness determined. In rare
cases the choice may be made by the swift process of observing a great
talent which, in the absence of serious objections, must govern the
life work. Oftener the process is one of elimination, or of building
up from a general foundation of the girl's abilities and limitations,
and her possibilities for training sufficient to make her an efficient
worker in the line chosen.
A knowledge of vocations presupposes, first of all, a grasp of the
essentials of the work, and hence the characteristics required in the
worker to perform it. What sort of girl is needed to make an efficient
teacher, nurse, saleswoman, or office worker? How may we recognize
this potential teacher without resorting to a clumsy, time-wasting,
trial-and-error method? These are matters with which schools and
vocational guides all over the country are occupying themselves.
Perhaps we cannot do better than to examine somewhat these
requirements for some occupations toward which girls most often
incline.
THE PRODUCING GROUP
The girl who is by nature a maker of things may be a factory worker, a
needlewoman, a baker, a poultry farmer, a milliner, a photographer, or
an artist with brush or with voice, or in dramatic work. She is still
one who makes things. We see at once how wide a range of industry may
open to her.
How shall we know this type of girl? First of all, by her interest in
things rather than in people. With the exception of, the singer and
the dramatic artist, whose production is of an intangible sort, the
girl who makes things is a handworker by choice. The extent to which
her handwork is touched by the imaginative instinct of course measures
the distance that she may make her way up the ladder of productive
work. The girl's school record will usually show her best work with
concrete materials. She draws or sews well, has excellent results in
the cooking class, works well in the laboratory. At home she finds
enjoyment in "making things" of one sort or another. She displays
ingenuity, perhaps, in meeting constructive problems. If so, that must
be considered in finding her place.
Handwork for women includes a wide range of occupations. Let us now
examine some of these kinds of work.
[Illustration: _In the packing room of a wholesale house. The
untrained girl finds it easy to obtain factory work_]
_Factory work._ This term covers many departments of manufacturing
industries. In the main, however, they may be classed together, since
in practically all of them the worker contributes only one small
portion of the work incidental to the making of candy, or artificial
flowers, or coats, or pickles, or shoes, or corsets, or underwear, or
anyone of a hundred different products, some one or several of which
may be found in nearly every American town.
The great advantage of factory work, as the untrained girl sees it, is
that it is usually easy to obtain and that it promises some return
even from the start. Hence a large proportion of untrained girls who
leave school as soon as the law allows enter the factories near their
homes.
The great disadvantages of factory work, laying aside for a moment
many minor disadvantages, are that it not only requires no skill in
the beginner, but that it produces little if any skill even with years
of work and offers practically no advancement for a large proportion
of the workers. It should therefore, be reserved for girls of less
keen intelligence, and other girls should if possible be guided toward
other occupations.
Teachers must make themselves thoroughly familiar with working
conditions in local factories, since there will always be girls who,
because of their own limitations or the limitations of their
environment, will find themselves obliged to take up factory work.
Under the teacher's guidance girls should make definite studies and
prepare detailed reports of local conditions with respect to working
hours, character of work, wages, possible advancement, dangers to
health, moral conditions, advantages over other occupations open to
girls with no more training, and disadvantages. Girls should at least
go into factory work with their eyes open, that they may pass their
days in the best surroundings available.
_Dressmaking_. The possibilities for the girl entering upon work
connected with dressmaking with the ultimate object of becoming a
dressmaker herself are far wider than in the case of the machine
worker in shop or factory. The immediate return for the untrained
girl is far less, but the farsighted girl must learn to look beyond
the immediate present. Not all girls, however, will make good
dressmakers. Not all, even of the producing type of girl, will do so.
Certain definite qualities are required. The girl who would succeed as
a dressmaker must possess ingenuity, imagination, and the visualizing
type of mind. She must see the end from the beginning, and must be
able to find the way to produce that which she visualizes. She must be
a keen observer. She must have confidence in her own power to create.
She must possess manual dexterity, artistic ideas, and, if she aims at
a business of her own, a pleasing personality and keen business sense.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
A millinery class. Millinery requires of the girl a certain degree of
creative ability]
_Millinery_. Millinery requires in its workers the same general type
of mind required for dressmaking, and in addition a certain millinery
faculty or creative ability. The girl who can make and trim hats
usually discovers her own talent fairly early in life.
_Arts and crafts._ This somewhat elastic term we use to include a wide
range of occupations which have to do with articles of use or ornament
which are handmade and which require skill in designing or in carrying
out designs. Embroidery, lace making, rug and tapestry weaving,
basketry, china painting, wood and leather work, handwork in metals,
bookbinding, and the designing and painting of cards for various
occasions are familiar examples of this kind of work. Photography, map
making, designing of wall paper and fabrics, costume designing and
illustrating, making of signs, placards, diagrams, working drawings,
advertising illustrations, book and magazine illustrating, landscape
gardening and architecture, interior decorating, are other lines
offering work to men and women alike.
The range of work here is no greater than the range of qualities which
may be happily and usefully employed in arts and crafts. All branches
of the work, however, are alike in demanding a certain degree of
artistic sense and deftness of manual touch. An accurate, observant
eye is an absolute essential, and, for all but the lowest and most
mechanical lines of work, imagination, originality, and an inventive
habit of mind make the foundation of success. In some lines a fine
sense of color values must underlie good work, in others the ability
to draw easily. All work of this sort requires the ability to do
careful, painstaking, and persevering work. Given this ability and the
artistic sense before mentioned, the girl's work may be determined by
some special talent, by the special training possible for her, or by
the openings possible in her chosen line of work within comparatively
easy access.
[Illustration: Photograph by C. Park Pressey
A youthful farmer. The Census figures for the year 1910 report
one-fifth of all women employed in gainful occupations as engaged in
the pursuit of agriculture and animal husbandry]
_Agriculture._ The Census figures which report one-fifth of all women
gainfully employed as engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry are
somewhat startling until we observe that southern negro women make up
a very large number of the farm workers reported. Even aside from
these, however, there are many women who are finding work in
gardening, poultry raising, bee culture, dairying, and the like. The
girl who is fitted to take up work of this sort is usually the girl
who has grown up on the farm or at least in the country and who has a
sympathy with growing things. She is essentially the "outdoor girl."
She must be willing to study the science of making things grow. She
must be able to keep accounts, that she may know what she is doing and
what her profits are. Above all, she must have no false pride about
"dirty work." Properly such a girl should have entered upon her career
even before she has finished her formal education, so that "going to
work" means merely enlarging her work to occupy her time more fully
and to bring in as soon as possible a living income.
In this sort of work the girl possessing initiative and an independent
spirit will naturally do best, since there are comparatively few
opportunities for such work under supervision. Care must, however, be
exercised by vocational guides in suggesting, and by girls in
choosing, the independent career. Usually it is the girl who has shown
promise in independent work at school or at home that will make a
success of such work later in life. The girl who relaxes when the
pressure of compulsion is removed will not be a success as "her own
boss." It goes without saying that the girl who does well as her own
superior officer will be happier to do work upon her own initiative
than merely to carry out the plans made by others. Agricultural work
will sometimes offer her exactly the conditions she desires. Many
successful farm-owners are women, and their work compares favorably
with that of men.
_Food production_. It is common, in these days, to meet the assertion
that the preparation of food, once woman's undisputed work, has been
almost if not quite removed from her hands; and that, even where she
may still contribute to this work, she must do so in the factory, the
bakery, the packing house, or the delicatessen shop. There are,
nevertheless, still many women who are fitted for cooking and kindred
pursuits who will not find an outlet for their abilities in any of the
places mentioned. In the main, factory production of food is like
factory production of other things--a highly differentiated process,
in which the individual worker finds little satisfaction for her
desire to "make things" and little, if any, opportunity to contribute
from her ability to the final result.
In the canning factory she may sit all day before an ever-moving
procession of beans or peas, from which she removes any unsuitable for
cooking. Or it may be an endless procession of cans, upon which she
rapidly lays covers as they pass. In the pickle factory she may pack
tiny cucumbers into bottles. In the packing house she may perform the
task of painting cans. None of these occupations is more than mere
unskilled labor. None is suitable for the girl who likes to cook, and
who can cook. The number of such girls is already fairly large and
will undoubtedly increase as the domestic science classes of our
schools do more and better work.
[Illustration: An up-to-date factory. In the factory the work is
necessarily routine, and the individual worker finds very little
satisfaction for her desire to make things]
Opposed to the theoretical statement that food is or at least
to-morrow will be prepared entirely in the public-utility plants
outside the home is the practical fact that home-cooked food,
home-preserved fruits and jellies, and home-canned vegetables and
meats find ready sale and that women who can produce these things do
find it profitable to do so. There is, consequently, a field for some
girls in such work.
[Illustration: Cooking class at Benson Polytechnic School for Girls,
Portland, Oregon. In spite of the statement that foods will be
prepared in the public utility plants, the trained, accurate worker
may find a ready sale for home-cooked foods]
Not all girls, on the other hand, who have taken the domestic science
course are fitted to take up this work, even if a market could be
found for their work. Only the expert, that is, the precise, accurate,
painstaking cook, can secure uniform results day after day. Only the
rapid worker can do enough to insure pay for her time. Only the girl
with a keen sense of taste can properly judge results and devise
successful combinations. Only a business woman can buy to advantage
and compute ratios of expense and return. This combination, of course,
is not to be found every day.
THE DISTRIBUTING GROUP
_Salesmanship_. Passing from the class of work which has to do with
making things to that group of occupations which has to do with the
distribution of various products to the consumer, we shall naturally
consider, first of all, the saleswoman. In any given group of young
and untrained girls drawn as in our schools from varying environment
and heredity, the _natural_ saleswomen will probably be in the
minority. I do not mean that girls may not often express a desire to
"work in a store" as apparently the easiest and most immediate
employment for the untrained girl. This may or may not indicate that
the girl has a commercial mind. The girl who is really interested in
commercial undertakings is easily distinguished from her fellow
workers in any salesroom. She is not the girl who lingers in
conversation with the girl next to her while a customer waits, or who
gazes indifferently over the customer's head while the latter makes
her choice from the goods laid before her. To the real saleswoman
every customer is a possibility, every sale a victory, and every
failure to sell distinctly a defeat. The fact that we see so few girls
and women of this type behind the counters in our shopping centers is
sufficient indication that many girls would have been better placed in
other occupations.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Hardware section of a department store. Salesmanship offers large
opportunities to the real saleswoman, who considers every customer a
possibility]
We find, however, in 1910, the number of saleswomen reported as
257,720, together with 111,594 "clerks" in stores, many of whom the
report states are "evidently saleswomen" under another name. There are
also about 4,000 female proprietors, officials, managers, and
floorwalkers in stores, and 2,000 commercial travelers. This gives us
a large number of women who are engaged in the sale of goods. For the
girl of the commercial mind, salesmanship in some form presents
certain possibilities, although there is far less chance for her to
rise in this work than for a boy. She must begin at the most
rudimentary work, as cash or errand girl, and her progress will
necessarily be slow. She will require an ability to handle with some
skill elementary forms of arithmetic, an alert and observing mind, an
interest in and some knowledge of human nature, and good health to
endure the confinement of the long day. She will be fortunate if she
finds a place in one of the stores in which a continuation school is
conducted. At such a school in Altman's department store in New York
the girls pursue a regular course designed to be especially helpful in
their work, and are graduated with all due formality, in which both
public-school and store officials take part. Such a school helps girls
to feel a pride in their work and to feel that they are under
observation by those who will recognize and reward real endeavor.
Filene's in Boston and Wanamaker's in New York and Philadelphia are
other notable examples of such schools.
In a government report previously quoted we find interesting figures
as to the possibility of advancement for the saleswoman. In a study of
twenty-six of the largest department stores in New York, Chicago, and
Philadelphia, employing more than 35,000 women, the workers were
classed as follows:
Per Cent
Cash girls, messengers, bundle girls, etc 13.2
Saleswomen 46.2
Buyers and assistant buyers 1.2
Office and other employees 39.4
"It will be seen," adds the report, "that the opportunity for reaching
the coveted position of buyer or assistant buyer is small."
The disadvantages and dangers of salesmanship for girls, other than
small pay and improbability of much advancement, we shall consider in
a later chapter. We may say here, however, that these disadvantages
and dangers, for the really commercially minded girl, are to a certain
extent neutralized by her nature and possibilities. She is the girl
whose mind is more or less concentrated on "the selling game." Her
nerves are less worn because of a certain exhilaration in her work.
She is the girl who passes beyond the underpaid stage and is able to
live decently and to rise to a position of some responsibility, partly
because of her concentration and partly because she has been able to
resist the influences about her which make for mediocrity or worse.
_Office work_. The girl emerging from high school and looking for work
is usually on the lookout for what in a boy we call a "white-collar
job." Especially in the case where the girl has been kept in school
at more or less sacrifice on the part of her parents, both they and
the girl feel that the extra years of schooling entitle her to a
"high-class" occupation of some kind. Girls are far less willing than
boys to "begin at the bottom" and work up through the various stages
of apprenticeship to ultimate positions near the top. They resent
being asked to take the "overall" job and fear mightily to soil their
hands.
[Illustration: Office girls at work. The successful office worker
must be neat and accurate and have a temperament in which pleasure in
arrangement takes precedence over joy in production]
Twenty-five years ago a large proportion of high-school graduates went
at once into the teaching force, where they succeeded (or not) in
"learning to do by doing," without professional training of any sort.
Now, however, teaching as a profession is in many places fortunately
reserved for the girls who prepare in college or normal school; and a
larger proportion of girls who cannot have this professional training
are looking for other occupations. Office work attracts a large
number, and, with present-day business courses in high schools, many
girls find employment as stenographers, typists, cashiers in small
establishments, bookkeepers, or general office assistants. In any of
these positions girls without special training or experience must
begin at very low wages. Whether they rise to higher ones depends to
some extent at least upon the girls themselves.
What sort of girl shall we encourage to enter office work? Not the
girl whose talent lies in making things, for to her the routine of the
office will be a weary and endless treadmill entirely barren of
results; nor the girl who requires the stimulus of people to keep her
alert and keyed to her best work; nor the girl who cannot be happy at
indoor work. Office work seems to require a temperament in which
pleasure in arrangement takes precedence over joy in production; in
which neatness, accuracy, and precision afford satisfaction even in
monotonous tasks. Coupled with these a mathematical bent gives us the
cashier or accountant or bookkeeper; mental alertness and manual
dexterity, the stenographer; a talent for organization, the secretary.
Girls who enter upon office work directly from high school must be
content with rudimentary tasks and must beware lest they remain at a
low level in the office force. Girls with more training may begin
somewhat farther up, the best positions usually going to those whose
general education and equipment are greatest. Stenographers are more
valuable in proportion as their knowledge of spelling, sentence
formation, and letter writing is reinforced by a feeling for good
English and an ability to relieve their superiors of details in
outlining correspondence. It is not enough that bookkeepers know one
or several systems of keeping business records, or that cashiers
manipulate figures rapidly and well. More important than these
fundamental requirements is the determination to grasp the details of
the business as conducted in the office in which they find themselves
and to adapt their work to the needs of the person whose work they do.
General knowledge and the ability to think not only supplement, but
easily become more valuable than, technical training.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
The successful secretary must have a talent for organization]
A careful study of local conditions as they affect office positions
will enable girls and their guides to have a better conception of
requirements and rewards in this field. A valuable study of conditions
among office girls in Cleveland has recently been published which
sheds considerable light on the ultimate industrial fate of the
overyoung and poorly trained office worker. A more general study is
found in the volume on _Women in Office Service_ issued by the Women's
Educational Union of Boston.
THE SERVICE GROUP
The third, or service, group of workingwomen covers without doubt the
widest range of all. Here we find the domestic helper (or servant, as
she has usually been called), the telephone operator, the librarian,
the teacher, the nurse, the physician, the lawyer, the social worker,
the clergyman or minister. All degrees of training are represented,
and many varieties of work, from the simplest to the most complex.
Strictly speaking, service has to do with personal attendance and
help, but it is constantly overlapping other lines of work. The
household assistant is not only a helper, but at times a producer; the
telephone operator and the librarian are distributors as well as
public helpers; the secretary is an office worker, although she is a
personal assistant to her employer as well. For successful work in any
of these lines, however, a girl must possess certain definite
characteristics, to which her peculiar talent or tendency may give the
determining direction as she chooses her work.
In service of any sort the girl is brought into constant relation with
people. Hence she must be the sort of girl to whom people and not
things are the chief interest of life. She should have an agreeable
personality, that she may give pleasure with her service; she needs
tact, that she may keep the atmosphere about her unruffled; she needs
to find pleasure for herself in service, seeing always the end rather
than merely the often wearisome details of work. Beyond these general
qualities we must begin at once to make subdivisions, since the
additional traits necessary to make a girl successful in one line of
service differ often widely from those required in any other line. We
must therefore take up some of the lines of work in more or less
detail.
_Domestic work_. The untrained girl who naturally falls into the
service group has a rather poor outlook for congenial and successful
work as conditions exist. With ability which she perhaps does not
possess, and with training which she cannot afford, she would
naturally become a teacher, a nurse, a private secretary, a librarian,
or a social worker. Without training, she finds little except domestic
service open to her; and domestic service finds little favor with
girls, or with students of vocational possibilities for girls.
These are unfortunate facts. For the untrained girl of merely average
abilities, with no pronounced talent or inclination, but with an
interest in persons and a pleasure in doing things for people, helping
in the tasks of homemaking ought to prove suitable work. It is,
however, the one vocation for the untrained girl which requires her to
live in the home of her employer, thus curtailing her independence,
rendering her hours of work long and uncertain, and cutting off the
natural social environment possible if she returned to her own home at
the end of the day's work. The social position of girls in domestic
service, especially in the towns and cities, is peculiarly hard for a
self-respecting girl to bear. It is in large part a reflection upon
her sacrifice of independence. The derisive slang term "slavey"
expresses the generally prevalent public contempt. It is small wonder
that a girl fears to brave such a sentiment and as a result avoids
what is perhaps in itself congenial work in pleasanter surroundings
than most noisy, ill-smelling factories.
Almost all the conditions surrounding the domestic worker are such
that it is practically impossible to say except of each place
considered by itself whether or not it is a suitable and desirable
place for a girl, or whether work and wages are fair. Practically no
progress has been made in standardizing household work. The factory
girl knows what she is to do and when she is to do it and how long her
day is to be. The housework girl seldom knows any of these things with
any degree of certainty. Any plan which will make it possible to
regulate these matters according to some recognized standard, and
which will enable domestic workers to live at home, going to and from
their work at regular hours as shop, factory, and office employees do,
will help very materially to solve the problem of opening another
desirable vocation to the untrained girl.
The untrained girl who is willing to accept a difficult and trying
position in a private kitchen with the idea of making her work serve
her as a training school for better work in the future may make a
success of her life after all. Such a girl will have good observing
powers and ability to follow directions and gauge the success of
results. She will have adaptability, patience, and a very definite
ambition. For domestic service may be a stepping stone.
For the high-school girl a better opening may sometimes be found as a
mother's helper. Many women who find the ordinary household helper
unsatisfactory give employment to girls of refinement and high-school
training who are capable of assisting either with household tasks or
with the care of children. Girls in such positions are usually made
"one of the family," and are sometimes very happily situated. Their
earnings are often more than those of other girls of their
intelligence and training who are in offices or stores; but there is
of course little chance of advancement, and there is still the
prejudice against domestic work to be reckoned with. Here, as with
household assistants, the greatest drawback is probably lack of
standardization of work and of working conditions.
The girl who wishes to become a "mother's helper" must have a natural
refinement and some knowledge of social usage if she is to be a sharer
in the family life of her employer. She must use excellent English,
must know how to dress quietly and suitably, and must not only _know
how_ to keep herself in the background of family life, but must be
_willing_ to remain somewhat in the shadows.
Probably no better field for the investigation of these trying
questions could be found than the high school. The ranks of employers
of domestic help are being constantly recruited from the girls who
were the high-school students of yesterday and have now taken their
places as housekeepers. The high school then, where the problem may be
approached in an impersonal manner quite impossible later when the
question has become a personal one, is the proper place in which to
study the domestic service question and to attempt its standardization.
The higher positions involving domestic work are more in the nature of
supervisory employment. Many women are employed as matrons in
hospitals, boarding schools, and other institutions, as housekeepers
in hotels, club buildings, or in large private establishments. These
positions of course call for women who are not only thoroughly
familiar with the work to be done, but are skilled in managing their
subordinates who do the actual work. They require women who have
administrative ability, knowledge of keeping accounts, proper
standards of living and of service, and initiative.
For the woman who has a desire to enter business for herself there are
openings in the line of domestic work. From time immemorial women have
managed lodging and boarding houses, sometimes with good returns. They
are also the owners and managers of tea rooms, restaurants, laundries,
dyeing and cleaning establishments, hairdressing and manicure shops,
and day nurseries. All these occupations can be followed successfully
only by the woman of business ability and some technical knowledge.
They require not only knowledge but aptitude on the part of the
worker. They are usually undertaken only by women of some experience,
and are the result of some earlier choice rather than the choice of
the vocation-seeking girl.
[Illustration: The true teacher represents a high type of social
worker]
_Teaching_. The teacher differs from the person who has merely an
interest in human kind in the abstract, because she has a special
interest in one particular class of human beings--those who are most
distinctly in the process of making. She is interested in children, or
she should not be teaching. This, however, is not enough. The girl who
wishes to teach must possess certain well-defined characteristics. Her
health must be good, and her nerve force stable. Temperamentally she
must be enthusiastic and optimistic, but capable of sustained effort
even in the face of apparent failure. Her outlook must be broad, and
her patience unfailing. Intellectually she must be a student, and if
she possess considerable initiative and originality in her study, so
much the better. She must not, however, become a student of
mathematics or history or languages to the exclusion of the more
absorbing study of her pupils, nor even to so great a degree as she
studies them. The true teacher represents a high type of social
worker. Many girls enter upon the work of teaching badly handicapped
by the lack of some of these essential qualities and are in
consequence never able to rise to real understanding and
accomplishment of their work.
Teaching in these days is a broad vocation, covering many different
lines of work; probably no occupation for girls is so well known with
both its conditions and rewards as this. In general, more girls than
are by nature fitted for the work stand ready to undertake it. There
is nevertheless difficulty for school officials in finding real
teachers enough to fill their positions. For the right girl, teaching
has much to offer.
_Library work_. The librarian in these modern days is a most important
public servant, and many openings in library work are to be found. The
services to be performed range from purely routine work to a very high
type of constructive service for the community. In the small libraries
an "all-round" type of worker is required. In the larger ones
specialties may be followed. In these larger libraries there are to be
found permanent places for the routine workers. In smaller ones each
worker should be in line for even the highest type of constructive
work.
The routine worker in the library is merely an office worker, and the
same girl who would do well at the mechanical tasks of an office will
do well here. The real librarian is of a different sort. She must have
the neatness, precision, and accuracy of the office worker, to be
sure; but to these she must add a broad conception of the place of the
library in the community, and must display initiative and originality
in bringing it to occupy that place. She must know books; she must
know people. She must be in touch with current history, and be alert
to place library material bearing upon it at the disposal of the
people. She must have quick sympathies, tact, the teaching spirit
(carefully concealed), and much administrative ability. And she must
be trained for her work.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
A well-equipped library. The successful librarian must be
scientifically trained for her work]
_Nursing_. The nurse is in many ways like the teacher, and the girl
who has the right temperament for successful teaching will usually
make a successful nurse, temperamentally considered. Her mental
traits, or perhaps more exactly her habits of thought, may be somewhat
different. The teacher must be able to attend to many things; the
nurse must be able to concentrate on one. Originality and initiative
are less to be desired, since the nurse is not usually in charge of
her case directly, but rather subject to the doctor's orders. She
must, nevertheless, be resourceful in emergencies, and of good
judgment always. She should be calm as well as patient, quiet in
speech and movement, a keen observer, and willing to accept
responsibility. Absolute obedience and loyalty to her superiors is
expected, and a high conception of the ethics of her calling.
Underlying all these qualifications, the nurse must have not only good
health but physical strength.
[Illustration: Copyright by Keystone View Co.
During the World War nursing offered to women perhaps the largest
opportunities for service. Here is shown Princess Mary of England in
the Great Ormond Street Hospital, London]
_Social work_. This term covers many occupations which overlap the
work of the teacher, the nurse, the secretary, the house mother or
matron, and even that of the physician and lawyer. The field of work
is a large one, including settlement leaders and assistants, workers
in social and community centers and recreation centers, vacation
playgrounds, public and private charities, district nurses and
visiting nurses sent out by various agencies, deaconesses and other
church visitors, Young Women's Christian Association leaders and
helpers, missionaries, welfare workers in large manufacturing or
mercantile establishments, probation officers, and many others.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Settlement work at Greenwich House, New York. The settlement worker
to succeed must be truly altruistic]
The social worker must of course have the same suitability for
teaching or nursing or any other of the various tasks that she may
undertake as has the teacher or nurse or other person who works under
different auspices. She must have in addition a truly altruistic
spirit, a deep earnestness which will survive discouragement, and a
real insight into the circumstances, handicaps, and possibilities of
others. This insight presupposes maturity of thought; and the young
girl must serve a long apprenticeship with life before she is at her
best as a social worker. It sometimes seems as though no field was so
exactly suited to the abilities of the married woman who has time for
service, or the mother whose children are grown, leaving her free
again to teach or nurse the sick or bring justice to the little child
as she was trained to do in her youth.
Less common vocations for women--but still often chosen after all--are
reserved for those whose abilities are so specialized and so striking
that they compel a choice. Singers, artists with brush or pen, the
natural actress, the journalist or author, need usually no one to
guide their choice. Our great difficulty here is not to open the
girl's eyes to her opportunity, but to restrain the one who has not
measured her ability correctly from attempting that which she cannot
perform. The same is true of girls who aspire to be physicians,
lawyers, or ministers. Some few succeed in all these vocations. Many
more have not the scientific habits of mind, the stability, or the
endurance to make a successful fight for recognition against great
odds.
Many girls mistake what may be a pleasant and satisfying avocation for
a life work. For the girl who will not be held back, there may be a
life of achievement ahead, with fame and all the other accompaniments
of successful public life; or there may be the disappointments of
unrealized ambition. We must see that girls face this possibility with
the other.