a few months to a year in length to those girls who even though they
must go to work early can arrange to give a short period to preparation
for some industrial pursuit. The compulsory school years are over and
the work papers obtained, but the student may or may not have finished
the elementary school work. In a city like New York with so large a
foreign element half the students, at least, will not have completed
the eight grades of school when they go to work. In Boston a larger
proportion have been graduated. The trade-school problem has been
partially met in a few of the cities of the United States. New York
organized trade instruction for girls in 1902 and Boston followed in
1904. Milwaukee, Cleveland, Rochester and Albany have begun or are
about to begin similar work, but as yet their schools have not been
established long enough to show definite results.
In Europe this class of school, reproducing actual trade conditions and
fitted for the poorest girls, is rare. In Belgium there are a few which
are called apprenticeship schools. The one in Maldaghem is extremely
interesting. The town is small and very mediæval. The school is housed
in a new, simple building. The entrance is on the side, and a narrow
long hallway, in which the students put their sabots two by two on both
sides, stretches the length of the building. A steep little staircase
leads to the upper floor where the business offices and workrooms
are to be found. Orders are carried out as in any factory, the work
being fine handwork, the operation of Corneli and single embroidery
machines, beading, and crocheting on net and mousseline. Robe garments
of embroidered net, scarfs, curtains and lace veils of fine character
are produced, some of which come to the American market. The students
are paid nothing while learning, but after their training is finished
can continue to work in the school and receive a regular wage. The
same town has another school for teaching the making of fine varieties
of Brussels lace, the product of which is for the regular market.
The building is an old type of peasant home with stone floors. These
Belgian apprenticeship schools are under government inspection.
The type of apprenticeship school begun in the United States is quite
different. The Manhattan Trade School of New York was the pioneer; the
Boston Trade School was organized later on similar lines. A careful
study of trade conditions in each city preceded the organization of
instruction. Continual close touch with actual conditions is held
by both schools to be necessary in order to keep up to business
requirements. They have thus fitted well into the business life of
their particular cities. The schools differ from each other in the
trades they offer just as the two cities differ. They both believe
that trade conditions must be exactly reproduced in instruction;
consequently they are organized as small factories. To aid the trade
work and to develop a high-class worker, art and academic work adapted
to the specific needs of each of the trades represented in the schools
are given. Wholesale and custom work are taken in all departments.
Systems of business shops headed by trade workers who can teach as well
as conduct workrooms give the students real business organization under
which to work. The results in both schools show that such practical
instruction enables the workers to enter better positions, to gain
higher wages and to continue to rise to more influential positions.
Crude, thoughtless girls have been developed into thoughtful, reliable
workers, and capable girls have been given the opportunity of rapid
rise to positions suited to them.
In both schools stress is laid upon health work. By careful physical
examinations, specific treatment, talks on hygiene, lessons on foods,
and experience in simple lunchroom cookery, the health of students is
brought to a higher level and they know how to keep it there. This
of itself makes better workers, able to stand the strain of business
life. Established health will also react favorably on their homes and
families if they marry.
Training for domestic service is not usually appreciated or desired by
the American girl of the large cities, for the industrial trades offer
her better opportunities. Even Germany finds difficulty in attracting
to her schools for training servants the class for whom the schools
were intended. An excellently planned school for this purpose was
opened some time since in Berne, Switzerland. The servant’s course,
six months in residence, includes the following work: cooking; care of
kitchen, care of the cellar and keeping stores; gardening, including
planting, cultivating, and gathering vegetables; laundry work; mending;
and care of rooms. Rooms with board are rented in the school building
to give practical experience to the student.
EMPLOYMENT BUREAUS FOR WOMEN
M. EDITH CAMPBELL
Director Charlotte R. Schmidlapp Fund, Cincinnati
No other agency stands so little for efficient service as the
employment bureau. Scorned by the scientific because of its
unscientific methods; condemned by the honest and conscientious
because of its unjust earnings and unscrupulous policies; despised by
the employer because of its failure intelligently to meet his needs;
ignored by the seeker for work because of its deceptive guarantees,
the employment bureau is far from commanding the respect of the
industrial world. Consequently, employer and employe usually dispense
with its services, and the woman who is busy molding for herself a new
industrial career gives little thought to so ineffective a method for
determining the direction of that career.
There is, however, in this very tantalizing condition of the employment
agency that which stimulates as well as irritates. For the existence
of an agency which might be a real power, rather than a mere semblance
of one, creates a desire to convert the useless into the useful. The
awakening of such a desire has been demonstrated by the establishment
within the last few years of a number of bureaus[41] which are
attempting to render the real service of which an employment bureau is
capable. Moreover, several excellent studies on the subject have been
published,[42] setting forth the inadequacy of present agencies and
looking toward the development of some plan by which such agencies
could be helpful in solving the problem of the unemployed.
In one of these studies Mr. Devine states that the lack of employment
is due to one of three causes:
1. Unemployableness because of inefficiency.
2. Lack of work.
3. Maladjustment--“The inability of people who want work to get quickly
into contact with opportunities.”
He further states that the employment bureau can offer no remedy for
the first condition, for in that case only education and training will
be effective; neither can it remedy the difficulty due to excess of
supply over demand for labor. It can, however, if properly managed,
help correct the maladjustment.
All the studies above mentioned agree with the opinion of a number of
writers[43] dealing in detail with the question of unemployment, that
the existing agencies have not met this question of maladjustment. Many
commercial agencies resort to “dishonorable practices and fraudulent
methods.” The hunter for a job “becomes, because of his ignorance
and necessities, a great temptation to an honest agent and a great
opportunity to an unscrupulous one.” Only a small proportion of these
agencies have been found efficient, honorable, or even systematic.
The work of charitable employment bureaus--those conducted under
the auspices or management of philanthropic organizations--has been
found extremely “fragmentary, uncoördinated and meagre,” while their
connection with charitable institutions has been of doubtful advantage.
Trade unions also have been unable to deal effectively with their
unemployed, or to attempt the formation of a systematic bureau.
Seemingly one of the simplest methods for employer and employe to
find each other is the want column in the daily newspaper. But this
method has proved too simple to be of more than nominal service. In the
first place, careful investigation has conclusively shown that a large
number of advertisements are either “fakes” or misrepresentations.
The effect upon a girl of looking up several advertisements is
marked. Her wearisome efforts and wanderings are usually rewarded
either by finding the place taken or misrepresented, or by meeting
with inexcusable carelessness and indifference on the part of the
advertiser. Hence she is convinced that there are no real or serious
wants for “Help--Female.” A condition of which much complaint is
made is the insertion of an advertisement and then a failure to give
instructions to those with whom applicants will first come into
contact. Consequently, when a girl appears to inquire for the work
she is often told by an uninterested stenographer that no help is
wanted. It such a case recently it was only by accidentally meeting the
employer on the elevator that the writer discovered that there was an
open position. Another employer had advertised in the morning paper,
but had left his office before nine o’clock. His secretary could give
no idea of the time of his return, or of the work desired. A number of
applicants, she said, had already been there, but would have to come
again. This waste of time, energy and carfare could be easily prevented
by a bit of foresight and consideration. The employer may reply that
the irresponsible girl fails him just as often. But surely the method
of unfairness on both sides will never straighten out the tangle, and
the employer by nature of his position and superior breadth of view, is
the one to set the example of fairness.
The free state employment bureaus which have been established in
several states are described, in the inquiries above referred to, as
involved in politics and hence rendering a service perfunctory and
inefficient. Miss Abbott calls attention to the fact that in these
bureaus “no man is working on the general problem of unemployment
and bringing the entire prestige of the state and its financial
expenditures to bear on its solution.” Also she notes that the
combination of inspection of private bureaus with the duties of the
superintendent of the state employment office prevents both good
inspection and good administration.
These statements concerning employment and employment agencies in
general have been repeated here because they bear upon the specific
problem of the woman worker whose adjustment to present industrial
conditions is so difficult. The difficulties of this problem may be
illustrated by a brief history of the effort to meet it that is being
made in Cincinnati.
In the year 1907, Mr. J. G. Schmidlapp, of Cincinnati, in memory of his
daughter Charlotte, placed in the hands of The Union Savings Bank &
Trust Company securities amounting to something over $250,000, saying
that he wished the income to be used for the benefit of wage-earning
girls, to increase their efficiency and power of self-support. It had
seemed an easy matter “to help girls” before money for that purpose was
available, but with abundant funds in hand, to decide just what to do
proved a hard problem. Letters poured in from young women all over the
country, until the board of trustees finally decided to restrict the
use of the fund to individual young women needing financial assistance
to complete their education. Even after the beneficiaries were limited
to Hamilton County, the task of selecting them from the applicants was
no easy one.
Accordingly the trustees were asked what they intended to do about
the girls to whom assistance must be refused. When they replied that
for these girls the fund was not responsible, the following facts
were brought to their attention: First, we cannot intelligently
assist in educating young women without a more accurate knowledge of
just what lines of work will be open to them when their education
is completed. Second, the number of girls who come to the office of
the Schmidlapp Fund for advice, for information concerning work and
for employment itself, almost equals the number who wish financial
assistance. Third, the applicant who applies to be made more fit in
her present industrial work cannot be assisted because there is no
adequate provision in Cincinnati for industrial training for girls.
Fourth, it is not at all improbable that the Schmidlapp Fund will train
a young woman for a certain line of employment, only to find out later
that the same employment brings to the beneficiary neither health,
reasonable remuneration, nor mental development. Such a mistake will
be due to lack of knowledge. Fifth, a wise expenditure for training
individual girls cannot be made, and a positive waste in expenditure
cannot be prevented without more definite knowledge concerning the
self-supporting life of young women. The board of trustees acknowledged
the seeming consistency of these statements and gave consent to a
further development of these ideas.
Within a radius of a mile of the Schmidlapp Fund’s office are at least
a dozen centers, to some of which for more than twenty years young
women have been going to look for work. One would naturally turn to
these bureaus for a few simple facts regarding the industrial life of
young women in Cincinnati. Perhaps they could advise the Schmidlapp
Fund as to the first step to take toward educating self-supporting
young women. Perhaps they could give some information concerning
the occupations in which women were engaged, not only as to numbers
employed but also as to remuneration, chances for advancement, effect
on health, and general advantages. Because of their unusual opportunity
for coming into contact with practical shop life, they might be able to
state in what way girls could be trained for any special occupation.
They might be able to tell why a girl had changed her occupation a half
dozen times within two years, whether it was her inefficiency or the
irregular, seasonal character of the work. Such information would be
a guide as to whether it was best to hold the girl to ordinary school
life for a longer period, or to try to overcome her inefficiency by
a different course of education. These bureaus had placed hundreds
of girls, and had had constant intercourse with many more. Yet not
a single bureau, even the one on which the state expended $2,500
annually, could give any definite or helpful information. There proved
to be a total lack of records, of systematic knowledge concerning
the applicant and the job, and even of intelligent interest in the
girl’s industrial career. Here was a rich opportunity wholly lost.
The Schmidlapp Fund found the most reliable way to gain the desired
information to be through a bureau of its own. By this time, Mr.
Schmidlapp had become so keenly interested that he decided to finance
such a bureau without encroaching upon the Charlotte R. Schmidlapp
Fund, which could still be used for individual girls. The bank, which
Mr. Schmidlapp had made trustee of the fund and of which he had been
the first president, offered to house the bureau and to allow the work
to enjoy its prestige. Consequently there now appears on the door of
the trust department the following sign:
The Schmidlapp Bureau for Women and Girls
Free Employment Department
Vocation Department
The Charlotte R. Schmidlapp Fund
We are beginning to attempt to do the things which ought to have been
done for us twenty years ago. In the words of the annual report:
This Bureau will be based on the work of the Vocation Bureau in
Boston, the Alliance Employment Bureau in New York, and on the work
of Mrs. Ogilvie Gordon, of Scotland. It will have a close affiliation
with all the social centers in Cincinnati, will be confined to work
for women and girls, and its general scope and usefulness cannot be
better formulated than in Mrs. Gordon’s Handbook of Employment and in
a report of the Alliance Employment Bureau:
1st. By well-planned education and congenial employment to bring as
favorable influences as possible to bear upon upgrowing girls. If the
first few working years of the girl can be spent industrially and to a
good purpose, the parents and public may have confidence in the future
of the women.
2d. To form a center of industrial information and a connecting link
between school training and trade requirements, thus aiding in the
development of industrial education.
3d. To make a constructive study of the facts involved in the problem
of employment.
4th. To aid by counsel and information as well as by employment the
girl who must be a wage earner.
Even the short experience of less than a year has demonstrated the
value of such a center in Cincinnati. The carelessness, the ignorance,
and the short-sightedness of parents have been brought to view over
and over again in the case of girls who have been taken from school
and placed in unskilled occupations where there is no chance for
advancement or growth. This is sometimes due to necessity and dire
poverty; but more often parents feel that a year or two more in the
public school will not increase the girl’s wage-earning ability, or
else they cannot discover what work the child is best fitted for, and
do not know in what occupations she can at least attain some growth
and promotion. This persistent withdrawal from school of girls at the
age of fourteen is a cause for serious concern. We shall be guilty of
criminal neglect if we longer refuse to face the situation. The already
overworked teachers cannot supply the necessary guidance in other than
a general way. It must be supplied by an outside agency, and as Miss
Van Kleeck of the Committee on Women’s Work so keenly points out, no
agency for the purpose can be so helpful and efficient as one built on
the needs of the individual girl.
Such a bureau will, in the first place, correct the evils and
deficiencies of the present agencies. In the second place it will
provide the only wise and strong foundation on which to build our
educational and vocational structures for women.
To render the first service, an efficient employment bureau for women
will of necessity attempt to do constructive work based on a knowledge
of the evils and deficiencies which have been mentioned.
1st. Instead of no records, or inadequate ones, full and complete
industrial records will be kept of both employer and employe. The one
will show the conditions under which the girl does her work, and will
give a careful description of the work to be done. The other will
state the girl’s home environment, her education or training, and her
industrial history both before and after application. Both of these
records will be verified by personal visits to the place of work and
the home of the applicant.
2d. Instead of the selfish attitude of the commercial agency based on
greed, and the perfunctory attitude of the state agency controlled by
politics, there will be an attitude of fairness toward both employer
and girl, based upon the sole desire to supply the need of the just
employer with the ability of the responsible worker.
3d. Instead of indifference toward the relation of employer and
employe, there will be an attempt, with a good chance for success,
we believe, to lessen unfairness on both sides. Often a mere word of
explanation, which can be given most effectively by a third party,
brings consideration in place of irresponsibility and injustice.
Employers who complain constantly of the impossibility of securing
steady workers, would be amazed at the reasons why the girls leave, as
brought out in a recent inquiry based on work certificates issued to
girls in 1907. Often through the unintelligent and short-sighted policy
of a foreman--or, I regret to say, more often a forewoman--the employer
loses a worker who proved, in another establishment, to be invaluable.
It may be of interest to note that the work we are trying thus to do
in Cincinnati chanced to come to the notice of Governor Harmon and C.
H. Wirmel, the commissioner of labor of Ohio. Both have evinced the
greatest interest in the experiments and have asked for suggestions
as to how the work of the state bureau in Cincinnati can be made more
effective. Mr. Wirmel will attempt to use our system of records and in
other ways to test the practicability of our methods. While, as Mr.
Devine points out, a state or federal bureau can never do aggressive
work, because the citizen can protest against “discrimination,” public
bureaus can give most valuable coöperation in the matter of records.
A number of such adjustments would go a long way toward righting the
general maladjustment which so evidently exists between the supply and
the demand for labor.
The second justification for the existence of these employment
bureaus is unquestionably to assist in the development of industrial
education--a problem which is now presenting itself in a formidable
manner. That we are still far from adjusting education to woman’s life
is lamentably apparent. The public schools seem averse to training
her for a trade lest they unadvisedly throw her into the employer’s
hands. The plea is still loudly heard that the girl must be trained
for home life and for home life alone. If a girl goes into a trade,
the school will not assume the responsibility of placing her under the
deadening influences she is sure to encounter there. Hence she enters
her trade untrained, with every possibility that trade experience
will make her unfit for the home--not because of the nature of the
occupation, but because of her own lack of intelligence concerning the
occupation. While the trade itself may not be essentially deadening,
to permit a girl to be a purely mechanical worker in the trade, without
an informing mind and a cultivated imagination, as Miss Addams has
expressed it, leads inevitably to mental and moral stupefaction.
Not long since, a man of deep mental and spiritual insight said to the
writer that he considered all legislation for making women’s industrial
life easier a mistake, because intolerable conditions in the factory
and workshop will ultimately force women back into the home. Just where
“back into the home” is, no one seems to know! With the industrial
processes in which woman has worked from time immemorial taken from the
home, the exhortation to stay at home and follow the example of her
industrious grandmother seems a bit hard to follow. This fear, however,
on the part of educators, this restiveness on the part especially of
men concerning women and the trades, should not be altogether ignored,
though part of it is due to plain cowardice in refusing to face things
as they are. The few courageous leaders who are trying to work out an
adequate system of vocational training for women feel that they need
definite knowledge of the effect of industrial work upon her.[44] This
can be supplied only by learning the specific needs and characteristics
of the girl, the actual happenings in her working life, and the wants
and demands of the employer, who, whether we like it or not, is bound
to determine finally all plans for training the wage-earning girl. We
can lessen his injustice and his lordship over conditions by refusing
him skilled workers unless he agrees to reasonable terms; but we can
never lessen his authority as to the actual work to be done and the
method the worker is to pursue. Much patient study is needed. The
immediate task is to bring together the employer and the educator, who
for too long have walked apart when their path, which led to the making
of the worker, should have been a common one.
The need for a mediary to bring about this coöperation is clearly
felt at the present time. After a recent interview dealing wholly
with educational questions, Mr. Hamerschlag, Director of the Carnegie
Technical Schools, said to the writer: “Do you suppose your fund
would consider establishing some center or bureau that would be able
to furnish really definite information concerning the occupations
of girls? Don’t spend your time over present education--spend it in
finding out what we should do! If some one could tell us as much about
trades for women as the Anti-Tuberculosis League can tell us about that
disease, we might accomplish better results. We simply do not know the
effect of our present legislation upon women, or whether this or that
trade means health, mental development, and reasonable pay.”