WORKING-GIRLS' CLUBS.
Twenty-five or thirty years ago in New York the question of the wisdom, if
not the necessity, of moving the downtown churches uptown began to agitate
the pastors and church leaders. The congregations, or part of the
congregations, who had contributed most liberally to the support of the
Church were beginning to move uptown, crowded out by business and the
incoming foreign element which settles near the shipping and factory
districts. The new-comers did not support the churches, especially the
Protestant, not even by attendance. It was natural that the churches should
follow their congregations. Some sold their buildings to the sects that
came with the foreigners; some made a brave effort to maintain a church for
the people; some became missions, distributing stations to the poor people
who had settled in the now overcrowded houses that formerly were the homes
of one family. The change in the downtown communities was so rapid that no
one could understand how to deal with the new element. The Church had to
spend years in learning how to adapt its methods to the needs of the new
peoples who settled by hundreds where scores had been. Not only was this
feature bewildering in itself, but the people spoke an unknown tongue, were
foreign in thought and sentiment; were social, rather than religious.
The saloon far outstripped the Church in the ease with which it adapted
itself to the new element. The Church encountered not merely the new people
degraded, but an environment that in itself was a tremendous obstacle to
decent living. The Church shortly discovered an entirely unlooked-for evil,
insidious, demoralizing--the political corruption of voters. The Church to
the smallest degree only in recent times has come into the larger
conception of its function as a teacher of good citizenship, a link between
the voter and the ballot-box, preaching the duty of the exercise of the
franchise governed by conscience. It took the moral degradation of the city
to rouse the churches to activity as redemptive civic powers.
The corrupting influence of corrupt politicians was evidenced in the
conditions that developed in sections of the city left to their control. As
the years went on and the men of conscience and intelligence became more
absorbed in business and profession, more given to money-making, because of
increasing social demands, the city became, in the minds not only of these
politicians, but of the voters they trained, a mine to be worked for
personal gain. Ignorance contributed to the rapid degeneracy of the people
in the old home sections of New York.
The saloon became very early in the development of the tenement-house
sections the only social center. The result was an increasing of the drink
habit and the establishment of political headquarters in saloons. Often the
politician in embryo was the saloon-keeper, often the bartender. The social
side of life thirty years ago was not a subject for church consideration
and study.
The Church ministering to a people having standards of social life
established by the churches, the outgrowth of its teachings and creeds, can
ignore questions that the Church ministering, or trying to minister, to a
people poverty-stricken, overworked, living lives barren of any pleasures
but those of the senses, in an environment that of itself would be a
deteriorating influence, must meet and answer.
The Church downtown discovered it must work seven days in the week; that
its office, its function was secular, as well as religious; that its Sunday
work was but one-seventh of its work, and that the six-sevenths must
minister to that one. The Church must go out into the highways and hedges,
to use a misplaced metaphor for a city street, and win the people. This
evolution of conception marks a spiritual Renaissance.
Industrial training was introduced by the churches, the natural result of
discovering the ignorance of the women of household arts. Far more valuable
than the skill imparted to the children gathered in these classes was the
contact with the earnest, refined women and young girls who were the
teachers in the now established mission churches. The revelation was
mutual. If the tenement-house child gained new ideas of cleanliness, of
order, of neatness, of dexterity, of manners, the uptown teacher also
gained knowledge of which she stood quite as much in need. When a panting,
shining-faced child came to sewing school half to three-quarters of an hour
late because she scrubbed the halls and stairs of a three-story tenement
house to help her mother, the housekeeper, who paid the whole or part of
the rent for the family by this service, the uptown woman of leisure gained
a new view of life and its responsibilities. When the mission worker who
was giving time and strength and knowledge as the expression of her faith
and conscience, found children scarcely more than babies working far beyond
their strength in the service of their families, the uptown worker gained a
new conception of sacrifice, of poverty, and, what was far more important,
a new conception of the causes of ignorance. The uptown woman of leisure
saw that often children were sacrificed to greed; forced to become
wage-earners by parents anxious to increase their bank accounts.
As time went on, they saw that, whether poverty or greed was responsible
for the sacrifice of the children, the protection of the children was the
safeguard of the State, of the nation. There came from this, by the process
of evolution, the factory laws for the protection of women and children;
the compulsory school law. In these latter days this last has been made
ridiculous by the failure of the municipality to provide school
accommodations for the children of school age, especially the children
under fourteen living in the overcrowded sections.
The church workers in the tenement-house sections were able to find means
to meet some of the evils of oppression, of poverty, of ignorance. They had
concrete facts to present to a semi-indifferent public; but when the social
side of the people in the tenements became a problem, especially the social
life of the young people, the remedies did not present themselves. The
legislation proposed and executed was restrictive, not recreative. It was
not the function of the State or the Church to provide social
opportunities for uneducated, overworked young people.
The older girls in the Sunday-school classes presented not only all the
problems of the little children, but the larger one of social opportunity.
The homes were too small, too overcrowded to give social opportunity to the
family. Besides, there was that saddest of all features too often found in
the home of the working girls--the absence of all sense of personal
responsibility on the part of parents for the social life of the children,
girls and boys. The children in all but the exceptional home were free to
choose friends, free to go and come as suited them. Home was a place in
which to eat and to sleep; a place of shelter; a place often entered only
when there was no place to go out of working hours.
The problem of providing social opportunity faced the downtown churches. In
the very nature of things the social opportunities the Church could offer
must be limited; must be of the nature that appealed to the more quiet, the
phlegmatic, the element that presented the least factors in the social
problem. The parish house, the church house did not exist. All the
amusements offered the people must be in a building consecrated to
religious life and service. It was a serious question how far the Church
was justified in introducing the purely social.
It was natural that the young women brought into touch with the young
working girls in the Sunday-school should apprehend the restrictions that
life in a tenement imposed on a working girl. Everything in this life
tended to make her gregarious. She was born into a house probably
overcrowded before she came into it; she slept, ate, lived with crowds. The
street, her only playground, was teeming with children like herself. When
she worked, she rubbed elbows with the workers on each side of her. She
went and came from her work one of a group. The working girl lived free,
and pleasure she would have.
The girl of wealth and leisure working in the mission Sunday-school, by her
own youth and natural inclinations, could appreciate this side of the
working-girl's nature, and with the same clearness of vision see the
limitations imposed on the Church in trying to meet the social needs of the
people for whom it primarily existed.
Visiting the homes of their girl pupils, the Sunday-school teachers
discovered the limitations of the homes. Between the homes as they existed
and the churches as they must exist, the social center for the working girl
must be created that would meet her social needs. The streets were the
working-girl's reception-room, drawing-room, living-room, where she
received her most intimate friends; where mutual entertainment was provided
in ways that made no drafts on purse or inventiveness. Halls were open for
dancing, where her presence was so desirable that she was admitted free or
at half the price demanded of her brother. Excursion grounds with dancing
platforms were then popular within the city limits. The immorality of the
present temptations that make perilous the way of the working girl in 1901
were almost wholly unknown twenty years ago.
The work the earnest-hearted women interested in the working-girl's life
faced was how to enlarge her social opportunities in connection with
educational opportunities that would meet her peculiar need, and which she
would accept. New methods of intercourse, new places of meeting must be
found.
Every organization that has developed in these latter days for bettering
the condition of the people has its root in the doctrines of the churches;
workers and money come from the people who receive their impulse from the
teachings of Christ. These organizations are as truly as the churches the
expression of brotherly love; the positive declaration of the
consciousness that no man liveth to himself.
To Miss Grace H. Dodge the women of this country owe a great debt. She,
from the standpoint of a Church worker, devoted and faithful, saw that
outside of the Church, but governed by all that the Church believed and
taught, the natural outcome of both, a social center for working girls must
be created. This center must be independent of any other organization. It
must be at once a natural expression of the working-girls' standards. It
must be flexible, as well as progressive, during every period of evolution
in each group; it must keep in touch with the least progressive mentally,
the most progressive socially.
A place must be created where recreation was possible; where classes to
meet the educational wants of every member could be established. Above all,
a place must be made where wealth and poverty, education and ignorance,
could meet on the common level of mutual helpfulness.
A conference with a group of working girls but strengthened Miss Dodge's
conviction that this social center would not only give to the working girls
the social opportunity that New York lacked, but it would give to the woman
of wealth and leisure the opportunity to meet the people whom she must know
if she would use her time, her money, her education wisely in the interest
of social development.
With Miss Dodge as president, the first working-girls' club was organized.
It marked a new epoch. It made the opportunity that had never existed--the
working of rich and poor to secure the same end. This country reaps the
benefit of this first step in altruism based on the highest Christian and
democratic doctrines.
The working-girls' club has from that time been a positive factor in the
social development of working women, not only of New York, but the whole
country. It has enabled the students of economics and sociology to get at
facts that have revolutionized theories. The working-girls' club taught the
working girls themselves the causes of their economic disadvantages.
Hardly was the first club formed when the practical results inseparable
from this new combination of interests and sympathies met the approval of
all interested in the problem of the working-girl's life. Everywhere clubs
began to form. The idea has been adapted and adopted by the churches.
Working-girls' clubs of all degrees of development, under many kinds of
constitutions, managed and mismanaged, are to be found north, east, south
and west.
The question of support was one of primary importance. Miss Dodge had
studied this side of the question thoroughly, and from the first it was
decided that dues must be paid by the members. As new clubs were formed,
this question of dues was met differently. Usually the wages of the
majority of each group of girls forming a club decided the amount of dues,
and naturally the dues varied in the clubs. In some clubs the dues were
five cents per month; in others, five cents per week; in some the dues were
twenty-five cents per month. Even this amount could not meet the expenses
of a club conducted to elevate the standards of the members by the
environment, as well as the social and educational opportunities provided.
The financial managements of the clubs differ greatly, and always have.
Strenuous effort has always been made in some clubs to make them
self-supporting; they seem almost to live for that purpose. Entertainments,
sub-letting of rooms, fairs, every means is resorted to accomplish this
end. Naturally the members of such clubs develop a good deal of business
ability; sometimes at the expense of qualities that in a woman count for
more in life.
The highest form of club life developed among working girls represents, to
the working girl, her college. She realizes, as does the rich girl or boy
who enters college, that what she pays does not, cannot, pay for what she
receives. This conception of the financial side of the working-girls' club
management controls in the clubs, with few exceptions, to-day.
The club must give every educational and social opportunity that will meet
the needs of the members. As the college meets the demands of its students
in the electives it offers, so must the working-girls' club. As the college
student must meet the financial obligations he assumes when he enters
college, so must the member of the working-girls' club keep her financial
engagement. As the college makes it possible for the worthy student to
complete his course of study after financial disaster makes it impossible
for him to meet his financial obligations, so must the working girl who has
contributed to the life of the club, or who has shown her desire to profit
by what it offers, be kept in good and regular standing when financial
disaster makes personal independence impossible. In short, the
working-girls' clubs that are conducted on the broader lines, and with the
most comprehensive knowledge of our social conditions, are in management
and purpose a college for working girls. The idea of self-support may have
been strained for a time, but it was an error in the right direction, and
led to the truer conception which regulates the management of the best
clubs to-day.
It was curious, is curious, the attitude of mind with which some girls
approach the club idea. There comes to mind now the effort to form a second
club in the rooms of a club of several years' standing. The need of the
second club had grown out of the refusal of the girls who earned from five
to nine dollars a week in various employments to associate with a number of
girls working in a tobacco factory, and earning on an average three dollars
and a half per week. The last-named were rough in speech and manner, and
far from stylish in dress--the standard of the elder club. The introduction
of the girls from the tobacco factory to the club was the result of the
sentiment of one of the members of the club, a bright, wealthy, healthy
girl, a great favorite with the other club girls. She had wanted for two
years to work with girls less prosperous than the girls in the club of
which she was a member.
A large tobacco factory not far from where the club met attracted her
attention, and she invited the girls working there to join the club.
Twenty-two came to the club-room. Mentally they were in a state of nature.
This group of girls represented just what intermittent school attendance,
uninterrupted freedom of the streets, from the time they could walk alone
to the present time, might be expected to produce. They were strangers even
to the degree of social opportunities the members of the club represented.
Their standards of manners and morals were what the neighborhood in which
they grew up made them. Their homes were in one of the worse sections of
the city, in which an institution wholly charitable pretending to do
educational work had been, not what was intended, an elevating influence,
but the reverse for the children of this section. When these girls went to
school they alternated between this and the public school, so that it was
impossible to compel their attendance at the public school through officers
of the law. The neighborhood in which most of these girls had been born and
grew up was a section as remote from the life of the city of which it was a
part as though it were in another country. Through it ran a thoroughfare in
which were stores that could supply every want. It was another political
unit where one man ruled, whose approval meant work in the city department,
in the street railroads, on the docks; even in the factories, of which
there were many in the section. The streets were in a shocking condition,
unpaved and dirty, and no one objected because no one cared.
The tenement houses were formerly the residences of the prosperous. These
houses were badly kept, old and unsanitary. Liquor saloons were on two, and
sometimes three, corners of the streets through the whole section.
Beer-sodden women were so common a sight that the women who did not bear
evidence of over-indulgence were remarkable. These girls had never known
personal ownership, even in a bureau drawer; not so much as the right to
one peg on which to hang their clothes to the exclusion of others. It is
doubtful if they ever owned a change of under-clothing that another child
of the family could not claim.
Naturally, the girls took possession of the club-rooms. Quite as naturally
the older members resented it. It was seen at once that an attempt to have
the new girls elected as club members would be equivalent to ejection. They
were tolerated, but not tolerable to the older members. At the end of four
weeks the two sets of girls lined up on opposite sides of the room, utterly
refusing to intermingle. This passive attitude changed to the aggressive,
which approached open hostilities so closely as to make the danger line.
When this point was reached it was decided to form the new girls into a
club by themselves. The rooms were not used every evening by the club for
which they were hired. Sub-letting would give more money for educational
purposes.
As this attempt at club-making is one of the worst, and for that reason one
of the failures, it would be well to describe it:
The directors hired rooms each fall, in September or October, until the
first of May following. As one recalls this club, it presents one of the
best evidences of the barrenness of the working-girl's life in New York.
Every fall for years a few notes written to the leading girls, and a group
of twenty or twenty-five working girls, would gather and start anew on this
club life. This method of conducting a club made it seem useless to spend
money in making the rooms attractive. They were usually on the second floor
of a house occupied by two or more families; the halls dark and bare; the
rooms rarely clean as to walls and ceiling, barren of ornament. The floors
were bare, and not infrequently stood sadly in need of scrubbing. They were
lighted by smoking kerosene lamps, which but added to their
unattractiveness. Frequently the caretaker started the fires a few minutes
before the time for the girls to appear. Yet the girls came and remained
winter after winter.
The new girls accepted the same conditions, and assembled one stormy night
to form their own club, with several additions to their number of their
own selection, among the rest their forewoman. The leaders of the club
realized that she might be an element of strength; she might be the source
of infinite trouble. She had been young many years before, a fact of which
she was wholly unconscious. She was dressed in what at the time was called
laquer--a warm shade of tan--silk, trimmed with bead trimming; a lace
collar, and a most remarkable hat completed the kind of a costume that
always is discouraging to a true club worker.
Naturally the forewoman was the spokeswoman for the girls. It was useless
to attempt to draw out a personal opinion from the girls, all of whom
worked under her. Knowing the wages of the girls, it had been decided that
five cents per month should be the dues, leaving the girls a margin from
which they might pay for classes. The indignation of the forewoman at the
suggestion of five cents a month dues would have been amusing if it had not
revealed her utter blindness to the poverty of the girls. Being determined
that no girl there should be kept out of her club by poverty, the
suggestion was made to the forewoman that as her wages equalled the wages
of any three of the girls, and as she chose to join a club where the others
received such small wages, she might pay the same dues, and each month
make a donation to the club to meet its current expenses. She could see the
dues alone would not do that.
The forewoman, after a few minutes, consented to accept the condition. The
worried look left the faces of the young girls, and they beamed on the
gracious lady who consented to waive her own dignity in their behalf.
Perhaps it is well to state here that the forewoman never made any
donation, and that she would have been dropped from the club for
non-payment of dues but for the knowledge that such a step would mean that
she would make the girls leave the club. She was by them considered a good
forewoman, kind, and ready to help a girl if a girl tried to earn more
money. She had to be consulted in everything attempted for the girls.
Fortunately she was so afraid of revealing her ignorance, which was dense
outside of her work, that she always supported the workers directing the
club affairs.
This woman was taken ill. The director of the club found that she boarded
with a family consisting of a father, mother and three children, living in
three rooms. She was found lying on a mattress on the floor, destitute of
sheets or pillow-cases. She did not own a nightdress. The tan silk dress
with the bead trimming hung on a nail over her head, surmounted by the
gorgeous hat. She was very ill and penniless; yet the poor about her were
devoted to her and considered her most remarkable.
[Illustration: A CORNER IN AN OLD SECTION.]
Several years ago both of the clubs referred to consolidated with another
club whose directors kept the club-rooms open throughout the entire year.
After the consolidation a house of three stories in a good neighborhood was
rented, and devoted entirely to the use of the club. Only those who have
watched the development of these girls could appreciate what the club has
done for them. Cooking and sewing classes, lectures on city government,
talks on books, on art and nature; the weekly contact with women of culture
and refinement, who carry the conviction that club work is a pleasure, that
service for others is a delight, has borne fruit, and the girls in turn
give their service to those whom they may help--oftenest the members of
their own club.
The evolution of character through the contact with others is, after all,
the highest attainment of the working-girls' club movement. It brought the
working girl into entirely new relations. Constantly she was forced to see
the folly of placing emphasis on the wrong thing.
A nice-looking girl, very well dressed, joined a working-girls' club. Her
face indicated character and intelligence. She was elected to office, but
never re-elected, for she was ignorant--too ignorant to perform the
smallest duties in club life. She came every week on the social evening,
always the best-dressed girl in the club. As she grew more familiar she
grew snobbish. She lived in a very poor neighborhood, where her clothes
must have been even more out of place than in the club-room. She held a
position which required special manual skill, and in her own field was an
expert. Unfortunately, she obtained an influence over certain girls and
headed a clique. Every week she became a greater problem. One night a
rather rough, but frank and intelligent, girl was introduced as a candidate
for membership by a member who worked in the same shop. The girl who was
the club problem had been away two weeks working overtime, and did not come
to the club until after the new girl had been elected a member. The
amazement of both as they faced each other as members of the same club
aroused questions as to their social and family background. All that
appeared was that they were neighbors.
[Illustration: OPPOSITE A CORNER IN AN OLD SECTION.]
The first reception to mothers was given by the club about this time. When
the night of the reception came, the "problem" came in a new dress having a
jetted front. Her appearance amazed the members, and made it clear that the
"problem" must be solved or eliminated. The new member appeared with two
mothers, both plainly dressed, one not warmly enough. This one was timid,
reluctant to enter the room, and but for the urging of the new member and
her mother she would have gone home. She refused to remove the shabby shawl
she wore, and adjusted again and again the straw hat, on which a narrow
black ribbon was pinned. The "problem" stood in front of the mantel,
surrounded by an admiring crowd. The two mothers and the new member walked
into the room. It was a dramatic moment. The new member, with an expression
of deep scorn, said: "You forgot to ask your mother; we brought her." The
"problem" grew white and then crimson. The girls fell back and gazed
spellbound at the shabby, uncomfortable, timid mother. The scales fell from
their eyes. The "problem," so far as influence in the club was concerned,
ceased to be a problem. A girl who would sacrifice her mother's comfort,
who used her simply to keep house for her, could not hold any position in a
working-girls' club.
The story crept out. The "problem" felt the loss of prestige. Clothes had
satisfied her ambition; she had through them enjoyed a sense of power. The
experience of that evening doubtless opened her eyes to things in life to
which she had been blind. Again and again she was seen during that evening
reception to look at her mother searchingly. She seemed to see her in a new
light, and by its reflection, herself. The mother was afraid of her and
showed it. The daughter, it was evident, discovered that fear for the first
time and sought to overcome it. It was determined to hold fast to the
"problem" and help her solve herself. Great progress was made. Her dress no
longer astonished; her mother came to the club receptions comfortably and
suitably dressed. Out of consideration for her mother, she remained in the
wretched tenement, because the mother and the house had grown old together;
but the rooms were now furnished. The new member had supplanted the
"problem" as an influence in the club. The "problem" became engaged, and
the club lost her. The man was a store-keeper in a town not far from New
York. The girl married and forgot to take her mother to her new home. The
mother remained a club legacy for two years, when she died. The daughter
sent the money to bury her, but did not come to the funeral. Her husband is
successful, and she is a social power in the Church to-day; a devoted
mother and wife, strange as it may seem.
The centering of experience, the revelations of character inevitable in a
working-girls' club, are the largest factors in educating the members. As
the years go on, emphasis is laid on the right things. Harmony results,
because a sense of proportion is gained. Girls who have had the benefit of
a public school education that enables them to fill positions that prove
they have had such opportunities, often in the beginning of their club life
will manifest a feeling of superiority over the girl who works with her
hands. But eventually some experience will reveal to them the pettiness of
their estimate, and a readjustment of values is made.
A girl, long a member of a club, had won the love and admiration of all
connected with it. She earned wages far above the average of working girls,
a fact well understood in the club. She was always an officer, and a
dependable power in the management of the club. The girls were to give a
play. No amount of urging won this girl's consent to take part in the play.
A girl who had taken a part dropped out, and some one must take her place
at once. Now the girls refused to take "no" for an answer, and the favorite
went down in the basement with the others who were in the play. Each had
her book to read her part, as a help to the girl pressed into the service.
When it came her turn to read there was absolute silence. The girl sat
white and trembling, trying to speak. At last jerkingly the words came: "I
cannot read. I never learned beyond the small words. I had to take care of
the children when mother went to work, while my father was sick. I went to
work as soon as I could and helped keep them in school. They all read and
write. I cannot. Now you know why I did not say 'yes.'"
There was silence for the space of several minutes. No one could speak.
Then the baby of the club, the one everybody petted, whose very naughtiness
was attractive, ran around the table, threw her arms around the speaker's
neck, saying: "You're worth all the rest of us put together. We'll never
give the old play. We all hate it." This followed by a half dozen kisses
placed wherever she could touch the crimson, tear-stained face of the girl
through her hands.
Education had been put in its right place in the field of accomplishment.
When the entertainment was given, the girl who could not read was made
manager, because no one could do so well.
For more than twenty years the working-girls' club has been a power in
thousands of lives. The process of character building through accretion and
elimination has been going on. Through its influence the club method has
been applied under every guise, but perhaps it is just to say that it has
been at its best where its formation and management has been purely
democratic and absolutely non-sectarian. In the nature of things, in
affiliation with any organization, it must take its place as the fraction
of a unit, and be in its management considered always as only a part of a
whole to whose success it owes an allegiance.
Now the working-girls' clubs have their State organizations, even their
national organization. The Pan-American Exposition brought working girls to
the number of five hundred together in a convention to consider the
questions vital to club life and management. Can any one doubt the effect
of this journey into the world, the first that hundreds of these girls had
ever made? Of the readjustment of ideas, the revelation of beauty, the new
birth of values, because of the vision of a larger world lying beyond
factory, workshop, office, school-room? For it has come to this: that the
professional as well as the manual worker finds inspiration in the
working-girls' club.
As the years went on, a new problem grew out of the working-girls' club
movement. The members married, but they were not willing to lose the social
affiliations of girlhood; they were unwilling often, reluctant always, to
sever club relationship. On the other hand, the members felt that a married
woman should remain home in the evening with her husband. Often the
married member would come carrying her baby, for the club represented the
mother's social relations. The next step was natural, the forming of a club
of the married members to meet in the afternoon. The first working-girls'
club, of which Miss Dodge is still president, formed, as the Domestic
Circle, a club of married members.
The A. O. V. Matrons at the Cottage Settlement are the married members of
the A. O. V. Club, formed when the matrons were little girls. Other
working-girls' clubs have contributed to the membership of other married
women's clubs.
Naturally, the subjects discussed in these clubs are those bearing on
housekeeping and the training of children. The training received in the
clubs enables the married members to conduct their business with dignity
and dispatch. They are trained to club life, and have learned how to avoid
unnecessary friction.
Some clubs plan a winter's work ahead. These programmes show a broadening
of interest and sympathy, not only in the technical affairs, the home and
the care of children, but the larger affairs outside of the home that makes
its environment. It must be that the girls who have been club members make
more companionable wives than the women who have not had their
opportunities. The children are always present at the meetings of the
mothers. Various devices and methods are employed to entertain and interest
them. What the mothers' club means to the little ones was unconsciously
revealed very recently in the statement of a young mother: "---- is always
home from school five minutes earlier club day. She runs home to get
ready."
The working-girls' club has in the process of its evolution become a family
institution.