Of the mother's work, notice must be taken. People interviewed in this
study were almost unanimously of the opinion that immigrant women were
adding to the family income in many cases. If the children are too
young to be left alone, the father's inadequate income is supplemented
by taking lodgers. Too often, however, the mother works outside the
home for wages.
Indeed, a number of people were of the opinion that the employment of
women has increased during the war. Among the more recently arrived
Bohemians, for example, it was said that mothers of small children
were going to work as never before, because taking lodgers was not
possible, as single men have not been coming in such large numbers
since the war. The older settlers felt that they must take advantage
of the relatively high wages offered women to make payments on
property. Lithuanian observers say that partly because of prejudice
against it, Lithuanian married women have not gone out of their homes
to work until recently. With the war, the increased cost of living,
the higher wages offered to women, and the appeal that was made to
their patriotism, many women had gone into industry, especially to
work in "the yards." Ukrainian and Slovenian women are also said to be
working in large numbers, but Croatian women are still said to stay in
their homes and contribute to the income by taking lodgers.
In addition to this testimony, which was obtained from leaders of the
national groups, there is also the information obtained from
individual families. Of the ninety women from whom information was
obtained in Chicago, twenty were working outside their homes and
twenty-four had lodgers at the time of the study. When it is
remembered that these families were those who have worked their way
through the first difficulties, these figures become doubly
significant.
There is, for example, a Ukrainian family from the Russian Ukraine. It
consists of the parents and four children between the ages of three
and fifteen. Ever since the family came to the United States they have
had one or more lodgers to help them pay the rent. At present they
have three men paying four dollars a month each; and as the father,
who had been working in the stockyards for nineteen dollars a week,
was discharged two months ago, the wife has been working in a spring
factory to support the family.
Then there is a Polish family, composed of the parents and four
children under fourteen, two of them children of the man by a former
wife. The father has been in this country since 1894, but his wife
has been here only since 1910. For two years after their marriage the
wife worked at night, scrubbing from 6.30 to 9.30 p.m., and received
twenty-four dollars a month. Then there was an interval while her
children were babies, during which she did not work, but the family
lived on the earnings of the father. For the last two years, however,
his work has been slack, first because of a strike, and later due to
an industrial depression in his trade, and the mother is again at
work, this time in a tailor shop, earning ten dollars a week.
The effect of the mother's work in decreasing the child's chances for
life has been made clear by the studies of the Children's Bureau in
Johnstown,[10] Montclair,[11] and Manchester,[12] in all of which a
higher rate of infant mortality was shown for children of mothers
gainfully employed.
The effect of the mother's work on the family relationship and the
home life of the family group is, of course, not measurable in
absolute terms. The leaders of the various national groups, however,
have repeatedly emphasized the fact that the absence of the women from
the home has created entirely new problems in the family life. They
have pointed out that while the peasant women have been accustomed to
work in the fields in the old country, their work did not take them
away from their homes as the work in this country does. If they were
away there was usually some older woman to take care of the children.
Here the work of the mother frequently results in neglect of the
children and the home.
In recognition of this fact attempts have been made to solve the
problem. Among Slovenians it was customary, before the war made it
impossible, to send the children back to the old country to their
grandmothers to be cared for. One priest said he had seen women taking
as many as twelve children to a single village. The Ukrainians in
Chicago have talked of establishing a day nursery to look after their
children, but the people are poor, and it has not been possible to
raise the money. In the meantime children are not sent to the day
nurseries already established, but are commonly taken to neighbors,
some of whom are paid for taking care of ten or twelve children. This
arrangement constitutes a violation of the city ordinance requiring
day nurseries to be licensed, but is evidently a violation quite
unconsciously committed by both parties to the transaction.
A group of nonworking Lithuanian women heard that neglected children
were reported to the settlement in the neighborhood. One of the women
investigated, and found many children locked in houses for the day,
with coffee and bread for lunch. One child, too small to shift for
himself, was found with his day's supply of food tied around his neck.
The women decided to open a nursery in charge of a Lithuanian woman
who would be able to speak to the children in their own language, as
few children below school age spoke English. The original plans were
to accommodate ten or twelve children, but as soon as the nursery
opened there were so many women wanting to leave their children there
that it took as many as thirty children. The nursery was maintained
for about eighteen months, and was then closed because of the
difficulty of raising the necessary funds.
Some such plan must be developed that takes care of the foreign-born
mother's work if she is forced to supplement the family's income
outside of the home. The organization of family life that has grown up
parallel with the industrial system assumes her presence in the home.
When misfortune makes this impossible some provision for caring for
the children must be found.