The influence of overcrowding on the work of the housewife must also
be considered in connection with housekeeping in immigrant households.
That overcrowding exists has been pointed out again and again.
Ordinances have been framed to try to prevent it, but it has
persisted. In the studies of Chicago housing a large percentage of the
bedrooms have always been found illegally occupied. The per cent of
the rooms so occupied varied from 30 in one Italian district to 72 in
the Slavic district around the steel mills. The United States
Immigration Commission found, for example, that 5,305, or 35.1 per
cent, of the families studied in industrial centers used all rooms but
one for sleeping, and another 771 families used even the kitchen.
Crowding means denial of opportunity for skillful and artistic
performance of tasks. "A place for everything and everything in its
place," suggests appropriate assignment of articles of use to their
proper niches, corners, and shelves. One room for everything except
sleeping--cooking, washing, caring for the children, catching a breath
for the moment--means no repose, no calm, no opportunity for planning
that order which is the law of the well-governed home. Yet there is
abundant evidence that many families have had to live in just such
conditions.
The housework for the foreign-born housewife is often complicated by
other factors. One is the practice to which reference has been already
made of taking lodgers to supplement the father's wages. In discussing
this subject from the point of view of the lodger, it has been pointed
out that the practice with reference to the taking of boarders and
lodgers varies in different places and among different groups. The
amounts paid were not noted there, but they become important when
considered together with the service asked of the housewife. Usually
the boarder or lodger pays a fixed monthly sum--from $2 to $3.50, or,
more rarely, $4 a month--for lodging, cleaning, washing, and cooking;
his food is secured separately, the account being entered in a
grocery book and settled at regular intervals.
Sometimes the lodger does his own buying, but the more common custom
is to have the housewife do it. Occasionally he does his own cooking,
in which case payment for lodging secures him the right to use the
stove. More rarely, as in some of the Mexican families visited in
Chicago in 1919, he is a regular boarder, paying a weekly sum for room
and board.
Just what keeping lodgers means in adding to the duties of the
housewife can be seen from the following description of the work of
the Serbo-Croatian women in Johnstown, Pennsylvania:[15]
The wife, without extra charge, makes up the beds, does the
washing and ironing, and buys and prepares the food for all
the lodgers. Usually she gets everything on credit, and the
lodgers pay their respective shares biweekly. These
conditions exist to some extent among other foreigners, but
are not so prevalent among other nationalities in Johnstown
as among the Serbo-Croatians.
In a workingman's family, it is sometimes said, the woman's
working day is two hours longer than the man's. But if this
statement is correct in general, the augmentation stated is
insufficient in these abnormal homes, where the women are
required to have many meals and dinner buckets ready at
irregular hours to accommodate men working on different
shifts.
The Serbo-Croatian women who, more than any of the others, do
all this work, are big, handsome, and graceful, proud and
reckless of their strength. During the progress of the
investigation, in the winter months, they were frequently
seen walking about the yards and courts, in bare feet, on the
snow and ice-covered ground, hanging up clothes or carrying
water into the house from a yard hydrant.