There is a Women's Department, directed by a committee of fifteen
women members. The central government frames regulations for this
department "conformably to the requirements of a given moment." An
illustration of its activities can be found in a movement initiated to
maintain oversight of the employment of Polish girls and women. A
great many Polish girls go into domestic work in private homes and in
hotels and restaurants. Because girls from the rural districts in
Poland find customs and living conditions here so different the
societies have undertaken to study the problem. In order to
investigate places of employment the women found they must represent a
regularly licensed employment agency. Some delay in securing a license
has held up their work, but they plan to establish in the near future
a "Polish Women's Employment Agency."
Many cases came to their attention showing the need of protective work
and legal aid for workingwomen, so that in 1917 the "Polish Women's
Protective League" was organized to provide free legal advice and aid
to Polish workingwomen.
The official organ of the Polish National Alliance is a weekly
publication, _Zgoda_. There is a daily, the _Dziennik Zwaizkowy_, that
has a semi-official status. The Women's Department is represented in
the official organ by one page of ordinary newspaper size, without
illustration. In the daily paper one page each week is devoted to
items of especial value to women. Different material is used in the
two issues, but both give considerable space to such subjects as
household management, the care of children, and problems of health and
hygiene.
There is, in fact, a marked development among the Polish, Bohemian,
Slovenian, and Lithuanian groups, of a definite division between the
men's and the women's departments. This began first in the local
lodges as they grew from mere meetings for the payment of dues into
something more in the order of a center for the discussion of
questions of importance in group or family life, or for action on
those questions.
A woman who, more than eighteen years ago, organized one of the first
lodges in the Polish National Alliance said that in the lodges of
mixed membership women were supposed to have the same rights and
privileges as men. As a matter of fact, she said that they had no
voice in matters in which they felt their interest as women were
especially concerned; the women were always in the minority, and there
were very few who would even voice an opinion in the presence of men.
The older women in the community came, therefore, to feel that there
were many problems of vital interest and importance for the immigrant
woman upon which action would never be taken in the lodge meeting, in
which there was a mixed membership. They believed, too, that the
meetings of the local lodge might become a real source of help to the
newly arrived immigrant women. The women's lodge was therefore formed,
and to the first meetings came women who still wore the handkerchiefs
over their heads. Some of the more prosperous members protested that
they did not want such women as these in the lodge, but the leaders
insisted that their purpose in organizing women's lodges had been to
reach through them just such women. The leaders felt that women who
knew little of American life and customs would gradually acquire that
knowledge by coming into the lodge.
A lodge of this kind under the leadership of progressive women of the
older immigration has become a center in which are discussed many of
the questions the women have to face for the first time. The plan in
the Polish National Alliance is to have lodges so organized that women
from Russian Poland may be in one, those from Galicia in another, or
to organize lodges on the basis of the neighborhood association in the
United States.
It is hoped that by such a plan as this the more backward women may be
drawn into some of the social activities of the Polish community.
Although English has not been the language of the meetings, women have
been encouraged to learn English as soon as possible after their
arrival. The older women urge the younger women to acquire the
language. They have learned the importance of a knowledge of the
language to the mother of boys and girls who are growing up in
surroundings of which the mother knows little, and where custom and
convention are so different from those to which she was accustomed.
With the multiplication of women's lodges came the demand on the part
of the women for representation in the national organization. As a
result, the Women's Auxiliary has been given an official place, and
women have been elected to the national board of directors.
Polish women have felt that the welfare of the group as a whole is
largely dependent upon the fitness of the women to meet the new
situation. They have recognized the fact that, because of the national
attitude toward women, Polish women of the class represented by the
bulk of the immigration are very backward. They have therefore sought
to inaugurate a campaign for the education of women on a national
scale.
Another interesting development has been the growth of national
organizations for women alone. One of the earliest and best known of
these is the Polish Women's Alliance, an example of organized effort
of women to deal with their own problems on a national scale. The
leaders in this enterprise were women who, through their own
experiences as immigrants, and through contact with those who came
later, had come to realize both the nature of the problems women were
called upon to meet and the different position of women in America.
One of the women who had been active in inaugurating the movement
spoke of the extreme difficulty of such work in the Polish community
because of the prejudice against women's taking part in anything
outside of their homes. Some of the more advanced women thought that
the welfare of the whole Polish community was retarded by the
ignorance and indifference and prejudices of the women which kept them
clinging to Old-World methods and customs entirely unsuited to the new
conditions. They hoped that by building a clubhouse for women, with
library and reading rooms, a large hall for assemblies, and small
rooms for clubs and classes, they might gradually interest the women
in something outside their homes.
No one thought it possible, however, for women to organize in this
way, much less to carry on a national movement and to build a
clubhouse, as they have succeeded in doing. Some leading women felt
that education must come, if at all, through the women's own efforts,
and that the education involved in work for the organization more
nearly than any other experience touched the needs of these women, in
that it drew them out of their older habits and encouraged them to
take the initiative and so to gain the self-confidence they lacked.
The organization was at first possible only because of the benefit
features through which the support could be gained of men and women
who had no interest or confidence in such educational projects as
attempt to interest the women in clean streets, satisfactory disposal
of garbage, and improved housing conditions.
This movement does not represent hostility to the great joint
organization. Most of the women interested in developing the movement
have been members of the Polish National Alliance; but they have
thought that to give the women a sense of confidence it was necessary
to have a women's organization, quite independent of the men's. And
there have developed then the three relationships between men and
women: (1) the Women's Department as one of the divisions of work in
the Alliance; (2) the Women's Auxiliary to the men's society, and (3)
the National Women's Organization, in which men are not members.