In your issue of April 19 the splendid article on The Housing Problem As
It Affects Girls, by the president of the Chelsea House, has greatly
interested me. May I add a few words on the subject and the names of
other cities where such houses are already started or are under
consideration?
There is a splendid though small Girls Friendly Lodge in Washington, D.
C. In Cincinnati the Anna Louise Home accommodates about 150 girls, and
Bishop Frances of Indiana has converted his spacious school
Knickerbocker Hall in Indianapolis into a boarding home for young girls.
This, I suppose, is the most complete and pretentious house of its kind.
It has a gymnasium, swimming pool, almost entirely single rooms, and
will accommodate nearly one hundred girls. In Louisville besides the
Girls Friendly Inn, there is the Business Woman’s Club which meets the
needs of a better paid class of young women, and the Monfort Home which
like the Inn meets the needs of a girl earning a more moderate wage.
I have had letters from all parts of the country asking questions
relative to starting such homes, and know that the subject is under
consideration in Denver; Watertown, N. Y.; Lexington, Ky.; Minneapolis;
Memphis; and Mobile.
The cherished hope I believe of all such houses should be to make them
self supporting. No self respecting girl wishes to be even a partial
object of charity. From the starting of the Girls Friendly Inn we have
aimed to make the house self supporting, and with the exception of the
interest on the mortgage, the house mother’s salary and coal, the weekly
income meets all the expenditures. As soon as we can enlarge the house
it will be entirely self supporting. I find this a great help, in
securing the co-operation of the girls and in preventing waste in light,
water and so on. The dominating thought is to make the inn a normal home
and with this in view there are almost no rules. No one but those close
to the young working girl knows what it means to her to be able to
entertain her “gentlemen friends” in a quiet and home-like living room
or to be able to give a party or entertain her Sunday School class in an
attractive room.
The problem of sickness is an important one. Girls must often struggle
along half sick because they can not afford a doctor or medicine or
because they are afraid of losing their position. The inn has an endowed
bed in the Norton Infirmary, and the services of some of our best
physicians, also a discount of 25 per cent on all drugs and
prescriptions. I find a word from the house mother is always received
kindly by the employer and in my experience of eighteen months I have
never had a girl lose her work on account of sickness.