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THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
HD
6096
.P5
073
-
THE


YOUNG EMPLOYED
GIRL
BY
HAZEL GRANT ORMSBEE
CAROLA WOERISHOFFER SCHOLAR, CAROLA
WOERISHOFFER FELLOW, AND MARY
E. GARRETT EUROPEAN FELLOW
A DISSERTATION
PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF BRYN MAWR COLLEGE
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR
THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
THE WOMANS PRESS
600 LEXINGTON AVENUE
NEW YORK
322 2
на кал да тоол
+
HD
6096
.P5
073
192
COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY THE
NATIONAL BOARD OF THE YOUNG WOMENS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS
OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Bryn Mawr College
L
皇
​Catal
12-28-1927
PREFATORY NOTE
In 1924 the Girl Reserve Department of the National Board
of the Young Womens Christian Associations undertook to dis-
cover the educational, industrial, and social status, and the in-
terests and ambitions, of young employed girls. The ultimate
object was to find out: first, whether the background and inter-
ests of these employed girls are identical with those of school
girls of the same age, and whether therefore young girls in in-
dustry should be included in the Girl Reserve clubs throughout
the country; or second, whether they belong with the older
girls, and should be classed in the industrial clubs; or, third,
whether the younger employed girls as a group ought to be by
themselves in a new department, differing in plan and program
from both the Girl Reserve and the Industrial Departments.
At the same time, the seminary in social and industrial re-
search at Bryn Mawr College planned to complete its series on
"women in industry" by undertaking an investigation of the
young girl in industry. Students in the seminary had already
prepared and published reports on the mother at work in the
home¹ and on the mother at work outside the home. An in-
vestigation of the single woman in industry was being finished.
2
Miss Elizabeth Eggleston, secretary of the Girl Reserves of
the Philadelphia Young Women's Christian Association, wel-
comed the suggestion made to her by the seminary for a co-
operative enterprise. It soon developed that the study would
center in the continuation schools, and Mr. William H. Welsh,
director of the Division of School Extension, Department of
Superintendence, Board of Public Education of Philadelphia,
secured the interest in the undertaking of Mr. Louis P. Hoyer,
principal of the Hart Continuation School; Miss Lilian H. Du-
Bois, principal of the Hollingsworth Continuation School; and
Miss Jennie Pittman, principal of the continuation classes in the
Fairhill School.
The seminary in social and industrial research given at Bryn
1 Agnes Mary Hadden Byrnes, Ph. D., Industrial Home Work in Pennsyl
vania.
2 Gwendolyn Salisbury Hughes, Ph. D., Mothers in Industry.
Bate
vi
PREFATORY NOTE
Mawr College by Professor Susan M. Kingsbury, director of the
Carola Woerishoffer Graduate Department of Social Economy
and Social Research, chooses each year for study some social
or industrial subject, and the students who are doing advanced
graduate work coöperate in carrying on the selected investiga-
tion. Usually one major student in the department who has had
more training and experience than the others takes the subject
of the investigation for a dissertation. In this way, the students
become a staff of investigators, and the major student becomes
the director of the investigation. In coöperation the study is
planned, the schedule is drafted, the interviews are held, and
sometimes the preliminary and simple tables are made. At each
step of the process, each student of the seminary presents her
own plans, ideas, and criticisms. The major student is responsi-
ble for determining the final procedure. She decides upon the
categories, outlines the analysis, and prepares the final report.
Contacts for coöperation with individuals or organizations are
made by her; interviews are supervised; schedules are reviewed,
checked, and edited by her. Frequently, as in this study, all
tables are made by her, independently or with clerical assistance.
Thus, as director of the investigation, the major student con-
stantly confers with the other students of the seminary, but
always under the supervision of the instructor.
On this plan the present investigation was conducted; the
writer was the major student during the years 1923-24 and 1924-
25. The students of the seminary were, in the year 1923-24:
Mary Elizabeth Durfee, Elizabeth Ewart, Elsie Heipp, Rebecca
Smaltz, Julia Snell; and, in the year 1924-25: Muriel Gayford,
Katherine Mahn, Wilmer Shields; to them the writer wishes to
extend due recognition and appreciation of their contribution to
the study.
HAZEL GRANT ORMSBEE.
FOREWORD
More than a century ago, in his annual report, the president of
the Board of School Comptrollers of Philadelphia directed at-
tention to the ever increasing army of young people entering the
ranks of the employed, after little or no contact with the recently
established public school system.
Advocates of the free public school had thought that with the
establishment of these schools the problems of the young de-
mocracy would be solved. It was believed that the open school
door of itself guaranteed a literate citizenry. And it was with
expressions of amazement and chagrin that those charged with
the responsibility of public education realized that the opening of
the school was but the beginning of their problem.
For the better part of a century attention was focused upon
getting and keeping the child in school. But the crystalizing of
public sentiment in favor of compulsory education was a long
and disheartening process. Not until the 1895 session of the
Pennsylvania State Legislature was the first compulsory educa-
tion act for this state passed. As it was hopelessly defective, it
was not enforced. The revised Act of 1897 marks the beginning
of required attendance. From that date, practically every ses-
sion of the legislature saw some advance in compulsory attend-
ance and child labor legislation, culminating in 1915 in our pres-
ent law.
If the lack of an attendance law was a concern to educators,
enforced attendance was even more so, for it brought with it a
whole series of new problems. Enforcement made necessary al-
most at once the organization of special classes to provide for
those children who obviously were unable to meet the require-
ments of the educational program set for the average child and
who, therefore, did not belong in the regular classes.
Prior to 1915, the child who could read and write might be
released from school for employment at fourteen years of age.
And a very charitable interpretation was placed upon “read and
write"; second grade ability was accepted as adequate. This
meant that few children of fourteen or over were ever refused
a working certificate. Moreover, the certificate was the property
viii
FOREWORD
of the child and was his unconditional release from the educa-
tional mill. There was no check-up on his employment, no re-
quired return to school. With freedom in his possession, he
worked or walked the streets at his pleasure.
The certificate record would seem to show that in the years.
preceding the passage of the Act of 1915 there was much more
juvenile employment than in the years that followed. But this
is probably not the case. To the best of our knowledge, the
number of employed children has never exceeded that of the
present school year (1926-27).
Today, as a result of the rigid enforcement of the present
school law and the Child Labor Act of 1915, all children between
fourteen and sixteen years of age not actually employed are in
school. Before the enforcement of this Act, the number of
children who roamed the streets with employment certificates in
their pockets was doubtless considerably in excess of the number
actually employed.
With the establishment of the continuation school under the
Act of 1915, educators were brought face to face with a new
set of problems. Those of us who have worked in the field know
how poorly prepared the school system was to undertake the huge
task imposed upon it by this law. Classes were organized and
housed in any vacant rooms available. Inexperienced teachers
with indefinite conceptions of the problem were placed in charge.
of classes. The course of instruction given in the regular schools
was followed with little change.
The resulting situation, which has been so adequately set forth
by Dr. Ormsbee, forced a realization of the fact that if anything
constructive were to be accomplished by the continuation school
several things had to be done these children must be housed in
modern school buildings, teachers must be trained for the work,
and a new approach to the child must be made.
With the first of these, Philadelphia has made commendable
progress in the past five years, indeed since this study was made
and largely as a result of its undertaking. The girls of the
Hollingsworth School have been transferred to the new million
dollar Girls' Trade School, a school designed and equipped to
provide full-time preëmployment instruction for fourteen- to
sixteen-year-old girls looking forward to entrance into industry
FOREWORD
ix
at sixteen, and part-time instruction for the continuation school
girls, the fourteen- to sixteen-year-old girls already engaged in
industry.
The Hart School for boys and girls will be replaced shortly
by the new one and a half million dollar vocational school, the
contract for which has just been let. This new school will ac-
commodate 5000 boys and girls in part-time continuation classes
and 500 boys and girls in full-time preëmployment classes.
Ample provision has been made for a wide and varied program
of occupational activities. With the remodeling of the McCall
School for boys to provide a further extension of the program of
that school, Philadelphia will have a school housing situation for
continuation pupils second to none in the country.
To meet the teacher situation, salaries and qualifications have
been raised, and during the past several years an intensive pro-
gram of teacher training in service has been conducted.
But, important as an adequate housing situation and trained
teachers undoubtedly are, of even greater importance is the ap-
proach to the problem. Who is this continuation school child?
What is he? Why is he? Wherein is he different from his
brother who continues regular school?
It is touching this point that studies such as the one Dr. Orms-
bee has made will be of greatest service to our work. What do
we know about this child? Particularly, what do we know about
this girl? Dr. Ormsbee's primary classification, based upon atti-
tude toward school, gives the continuation class teacher a definite
point of departure in the study of these girls. If not interested
in school, in what are they interested? Is it simply lack of in-
terest in school per se, or is it a lack of interest in the content
and method of instruction of the school attended by the pupil?
We may correctly assume the latter point of view, if we accept
Dr. Ormsbee's findings that eighty-three per cent of the girls not
interested in regular school were interested in continuation
school. This may well be considered due in large measure to
the untiring effort of the continuation teachers to discover the
interests and aptitudes of these pupils.
To help in this discovery, entry classes have recently been es-
tablished. In these classes all new pupils are studied, that they
may be so placed in the school as to derive from it the maximum
possible benefit.
X
FOREWORD
That the classroom teacher might have opportunity for undis-
turbed individual conferences with the pupils, definite periods
during the day have been set apart as conference periods.
On the staff of each of the three central schools is a coördinat-
ing teacher who devotes her entire time to the making of adjust-
ments between the school and the home and industry. In the
classroom, every effort is made to socialize the instruction, and
to secure that informality and absence of restraint which make
for a spirit of friendly coöperation and understanding between
pupil and teacher.
These are but means to the same end-such a knowledge of the
child, as an individual, as is indispensable if we are to aid him
in finding for himself in the social order his way of complete and
happy living.
I have reviewed the continuation school situation in Philadel-
phia not only to give a setting to Dr. Ormsbee's study but also
to point out that we are now at that stage of our progress where
studies of this character are of vital importance. The more we
know of the continuation school pupil, the better we understand
him, the more exactly the technique of studying him is developed,
the more nearly will these schools achieve their high purpose and
justify the investment that our community has made in them.
-WILLIAM HENRY WELSH.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HERSELF
The problem. The study. Significance of the completed
study. School progress. Interest in school. Lack of
interest in school. Backwardness.
CHAPTER II. THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER
SCHOOLING
Retardation. Age and grade at leaving school. Types of
schools attended. Changes from school to school. Na-
tivity of parents. Reasons for leaving school. Interest
in school-the primary groups.
CHAPTER III. THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER
WORK.
Vocational and educational guidance. Industries in which
girls work. Attitude toward work. Wages and savings.
Attitude toward continuation school.
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER
CHAPTER IV.
HOME .
The number of homes visited. Impressions of the homes.
Handicapped homes. Marginal and fairly prosperous
homes. The four groups of employed girls studied in
their homes. Parental control.
CHAPTER V. THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER
LEISURE
Reading. Magazines. Books. Movies. Dances. Domes-
tic occupations. Athletics. Group activities. Desire for
recreation.
CHAPTER VI. CONCLUSIONS.
APPENDIX A.
(1) Schedules used for interview with the girl at the
school or place of employment.
(2) Schedule used for interview with the girl's parent
in the home.
APPENDIX B. .
List of References on the Young Employed Girl.
INDEX
PAGE
1
16
37
55
75
104
109
115
123
TABLE
NUMBER
LIST OF TABLES
I. Retardation in the school population of Philadelphia
II. Retardation among children 14 or 15 years of age past
the sixth grade and below the second year in the
high school
•
SUBJECT
III. Retardation among girls only in Philadelphia
IV. Grade completed in relation to age at leaving school
of the 500 continuation school girls interviewed.
V. Types of schools attended in relation to school prog-
ress groups
•
VI. Changes in school in relation to school progress groups
VII. Changes in school in relation to type of school at-
tended
VIII. Nativity of parents in relation to school progress of
children
IX. Reasons for leaving school
X. Analysis of reasons given for leaving school by ninety-
nine girls who wished to remain in school .
XI. Economic stringency in relation to the primary groups
XII. Relation between wage and school progress
XIII. A comparison of the number of homes visited with the
total number of girls interviewed, in each of the
school progress groups
•
XIV. Social maladjustment in the home in relation to school
progress and school interest groups
XV. Status of the homes in relation to school progress and
school interest groups
•
XVI. Type of parental control in English-speaking and for-
eign-speaking families in relation to school progress
and school interest groups
PAGE
17
17
18
20
21
22
23
24
1227
31
35
52
57
60
62
71
xiv
TABLES
TABLE
NUMBER
XVII. Magazines mentioned by girls in each school progress
and school interest group .
XVIII. Type of magazines read by girls in the school interest
and school progress groups
XIX. Reading of books in relation to school progress and
school interest groups
•
XX. Relation between dancing and frequency of attendance
at movies
XXI. Relation of membership in clubs to school interest and
school progress groups
XXII. Distribution of school interest and school progress
groups according to classes and music lessons
PAGE
78
8888
79
98
101
102
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
CHAPTER I
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HERSELF
The Problem
The purpose of this study is to find out from young em-
ployed girls themselves what the sudden change from going
to school all day to going to work all day means to them.
Why do they do it? What do they get from it? What are
their interests, their preferences, their ambitions, their atti-
tudes toward school, toward their homes, toward their work,
and toward their fellow workers? Where and how do they
get recreation? What characteristics, which may provide a
basis for educational or recreational programs, differentiate
one group of working girls from another, or from girls re-
maining in school?
1
In Philadelphia, according to the school census of 1924,
almost 4000 (3867) girls between the ages of fourteen and
sixteen years were at work and attending continuation school
one day each week. This was thirteen per cent of the 29,238
girls of these ages in the city. The remainder were in
grade schools and in high schools. Children enter continua-
tion school, however, at any time between their fourteenth
and their sixteenth birthdays, and usually leave the moment
they are sixteen. Not only, therefore, were nearly four
thousand girls enrolled at any one time, but during the school
year ten thousand girls (10,518, according to the school
records), and as many boys, marched in and out of continua-
tion schools and classes.
¹ See Annual Report of the Philadelphia Bureau of Compulsory Education
for year ending December 31, 1924.
2
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
Such is the problem which a city of the size of Philadel-
phia, having a population of nearly 2,000,000 persons, must
meet; and this problem is found in all of our large cities.
Public attention to the welfare of working boys and girls
has resulted, during the past ten years, in better child labor
laws, in better school attendance laws, and in the establish-
ment of continuation schools. The haphazard sifting of
those who go to work from those who remain in school is
gradually giving way to more orderly and scientific methods.
In Philadelphia the number of young workers has been
greatly reduced. In 1915, six and two-tenths per cent of
the children of school age were employed. In 1924, the per-
centage had fallen to two and two-tenths; but two and two-
tenths per cent of the total school population still means
7358 boys and girls, a not inconsiderable number. To judge
of progress, with conditions thus constantly changing, re-
quires continuous study. To check up past successes and
failures, to give an actual picture of the situation, just as
the school census gives a numerical picture once a year, helps
to point the way toward the next step.
There is no question of the urgency of the subject. "The
number of children who work and the standards governing
their employment is always a matter of paramount impor-
tance," says the Bureau of Women in Industry in the State
of New York.2 The adjustment of children to industry
during adolescence, the shifting of other forces-home,
school, play, companions-in their relation to the young
worker, make this period of adolescence difficult. Not only
the child herself, with her various likes and dislikes, inter-
ests and ambitions, but the circumstances which surround
her and her inheritance of health or intelligence should be
studied. The young girl who leaves school, especially the
elementary school, is undecided and unguided about herself
in relation to her work and to her play. She is likely to
2 State of New York, Department of Labor: Special Bulletin No. 132, No-
vember 1924.
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HERSELF
3
drift into unsatisfactory work and more likely to drift into
dangerous play. While she resents interference she responds
to genuine friendliness.
Certain restrictions imposed upon the employed girl by
law regulate to an extent the conditions under which she may
work. Junior employment bureaus help her to find work
and are continually studying the different opportunities open
to her. Continuation schools afford her instruction one day
during the week and vary their subjects and methods ac-
cording to her needs. Each girl of the four thousand, or of
the ten thousand, however, shows as many sides to her na-
ture as there are forces with which she comes into contact.
The school sees one side, and the home another. The school
teacher, when she happens to see the girl on the street at
night, wonders if this can be the person who has been taught
all day. Parents wonder how the girl can get along so well
at school and at work, and yet be so indifferent or quarrel-
some at home; and the employer wonders how she can be so
stupid and yet go to school one day every week. The prob-
lem is to know her well enough to give her both guidance
and opportunity at school, at work, and in the use of her
leisure time. The day-by-day reactions of the girl to the
situations with which she has been surrounded and which
have culminated in her going to work suggest a field fruitful
for "social discovery."
No one recognizes the necessity for it more than do the
directors of continuation schools, on the one hand, and the
directors of social organizations conducting girls' clubs and
recreational classes, on the other. The work of the continua-
tion class is colossal, one might almost say superhuman.
Picture each school: five different groups every week in-
stead of one; a student body of two thousand girls or boys
in the place of four hundred; eight hours instead of thirty a
week for each pupil, and a school day of eight hours rather
than six for each teacher;—and these youngsters are in all
stages of preparation, representing every nationality, coming
4
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
from diverse districts of the city, bringing with them experi-
ences and influences of widely scattered industries as well as
of varied homes. There are only two unifying elements: all
the pupils are fourteen or fifteen years of age, straying in
at the fourteenth birthday, escaping at the sixteenth; and all,
during the other five days a week, are being "whipped into
shape" in mills or in factories, in stores or in offices. Un-
fortunately there is one other element in common: almost
all the pupils have been retarded in school, and a very large.
number are limited in mentality. They are housed probably
in an old and perhaps discarded school building, crowded to
the utmost at each session, without lockers for the non-
attendant group, and without room or resources for a new
educational program.
The task of the social organization is almost as difficult-
for it is not easy to find these girls, to invite them, to interest
them, to entice them, even with beautiful buildings, great
swimming pools, attractive reading rooms, pleasant class-
rooms, cosy club rooms.
G
It was because of these extremely difficult problems that
the present investigation of the young employed girl at
school, at work, and at home, was suggested by the Girl Re-
serve Department of the Y. W. C. A., who showed keen in-
sight into this complex problem. For the same reasons, Mr.
William H. Welsh, director of continuation schools in Phila-
delphia, welcomed the suggestion, opened the opportunity,
and gave every kind of assistance and advice throughout the
two years' work. In the same spirit, at great inconvenience.
and often with an interruption of their regular work, princi-
pals and teachers in the schools arranged for the interviews
and afforded means of conducting the investigation.
The present study, then, aims to analyze the forces at work
moulding the lives and characters of young working girls, to
discover some of the large categories into which these forces
may be grouped, and to provide data which may be of use to
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HERSELF
5
organizations, public and private, interested in the problems
of such girls.
An outstanding conclusion of the report is that girls in
industry fall into distinct types; that it is possible to discover
these types through interview and investigation; and that it
is as necessary to study the type as to study the individual.
There may be overlappings and exceptions and contradic-
tions, but when to the broad bases of classification, which in-
clude such measurable factors as age, grade, and intelligence,
are added such other factors as special interests, preferences,
attitudes, the resulting groupings form a foundation for fur-
ther experiments in different educational methods, better ad-
justment to industry, and more effective vocational guidance.
The Study
As a basis for judgment, 500 girls were interviewed dur-
ing the school year of 1923-24, and more than half of their
homes were visited in the year following. The conclusions
are thus based on personal, private, friendly, and informal
interviews with 500 girls in the continuation schools, and on
information gained by visiting 263 homes, where in each case
the investigator talked with the father, with the mother, or
with some member of the family. The names were selected
at random in the continuation schools, at Y. W. C. A. clubs,
and in certain factories. The interviewers included not only
graduate students in the Carola Woerishoffer Graduate De-
partment of Social Economy and Social Research at Bryn
Mawr College, but also Y. W. C. A. secretaries in Philadel-
3
3 At the time the study was planned and organized in consultation with Mr.
Welsh, psychological tests which had been made in the continuation schools
were being analyzed. As it was thought the data would be available for this
report, it seemed unwise to repeat the examinations. Unfortunately the analy
sis of the tests was not completed and such individual test records as could be
obtained were found to be useless. By that time many of the students inter-
viewed had completed their term, and renewed examination of the entire school
seemed both unwise and too difficult of accomplishment. The factor of mental
ability has not therefore been considered, but school achievement has been
used instead throughout the study.
6
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
phia. All of these had been aroused to the importance of
studying the problems of young employed girls, and all met
frequently for conference as the work progressed.*
Selection, at random to some extent and yet designed to be
a fair sample of the four thousand girls at work at any one
time in Philadelphia, resulted in the number of interviews at
the places designated below:
Hart Continuation School .
Hollingsworth Continuation School
Fairhill Continuation School
Y. W. C. A.
Factories
•
Girls under Sixteen
Hart School
Hollingsworth School
•
Fairhill School
Other continuation schools
Girls over Sixteen
Y. W. C. A.
Factories
•
Divided by age and according to continuation schools at-
tended, not according to the places where the interviews
were held, the numbers are as follows:
•
215
99
122
44
20
500
467
228
100
127
12
33
23
10
500
The members of the seminary in social and industrial research at Bryn
Mawr College who coöperated under the direction of the author and with the
supervision of Professor Kingsbury in planning the study, drafting the sched-
ules, and interviewing the girls were: 1923-24, Mary Elizabeth Durfee, Eliza-
beth Ewart, Elsie Heipp, Rebecca Smaltz and Julia Snell; 1924-25, Muriel
Gayford, Katherine Mahn and Wilmer Shields. Miss Elizabeth Eggleston, secre-
tary of the Girl Reserve Department of the Philadelphia Y. W. C. A., Miss
Esther Todd, Girl Reserve secretary of the Kensington Branch, and Miss Mil-
dred Dougherty, Girl Reserve secretary of the North American Lace Company
Branch, together took 117 schedules for the study.
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL HERSELF
7
The schedule used in interviews is given on pages 111-113.
It was not used as a census blank, but as a guide to the sub-
jects on which information was desired. The purpose of the
study was explained to each girl, and her coöperation and
friendliness were secured by stressing the value of her ex-
perience to others who were leaving school and going to work
as she had done. The interviewers were instructed to answer
questions as fully and as carefully as they might wish their
own questions answered, which resulted very often in valuable
exchange of information. Each girl was assured that she
might refuse to answer any question. As a result, this
privilege was almost never used. The conversations lasted
from half an hour to an hour, depending upon the type of
girl and the skill of the investigator.
The schedule has proved a contribution to method and
technique in social investigation. In form it provided a new
device for editing, so that its complexity did not prevent the
use of "sorting and counting" in tabulation. The investiga-
tors anticipated contradictory returns from the homes, and
the cards were carefully planned so that contradictions might
be detected and measured. The analysis of the two sets of
cards showed, however, that parental statements corroborated
rather than opposed the stories of the girls. The attitudes
and interests expressed by each girl were checked up, as far
as possible, by balancing her own statements, by visiting her
home, and by impressions gained from girl, from home, and
from parent. The device was successful, and the experience
indicates that the facts stated by the adolescent girl, ascer-
tained by interviews as described above, may be accepted as
true.
The information obtained is given in the following chap-
ters. A brief summing up of conclusions forms the last
chapter. In this section the purpose is briefly to indicate the
significance and importance of the chief findings and where
lies the responsibility for their use.
8
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
Significance of the Completed Study
In one respect, the approach, the analysis, and the inter-
pretation of material here recorded must differ from those
in many other social studies. Though children in becoming
wage-earners at fourteen years of age may be assuming un-
desirable responsibilities and relationships, they represent not
an abnormal type but a disadvantaged class. Indeed, the
group here considered constitutes a norm for a very large
number of considerations. From such groups of children
come the delinquents, at least those who get into the courts."
Children of employed mothers and widows are or will become
young wage-earners. The child who becomes the charge of
the public or the state through disintegration of the home
probably has come from a family of similar economic status;
otherwise relatives or friends would have been able to as-
sume responsibility for him. The experience of girls con-
sidered in this study is representative of the early life of a
very large social class. Every study so far issued shows that
almost all women employed in manufacturing and mechani-
cal industries, and in the unskilled mercantile occupations,
began work before they were sixteen years of age.
On the other hand, we now need a similar investigation of
girls who have not withdrawn from school, and whose fa-
thers are in industry. That is, to understand the facts set
forth in this report, we need a norm, drawn from the girls
of fourteen and fifteen years of age who are in school, who
live in districts of the city in which employed girls live, and
whose fathers are or were in occupations similar to those
here represented.
Do the daughters of such fathers like school? Are the
Breckenridge and Abbott: The Delinquent Child and the Home, pp. 74, 76.
U. S. Department of Labor: Woman and Child Wage-Earners, vol. VIII, p. 62.
• Hughes, Gwendolyn: Mothers in Industry, ch. 10.
see
7 References to substantiate this statement are too numerous to mention here,
but may be found in any list of books on women in industry. However,
especially U. S. Department of Labor, Woman and Child Wage-Earners, vol. I,
pp. 796-821; vol. II, pp. 712-713.
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HERSELF
9
girls retarded? Are their homes handicapped? What books
do they read? What magazines do they select? How often
do they go to the movies? Do their parents find control of
their children difficult? In short, how do these two groups
compare? The conclusions of this report are not vitiated by
lack of this knowledge. We have learned merely what the
status of young employed girls is, and we have pointed out
our responsibility to them.
School Progress
A large majority of the girls were found to be retarded
one or more years, and almost half were retarded two and
three years. This backwardness among working girls is not a
new discovery. It stands out clearly in every school report
published. But its relation to home conditions, interests,
health, and mental deficiency has only lately begun to be
studied. The present investigation reveals another factor
in school leaving which, combined with retardation, becomes
the basis of classification into types. This factor is the atti-
tude of the girl toward school.
Apparently the types are not only easily discovered, but
they are reliable. Every social factor discussed throughout
the following chapters seems to confirm the classification.
The character of employment, the handicaps of the home, the
reading each girl does, the frequency with which she attends
the movies, the reaction to parental authority, all tend to
prove the soundness of these categories. Check back and
forth, search diligently for cause and effect, seek out rela-
tionships, and at every step the value of this grouping seems
to be reiterated.
Interest in School
A few girls (representing perhaps 425 in the city of Phila-
delphia, if our figures are indicative) liked school, in spite of
retardation of one, or two, or even of three years. For
IO
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
these girls, home conditions frequently appeared which may
have been the cause of the retardation. Adjustment might
have opened opportunity and overcome the handicap. Such
girls constitute one of the four primary groups described in
the next chapter.
Girls of another group, just double in number, were inter-
ested in school and were normal in school progress. Most of
them needed advice about home difficulties and information
as to further educational opportunities. For many of them,
"leaving school" had made the future cease to be an attractive
adventure and the present only a series of humdrum daily
tasks.
Lack of Interest in School
A third group was composed of the girls who were not in-
terested in school, it may be for good reason, inasmuch as
they were badly retarded (approximately 1300 of them in
Philadelphia, using this study as a basis for estimate). An
attempt to induce them to stay in the regular school would be
of little use, but they present great need for definite and ac-
tive interest on the part of the continuation school, especially
as regards the proper use of their leisure time. These young
people find satisfaction not so much in work as in play. They
crave amusement and entertainment, and get it by attendance
at movies and dances, and by reading the cheapest kind of
cheap magazine stories. They do not seek other kinds of
recreation, but if they had encouragement to do so, informa-
tion about what to do and where to go, meeting places ar-
ranged, Big Sisters to lend enthusiasm now and then, the in-
fluence of morbid or falsely stimulated emotions aroused by
cheap movies and trashy stories would tend to be counter-
acted.
K
Then there is a fourth group, of about the same size as the
third, perfectly normal and yet not interested in school. It
may be that something has happened to these girls, trivial
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HERSELF
II
enough in itself, which makes them hate school for the mo-
ment, and which causes them to leave upon a sudden impulse
without thought of future considerations. "Getting in
wrong" with a teacher, or trouble about lessons, or real or
fancied injustice from companions, or sensitiveness to poor
clothes-any one of a hundred such reasons, if it occurs at a
time when "other girls are leaving," is sufficient to cause
such a girl to drop out.
One of the girls in this group had reached her second year
in high school. German was a subject which she herself
chose to study. She had such difficulty with it that it be-
came a continual burden to her, and although she did not
noticeably lag behind in the class, she had to make strenuous
efforts not to become conspicuous in her failure. She
acknowledged that she began to think she disliked school
entirely, decided to leave school, and did leave, without ac-
quainting anyone at school or at home with the real cause of
her difficulty. The three facts which could have been easily
learned from her-namely, that she was not retarded, that
she had been really interested in school, and that there was no
economic pressure at home-would have revealed a clue as
to her difficulty and furnished a chance for corresponding
adjustment.
Backwardness
Or it may be that some of the girls in this group have
reached the highest point of their development. Important
as it is to keep girls in school who can profit by further
training, it is just as important to keep out of the same kind
of school those who cannot profit by it; for it must be real-
ized that the latter are not responsible for their failure to
grasp what is required of them and that they may be seriously
hampered by a sense of failure. Dr. Ayres in 1913 empha-
sized the importance of this particular point in the last para-
graph of his book. He says:
12
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
Success is necessary to every human being. To live in an atmos-
phere of failure is tragedy to many. It is not a matter of intellectual
attainment; not an intellectual matter at all but a moral matter. The
boys and girls coming out of school clearheaded and with good
bodies, who are resolute, who are determined to do and sure that
they can do, will do more for themselves and for the world than those
who come out with far greater intellectual attainments, but who
lack confidence, who have not established the habit of success, but
within whom the school has established the habit of failure.8
In 1920, Dr. Jessie Taft wrote in Mental Hygiene:9
With the distinctly inferior child, no amount of home treatment
can undo the effect of his inevitable and constant failure to come up
to public school standards. It is here that we get our most serious
problems of delinquency, beginning and confirmed. If the case
problems presented to me by child-caring agencies in Philadelphia
during the past year and a half are any criterion, the crucial situa-
tion in all children's work is lack of suitable school opportunities for
the dull-normal child. In Philadelphia, at least, and I am sure in
the vast majority of city public schools still running along conven-
tional academic lines, there is no possibility of obtaining for the dull-
normal child, who has become a behavior problem because of his
sense of inferiority and failure, the treatment that will touch his
case a school program suited to his abilities.
The fact that eighty-three per cent of the girls who were
uninterested in the grade school said that they liked the con-
tinuation school seems to justify Dr. Dearborn's plea for a
new school program. In his introduction to Professor Hop-
kins' study on the intelligence of continuation school children
in Massachusetts he says:
Not all the difference between these groups (of high and low in-
tellectual development) can be attributed to heredity. It is in part
the effect of schooling. The intellectual development of some of
these children (how many, no one knows) has suffered because the
schools have not provided the right sort of training for them. The
usual academic training has failed where there is good reason to
believe training of a different sort might have succeeded.10
8 Ayres, Leonard P.: Laggards in Our Schools, p. 220.
9 July 1920, pp. 537-549.
10 Hopkins, L. Thomas: The Intelligence of Continuation School Children in
Massachusetts.
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HERSELF
13
No one realizes this better than those who have to deal with
working girls in the schools, in industry, and at home. It is
not, however, the function of the present study to enter into
discussion of educational methods. That must be left in the
hands of educators.
What this study does emphasize is the presence of these.
four groups of children in industry, and that these four
groups may be detected by a comparatively brief interview
with the child at school. Conference would reveal those in-
dividuals who wish to be and ought to be in school, and the
proper use of the social resources at hand might keep them
from leaving school, thus eliminating approximately one-
fifth of the young employed girls in Philadelphia. The able-
minded discontented group, comprising one-third of all young
workers, would by interview and home visit be caught and
directed into different types of study, or, until some success-
ful new form of education is devised, at least be given care-
ful social guidance. It is to aid these groups that much of
this study should be of value, as well as to emphasize the
need for directing, controlling, and protecting the retarded
girls, whether they are serious-minded (there seem to be a
few of them), or whether they form that one-third of the
total number who have been found to be uninterested in
school, not much interested in work, and who spend their
leisure time going to movies and dances and reading trashy
stories. But this report will prove useful only in so far as it
has successfully discovered the attitude of girls toward their
recreation, amusements, home life, reading, group activities,
and church interests, as well as the effect of these activities
upon the girls' own development.
Church organizations, clubs, settlements, all confess to a
difficulty in "getting hold" of working girls from fourteen
to sixteen years old. Young women whose interests have
crystallized into more definite channels seek certain oppor-
tunities which they find open to them, but the younger girls,
without definite interests, are afraid of committing them-
14
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
selves to a regular program. They seem not to wish to
identify themselves with outside groups. And yet they do
not, as a rule, wish to do things alone. A "lady-friend" or
a "boy-friend" is indispensable, but is enough. If, however,
groups are formed which necessitate no curtailment of the
girls' free time and which arise normally from and in the
two places where they are compelled to be, namely, the con-
tinuation school and the place of employment, the girls may
become interested.
The continuation school forms a natural social center, in
that age and development are similar among the girls who
gather together there. But one day a week is a very short
time in which to get acquainted, when that day is filled with
classes. There is a more natural grouping in industry, if the
number is large enough in any one place of employment.
These two forces, continuation school and industry, are
jointly responsible for the well-being of young workers when
the homes are lacking in proper influence, and beyond these
is the responsibility of the state, which permits the girls to
enter industry and compels them to attend continuation
school.
So far as they are qualified to do so, many homes look after
their children. In such cases the parents expect their efforts
to be supplemented by the school and industry which give
training and experience. But, aside from the physically
handicapped homes where adjustment of one kind or another
is needed, there are other homes, as will be shown in chapter
V, where parental control is lacking, or where it is attempted
but fails. Here the school might be and often is of great
assistance. Industry might aid, but usually does not. In-
dustry cannot consistently say, "If parents cannot control the
girl, can we be expected to do so?" By accepting the girl as
a worker it thereby assumes responsibility for part of her
welfare. And it cannot discharge this responsibility if it
chooses to remain in ignorance of her character. Were the
homes of dissatisfied, retarded girls and those in which pa-
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HERSELF
15
rental control is lacking or inadequate known to the continua-
tion school and industry, and were such homes bolstered up
and supported by the resources of school and industry, the
trend of the girls' lives would be changed. The fault does
not in such cases rest entirely with the girl.
Not only have the continuation schools and industry a duty
toward the girls; so has the community at large, especially in
the matters of recreation and amusement. It is the commer-
cial enterprises of the city, and not the social organizations,
which secure the girls' attention. Public opinion back of
commercialized entertainment, insisting that it should not be
unwholesome, would greatly help. A more thorough knowl-
edge on the part of adults as to where in each community
girls go for amusement would help also. The community
does not properly know its working girls. Neither do the
parents. But that is not to say that these girls are unknow-
able!
CHAPTER II
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER SCHOOLING
Much has been written lately about the "human element"
in industry. Much might be written about the "human ele-
ment" in the public schools. More and more, teachers and
students of child psychology are observing and recording im-
pressions and facts about the children with whom they work.
No case record of any social agency is now complete without
the "school record" of the child. The vocational guidance.
expert must go back to the school to get invaluable informa-
tion upon which to found advice and direction.
Obviously the school's record of the child is important.
But equally important is the child's view of the school and
his attitude toward it. Conditions which exert tremendous
influence over growing boys and girls, and even become turn-
ing points in many of their decisions, are often insignificant
in the eyes of elders. When boys and girls reach the age
of adolescence, and, for the first time in many cases, have
the opportunity or are forced to make important decisions.
about themselves, as in the matter of going to work or of
staying in school, it is necessary to inquire how large a part
is played in these decisions by the influences represented by
the school. The child's reaction toward the school, or from
the school, is of course not the only factor in such decisions.
The home situation, or other conditions entirely outside of
home or school, may have greater weight, but in this chapter
will be considered the background of the school in its rela-
tion to the girl who chooses work in place of school.
M
Retardation
The majority of girls who go to work between the ages
of fourteen and sixteen years are already retarded in their
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER SCHOOLING
17
school progress. They are over age for their grade. They
have not kept the pace set by the school. The following
table derived from the report of the Board of Public Edu-
cation of Philadelphia for the year ending December 31,
1923, shows clearly how far continuation school boys and
girls lag behind the total school population.¹
TABLE I
RETARDATION IN THE SCHOOL POPULATION OF PHILADELPHIA²

Schools
Senior high schools
Junior high schools
Elementary schools.
Continuation schools
High school classes
Elementary classes.
Total
•
Schools
•
•
•
Senior high schools
Junior high schools
Girls' Trade school .
Elementary schools.
•
•
Over Age
(Retarded)
Per
Number cent
5,547 22.2
2,456 38.9
85,963 42.2
616 24.7
93.7
6,106
Total Number
Under Age
(Accelerated)
7,663
2,960
184
11,227
22,034
Per
Number cent
TABLE II
RETARDATION AMONG CHILDREN 14 AND 15 YEARS OF AGE PAST THE
SIXTH GRADE AND BELOW THE SECOND YEAR IN THE
HIGH SCHOOL
4,343 17.4
472 7.5
11,063
81
Number
15,102 | 60.4
3,381 53.6
5.4 106,851
52.4
Normal
3.2 I,798
Number
Retarded
1,315
1,695
121
8,830
11,961
Per
cent
72.1
408 6.3
Per cent
Retarded
17.2
57.3
65.8
78.6
54.3
For example, a
1 Normal age in this report covers one and one-half years.
pupil who has passed her fourteenth birthday but is less than fifteen and one-
half years of age and who is in the first year of high school is counted as
"normal.'
>>
* Derived from Tables 68, 69 and 71, pp. 275-281, of the Philadelphia report.
18
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
•
In the elementary classes of the continuation schools
ninety-four per cent are found to be retarded and six per
cent normal, not one boy or girl being accelerated; in the
entire elementary school population only forty-two per cent
are retarded. Of all the fourteen and fifteen year old chil-
dren at work at the time of the report, even if we include
the high school group, almost exactly three-quarters.
(seventy-four per cent) were retarded. Of these, boys and
girls are practically equal in backwardness. Of all the chil-
dren in school of like age and grade as those in continuation
school, that is, fourteen and fifteen years of age, past the
sixth grade and below the second year of high school, fifty-
four per cent were retarded.
TABLE III
RETARDATION AMONG GIRLS ONLY IN PHILADELPHIA³
Schools
Senior high schools
Junior high schools
Elementary schools
Continuation schools
•
•
•
Over Age
(Retarded)
•
Per
Number cent
23.2
High school classes 313
Elementary classes 3,018 93.2
2,507 19.0
1,203 37.0
40,491 40.0
Under Age
(Accelerated)
4.
Per
Number cent
2,661
261
5,905
35
20.1
8.0
5.8
2.6
Normal
Per
Number cent
8,042 60.9
1,789 55.0
54,949 54.2
1,001 74.2
219 6.8
C
It must be kept in mind that the total numbers above given
as in continuation classes represent only the pupils enrolled
at one particular time. They do not include the floating
population of continuation classes during a year; those who
reach the age of fourteen, drop out of the regular school,
and come wandering into the continuation school, and those
who, becoming sixteen, slip out through its doors. From
September 1923 to June 1924, 21,481 pupils (10,963 boys
3 Derived from Tables 68, 69 and 71, pp. 275-281, of the Philadelphia report.
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER SCHOOLING
19
and 10,518 girls) were on the rolls of the Philadelphia con-
tinuation schools.
Age and Grade at Leaving School
Retardation grade by grade of the 500 girls interviewed in
Philadelphia differs slightly from that of the entire continua-
tion school group mentioned. In the schedules used in this
study, the emphasis upon the finishing of a grade, rather
than upon being in a grade at the time of leaving school,
probably accounts for the smaller number in the normal
group as compared with all girls in continuation school.¹
However that may be, only 16.2 per cent of the 500 girls in-
cluded in this study were normal in their school progress;
six and four-tenths per cent were accelerated; 75.4 per cent
were retarded. Almost all had left school before their fif-
teenth birthday. All had completed the sixth grade as re-
quired by law, but only one in four had finished the eight
grades of the elementary school, and only one in twenty-five
had completed a year or more in high school.5
School Progress of the 500 Girls Interviewed
Number of girls accelerated in school progress
Number of girls normal in school progress
Number of girls retarded 1 year in school progress
Number of girls retarded 2 years in school progress
Number of girls retarded 3 years in school progress
Unknown
•
-
32 or 6.4%
81 or 16.2%
161 or 32.2%
187 or 37.4%
29 or 5.8%
10 or 2 %
To sum up, almost eighty-three per cent of the girls (414
out of 500) left school before becoming fifteen years of age;
• This difference may be due to a slight and unavoidable difference in the
basis of classification for the "normal" group. In this study a girl was con-
sidered "normal" in school progress who had finished the eighth grade between
her fourteenth and fifteenth birthdays, the seventh grade between her thirteenth
and fourteenth birthdays, and so on.
The variation in the age at which these 500 girls left school ranged from
slightly under fourteen years in the case where the girl's fourteenth birthday
fell during the summer vacation, and she did not return to school, to over
sixteen years in the case of six girls.
20
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
about forty per cent (206 out of 500) left school on the
completion of the sixth grade; and thirty-two per cent more
(161 out of 500) on the completion of the seventh grade.
About seventy-five per cent were retarded one year or more
in school progress.
TABLE IV
GRADE COMPLETED IN RELATION TO AGE AT LEAVING SCHOOL OF THE
500 CONTINUATION SCHOOL GIRLS INTERVIEWED
Grade Completed
Sixth
Seventh
Eighth .
High school, 1st yr.
High school, 2nd yr.
High school, 3rd yr.
High school, 4th yr.
Unknown
Total
•
•
Under
14
11
10
17
•
• •
•
14 and
under 15
166
129
65
12
1
3
38 | 376
Age at Leaving School
15 and
16
under 16 and over
220
29
19
5
1
1
75
121
1
6
Unknown
*
22
5
Total
206
161
104
19
3
1
6
500
If the three criteria-an existence of less than fifteen
years, an education cut short at the sixth or seventh grade,
and a retardation of one, two, or three years-be applied,
there emerges from the five hundred girls interviewed a
group of three hundred girls handicapped for work by each
of these three conditions, namely, lack of maturity, lack of
education, and lack of achievement as measured by school
progress. No matter what the explanations of these handi-
caps are, whether they lie in the "failure of the school to
adjust itself to the needs of the child," whether they lie in
the lack of sufficient intelligence on the part of the children
to deal with the requirements of the school, whether they lie
in economic necessity or in the unwholesome influence of
the home, the fact of the above-mentioned triple handicap re-
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER SCHOOLING
2I
mains for three out of every five young employed girls.
Later we shall take up the cause of these handicaps, and try
to discover whether they are avoidable, and, if so, how they
are being met, or could be met, by the schools, by industry,
and by the community.
Types of Schools Attended
The cause for retardation might be thought to be in the
type of school attended or in the number of changes made
from one school to another. But the surprising fact devel-
oped that neither the type of school nor frequent changes
in schools seemed to bear any relation to school retardation.
TABLE V
TYPES OF SCHOOLS ATTENDED IN RELATION TO SCHOOL PROGRESS
GROUPS
Type of School
Attended
Public schools
Parochial schools
Both public and
parochial schools
Private schools
Total
•
•
cele
Acceler-
ated
21
5
6
Re-
Normal tarded
1 year
60
10
10
1
Number of Girls Who Were
32 81
98
35
28
161
Re-
Re-
tarded tarded
2 years 3 years
102
44
41
187
21
3
5
29
Un-
known
1 Ci
5
4
10
Total
307
98
94
1
500
Three out of every five girls attended only public schools,
one out of every five attended only parochial schools, and
one out of every five had attended both types of schools.
The retardation among these three groups seems to be about
the same. Thus forty per cent of the public school girls,
forty-seven per cent of the parochial school girls, and forty-
six per cent of those who would be in both groups were re-
tarded two or more years.
22
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
Changes from School to School
Changing from school to school also seems to have had
little effect on school progress.
TABLE VI
CHANGES IN SCHOOL IN RELATION TO SCHOOL PROGRESS GROUPS
Schools Attended
1 school .
2 schools.
3 schools
4 schools
5 schools
6 schools
7 schools.
8 schools.
9 schools
10 schools
13 schools
Unknown
Total
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
| Acceler
ated
6
13
8
3
1
Number of Girls Attending Specified Number
of Schools Who Were
32
Re-
Re-
Re-
Normal| tarded | tarded | tarded
1 year 2 years 3 years
16
29
16
6
6
2
1
1
~~~~O~-~
42
54
31
17
6
2
1
1
2
5
51
60
35
19
7
4
4
•
6
81 161 187
9
10
4
2
2
29
Un-
known
+3+
1
4
10
Total
125
169
98
47
22
10
7
2
2
1
1
16
500
Of those who had attended only one, and similarly of those
who had attended more than two schools, half were retarded
two years or more; but since the total number of those who
had attended more than two schools was small, only ninety-
two (nineteen per cent), this deduction may not be conclu-
sive.
While sixty-one out of the 307 public school girls (twenty
per cent) had changed schools over three times, only two out
of the ninety-eight parochial school girls had changed over
three times. Twenty-nine of the ninety-four girls attending
both public and parochial schools (thirty per cent) had
changed over three times. Apparently the school system has
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER SCHOOLING
23
perfected its organization to the extent of minimizing the
effect of such changes, and compulsory attendance laws are
enforced, so that the minimum of time is lost between
changes. Retardation is not lessened, however, in the paro-
chial schools where the girls do not change from school to
school.
TABLE VII
CHANGES IN SCHOOL IN RELATION TO TYPE OF SCHOOL ATTENDED
Schools Attended
1 school
2 schools
3 schools
4 schools
5 schools
6 schools
7 schools
8 schools
9 schools
10 schools
13 schools
Unknown
Total.
Number of Girls Attending Specified Number of Schools
Who Were in Specified Type of School
Parochial
Both
Private
Public
53
113
69
32
18
332
1
1
1
11
307
69
18
4
1
--
5
98
40
25
15
4
6
3
i
94
1
1
Total
123
171
98
47
22
10
7
2
2
1
1
16
500
Nativity of Parents
So few of the girls interviewed were born outside of the
United States (twenty-seven), and so many were born in
Philadelphia (360), that the question of foreign birth was
not important. Therefore only the birthplace of their par-
ents was studied in relation to the school progress of the
girls. Forty per cent of the girls were from homes where
both parents were foreign born; eight per cent from homes
where the father only was foreign born; and seven per cent
from homes where the mother only was foreign born. But
this national difference is not significant. Daughters of for-
24
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
eign parents seem to have made better progress, though only
a little better, than those whose parents were native born.
TABLE VIII
NATIVITY OF PARENTS IN RELATION TO SCHOOL PROGRESS OF
CHILDREN
Nativity of Parents
Both parents
born in U. S.
Father born in
U.S., mother
abroad
•
Mother born in
U. S., father
abroad
·
Both parents
Total.
•
Unknown.
Accel-Nor-
Nor-
erated mal
15
4
3
born abroad 10
28
7
7
38
1
32 81
Number of Girls Who Were

Re-
tarded
1 year
71
10
•
15
63
2
161
•
Re-
Re-
tarded tarded
|
2 years | 3 years
88
8
11
79
1
187
Both parents born in the United States
One parent born in the United States.
Father born in the United States,
Mother born in Austria-Hungary
Mother born in Canada
Mother born in England
Mother born in Germany
Mother born in Ireland
Mother born in Russia
Mother's birthplace unknown
Mother born in the United States,
Father born in British West Indies
Father born in Canada
20
2
1
6
29
Un-
known
4
·
1
2
3
Total
226
32
39
199
4
10 500
Per cent
re-
tarded
2 years
or more
The following list of countries gives a picture of the wide
range
of territory from which these parents come:
47%
31%
30%
42%
226
71
1
1
9
11
9
1
1
1
1
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER SCHOOLING
25
Father born in England
Father born in Germany
Father born in Ireland
Father born in Italy
Father born in Poland
Father born in Sweden
Father's birthplace unknown
Armenia
Austria
England
Galicia
Both parents born outside of United States.
Alsace-Lorraine
Germany
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Lithuania
Norway
Poland
Roumania
Russia
Scotland
"Europe"
•
•
•
•
Both parents born outside of United States and in different
countries
Father born in Austria, mother in Germany
Father born in Bavaria, mother in France
Father born in England, mother in Germany
Father born in England, mother in Ireland
Father born in Germany, mother in Alsace-Lorraine
Father born in Germany, mother in Ireland
Father born in Germany, mother in Poland
Father born in Ireland, mother in England
Father born in Ireland, mother in Scotland
Father born in Ireland, mother in Wales
Father born in Italy, mother in Poland
Father born in Poland, mother in Germany
Father born in Roumania, mother in Austria
Father born in Russia, mother in Germany
Father born in Russia, mother in Poland
Father born in Scotland, mother in England
Father born in Sweden, mother in England
•
•
•
•
·
9
12
5 15 13
171
1
1
14
16
1
31
8
17
24
1
1
23
3
18
11
1
32
1
1
1
3
1
1
1
3
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
1
EN
26
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
1
1
1
Father born in Switzerland, mother in Germany
Father born in Wales, mother in Scotland
Father born in England, mother in Scotland
Father born in Austria, mother's birthplace unknown
Father born in Scotland, mother's birthplace unknown
Father's birthplace unknown, mother "on high seas"
Father's birthplace unknown, mother's birthplace unknown 3
1
1
1
•
Reasons for Leaving School
So far we have been considering the actual facts of lack
of maturity, lack of education, lack of school progress, the
type of schools attended, the changes from school to school,
and the nativity of parents, all of which facts go to make up
the school background of the young employed girl. But why
have these girls given up school and taken on the responsi-
bilities of self-support at so young an age and with so little
preparation? This question, the reason for leaving school,
has been asked in many ways and of many groups. It was
first asked twenty years ago of the parents of one-fifth of
the employed fourteen and fifteen year old children in the
state of Massachusetts. The question was put to their par-
ents, "Who decided that your child should leave school?”
and the parents answered, in the majority of cases, "The
child decided." To quote from the report: "Mother after
mother declares, 'We wanted him (the child) to stay in
school.' The theory that the parent puts the child to work
as soon as he can is not tenable, except for the lower foreign
element. Read with the visitor history after history of the
child and of the family, and you will find that the child left
school from choice, and that the parents objected." The
same condition is true today. This study shows that the
majority of children leave school from choice.
Five years ago a similar question was asked in what is
probably the most extensive investigation of its kind ever
• Kingsbury, Susan M.: "The Relation of Children to the Industries" in the
Report of the Commission on Industrial and Technical Education (Massachu-
setts), April 1906, p. 86.
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER SCHOOLING
27
undertaken, when 145,000 boys in the state of New York
were interviewed. In the survey, made under the direction
of Mr. Howard G. Burdge, all boys above the age of sixteen
years and not over nineteen years, were enrolled in accord-
ance with the Military Training Law of the State of New
York, by means of a carefully prepared questionnaire on
which the answers of the boys were recorded by the teachers
or enrolling officers. The reasons for leaving school given
by the boys are as follows:
TABLE IX
REASONS FOR LEAVING SCHOOL
(Per cent giving specified reasons)

Wanted
to Work
51.0
64.8
62.4
Greater New York
Cities over 25,000
Cities under 25,000
Villages over 5,000 68.8
Places under 5,000 72.1
Employed farm
boys.
68.7
Finan-
cial
10.8
13.0
17.5
13.4
10.1
18.7
Gradu- | Disliked
ated
School
30.8
8.4
2.5
2.8
4.1
2.9
3.3
10.8
14.6
11.6
10.7
5.9
Miscel-
laneous
3.2
1.3
.7
1.1
.5
.4
Illness
9
1.7
2.3
2.3
2.4
3.4
Mr. Burdge, in commenting on this table, says, "All the
evidence shows that the 'reasons' given by these boys for
leaving school are not 'real' reasons but 'good' reasons, or
rather excuses for leaving. What the real reasons are we
do not know, but the boys will naturally seek a reason which
will in a measure relieve them of censure and criticism."
"The general impression gained by those who interviewed
boys in the shops is that in most cases 'Wanted to work,'
'Financial,' 'Graduated,' and 'Disliked school,' could well be
classified under the one heading, 'Wanted to quit school and
go to work." "8
7 This table is taken from page 117 of Our Boys, by Howard G. Burdge.
6 Burdge, Howard G.: Our Boys, p. 117-119.
28
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
Another study of reasons for leaving school is reported in
the Schoolmen's Week Proceedings for April 1923. The
pupils of the Philadelphia continuation schools were asked to
write the answers to certain printed questions under the di-
rection of their classroom teachers. The conclusion reached
is that "children leave school for one of two great reasons-
their parents need their help, or they are tired of school-
about fifty per cent in each class."⁹ Here also one might
suspect "good" reasons, instead of "real" reasons.
A still more recent study was published in 1924 by Pro-
fessor L. Thomas Hopkins, under the significant title of
The Intelligence of Continuation School Children in Massa-
chusetts. Professor Hopkins says on this point: "(1) In-
formation received from children as to why they leave school
to go to work is unreliable, and cannot be accepted without
careful checking; (2) the two usual reasons, that is, the eco-
nomic one and genuine desire to go to work, are of little
significance; (3) inability to do the work of the regular
school is by far the most important factor."10 Professor
Hopkins, however, considers that "economic necessity exists.
only when the wage which the boy or girl earns is absolutely
essential for the preservation of the family group as an in-
dependent organization.
9911
The present investigation differs in one very important re-
spect from all preceding efforts to get the truth about school
leavers. The girl was interviewed at the school, and the
parents were subsequently interviewed in the home. In this
report statements of fact and expressions of opinion come
first from the girl herself. But facts and opinions, responses
and reactions were checked up by conversation with the par-
ent and by observations in the home. With the above in-
terpretation let us compare our analysis of the reasons for
Adams, Edwin W.: "A Study of Continuation School Pupils" in School
men's Week Proceedings, April 12-14, 1923, p. 190. University of Pennsyl
vania Bulletin.
10 Hopkins, L. Thomas: The Intelligence of Continuation School Children in
Massachusetts, p. 107.
11 Ibid, p. 95.
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER SCHOOLING
29
leaving school given by 500 Philadelphia continuation school
girls, corrected or corroborated by subsequent visits to their
homes. The answers to the direct question, "Why did you
leave school?" may be grouped as follows:
Economic necessity
Parents wished them to work
•
Went to business school
Death of parent
Illness in family
Illness of girl
•
Discontented with school
Graduated
•
159
13
7
19
22
12
121
6
25
76
40
Other girls working
Wanted to work.
"Just wanted to leave"
Total.
For the purpose of analysis, and in order to relate them to
other factors, these answers may be combined into two
groups, as follows: (1) statements of girls who said they
had to leave school for reasons which are really economic
(220); (2) statements of girls who said that they were dis-
contented with school (280). Then, in order to get further
information as to the attitude of the girls toward school, as
well as to provide a check on the reasons given by them for
leaving, two other questions were asked, the first, "Did you,
at the time you left school, want to stay in school longer?"
or, in other words, "Were you sorry to leave school?" And
the other question was, "Would you, if you had the chance
now, go back to school?" Combining the answers to these
two questions with the reasons given for leaving school, it
was found that, even though economic necessity was really
a reason for leaving school in 220 cases, yet some of the girls
in this group disliked school just as much as did the girls in
the other group and were only too glad that some form of
economic necessity had compelled them to go to work. Thus
the two reasons for leaving school, (1) economic pressure
500
30
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
and (2) dislike of school, as given quite truthfully by the
girls, did not seem to furnish a working basis for classifica-
tion throughout the study, nor to divide the girls into distinct
types for any purpose whatever.
Interest in School-the Primary Groups
On the other hand, the attitude of the girl toward school,
checked by her statement of her reason for leaving school
obtained through personal interviews and verified later by
home visits, did seem to furnish a primary classification, and
on this basis the following two groups developed :
1. One hundred and sixty-seven girls said that they had
not wanted to leave school. Of these, 116 said they would
return to school at once if the chance were offered. This
statement seems to be verified, for of these 116, ninety-nine
had already claimed that they had left school only because
they had to for economic reasons. Furthermore, out of the
total group of 167 girls, 139 stated they had left for economic
reasons and ten on account of illness.
2. Three hundred and thirty-three girls said that they had
wanted to leave school and were ready to go to work. Only
twenty-eight of them expressed any regret at leaving, or any
desire to return. Eighty-one were obliged to leave for eco-
nomic reasons. For them, and for them only, necessity and
desire coincided.
Can we rely upon the genuineness of these two groups?
And if so, what is its significance? Is economic necessity
as great a factor in the first group as it appears to be from
the statements of the girls, even when supported, as it is, by
their evident desire to stay in school?
Let us study the following explanation of their “economic
necessity" offered by the ninety-nine girls mentioned in the
first group, those who stated definitely that they did not
want to leave school and would return if a chance were
offered them.
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER SCHOOLING 31
TABLE X
ANALYSIS OF REASONS GIVEN FOR LEAVING SCHOOL BY NINETY-NINE
GIRLS WHO WISHED TO REMAIN IN SCHOOL
Father dead.
Mother dead
Father and mother
Total
dead
Father deserted
Father ill
Mother ill
Father old
•
Father out of work
Father on strike.
Death of brother
No older children in
family
Large family
"Organ lessons'
Miscellaneous
nomic reasons
Doubtful.
•
•
•
•
eco-
Total
17
6
2
6
11
9
1
4
TH
1
1
14
11
1
9
6
99
Number of Girls Who Were
Re-
Re-
Re-
Accel-
erated Normal| tarded | tarded tarded
1 year 2 years | 3 years
4
1
2
2
: :
1
11
33 124
1
~~~3:
2
1
2
2
4
1
1
31
24
www.
2
HH
6
3
52
32
6
3
1
32
25
2
25
:
1
1
Janda
:
1
5
Un-
known
*
•
2
The result is startling because in all but the six cases which
were considered doubtful, economic necessity was evidently
a real reason for leaving school; perhaps not the same kind
of economic necessity as defined by Professor Hopkins,
which makes the wages of the employed girls absolutely es-
sential to the preservation of the family group, but rather
an economic stringency which renders their wages essential
to the preservation of a set standard of living. If this is so,
then ninety-three out of the 500 girls interviewed were com-
pelled to leave school contrary to their own wishes, because
of financial conditions at home, and they would have re-
turned to school had an opportunity been given them to do
so. However, twenty-eight of the ninety-three were retarded
32
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
two or more years in school. How much would they have
profited by continuing in school? A detailed case study with
a psychological examination would be necessary to answer
this question. Here is, however, a telling list of statements
compiled from the information secured from the girls, and
from the homes, about the five girls in this group who are
retarded three years:
1. Had to go to work when brother died. Would like to have
finished eight B.
2. Father deserted.
3. Father ill for eight years. Brother will not work unless you
put a job in his hands.
4. Large family.
5. Out of school four years with bone disease.
Again, from the twenty-three who are retarded two years,
leaving out the two doubtful cases, we get the following
statements:
1. Out twice a week since fifth grade. Mother ill. Heavy home.
responsibilities.
2. Irregular attendance. Mother ill. Much housework. Large
family. Father a stableman.
3. Mother ill. Father a machinist but out of work. Large family.
Heavy home responsibilities.
4. Wanted to finish eighth grade. Large family.
5. Irregular attendance at school. Large family.
6. Father dead. Mother ill. Irregular at school.
7. Father dead. Mother works.
8. Oldest in family.
9. Mother ill. Irregular attendance. Brother in high school.
10. Mother dead.
11. Mother ill. Irregular attendance.
12. Father dead. Mother ill. Irregular attendance.
13. Father ill.
Mother went back to England. Child boarding
with guardian.
14. Father deserted. Mother works. Brother must have an edu-
cation.
15. Mother dead. Three sisters keep house.
16. Father partly blind. Mother takes in two washings a week.
17. Large family. One older brother, now out of work.
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER SCHOOLING
33
18. Father an invalid and cranky.
19. Father out of work. Large family. Irregular attendance at
school.
20. Father dead. Mother not well but works in a restaurant.
21. Father dead.
22. Father dead.
23. Mother dead.
Hardly a home here listed could be considered "normal."
In almost every instance it is broken, or handicapped by the
illness of the father or the mother, or by the large size of
the family. Such a list of home conditions, taken in con-
nection with the evident desire of the girls to remain in
school, suggests, even if it does not prove, that lack of school
progress here may not be synonymous with mental deficiency.
At any rate, such conditions show a fertile field for adjust-
ments and a need for wise school counseling and guidance.
Especially those ten children in the accelerated group, who
yearned for more education and yet were compelled to give
up their right to school, would have repaid every effort to
keep them in school, and, if no other adjustment had been
possible, scholarships should have been available. An invest-
ment of possibly fifty dollars a week might have saved all
ten for better citizenship. The statements of home condi-
tions in this accelerated group follow.
1. Father dead. Mother works. No older brothers or sisters.
Goes to evening school. Wanted to go to college.
2. Father dead. Mother works.
3. Father dead. Mother has nervous headaches. "Father had
promised I could go to high school.”
4. Father dead.
Mother has position as housekeeper. Two broth-
ers in a home.
5. Father ill. Cancer. Mother a dressmaker. "Wanted to be a
secretary."
6. Father ill. No older brothers or sisters. "Wanted to go to
college."
7. Living out as mother's helper. Father "away." Two brothers
in orphanage. Mother does housework.
8. Father mill hand. Mother does home crocheting. No older
brothers or sisters.
34
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
9. Father P. R. T. watchman. No older brothers or sisters.
"School and me never agreed but I liked it a lot."
10. Father a bricklayer. Quite old.
The genuineness of the economic reason for leaving
school, coupled with a real desire for further education, does
not seem difficult to prove in these cases. But what about
the validity of the reasons given by the second group (page
30), those who expressed a dislike for school and a desire to
leave? Of 333 girls, only twenty-eight regretted having left
school. They, too, had disliked school and wanted to leave,
but they were inclined to think later that they had made a
mistake and to wonder whether after all it would not have
been better for them to have continued in school. Eighteen
of the twenty-eight had left for economic reasons as well,
and they, together with the other ten, all acknowledged a de-
sire to return to school.
The great majority of this group of 333 girls, however,
expressed no regret at having left school and no desire to
return. Only sixty-three out of the remaining 305 offered
any form of economic necessity as an excuse, and in all of
these cases this "good" reason did not conceal the dislike for
school and the eagerness to leave. In this group, of the 333
homes considered, there were only thirty broken by the death
of the father. In thirteen cases the mother had died, and in
two cases both the parents were dead. Four fathers had
deserted their families, and one was insane. In all, fifty
families were without father or mother or both. The others
were unbroken and fairly normal, hampered occasionally by
illness, more rarely by real poverty. While in all of these
families the girls interviewed sincerely and heartily disliked
school, only half of them were retarded.
Out of this discussion, therefore, appear four groups based
both on interest in school and on progress in school, and these
four groups seem to form an essential primary classifica-
tion.12 This classification is reënforced by a study of the
12 Hereafter, these groups will be designated "school interest" and "school
progress" groups.
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER SCHOOLING
35
homes as well as of the girls themselves. It should prove
valuable in all plans and programs which look toward school
or trade or social guidance. The four distinct categories.
formed are:
I. Those who are interested in school and who are fairly
normal in school progress (including the previous classi-
fication of the accelerated, the normal, and the retarded
one year)
II. Those who are interested in school but are retarded two
•
years or more
III. Those who are not interested in school but are fairly nor-
mal in school progress
IV. Those who are not interested in school and are retarded
two years or more
Unknown
Total.
School Progress
Total
TABLE XI
ECONOMIC STRINGENCY IN RELATION TO THE PRIMARY GROUPS
Accelerated
Normal
Retarded 1 year
Retarded 2 years
Retarded 3 years
Unknown
•
•
•
Interested in School
but
Left for
Economic
Reasons
Im $0 am
44
Number of Girls Who Were
36
139
Left for
Other
Reasons
378721
28
Not Interested in
School and
Left for
Economic
Reasons
5
11
21
40
4
1
82
Left for
Other
Reasons
·
10
30
88
104
14
5
251
109
54
165
162
10
500

Total
32
81
161
187
29
10
500
In this classification the question of economic necessity is
disregarded because while economic necessity, or economic
stringency as we shall call it, may be present in any one of
these four groups and may have been the decisive factor in
36
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
causing the girl to leave school, it is not an attribute of the
girl herself, and therefore should not be considered as a
basis for primary classification, but rather in its relation to
each one of the four groups.
The percentage of girls leaving for economic reasons in
each group is as follows:
Group I-83 per cent said that they left school for economic reasons.
Group II-83 per cent said that they left school for economic reasons.
Group III-22 per cent said that they left school for economic reasons.
Group IV-27 per cent said that they left school for economic reasons.
While, therefore, the question of economic stringency must
be studied very carefully in its relation to the first two
groups, it is only of secondary importance in its relation to
the third and fourth groups.
But other characteristics of these four groups must be
carefully considered if these categories are to be used in the
education and direction of the adolescent working girl. They
will therefore be further analyzed in the following chapters.
CHAPTER III
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER WORK
Vocational and Educational Guidance
Transition periods in life are difficult and dangerous. For
girls like those whose background we have studied in the
previous chapter, the transition from school to work is not
an exception. The city of Philadelphia is fortunate in de-
veloping a system through its present junior employment
service which is planned eventually to cover an important
stage of this transition. The first stages, however, must be
covered by the schools. At present the boy or girl who
makes up his mind to leave school is rarely questioned at the
school about the reason for the decision. He or she secures
a job, gets a "promise of employment," and it is only when
application is made for working papers that reasons are
sought or investigations made. By that time half of the
transition period is past, or at least the decisive steps have.
been taken. Sometimes these steps can be retraced under the
guidance of a wise employment supervisor; but oftener,
when once the desire to leave school is formed, it is followed
by immediate action. Action needs to be justified, and there-
fore when the child presents himself for working papers his
mind is made up and his avenues of approach are guarded.
Because of the lack of suitable schools, the plan to substitute
work for school is undoubtedly the wisest course for many
of these boys and girls. For others it may be a sad mistake.
For most of them it is not a decision based on a thorough con-
sideration of the subject with parents and teachers, but it is
a matter which they take into their own hands and from
which, by a method of trial and error, they hope for the best.
1 See the story of the fifteen year old Polish boy on page 343 of the report
of the Board of Public Education of Philadelphia for the year ending Decem-
ber 31, 1924.
38
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
Of the 500 girls interviewed, less than one-third had found
their present positions through the help of parents or other
relatives or through the junior employment service. Forty
per cent secured jobs for themselves either through a news-
paper advertisement or by direct application. About a fourth
of them were helped by friends, usually "lady friends."
As already shown, although half were making fairly nor-
mal school progress, two-thirds of these girls disliked school
and wanted to leave and did leave, fifty-three per cent of
them against the wishes of their parents. At the school
there is nothing to distinguish this comparatively small
group-girls of normal progress but of little interest in
school who are making up their minds to drop out-from that
other group similar in ability and attitude who will stay in
school or who are compelled to stay in school whether they
like it or not. Consequently, this group (Group III), which
cannot be recognized until the crucial moment of leaving,
needs quick and skilful investigation, and fortunate is the
school which is equipped with visiting teachers or school
counselors who may be called upon for this service.
The city of London has a unique scheme for reaching
every "school leaver." From humble and haphazard begin-
nings initiated by the Destitute Children's Dinner Society,
the Ragged School Union, and other private organizations,
London has developed a comprehensive system of Children's
Care-Committees covering all of the schools in the city. The.
London County Council heads the movement with twelve
paid organizers. Except for them and for their clerical as-
sistants, the work is done by volunteers, and yet the ele-
mentary schools in London number nearly one thousand.
The children are not allowed to withdraw until the end of the
term in which they reach their fourteenth birthday. This
means three definitely stated times during the year for school
leaving. A joint committee, composed of the regular School
Care-Committee, the members of which are social workers.
and others interested in the school and in the community,
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER WORK
39
and a member from the nearest Juvenile Labor Exchange,
is called together at the school to discuss possible occupations
for each boy and girl. The head teacher invites the parents
of the child to this conference, and most parents accept the
invitation. Future occupations are discussed, from the point
of view of the teacher, who knows the child's record at school,
from the point of view of the care-committee worker, who
knows the general home conditions of the family, and from
the point of view of the labor exchange worker, who knows
the employment situation. The parents and the child con-
tribute their desires and ambitions. The results of the dis-
cussion are recorded and sent to the labor exchange, and the
child is instructed to report at the exchange. There is also
an excellent system of follow-up work until the "young per-
son" is eighteen years of age.
In this country the choice of an occupation is determined
more by the child than by the parents, at least in the case of
the younger boys and girls and those who drop out of the
lower grades of school. Parents of children who remain at
school longer usually show greater interest in future occu-
pations, but parents of those leaving school while in the
grades are apt to be indifferent to their responsibilities in
this respect. Practically every report dealing with this sub-
ject of boys and girls dropping out of school stresses the
need for wise counselors and guidance at this time and later.
Mr. Burdge, on page eight of his study of 145,000 employed
boys in New York State, already quoted, says:
"You might as well throw the Greek alphabet on the floor and ex-
pect to pick up an Odyssey," as to expect these inexperienced, aim-
less, uncounseled boys, 50,000, or one-fifth, of whom have no father
as a guardian, and 12,500, or one-twentieth, of whom have neither a
father nor a mother as a guardian, to obtain by accident the kind of
employment best suited to their growth and development as citizens
and wage-earners. What these boys really need and crave is sane,
sympathetic, individual counsel, guidance, and leadership, beginning
with the junior high school and continuing with them throughout
that trying period after they have left school. By the term guidance
40
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
is meant guidance of the "Big Brother" type; guidance of a very
intimate and personal nature that will soon develop into a strong and
lasting friendship between the boy and his counselor. . . . . Guid-
ance of this "Big Brother" type is a calling and cannot be bought
for mere money.
Whatever work of this kind has been done so far in the
United States has been undertaken almost entirely by private
organizations. Due to their efforts, the number of "visiting
teachers" who deal "with all children who for any reason are
failing to get what they should out of their school life" is
increasing, and vocational counselors are appearing." The
Children's Bureau reports that, from a questionnaire sent out
to all cities with a population of 10,000 or over, “258 cities,
or forty-two per cent of those replying, reported that some
phase of a vocational guidance program had been developed
in the public school system or in connection with it."3 Such
service rendered at the school is truly "personnel work at the
source," and there is a growing tendency for the schools
themselves to demand it. The principal of a junior high
school in Philadelphia writes: "I have been desirous of
bringing about a closer, more sympathetic coöperation be-
tween the community and the school. I had in mind par-
ticularly the special advantages to be gained from such co-
operation with families of pupils who have a tendency to
truancy or who bring in requests for working certificates.
For about a year I have assigned as special work for one of
my teachers a degree of vocational guidance to as large an
extent as was possible with her instructional duties.
No pupil in my school is given working papers without an
interview with the principal and also with this vocational
guidance teacher.
The chief value in this system it
•
2 See reports of the Public Education Association and the Vocational Service
for Juniors in New York City and of the White-Williams Foundation in Phila-
delphia; also the reports of the Commonwealth Fund Program for the Pre-
vention of Delinquency.
3 United States Department of Labor, Children's Bureau, "Vocational Guid-
ance and Junior Placement," Bureau Publication No. 149, p. xi.
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER WORK
41
seems to me has consisted in the bringing out of a very defi-
nite need for a social worker in a school of this type.'
914
If such guidance had been available for the 500 girls dealt
with in this study, many of those in Group I who wanted to
stay in school might have been given advice or aid enabling
them to keep on with their education; a few of those in
Group II who were backward but liked school might have
been helped to overcome their retardation; and several of
those in Group III who disliked school but were progressing
reasonably well might have been induced to acquire a firmer
educational foundation before going to work.
But such guidance and help were not available, so these 500
girls went to work. What kind of work did they find? How
much choice has a girl of fourteen or fifteen years of age,
especially one with a sixth or seventh grade education, and
no special training for any trade?
Industries in Which Girls Work
A study of the "Working Children of Philadelphia," made
in 1921 by Miss Anna B. Griscom, divides the occupations
of the 3,312 children then studied (which was thirty-six per
cent of all the children working at that time) into two
classes, those engaged in manufacturing and mechanical pur-
suits, and those engaged in occupations connected with trade
and transportation. Two-thirds of the children studied were
girls, of whom it is stated: "Four times as many were in
manufacturing and mechanical pursuits as in other lines of
work." Miss Griscom points out the fact that "as there
was an excess of fourteen to sixteen year old girls in manu-
facturing firms in proportion to the women employed, and
an excess of fourteen to sixteen year old boys in commercial
firms in proportion to the men employed, there will be a
tendency for the girls when past sixteen to leave industry
and drift into the commercial firms or enter home pursuits,
One Hundred Sixth Annual Report of the Board of Public Education,
School District of Philadelphia, year ending December 31, 1924, p. 308.
42
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
and for the boys when past sixteen to leave the commercial
firms and enter industry or the trades. Therefore, the two
years between fourteen and sixteen are in a large percentage
of the cases lost years for the employed child so far as train-
ing received for future life work."
The present study of 500 Philadelphia girls shows the
same proportion-four times as many girls in manufacturing
and mechanical work as in all other pursuits. (See the
accompanying list.) A number of girls said they were stick-
ing to their present job or to their present line of work only
until they were sixteen. On the other hand, not all of these
girls were working on unskilled processes. Some of them
had already found their way toward becoming skilled work-
ers and were, as far as they were able, turning these early
years to advantage. A chance for industrial advancement
is not lacking in most of the textile factories or in the sew-
ing trades. This would mean that of the 412 girls in in-
dustry, 315 (seventy-six per cent) could advance to skilled
operations in their trade with a corresponding increase in
wages. The remaining ninety-seven girls, however, about
half of whom were from the non-retarded school progress
group, were in industries holding out little to them for the
future.
I. Manufacturing and Mechanical Occupations
A. Textiles
1. Hosiery
2. Lace
3. Tape
4. Carpets
5. Silk
6. Cotton
7. Woolen
8. Dye works
B. Dressmaking
C. Candy
412
287
140
47
36
21
21
15
3
♡ ♡ L
4
5
5 Griscom, Anna B.: "The Working Children of Philadelphia," Schoolmen's
Week Proceedings, April 12-14, 1923, University of Pennsylvania Bulletin,
p. 203.
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER WORK
43
F
I
¦
D. Cigars
E. Paper box products
F. Hats
G. Clothing
H. Dental supplies
I. Other industries
II. Trade and Transportation
1. Messengers
2. Clerks
3. Stock-girls
4. Others
III. Clerical Occupations
1. Stenographers
2. General clerical work
IV. Domestic Work
V. Staying at Home
VI. Out of Work
•
•
Totals.
5
23
12
13
7
57
24
7
8
5
4
38
10
28
5
19
2
500
The above list shows that the hosiery industry employed
the largest number of girls (140). A little over one-quarter
of them were performing skilled operations such as knitting
and topping, seaming, looping, boarding, and pairing; but
fifteen of these girls were over sixteen years of age. The
other three-quarters were working on such unskilled opera-
tions as raveling, examining, turning, sorting, boxing, and
labeling. All of the school progress groups, in about equal
proportions, were represented in this industry. Girls who
were interested in school and those who were not, the bright
girls, the average girls, and the dull girls, all were found at
the various processes open to them; and only three of the
140 said that they actively disliked the kind of work at
which they were placed. Thirty per cent (forty-two) had
definite ideas about opportunities in the industry. Two of
the girls who were "ravelers" were looking forward to the
time when they should be "loopers." A "raveler" starts at
seven dollars a week and rarely gets over nine dollars. A
"looper" begins at twelve dollars a week and may get as
44
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
high as thirty-five dollars a week. Two "turners" wish to
become "seamers," another skilled operation paying at least
twenty dollars a week. In this way forty-two of the 140
girls anticipated definite advancement.
A large number (sixty-one), however, seemed to have no
thought for the future; thirty-seven wanted to get out of the
hosiery industry altogether. Fourteen of the thirty-seven
girls wanted to change to "office work," eleven from the
non-retarded school progress group and three from the re-
tarded group. The ambitions of the other twenty-two ranged
from manicuring to dressmaking and from teaching to tele-
phone operating. It is evident that all of these groups need
further industrial supervision.
In contrast to the girls in the textile industries, where skill
may be acquired and advancement is possible, are the ninety-
seven girls who had drifted into blind-alley jobs. The fol-
lowing list shows on what processes they were engaged.
Turning-in, lidding-up, bending, covering, shaping, packing, glue-
ing-off, and wrapping paper boxes
Trimming and finishing false teeth
Packing candy
Packing cigars
Pasting, glueing, and packing leather goods
Hooking together hooks and eyes
Separating buttons
Bunching artificial flowers
Making Christmas wreaths
•
Wrapping in laundry
Labeling cigar boxes
•
6
Putting buttons in pencil boxes
Packing twine
Table work in shoe factory
Work on umbrella frames
Work on toy pianos
Painting carpets
Filling and labeling perfumes
Packing and inspecting in publishing houses
•
•
•
·
23
7
555~~~~~~~21
3
1
1
1
1
1
For an excellent brief account of this industry see The Hosiery Industry,
by Ruth J. Woodruff, Bulletin No. 5 of the White-Williams Foundation, Phila-
delphia.
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER WORK
45
Pressing curtains
Weighing and packing for baking company
Core making in foundry
Cutting and folding chamois
Work on surgical appliances
Packing, sorting, stamping, etc., in unspecified industries.
·
1
1
1
2
2
1212
97
Total
It would seem from the occupations listed above that these
ninety-seven girls (one-fifth of the total number studied)
also need continued industrial supervision. The brighter
ones, at least, ought not to stay longer than necessary in work
which offers no possible opportunity for advancement.
Fortunately, again, the Philadelphia continuation schools
have "coördinating teachers" who work on as many of these
problems as their time and strength will permit.7
The twenty-four messengers, clerks, stock-girls, and others.
in the trade and transportation group, with three exceptions,
the stenographers, without exception, and the twenty-eight
general clerical workers, with seven exceptions, came from
the group of non-retarded children. All of these appeared
satisfied with the type of work chosen, although it is quite
possible that some of the positions listed as "general cleri-
cal" might be as much blind alleys as the lowest industrial
positions.
Attitude Toward Work
After the initial excitement of finding a job and "getting
working papers," comes the more humdrum settling down to
work every day, relieved by continuation school one day each
week, a program which continues until one's sixteenth birth-
day. The girls seem not to complain of the long work-day
The investigators were continually faced by the question of how to avoid
being drawn into case work, and at the same time to satisfy the questions
asked by parents and by girls; how to give information and yet not raise false
hopes or make impossible promises. This system of a coördinating teacher in
the school made it possible to turn over some of the problems to her.
46
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
in comparison with the shorter school-day. For most of
them, especially for those who wanted to leave school, it is
such a welcome change that the novelty of it obscures the
effect of the longer day until the difference is forgotten; and
yet the hours of work are very long for these fourteen to
sixteen year old girls-as long as the law permits, and longer.
The modal working day was eight and three-quarters
hours; one hundred and fifty-six of the girls worked eight
and three-quarters hours per day; seventy-six worked nine
hours per day; thirty-five worked nine and one-quarter hours;
twenty-three worked nine and one-half hours; six worked.
nine and three-quarters hours; two worked ten hours; and
one worked ten and one-quarter hours. If the former federal
child labor law, which when in effect provided a limitation
of eight hours per day for children under sixteen years of
age, had been in force, there would have been 339 violations.
The present Pennsylvania law, which restricts the employ-
ment of children between fourteen and sixteen years to nine
hours per day, was violated in sixty-six cases, if we may
accept the statements of the girls.
8
The weekly hours came more strictly within the labor law.
In only two instances were girls found to be working more
than the fifty-one hours per week permitted under the Penn-
sylvania law. Four-fifths of the number of girls were work-
ing forty-eight hours a week or less. The majority of states
limit the employment of children to forty-eight hours a week
in conformity with the standard set by the former federal
child labor law. Pennsylvania, however, ranks with North
Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, South
Dakota, Idaho, Maine, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode
Island, and Michigan, in permitting a longer week. On the
The hours of work were carefully reckoned by the investigators. Each
girl was asked at what time she began to work in the morning, at what time.
she stopped for lunch, when she began to work again after lunch, when she
stopped working, and how long she worked on Saturday.
⁹ Children's Bureau, United States Department of Labor, State Child-Labor
Standards, September 15, 1924.
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER WORK
47
other hand, the provision of Pennsylvania that working boys
and girls under sixteen years of age must spend eight hours
of each week in continuation school places her well to the
fore among the states in respect to such legislation.10
In spite of the long hours, however, the girls did not dis-
like work. The business girls, who numbered sixty-three
out of the total group, with only one exception were satisfied.
They had the shorter hours, only eight working more than
eight hours. They also had more variation in their lunch
period. Only eight had lunch in their offices. A few (nine)
were able to walk home for lunch, and the others either went
out to lunch or made use of lunchrooms provided by their
employers.
But the majority of the 413 industrial girls also said they
liked their jobs, and ninety-eight of them showed a desire
to keep on in the industry they had entered. Only thirty-
four expressed any dislike for the kind of work in which
they were engaged, but eighty-six (twenty per cent) wished
to get into a “business position." Most of them had three-
quarters of an hour for lunch, and thirty-one per cent were
able to walk home at noon. Almost half (forty-seven per
cent), however, ate their lunches in the shop. Only fifty-
seven (less than fourteen per cent) either went out to lunch
or were provided with a lunchroom in the factory.
The long hours were very much increased for some of
the girls by the length of time taken in getting to and from
work. Nearly half of the number of girls lived too far
away to walk, and this necessitated the use of street cars and
the deduction of carfare from wages. Ninety of the girls.
lived over half an hour away, which increased the length of
their working day one hour. Most of them, however, could
get to work within fifteen or twenty minutes.
Although the girls did not actively dislike their occupa-
tions, at the same time they had not much enthusiasm. They
10 Children's Bureau, United States Department of Labor, State Compulsory
School Attendance Standards Affecting the Employment of Minors, September
15, 1924.
48
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
appeared to know little about the product on which they were
engaged and little about the organization of the industry.
Similarly, the industry had not attempted to understand the
girls nor to learn about them nor to show them how they in-
dividually might better fit into the industrial scheme. To
each girl, her own tiny piece of work was important, but
chiefly as the source of the weekly pay envelope. If there
was any romance in industry they had not discovered it, nor
had they been moved to any study of the interesting inven-
tions employed. Pride in their own part in "something in
the making" had not been aroused. The fact that they were
not being trained for a vocation did not concern them. Why
should one be concerned about the future at the age of four-
teen? The passage of time had, as yet, little interest for
them. They plodded on from day to day, heedless of work,
heedless of working conditions. Not one of the 500 girls
had noticed any risks or any danger in the conditions about
her.
This is a decidedly indifferent attitude compared with the
positive stand taken by most of the girls toward school.
Mention of school produced a definite reaction either positive
or negative. Mention of industry produced only indifference.
Evidently the interest of fourteen to sixteen year old girls
does not center in work as much as in school. Work, to
them, is necessary and not especially unpleasant. For the
majority it affords a kind of antidote to the struggles of
school. It is not a continual effort to keep up to a standard
ahead of one's capabilities. It is not a grind. Sorting, ex-
amining, lidding-up, sewing, pasting, running errands, and
so on, can be done easily and without much effort. Though
the hours are long and the process monotonous, the work
gradually becomes humdrum, though not disagreeably so.
The personal side of it begins to attract attention. The boss
is often discussed and fellow workers come in for a large
share of attention. Work itself gradually becomes a matter
of secondary interest.
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER WORK
49
Wages and Savings
So far as wages were concerned there was a certain lack
of interest, due to the fact that the pay envelope was turned
over intact each week to parents. The girls were not so
much interested in the amount earned as in the amount given
back for spending money, and an increase in weekly wage
interested many of them only if it resulted in more spending
money.
Wages here presented were received by the girls, exclusive
of those who were at home (2) or out of work (19), and
exclusive also of the thirty-three girls who were over sixteen
years old at the time they were interviewed.
Weekly Wage
Less than $5.50
$ 5.50 and less than $ 6.50
$ 6.50 and less than $ 7.50
$7.50 and less than $8.50
$8.50 and less than $ 9.50
$9.50 and less than $10.50
$10.50 and less than $11.50
$11.50 and less than $12.50
$12.50 and less than $13.50
$13.50 and less than $14.50.
$14.50 and less than $15.50
$15.50 and less than $16.50
$16.50 and less than $17.50 .
$17.50 and less than $18.50 .
$18.50 and less than $19.50
Over $19.50
Wage unknown
→
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Number of
Girls
7
14
41
88
71
76
39
41
18
13
8
∞o
745mna
3
2
9
446
Total
The modal wage is about eight dollars per week. The
median wage is $9.46. The mean wage is $9.91. The
standard deviation is $2.70. In reality the girls earned
scarcely enough to support themselves, but since they all,
without exception, lived either at home or with relatives, the
50
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
amount was in most cases sufficient to cover their actual
expense to the family. Two hundred and seventy-four of
them earned between $7.50 and $11.50; 101 of them earned
over $11.50. By going to work, even though they did not in
most cases become assets to the families, they did cease to be
liabilities, and they received more spending money than be-
fore. A study of the spending money of school girls com-
pared with that of working girls of the same age might be
very fruitful.
If there were a decided difference in the
amount allowed to each, and if such difference were in favor
of the one who worked, it would be helpful to know whether
this advantage had already occurred to her and whether it
entered into her calculations.
All but ten of the girls turned over their full pay envelopes
to the family. Three of the ten contributed nothing at all
to their families, and seven "paid board," ranging in amount
from four dollars and a quarter to ten dollars per week.
There were only six, however, who did not receive back some
spending money. The amount was a definite sum for 367
girls. For the others it varied from week to week as oc-
casion arose. An interesting and business-like procedure
adopted by the parents of fifteen girls who were on a piece-
work basis was that of giving back "ten cents on every dol-
lar." The amount returned by the parents was as follows:
$ .25 received back each week by
.40 received back each week by
•
•
.50 received back each week by
.75 received back each week by
1.00 received back each week by
1.25 received back each week by
1.50 received back each week by
2.00 received back each week by
2.50 received back each week by
3.00 received back each week by
3.50 received back each week by
4.00 received back each week by
5.00 received back each week by .
6.00 received back each week by
•
·
•
•
•
•
3 girls
1 girl
36 girls
12 girls
132 girls
22 girls
62 girls
33 girls
8 girls
14 girls
1 girl
2 girls
4 girls
1 girl
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER WORK
51
Varying amounts received back each week by
Ten per cent received back each week by
No spending money received back each week by
Contributed nothing to the family
"Paid board"
Out of work
.
Staying at home¹¹
•
117 girls
15 girls
6 girls
3 girls
7 girls
2 girls
19 girls
Total number of girls .
Of those who had money given back to them, just half
were saving something each week. The savings took the
form of Christmas Clubs, school or savings bank accounts,
and sometimes were put into Building and Loan Associa-
tions.12 One hundred and forty-nine were saving regular
and definite sums. The others varied in the amounts put
away from week to week. Average weekly savings were as
follows:
.
500
2 girls
25 girls
2 girls
59 girls
3 girls
7 girls
$.10 each week saved by
.25 each week saved by
.40 each week saved by
.50 each week saved by
.60 each week saved by
.75 each week saved by
1.00 each week saved by
1.25 each week saved by
1.50 each week saved by
2.00 each week saved by
2.50 each week saved by
Varying amounts each week saved by
Total number of girls
Of the four groups mentioned in the previous chapters,
the girls in Group I (those who were normal in school prog-
ress and interested in school) were the most thrifty in spite
of their handicapped homes. Fifty-six per cent of Group I
35 girls
4 girls
3 girls
8 girls
1 girl
81 girls
230
"The girls who stayed at home did not get definite amounts for spending
money.
12 The form of saving was often not known, and may well have included in-
dustrial or burial insurance. These facts as to savings may thus be insignificant.
52
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
(normal and interested in school), forty per cent of Group
II (retarded but interested in school), forty-eight per cent
of Group III (normal but not interested in school), and
thirty-nine per cent of Group IV (retarded and not inter-
ested in school), saved money each week.
TABLE XII
RELATION BETWEEN WAGE AND SCHOOL PROGRESS13
Wages
Less than $ 5.50
6.50
$5.50 to
6.50 to 7.50
7.50 to
8.50
9.50
8.50 to
9.50 to
10.50
10.50 to
11.50
11.50 to
12.50
12.50 to
13.50
13.50 to
14.50
14.50 to
15.50
15.50 to 16.50
16.50 to
17.50
18.50
17.50 to
18.50 to 19.50
19.50 and over
Total
も
​•
•
•
•
•
•
1
•
·
Accel-
erated
7
2
2
6
~~~O~ :H3N
1
2
2
Number of Girls Earning Specified Wages in
Each School Progress Group
1
1
Re-
Normal tarded
rma
1 year
13
6
2326
12
13
17
5
1
2:5
3
5
9
2 2 2 2 2 2 +33H
13
10
Re-
Re-
tarded tarded
2 years 3 years
1
4
21
32
30
34
14
21
6
6
:~~~~
3
2
2
2
1
1
4
4
311
12
27 76 150 178 28
Un-
known
1
1
1
12
1
1
1
Total
7
-
14
41
89
71
78
40
43
22
16
9
7
3
11
9468
While at first glance there seems to be no relation between
low wages and school retardation-seven of the accelerated
group earning as low as eight dollars while four of the three-
year retarded group earned seventeen dollars a week or over
-yet closer inspection of Table XII does reveal differences
between the two groups. Taking $9.46 as the median wage
for the total number, we find that the per cent of each school
13 Of the 500 girls studied, thirty-two were at home and not gainfully em-
ployed, were out of work, or their wages were unknown.
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER WORK
53
progress group falling above the median declines steadily
from the accelerated to the three-year retarded. The cases
falling in the extreme groups are, however, very few
although about the same in number. Undoubtedly variations
in age and length of time employed should also be considered,
but since in this study there could be only a variation of less
than two years, it is too small to be significant. The per
cent earning above the median wage is then for each group
as follows:
66 per cent of the accelerated group earned more than $9.46 per week.
53 per cent of the normal group earned more than $9.46 per week.
54 per cent of those retarded one year earned more than $9.46 per
week.
45 per cent of those retarded two years earned more than $9.46 per
week.
32 per cent of those retarded three years earned more than $9.46 per
week.
Attitude Toward Continuation School
The girls seemed inclined to look toward their sixteenth
birthday as toward a milestone, on the other side of which
pay envelopes would grow bulkier. This they attributed al-
together to the escape from continuation school and not at
all to their more mature age for work. But even though they
did look forward so eagerly to exemption from school at-
tendance, they did not on that account dislike the continuation
school. In fact, out of the entire 500 studied only twenty-
six actively disliked it, thirty-six were indifferent about it,
leaving 438 who expressed themselves positively for it. Evi-
dently, then, girls who dislike the present elementary schools
by no means always dislike any and every school. On the
contrary, of the 333 girls, both normal and retarded, who
were uninterested in regular school work, eighty-three per
cent liked continuation school, only seven per cent disliked
it, and ten per cent were indifferent. On the other hand, the
girls who were enthusiastic about regular school were making
54
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
the most of continuation school, although not without com-
parisons and regrets. Their frequent comment was, "This
school is all right, but I liked regular school better." And
other comments volunteered by this group were:
"I like it, but I don't learn much here."
"I like the school, but the girls are too tough."
"You can have lots of fun with the Y. W. leader."
"It's a rest from walking around." (Messenger)
"It's a great help in my line of work." (Index clerk)
"It's all right when I'm here but it's so far to come and it's such
a long time from one week to the next that you forget what you have
learned."
"It keeps me in school some of the time anyway."
"It's like business."
Of the two girls in this group who disliked continuation
school, one gave as her reason, “Because I lost a good job
on account of it"; and the other, "Because the girls are not
all Catholic girls here."
This friendly attitude toward continuation school on the
part of almost all the girls certainly indicates progress. It
shows the opportunity as well as the obligation which is
open to the continuation school to control and direct the
forces at work during this period of transition. The school
holds these children in the hollow of its hand. They must
be gathered together in its buildings one day every week,
for the law so decrees. If they like to go, the influence of
the school is increased; but whether they like it or not, the
obligation to attend the school is the same. They may shift
about in industry, they may please themselves about joining
classes or clubs, they may go where they choose for their
recreation and amusement, home conditions and circum-
stances may change, but no shifting, no changing, no choos-
ing is possible in their attendance at continuation school.
CHAPTER IV
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER HOME
It must be acknowledged that interviewing 500 girls, talk-
ing with them about their special interests, about what they
really did and what they wanted to do, about what they liked
and what they disliked, about their friends and fellow work-
ers, aroused great interest concerning their homes. What
would the mothers and fathers in these homes say about
their young working daughters, about their activities, about
their past experiences at school, about their work, about their
play? Lack of interest in school and economic conditions at
home were given by the girls themselves as the two largest
factors which determined their destinies at the moment of
going to work. Would their parents confirm this point of
view?
Almost half of the number of girls interviewed gave as
their reason for leaving school some form of economic
necessity; yet many of them stated with equal clearness their
dislike for school and their desire to leave. Was this dislike
due to the pressure of economic conditions, or was it en-
tirely independent of such conditions? Were the parents
aware that it existed? Or were they so oppressed by the
difficulties of earning a living for their families that the
likes and dislikes of a growing girl had to be subordinated to
the welfare of the family as a unit? Could the parents
throw any light upon the positive dislike for school encoun-
tered in so many cases, not only among the retarded girls
but among the others as well? Would the conditions learned
by visiting the homes bear out the theory advanced to explain
that group of girls who were interested in school and yet
were retarded-the theory that home conditions and not
mental deficiency caused lack of school progress? In short,
56
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
could we by a systematic and sympathetic contact with the
homes of our 500 girls discover any facts, or bring forward
any interpretations, which would be helpful in the attempt.
to understand the problems of school, work, and play of
young employed girls?
The Number of Homes Visited
All the homes which could be reached (263) were visited,
and in each case the visitor talked with some member of the
family-father, mother, brother, or sister, as the case might
be. The reasons for not visiting the others were definite
reasons in each case.¹
This group of 263 homes proved to be a fair sample of
the whole number as tested by the school progress and school
interest of the girls. Thus, while one-half of the total num-
ber of homes were visited, from one-third to two-thirds of
each of the four school progress and school interest groups
were included.
Impressions of the Homes
The first general impression made by the two hundred and
sixty-three homes visited was one of surprise at their quality
and character. Generally speaking, they were by no means
poverty-stricken, neither were they as a rule unclean or
1 Incomplete addresses
Families which had moved and could not be easily located
Families living outside of Philadelphia
Families where no English was spoken and where no interpreter was
available
Families not interviewed because of illness in the home
Families not interviewed because no member of the family was at home
(a) Homes where mother worked
(b) Homes where visitor called twice and met with no response
Families eliminated at the beginning of the study
·
(a) Address of the girls not taken
(b) Families of girls over sixteen years of age when interviewed
and not attending continuation school
Total
•
•
·
•
•
•
•
·
•
•
•
27
27
46
33
27
50
8
11
8
54
79
237
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER HOME
57
unwholesome. Most of them were independent little homes,
some showing signs of earlier struggles, others quite prosper-
ous; and in many cases the visit, begun with some trepida-
tion, became a pleasure later expressed by both the visitor
and the member of the family with whom she talked. Some-
times family albums were shown with pride, and sometimes
TABLE XIII
A COMPARISON OF THE NUMBER OF HOMES VISITED WITH THE
TOTAL NUMBER OF GIRLS INTERVIEWED, IN EACH OF
THE SCHOOL PROGRESS GROUPS
Accelerated
Normal
Retarded
one year
Total
•
Retarded
two years
Retarded
three years
Total
Unknown
Grand total
•
·
Interested in School
Total
Group
17
40
52
109
43
11
54
4
167
Homes Per Cent
Visited
Visited
10
18
17
45
16
1
17
62
59
45
33
41
37
10
31
37
Not Interested in School
Total
Group
15
41
109
165
144
18
162
6
333
Homes
Visited
11
23
61
95
89
17
106
201
Per Cent
Visited
73
56
56
57
62
94
65
60
small boys or girls entertained with piano "selections" or
"recitations." There was not one home which could be des-
ignated by the term "extreme poverty," although such a
classification had been prepared. There were two cases of
extreme uncleanness-"a place of squalor and filth" in one
instance, and "a dirty hole" in another, but in both cases it
was the dirt which was impressive and not the poverty. In
173 out of the 263 homes visited, any imputation of lack of
58
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
cleanliness would have been impertinent. Sixty-six other
homes could be called fairly clean, and only twenty-four
were really dirty.
Some measure of the intelligence of the members of the
family interviewed was sought by using three general classi-
fications: (1) persons of superior intelligence, (2) those of
average intelligence, and (3) those who appeared ignorant.
These classifications were found to be practicable even
though they could not be defined psychologically. In gen-
eral, a parent of superior intelligence was assumed to be one
who deliberately considered the welfare of the children, who
tried to understand them, and who had achieved some success
in bringing about a normal, wholesome family relation.
Those rated of average intelligence were parents who seemed
to wish and hope for the welfare of their children, but lacked,
to some extent, the realization of their own responsibility,
and gave less evidence of foresight in planning for the family
as a whole. The parents classified as ignorant showed lack
of management in the home and apparently knew little about
the interests of their children. According to this rough classi-
fication, forty-six of the persons interviewed seemed to be
of superior intelligence, 180 were of average intelligence, and
thirty-five were rated as ignorant. The great majority were
pleasant and hospitable. Only twenty-five were suspicious,
or very reticent, or both, and yet these were willing to give
the information wanted when its purpose was explained. In
only two homes was it impossible to establish friendly rela-
tions. The problem of ignorance, therefore, exists in only
thirteen per cent, approximately, of the families whose
daughters are struggling into industry each year.
Handicapped Homes
The second general impression made by these 263 homes
was that although they were chiefly comfortable and whole-
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER HOME
59
some they were to a surprising extent "handicapped" homes.
Thirty-nine per cent (103) were struggling against some
definite form of social maladjustment. Death, desertion, ill-
ness, accident, or unemployment, had eliminated the bread-
winner in these families; and the consequent adjustment of
the entire family to this circumstance had required the
daughter to become a wage-earner and had sometimes en-
tirely changed her course of life. The effect upon the girls
varied, of course, according to the type of family and accord-
ing to the nature of the girl herself. One-third of this group
of 103 girls had been forced to leave school against their
wishes and to make a sacrifice of hopes and ambitions. One-
third had been compelled to move to different homes, to live
with different companions, to submit to different supervision,
sometimes without friction, oftener with friction. The with-
drawal of a restraining influence fostered a tendency on their
part to "go out" more and to assume greater independence
and freedom to "do as I like." Thirteen girls experienced
the result of desertion in their parents' homes and caught
more than a glimpse of the way in which home life is
wrecked and marriage ties are broken, which resulted some-
times in a bitterness and a conviction that because "I never
saw any happiness in married life," there could be no such
happiness. Twelve girls had to adjust themselves to the ad-
vent of a new person into the home, in the rôle of stepfather
or stepmother, who sometimes eliminated the handicap but
who oftentimes brought about a second state worse than the
first.
Table XIV reveals that the death of father or mother is the
greatest single handicap in these handicapped homes. Thirty-
six families out of the total number visited had suffered the
loss of the father by death, and in ten homes the mother had
died. Fathers had married again in just half (five) of the
homes, while a quarter (nine) of the widows had remarried,
but in two cases the stepfather also had died. Four out of
60
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
the five stepmothers were not getting on with the children.
Only eight, therefore, of the forty-six homes handicapped
by the death of a parent seemed to be again established to
provide normal home life.
There were thirteen cases of desertion by the father, six
of which occurred in families where the children were re-
TABLE XIV
SOCIAL MALADJUSTMENT IN THE HOME IN RELATION TO SCHOOL
PROGRESS AND SCHOOL INTEREST GROUPS
Home Handicap
mother
Stepfather
Stepmother.
Death of
brother.
Desertion of
father
Death of father 2
Death of
•
•
•
Illness of father
or mother.
Accident to
father
Extreme
•
poverty.
Unemployment
Illness of child
Total.
Interested in School
Acceler-
ated
1
3
•
Normal
1
1
1
1
Number of Girls Who Were
2
Retarded
1 year
1
1
2
2
1
1
679
Retarded
2 years
3
1
•
1
1
2
•
9
Not Interested in School
Acceler-
ated
1
Normal
4
1
1
1
17
Retarded
1 year
5
2
2
1
2
9
3
24
Retarded
2 years
11
1
3
6
7
Retarded
3 years
2
31
1
:
Total


1
29
575
2
13
26
3
1
2
31 9103
7
6
tarded two years or more.
It is difficult to know whether
these two factors are associated. In any case, this group
presented the worst form of handicap which the girls suf-
fered. Desertion is not a clean-cut wound like death.
The
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER HOME
61
facts connected with it are apt to rankle and cause bitterness.
Unconcealed immorality in some cases led the girls to form
independent and sometimes biased judgments even when
helped, as was not always the case, by clear thinking on the
part of the mother. The consequences to the girls in most
of the desertion cases were worse than the consequences fol-
lowing the death of either parent, and certainly much more
serious than those following other handicaps of illness, acci-
dent, and unemployment, which are more temporary and in
which there is at least a fighting chance of a return to nor-
mal conditions. In only one instance was this true of deser-
tion. In one case a father and mother who had been sepa-
rated had come together again to provide a proper home for
their children. But in most of these cases the mother had
had a real struggle, both economically and morally, with not
much encouragement, and sometimes sickening disappoint-
ments.
In five of the families the father's desertion had been fol-
lowed by the breaking up of the home, the family going to
live with an aunt or grandmother and the mother usually go-
ing to work, leaving the responsibility of the children to rela-
tives who assumed it, in most cases, as a duty to be per-
formed but who often did not hesitate to "throw up" to the
mother and the children the fact of their dependence, es-
pecially in moments of stress and strain. In the cases where
the family remained a unit, the situation was almost as for-
lorn. "A gloomy home" describes one of them; "mother
and daughter have struggled together." "The girl is old for
her age and very serious," is another. "Home utterly con-
fused," is a third. The sins of deserting fathers seem to be
especially visited upon the heads of their children.
So far we have considered only the nature of the handicap.
If, however, the total number of homes visited is divided
into two groups comprising (1) the sixty-two girls who were
interested and would like to have continued in school, and
62
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
(2) the 201 who disliked school and wanted to leave (see
Table XIII), we find that the proportion of handicapped
homes in the first group is fifty per cent while in the second
group it is only thirty-one per cent. In all Philadelphia,
perhaps 1,444 girls each year are leaving school against their
will, and 722 of them because of maladjustment in the home.
TABLE XV
STATUS OF THE HOMES IN RELATION TO SCHOOL PRogress and
SCHOOL INTEREST GROUPS

Group
Interested in
school
Group I
Accelerated.
Normal
Retarded 1 yr.
Group II
Retarded 2 yrs.
Unknown.
Group III
•
Total
•
Not interested in
school
•
Accelerated.
Normal.
Retarded 1 yr.
Group IV
Retarded 2 yrs.
Retarded 3 yrs.
•
Number of Girls from Homes Which Were
Handicapped Marginal | Fairly Prosperous
679
9
9
1
7
24
31
9
103
3500
8
74
1
vão 5 bu
10
12
48
106
16
•
som of
5
6
25
10
1
54
Total
101810 16.
17
1
11
23
61
89
17
263
The Mothers' Assistance Fund, unless modified to include
benefits for the fourteen and fifteen year old child, cannot
help. The girl or her mother must go to work. The propor-
tion of handicapped homes among the retarded and non-re-
tarded groups is the same.
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER HOME
63
Marginal and Fairly Prosperous Homes
Let us now consider the group of homes (160 in all)
where there is not the definite handicap from death, deser-
tion, illness, accident, or unemployment. What kind of
families are these? Do they, like the group just studied,
supply an "economic" reason which would compel the girl to
leave school? They may be classed as "marginal" and as
"fairly prosperous.
""
One hundred and six homes were financially hard-pressed,
that is "marginal," and fifty-four were fairly prosperous.
By marginal homes are meant those in which the increasing
wants of the family necessitate an increase in income, and
where there is no margin to supply this increase except by
using the earning capacity of another member of the family,
either the child or the mother, or perhaps by taking a boarder.
In the marginal homes, high school is considered as a luxury;
increased expense in clothes alone weighs against further
education; or the family has begun to acquire a house, and
the payments on the house cannot be met without further
resources.
By fairly prosperous homes are meant those where an
economic stringency was not obvious and where the parents
made no mention of it in connection with the girl's leaving
school.
"Economic necessity" or a similar term as used by the
girls from marginal homes, bore, it was discovered, many in-
terpretations; it signified, most frequently, not need of fur-
ther income as a condition of staving off suffering and star-
vation, but a desire for additional income to maintain the
present standard of living; for the sum of money necessary
to supply the demands of a growing daughter at a given age
is not sufficient to supply the demands of that same daughter
later, and the situation must be met in one of three ways:
either the family must make sacrifices; or the daughter must
forego something, usually clothes or "looking like other
64
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
girls"; or the daughter must go to work. In some cases
(twenty-four) the family was not willing to make the sacri-
fice. The parents thought "Grammar school education is
enough," or "Eight B is a good place to stop," or "High
school is not for poor folks like us," or "We are buying our
house and must have help in making the payments," or
"There are several younger children, and we must have help
in educating them"; and the girls, although eager for school,
acquiesced in the judgment of their families and went to
work.
In three-fourths of these marginal homes, however, it was
the girl who was not willing to make the sacrifice necessary
for more schooling, and in some cases rightly, for, as her
parents said, "She was getting nothing out of it, so why
stay?" and the girl agreed. Often the parents "would have
been glad to have her stay in school longer, but there is no
use in forcing her to go to school."
In the fairly prosperous homes, where there was no ques-
tion of financial need, the attitude of many parents coincided
with that just expressed. "There is no use in forcing my
daughter to go to school when she does not want to go and
is apparently gaining nothing by going." Considering the
amount of retardation, whether preventable or not, among
the girls in the group which disliked school, the attitude of
the parents and the girls seems quite justifiable.
The Four Groups of Employed Girls Studied in Their
Homes
This analysis of homes leads us to a further consideration
of the table on page 57, and its interpretation from another
point of view, that of the school progress of the girls and
their interest or lack of interest in school. In accordance
with the grouping of the 500 girls studied, shown in chapter
II, a similar table may be made of the 263 girls whose homes
were visited.
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER HOME
65
Group I The girls who liked school and were normal or
accelerated in school progress, or retarded one
year
Group II The girls who liked school but were retarded
two years or more
Group III The girls who disliked school but were normal
or accelerated in school progress, or retarded
only one year
Group IV The girls who disliked school and were retarded
two years or more
Total
•
•
45
17 62
95
106 201
263
To the home as well as to the school the above four groups
present four definite and different, although at the same time
overlapping, problems.
The first group clearly presents a social problem. The
girls in this group have shown themselves able to cope with
school difficulties. They want to cope with them. Their
desires and ambitions lie in that direction. Family circum-
stances almost entirely have caused them to leave school.
It is not too much to say that adjustments might have been
made in nearly every case had there been thrown open to the
family other resources, such as scholarships, mothers' pen-
sions, or the opportunity to talk over and consider different
plans with someone who knew what the resources of the
city were. It is true that this is not a large group, only seven-
teen per cent of those whose homes were visited, but this fact
is an additional reason why such a sacrifice from them should
be unnecessary.
The second group of girls, those who confess to a liking
for school but are two years or more retarded, present a
social and psychological problem as well. They form a still
smaller percentage of the total group, only seven per cent,
and here again it would seem to be the duty of the ele-
mentary school to determine whose problem this represents.
If the retardation is due to home conditions, irregularity at
66
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
school, or some other removable cause, there is even yet a
chance for it to be overcome. If, on the other hand, back-
wardness is due to lack of normal mental ability, the task
may be transferred to the continuation school, and the girl's
training may be conducted along appropriate lines. And, in-
cidentally, it would undoubtedly help the continuation schools
greatly if the facts were recognized and presented to them
with the child.
The last two groups are more definitely the problem of the
continuation school, especially the first of the two. This
group, the third, is the one comprised of the girls who dis-
liked regular school but had done normal or almost normal
work there. They do not so much "hate" school as the
fourth group does, but they have their reasons for not liking
it. The brightest girls in this group, or the ones who are
accelerated in school progress (eleven), have ideas about
future occupations which do not call for further attendance.
at school. All eleven had finished the eighth grade, and four
of them had had at least a year in high school. They wanted
business courses, or something which would prepare them
more quickly than would four years of high school to earn a
living in a manner which they considered satisfactory; or
they had some definite trade in mind. One girl was intent
upon a hairdressing shop of her own.
When a good op-
portunity came to learn the trade she left high school, and
devoted herself entirely to learning hairdressing. Now she
has a shop of her own, and also, as her mother says, she
has "a wave that they come miles to get." The continuation
school should be and is of great assistance to these girls in
teaching them things which are of direct value in their work,
but which are not always taught as a part of the trade itself.
In the third group, too, are the girls (twenty-three) who
are quite normal in school progress, measured by age and
grade, but who have no liking for school of any kind. All
but two of these girls, also, had finished the eighth grade.
Five had even entered high school, but had dropped out;
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER HOME
67
three because, although they were equal to finishing grammar
school creditably in the normal length of time, they found
high school work "too hard"; and two because it "cost too
much." Others had parents who did not believe in high
school, and thought the eighth grade a "good place to stop.”
The girls in this group who were retarded one year (sixty-
one) showed a greater active dislike of school.
This whole group of ninety-five girls, none of whom was
retarded more than one year and eleven of whom were ac-
celerated in school progress, seems to present problems which
proper employment could help to solve. They are not un-
ambitious; they are not dull; and yet they do not fit into
the scheme of things as worked out by the schools at the
present time. They want, however, to get ahead; they want
to prepare for "something," but they do not know how to
do it. They present a distinct case for employment super-
vision.
There is still the fourth group, the largest group of all,
comprising 106 girls, or forty per cent of the total number
whose homes were visited. They dislike school most posi-
tively and are retarded two years or more. They are not
only the problem of the continuation school but of the public
as well. More questions of discipline in the home arise in
this group than in any other. Many of the girls are those
whose aims can be summed up in their own words, "I want
to go out and have a good time." Considering that they are
for the most part sixth and seventh grade girls, that they
have found no satisfaction in school and not much possi-
bility in work, it is to be expected that they will seek satis-
faction in recreation.2 Some of them find recreation in a
natural way, at home or with neighborhood groups, or with
their families; others seek it, and do so in the companionship
of older and more sophisticated boys and girls, and in places.
to which these older companions lead them. So the problem
of this fourth group comes down to one of proper recreation,
* See chapter V for a discussion of leisure-time activities.
68
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
how to provide it and how to insure that it shall be used after
it is provided. It is not alone a task for the continuation.
school, but for every other agency interested in providing
suitable and wholesome recreation for young working boys
and girls.
Parental Control
Parents need help on the question of recreation-at least
many of them do. Not to meet this need may lead to more
dangerous if not more serious consequences in the fourth
group than in any other group. It is a question for every
young employed girl, even though some may be dealing with
it better than others.
The interests and activities of the girls whose homes were
visited seemed already well defined in a general way but
very vague in details. While we can usually say whether
women are studious, or athletic, or domestic, or musical, such
characteristics do not definitely appear in most of the young
working girls. They sew, or play, or read, or walk, or dance,
indiscriminately. And yet in another way there are quite
sharp group distinctions. Their leisure life seems to center
definitely either around their homes, families, and churches,
or to center not less definitely around "outside" affairs, "go-
ing out," it does not seem to make much difference where,
but just "going out and having a good time." Out of the
total number of girls whose homes were visited, about three-
fifths (153) seemed to be of the former type, girls whose
pleasures were those of their families, who found enjoyment
at home. Their other activities might vary all the way from
reading and sewing to "taking up the rugs and having a
dance." The home might be very lively or very dull, but in
any case it was the center of family life.
On the other hand, two out of every five girls (110) were
those whose interests centered outside of their own homes,
and of these 110 girls only eleven liked school. They wanted
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER HOME
69
to be "on the go" all the time. Many of them would be "out
every night" if allowed, and some were quite unrestrained.
Sometimes the parents were watchful, trying to temper the
proper amount of freedom which the child thought she ought
to have with the proper amount of restraint which the par-
ents thought she ought to have-not easy to work out; but
sometimes the parents were perplexed and did not know
what they ought to do, and sometimes the girl had taken
things into her own hands and was doing as she pleased.
It is significant, though, that in the group of girls who defi-
nitely liked school and wanted to continue, all but eleven,
that is five-sixths, were those whose interests centered
around their families, while in the group which disliked
school one-half sought pleasure outside of their own homes,
showing that for these neither home nor school claimed much
attention. Two-thirds of the girls who were making normal
school progress likewise made the home a center for social
life as compared with one-half in the case of the retarded
girls. The center of social interest may be thus summarized:
Center in the Home
Interested in school
Not interested in school
Center Outside the Home
Interested in school
Not interested in school
Interested in School
Center in the home .
Center outside the home
Not Interested in School
Normal Progress
•
•
Center in the home
Center outside the home
•
Retarded
Center in the home
Center outside the home
•
Center in the home
Center outside the home
•
Per Cent
33
67
10
90
82
18
55555555
50
50
3533
67
50
50
C
70
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
The control of the parents over their daughters varied
from severe strictness to no control at all. The homes
seemed to fall into four groups in this respect: (1) those
where the control of the parents was apparently successful
and companionable; (2) those where the control of the par-
ents was apparently successful, though very strict and se-
vere; (3) those where the parents tried to control their
daughters but were not successful; (4) those where the
parents were entirely lacking in control, apparently making
no effort. Fortunately, out of the total number, over half
fell into the "successful and companionable" group. Seven-
teen per cent of the parents were strict and severe, while
twenty-six per cent were either, by their own admission, un-
successful, or were lacking entirely in control. Table XVI
presents the complex factors showing different types of con-
trol exercised in relation to retardation, interest in school,
and nationality. By "foreign families" is meant here those
in which some language other than English was spoken at
home by the parents.
Girls in foreign-speaking homes show just as much desire
for further education as do girls in English-speaking homes.
Indeed, they are even more eager. Nineteen of the forty-
nine girls in the foreign homes (twenty-two per cent) wished
to stay in school; of these only four were retarded over one
year, as compared with twenty per cent of the girls from
English-speaking homes, of whom nearly one-third were re-
tarded over one year.
Group IV, combining factors of retardation with lack of
interest in school, stands out in this study of parental control
as again the most difficult group. Without doubt it is from
Group IV that the largest number of "problem girls," so
called, come. Discussion of each factor involved seems to
show this fact, but nowhere more clearly than in the con-
sideration of home relationships. Of these 106 girls, less
than half (forty-eight) come from homes where parental
control may be designated as "successful and companion-
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL—
71
-HER HOME
TABLE XVI
TYPE OF PARENTAL CONTROL IN ENGLISH-SPEAKING AND FOREIGN-SPEAKING FAMILIES
IN RELATION TO SCHOOL PROGRESS AND SCHOOL INTEREST GROUPS
Groups
Interested in
school
Group I
Accelerated
Normal
Retarded 1 yr.
Group II
Retarded 2 yrs.
Unknown
Not interested in
school
Group III
·
Accelerated
Normal
Retarded 1 yr.
Group IV
Total
Retarded 2 yrs.
Retarded 3 yrs.
Success-
ful and
Compan-
ionable
31
10
8
6
1
102
9
2226 222
12
35
36
10
133
English-Speaking Families
Severe
and
Strict
3
::~
2
1
22
1∞
8
12
1
25
Attempt-
ed but
Unsuc-
cessful
5
- pod
1
3
:
22
1
1
5
13
2
27
Lack-
ing
4
2
25
1
3
4
52
15
29
Total
43
6
12
12
12
1
171
11
17
52
76
1.5
214
Success-
ful and
Compan-
ionable
со
8
4
13
8
3
3
2
16
Foreign-Speaking Families
Severe
and
Strict
9
42
3
:
11
33
5
20
Attempt-
ed but Lack-
ing
Unsuc-
cessful
•
1
1
•
4
·
24
1
5
1
1
7
2
4
1
8
Total
19
30
465
20180
6
13
2
Grand
Total
49
62
17
16
1
201
11
23
61
89
17
263


72
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
able." Eighteen are from homes in which the parents are
"strict and severe.' In some cases, strictness and severity
take the form of "domineering" on the part of the mother
or father; the child is forbidden the privilege of "going out"
except under careful regulation. This attitude reacts upon
her in one of two ways: either she becomes "quiet and not
assertive," "has few friends," "her interests are suppressed,"
she "becomes indifferent"; or else she deceives either her
father or mother, as the case may be, and makes opportuni-
ties for "going out" for herself. One girl said quite frankly
that her father was very strict, but that she managed to elude
him and frequently went to dance halls, her mother helping
her in the deception. Another girl said her father was very
strict, but her mother would let her go as she pleased. What
effect such procedure on the part of parents will ultimately
have on these eighteen girls is open to question.
At the other extreme are the twenty-two girls from homes
where parental control is lacking, not even attempted; where
there is no restriction in the use of leisure time and the girls
may go out every night if they choose. It seems to be a re-
sult not so much of physical handicaps as of inability of the
parents to grasp and control the situations which present
themselves. For example, one of the girls worked in a res-
taurant and was tipped and made much of by the men who
frequented the place. Her mother had no control over her
and could not even see possible harm in such an environment.
In another home where the girl was unrestricted in her move-
ments the mother is described as "in a rut, mentally, and
worn out."
But the most serious problems are to be found where the
parents are honestly and sincerely attempting to give their
daughters proper supervision but are failing in the attempt.
Of the 106 girls, there are eighteen (seventeen per cent)
from such homes; in the other group of 187 girls there are
fourteen, only nine per cent. These are the families where
such comments are heard as: "She thinks of nothing but
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER HOME
73
boys"; "She does not respect her parents"; "She goes her
own way"; "She is very stubborn-out all the time"; “I
have lost all control over her." Parents are baffled and dis-
tressed by the situation which has arisen and which they lack
the power to control.
Assuming these forty girls to be typical of all the girls at
work and in continuation schools, there are perhaps 580 girls
in Philadelphia who may at any one time be on the threshold
of delinquency, hating lessons, backward in school, impatient
of home restraint, resistant to parental authority; and yet
this group is easily discovered and might be guided through
coöperation between the continuation school and the organi-
zations existing for social, moral, and vocational guidance.
Even the home where parental control has been designated
"successful and companionable" is not free from behavior
difficulties. The relationship between mother and daughter
may be close, and parents and children united, and yet the
resulting attitude of the girl not satisfactory. There are a
few girls, nine at least in this group, about whom their
mothers are quite as perplexed because they "stay in too
much." As one mother said: "My daughter is very quiet,
quite the opposite from me. I am at a loss to understand
her." And another said: "She is too quiet and serious. We
would like her to go out more."
Thus parents (as well as psychologists) are battling with
the problems of "individual differences." Parents are, how-
ever, rapidly advancing in their ideas of material comforts,
or the majority of the homes visited would not have been
rated as comfortable, with some even "fairly prosperous"
(page 63). They are working for further conveniences in the
home, or the investigators would not have been surprised at
"the quality and character of these homes" (page 56). Par-
ents are attempting not only to make the homes more attrac-
tive, but to make it possible to provide more amusement and
recreation, as the number of pianos, victrolas, radios, and
knocked-out partitions between living-rooms and dining-
74
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
rooms, bear witness. But while fathers and mothers are thus
struggling, suddenly their girl, or their boy, stops being a
child and grows up. They find themselves at a loss; they
find that they know very little about their child after all. If
the home has been happy and companionable, as over half of
these homes actually visited seemed to be (see Table XVI),
the situation is not so difficult. But in the remaining homes,
problems of discipline, of recreation, of companionship, arise,
which from the point of view of the parents are irritating
and baffling, and upon which they welcome help. One of the
biggest of these problems is that of proper recreation, of the
advantageous and enjoyable use of leisure time. This affects
all working girls, not just the group of 500 interviewed, and
not just those whose homes were visited.
CHAPTER V
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER LEISURE
Only three or four hours out of every twenty-four are left
to young employed girls for leisure-time activities. The
average work-day is eight and three-quarters hours, with an
additional hour each day for transit. Nine and three-quar-
ters hours, therefore, is a conservative estimate for the time
given each day to industry. This means that the girl starts
out, say, at seven-thirty A.M., and returns at six P.M.,
which leaves for leisure the period from about seven or
seven-thirty in the evening until ten or eleven o'clock at
night, together with Saturday afternoons and Sundays.
What kind of recreation do girls fourteen to sixteen seek
after such a day in industry? What difference is there, if
any, in the leisure-time activities of the four school progress
and school interest groups formulated in the previous chap-
ters?
Reading
First, what do young employed girls read? All but fifty-
three of the 500 girls interviewed read books or magazines
or both. All but twenty-three read newspapers, but when
pressed for details, 149 acknowledged their devotion to the
comic section almost exclusively, while ninety read the news-
paper stories principally. However, seventy-two said that
they read the newspapers for the news; the interests of the
others were divided among fashions, the woman's page, acci-
dents, murders, society, politics, advertisements, love letters,
sports, scandals, "sensational stuff," editorials, and the
weather. Once in a while a girl was found who read the
newspapers intelligently and welcomed an opportunity to
discuss what she had read, but for the most part the news
columns seemed to have little attraction.
76
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
The list of magazines and books, while surprising in in-
stances for its solid character, contained a large number of
decidedly third-rate stories. Doubtless the reading of the
average adult would show like characteristics, due in a
measure to habits formed in the adolescent period. We do
not, of course, know accurately what the average adult does
read, but perhaps we may safely assume that he sometimes
tires of "trashy stuff" and turns to more substantial subjects.
If so, he differs from the average fourteen to sixteen year
old seventh-grade school girl, who not only devours trashy
stories but reads herself into them and carries the excite-
ment into her everyday life. For if she chooses such stories
at all she is likely to seek nothing else. Nearly one-third of
the whole group were reading only trashy books and maga-
zines.
To a girl of limited intelligence and limited training, third-
rate stories seem to treat of Life, and many of these publi-
cations advertise to do so. Since she is just entering upon
this business of Life, or at any rate just beginning to work,
she wishes to read about the experience of others and imagine
herself in similar situations. She is in the adolescent period
when everything about her is new and untried. Mysterious.
emotions are aroused in her. Professor G. Stanley Hall
likens this period for a girl to "floating down a broadening
river into an open sea. Landmarks recede, the water deepens
and changes in its nature, there are new and strange forms
of life, the currents are more complex, and the phenomena
of the tides make new conditions and new dangers. As
every student of human nature knows, a girl is conscious of
her sex at this time as never before, and if she has no outlet
in the way of athletic or domestic or educational interests,
she becomes absorbed in her leisure time with movies, dances,
and trashy stories, all of which she grows to enjoy, and
which, in contrast to her prosaic home surroundings and per-
"'1
1 G. Stanley Hall: Adolescence, vol. I, p. 507.
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER LEISURE
77
haps her uninspiring work, make her feel that she is in the
midst of a life of adventure and romance.
Magazines
The magazines which the girls read are listed below and
seem to fall naturally into three classes. Those in the first
class are "informational" magazines; those in the second
class contain fiction of more or less literary value and usually
special articles of information; those in the third class con-
tain nothing but the cheapest kind of stories.
Three hundred girls (fifty-eight per cent of the normal
school progress groups and sixty-four per cent of the re-
tarded groups) read magazines; very few, only eleven, of
the 300 girls read the magazines in the first class, and as
might have been expected, all but two of these girls were in
Groups I and III, the normal school progress groups. The
interest of the remaining 289 was equally divided between
magazines in the second and third classes. One hundred and
forty-five girls chose a scattered list of magazines, twenty-
five in number, headed by the Ladies' Home Journal, the
Saturday Evening Post, and the Pictorial Review. One
hundred and forty-four girls selected twelve magazines led
by True Stories and Love Stories, and three of these twelve
were being read by almost as many girls (134) as were the
whole group of twenty-five magazines above mentioned.
Furthermore, the reader of one class of magazines rarely
sought the other class. The type of magazines preferred
coincided closely with the division of the girls into the four
school progress and school interest groups already men-
tioned. (See a summary of Table XVII, given in Table
XVIII.)
A larger percentage of girls from the retarded groups
than from the normal school progress groups was reading
magazines, but the retarded girls seemed to like the trashy
magazines to a much greater extent than did the other girls.
TABLE XVII
MAGAZINES MENTIONED BY GIRLS IN EACH SCHOOL PROGRESS AND
SCHOOL INTEREST GROUP2
Magazines
Class I
Literary Digest .
National Geographic
House and Garden
Review of Reviews
World's Work
Total
Motion Picture
Movie Weekly
Class II
Ladies' Home Journal
Saturday Evening Post
Pictorial Review
McCall's
American
Delineator
Collier's.
Everybody's
Metropolitan
Cosmopolitan
Hearst's
Woman's Home Com-
panion
Photo Play
McClure's.
Classic
Life
Vogue
Little Folks
Argosy
Munsey
Blue Book
Total.
་
Modern Priscilla
Good Housekeeping
Red Book
Class III
•
•
•
•
True Stories
•
Love Stories
I Contess
Breezy Stories
Short Stories
Western Stories
Snappy Stories
Cupid's Diary
Physical Culture
Hot Dog
་
•
•
J
Price3
10c w
50c m
35c m
35cm
35c m
10c m
5c w
15c m
15c m
25c m
25c m
25c m
15c w
20c m
25c m
25c m
35c m
20c m
10c w
25c m
25c m
Number Times Mentioned by Girls in:
Group Group Group Group
I
IV
II
III
25c m
15c w
10c m
3
25c m 6
20c m
3
5c w
25cm
25c m
35c m
3
1
250 m
25c m
1
1
1
5
10
7
3
در
32
2
SHH
5
1
1
2
1
56
250 m 10
15c w
1
15e m
200 m
25c m
15cm
25c m
20c m
1
1
13
1
1
2
17
19
4
jand fie
3N2M H
NOONNY :~~25 5
300 + MNNAHA
·H
1
1
1
ļ
2
27
2
12
10
S
2
7
··
1
2
1
1
67
35
12
}
49
1
1
·
7
1
8
4
3
2
2
1
1
1
1
2
41
60
13
1
•
Total
S4
TAHAH
7
1
1
1
1
11
24
24
20
15
14
12
S
6
7
5
4
4
4
3
FNINWA
1
1
1
1
1
181
124
30
11
J
1
1
1
1
1
1
Total
2 Three hundred of the 500 girls interviewed mentioned reading magazines.
3 Prices given in Table XVII are those in force at the time this study was made.
W signifies weekly; M, monthly publications.
No.
Girls
173
Men-
tioning
11
145
144
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER LEISURE
79
Of the 145 girls reading the magazines in the second class,
seventy per cent were girls in the normal school progress
groups; of the 144 girls reading the magazines in the third
class, thirty-six per cent were in the normal school progress
groups. The magazines of class three were mentioned 111
TABLE XVIII
TYPE OF MAGAZINES READ BY GIRLS IN THE SCHOOL INTEREST
AND SCHOOL PROGRESS GROUPS
Group I.
(Interested in school
and normal)
Group II.
(Interested in school
but retarded)
Total
Groups
Group III.
(Not interested in school
but normal)
•
Group IV
(Not interested in school
and retarded)
Unknown
*
•
•
Total
Number
Girls in
Group
109
54
165
162
10
500
Per cent
of Girls
Reading
Magazines
58
68
57
63
Number of Times Maga-
zines Were Mentioned
First Second Third
Class Class Class
7
56
13
1
2
1
17
67
41
27
49
84
11 181 173
times, or by every second girl in the retarded groups, as
compared with sixty-two times, or by less than every fourth
girl in the normal school progress groups. Magazines in the
second class were mentioned only fifty-eight times, or by
less than every third girl in the retarded groups, and 123
times, or by almost every second girl in the normal school
progress groups. In fact, only twelve out of the total 109
girls in Group I had any acquaintance with those of the third
class, showing that with an ascending scale of interest in
80
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
school there is a corresponding descending interest in the
poorer type of stories.
The concentration upon two or three magazines in the
third class in particular, as compared with the much wider
range of titles in the second class, seems unusual. The first
magazine in the third class is mentioned four times as often
as any other in the whole list (124 times); this and the next
most popular magazine, also in the third class, together ap-
pear over six times as often (154 times) as any of the others.
Because of this popularity it may be permissible to give some
description of one of these magazines and to question both
its effect on fourteen to sixteen year old girls and the reason
for its large circulation among them. Even though it may
be found on all the street corner news stands, and indeed at
almost every stand where magazines are sold, its name is
probably not even known to the many persons who are fa-
miliar with most of the magazines in the second class.
This magazine has two features only, advertisements and
stories. The advertisements are of two distinct types, one
of which seems designed especially to attract women; the
other is planned to arrest the attention of men.
The one
appeals to sex charm, the other to earning capacity. A sam-
ple of the advertisements of the first type, picked at random
from one number of the magazine, with some of the slogans.
attached, shows their appeal, how they play on the weakness
of the flesh, how subtle is their flattery, and how audacious
are their promises.
ADVERTISEMENT
Beauty Powder
Shampoo
Freckle Cream
SLOGAN
"Beauty gained is love retained.”
"The blonde remains a blonde, the brunette a
brunette-but the transformation! Ah!"
"Why put off regaining the milky white skin
that nature gave you?"
"The magic charm of lovely hands."
"To preserve and enhance the beauty of your
eyes."
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER LEISURE
81
Soap
Foot-ease
Tablets
Crème
Skin Clearer
Caruso's Secret
Rubber garments
Reducing soap
Nose Adjuster
"To unlock the hidden beauty in your skin."
"Is adding charm to thousands of faces."
"These tablets alone will give you the slender
figure you want."
"Make this three-minute-before-bedtime test. The
next morning look into your mirror."
"Formula of a European chemist. Guaranteed to
reduce you 8 to 15 pounds in two weeks."
"This remarkable woman was homely once."
"You have a hyo-glossus muscle in your throat.
Strengthen your hyo-glossus and your voice
will be powerful, rich, and compelling."
"Chin reducers and anklets."
"A secret from Paris."
"Will successfully straighten bow-leggedness and
knock-kneed legs."
"Wash away pounds of fat, double chins, and
years of age."
"Corrects all ill-shaped noses, quickly, painlessly,
permanently, and comfortably."
"Shapes while you sleep."
These beauty-over-night advertisements are read with.
avidity by fourteen to sixteen year old girls. Their appeal
is invariably to the desire for feminine attractiveness. They
are surrounded by all the lure of perfect beauty and "magic
charm" which lessons in hygiene and gymnasium classes
seem to lack. If the latter could only be invested with simi-
lar glamor and romance, their results might put these dealers
in beauty to shame! Or if interest in personal appearance
and charm could be capitalized by those whose concern in
the welfare of young girls is less commercial, the influence
of the magazine might be neutralized. But bathing, teeth-
cleaning, and proper diet do not appeal as subjects of ad-
venture and romance, nor do they promise such immediate
transformation as beauty powders, rouge, and nail polishers.
Development of health or of ability is not emphasized by the
magazine, nor does it try to stimulate real grace or proper
82
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
ambition. Such publications recognize that their readers
possess little or no capital or savings and that their only assets
are personal qualities. The object of the advertisements,
therefore, is to advocate methods for enhancing physical at-
tractions. There is no mention of things which would add
to the comfort or attractiveness of a home, nothing which
would stimulate self-improvement or a desire to save money
for the accomplishment of some particular aim, nothing even
which might provide amusement or enjoyment for leisure
time.
The other form of advertisement contained in the maga-
zine emphasizes opportunities for increasing earning ca-
pacity, and makes its appeal largely to men, as seen in the fol-
lowing illustrations:
Learn how to be an electrical expert.
Learn how to be an auto expert.
Learn how to be a dental laboratory expert.
Learn how to be an R. R. traffic inspector.
Learn how to be an R. R. postal clerk.
Learn how to be an expert watchmaker.
Learn commercial art.
Learn photography at home.
Learn cartooning.
Learn to play a harmonica.
Learn to play a tenor banjo.
Learn to play a saxophone.
"Be a champ." "I make champs." "You will find several sports
pictures here but these are only a few of the many I can help you
with."
There are, too, a few advertisements in which the privilege
is sought of sending articles such as diamond rings, watches,
bracelets, free to patrons, followed by a description of how
to pay for the article on the instalment plan.
A comparison of the whole array of these advertisements
with the familiar ones in the second group of magazines may
help to explain further the appeal of the former to young
girls. For example, advertisements in the Ladies' Home
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER LEISURE
83
Journal, the most widely read monthly magazine among
those of the second class, cover a much wider range of sub-
jects. In it many kinds of foods are mentioned, designed
to appeal to the housewife, but not to girls who never do any
cooking. Similarly, furniture and household equipment are
included, and labor-saving devices; clothes and toilet acces-
sories are displayed, too, but in a dignified way, without
startling claims for results. In one instance, the same beauty
powder is listed in both magazines, but the caption in the
Ladies' Home Journal is, "Her new beauty brought added
happiness," while in the other it is, "He found her at last.”
The character of the stories in this popular magazine re-
mains to be described; a leading feature of these is the pic-
tures with their accompanying captions. These pictures are
so striking as to compel attention the moment the magazine
is opened, they look like miniature scenes of the most dra-
matic and sensational parts of a movie with the legends so
arranged as to intensify curiosity. The stories are chiefly
sordid tales, often with a moral wagging at the end. They
purport to be true and are so advertised. Plots are negligi-
ble, character delineation is more so, the chief interest center-
ing around the situation presented by the actions of the two
or three persons involved, almost invariably a man and two
women, or a woman and two men, one of whom is usually
married; the situation presented usually includes an illegal
practice or relation. There are about twenty of such stories
in each number of the magazine. In the number from which
illustrations of the advertisements have been cited, every
fourth story, beginning with the first one, was chosen, and a
synopsis is given below:
-
Number One
A young man whose mother died two weeks before the story opened
felt that her death had left "an empty void in my life which I was
sure could never be filled." He feared he was going mad. He left
his home and went to New York City. While sitting in Central Park,
84
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
"I looked up and saw a young man smiling at me." The young man
took him to a "cellar café" and introduced him to a young girl who
explained afterward that this was the first time she had ever been
in the café, and gave him some cocaine. He took the cocaine and
under its influence married the girl that night. He became more
and more a slave to cocaine. Then he had difficulty in getting co-
caine; so he tried morphine. "The morphine was totally different
in action from the cocaine. Cocaine is stimulating, exhilarating. It
makes one arrogant, superior, leader of everyone and everything.
Morphine is soothing; it makes one calm, dignified, above the motley
crowd." Next came difficulty in getting the morphine. He asked
his wife to get it from a certain man as "the only one he'll give it
to without money is a woman." His wife refused to get it for "a
beast who would not hesitate to sell the soul of his wife, send her
out on the streets, just to satisfy his own vile craving for drugs."
He then strikes her and she leaves him. He becomes almost insane
with craving for the drug, and goes back to his empty house in
Connecticut. His wife follows him. When she opens the door he
thinks she is "Lady Morphia" and shoots at her. He manages to
call a doctor who tells him she is to have a child. He arranges with
a police lieutenant to be sent to a county jail for three months and
comes out cured. The concluding sentence of the story is, "But God
is good, and although at times we cannot understand his ways and
we doubt Him, still, if there is the will and the incentive, there is
no pit, no matter how deep or how filthy, from which we cannot
extricate ourselves, especially with the helping hand of a good
woman."
Number Two
This story is in the form of a letter written by a married man to a
woman he met on shipboard and with whom he was closely associated
for five days in a life boat, his wife being in another life boat. He
writes her, "just to let you know that the thing which lived between
us did not die." He tells her that he did not marry young because
he was "waiting for somebody." Then he decided he was a "senti-
mental fool" and married a girl he did not love. Four months later
the shipwreck happened and he feels he "missed Paradise by that
much." But he cannot "create perdition" for his wife. The story
ends with this paragraph. "This letter is stolen from Fate. Its
words can never be said again, but somehow I feel that you must
know. I feel that your spirit is so close to mine that I must tell
you. God forgive me if I am wrong."
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER LEISURE
85
Number Three
A young girl and her husband go up the Rocky Mountains to live
in a hut far away from civilization. The girl becomes lonesome,
loathes "the top of the world," and tells her husband she hates him.
He agrees to take her away, but while he is busy gathering up his
traps, a strange well-dressed man appears at the hut in a "flivver,"
and an attachment immediately develops between the stranger and the
girl. She changes her mind about going away; thereafter the man
meets her husband and frequently calls upon them and upon her. He
tells her of his love for her and urges her to go away with him. One
day, however, the sheriff appears, and at the same time the well-
dressed man disappears. The sheriff is looking for a cache of bootleg
whiskey and he finds it near the hut. He suspects her husband. The
husband returns, and fearing that his wife loves the bootlegger, is
ready to sacrifice himself. This makes her decide she does not love
the bootlegger, and so she "found out the measure of a good man's
love." The story ends with the sentence, "The love you give makes
the full rich life, not the love that you merely get."
Number Four
A little country girl from a small Ohio town goes to New York
City "with little money, without experience and without a job." Her
father, a minister, and her mother see her off at the train, advising
the use of the Travelers' Aid and the Y. W. C. A. On the train a
man takes the empty seat beside her and they talk about each other.
On arrival she sees neither a policeman nor the Travelers' Aid at the
station, so she asks a motherly woman to direct her to the Y. W. C. A.
The woman takes her to a brownstone-front house, buys her pretty
clothes, and tells her she has engaged her for the position of her
social secretary. At a dinner party that night she becomes afraid and
goes upstairs to pack her clothes. A man follows her, tries to em-
brace her, and breaks the mirror on the dressing table. She faints.
When she opens her eyes she is riding in a taxi with the man she
met on the train. He, it seems, had seen her go into the house in the
afternoon, and walked past there again in the evening, heard the
crash of the mirror, followed a policeman into the house, picked her
unconscious form from the floor, called a taxi and directed the driver
to go to the Y. W. C. A., “and in the morning," he said, "we are go-
ing to get married." The story ends, "Love is life, and until we have
experienced it, we have not lived. But bogus love brings only un-
happiness."
86
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
Number Five
The story begins with this paragraph: "I am twenty-two years old
and in three months I am to become a mother, but I am in prison
and, before my baby is born, I shall stand trial for murder." It is
the story of a girl, newly wed, who learns that her husband, a young
Italian, is a "hold-up man." His next hold-up is to be a bank car,
and with the money thus obtained they will go to Italy and live
happily ever afterward. She sees guns stacked in her closets, she
even makes masks for the men, all the while pleading with her
husband to give up his way of life. The hold-up is unsuccessful.
Her husband and six other men are arrested, tried, and sentenced
for murder. The trial brings out the fact that she is not a wife.
Her supposed husband is already married. However, she still loves
him. "He is not bad. He was weak. He is my husband and I do
not judge him." She hears him condemned "to be hanged by the
neck until he is dead." The last paragraph is: "Perhaps some young
girl will read my story. I have written it for her. Be careful about
the small steps. They lead to so much bigger ones.
The above stories are fairly representative of the type read
by a third of the girls. These periodicals probably could not
be barred from the mails nor are they especially vulgar.
But the stories are inane, stupid, sordid, full of unreal situa-
tions, impossible persons, and false attitudes, glossed over at
the end with a smug let-this-be-a-warning-to-you sentence.
Furthermore, these unreal situations are developed by details
based entirely upon the sex impulse and desire, lawful or
unlawful, fulfilled or thwarted. The fact that all of the
stories are written in the first person, supposedly by the one
whose experience they chronicle, obviates any necessity for
the appearance of an author's signature.
These tales lack any reference to outdoor nature, politics,
political situations, literature, or to any kind of normal,
wholesome family life. As in the case of the accompanying
advertisements, there is hardly an allusion to beauty of any
kind except beauty of face and form. In the magazines in
the second class, there are usually articles of interest along
lines scientific, educational, political, social, which give in-
formation as well as diversion. The stories, too, are of a
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER LEISURE
87
different type. There may be a similar plot, or lack of plot,
but the details are as different as the type of picture shown
in a ten-cent movie house differs from the better class of
screen productions. Perhaps a paragraph picked at random
from one of the stories in the most popular magazine in the
second class will illustrate this difference, as follows:
All was quiet; there were no sounds from within the clubhouse,
nor came any from the links; and although no kine wound slowly
o'er the lea and no plowman plodded his weary way, the impending
twilight in such a peace might well have stirred a poetic observer to
murmurous quotation from the Elegy. Nevertheless, in this sweet
evening silence emotion was present and not peaceful.
There was emotion far out upon the links, and there was more
upon the western veranda of the clubhouse where two ladies sat, not
speaking, but gazing intently toward where the dim and hazy great
sun was immersing itself in the smoke of the horizon.
A paragraph such as the above never appears in the popu-
lar magazine described. The quiet and peaceful picture
would undoubtedly be cut out and the story would probably
open in some such way as this: "My husband is out on the
golf links while I sit here in misery and wretchedness wait-
ing for him and the woman who has infatuated him to appear
before me enjoying their intimacy, as they continually appear
to me in my imagination." Then probably would follow
passionate scenes and bitter recriminations instead of, as in
the real story, the gradual unfolding of an interesting and
plausible situation, and the development of the characters in
the story to meet the situation.
One-third of the girls interviewed preferred this magazine
to any other. The pictures catch their attention and the cap-
tions give a vivid promise of wickedness. Also for retarded
fourteen to sixteen year old working girls, the fact that it
publishes twenty stories in a single issue, while the magazines
in the second class publish only a few stories in each number,
with articles and features interspersed which may or may
not be interesting to young girls, tips the balance heavily in
88
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
favor of this magazine. These girls will buy such a maga-
zine as long as it is on the market, or until another one ap-
pears which attracts them more strongly.
Investigation showed that mothers and fathers occasion-
ally forbade this magazine, but the majority of parents did.
not even read it, and did not know what it was like; it some-
TABLE XIX
READING OF BOOKS IN RELATION TO SCHOOL PROGRESS AND
SCHOOL INTEREST GROUPS
Group I .
(Interested in school
and not retarded)
Group II.
(Interested in school
but retarded)
Group III
(Not interested in school
but not retarded)
Group IV.
(Not interested in school
and retarded)
Unknown
Total
Groups
·
Reading
No Books
12
16
35
57
3
123
Number of Girls
Reading
Books
97
38
130
105
7
377
Total
109
54
165
162
10
500
times held a conspicuous place on the living-room table with-
out the mother's ever having looked into it. Occasionally a
mother would even defend it on the ground that it told her
daughter "things she ought to know," which perhaps the
mother disliked telling, or did not know how to tell. Parents,
as a rule, knew very little about what their daughters were
reading. "She gets library books," or "She reads all the
time," or "She never opens a book," was the type of com-
ment most frequently heard.
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER LEISURE
89
{
Books
Three hundred and seventy-seven girls had read books
within the previous six months.
The range of books read by the girls is wide and the list is
long. It shows characteristics of the magazine list in that it
can be arranged on a scale beginning with books which may
be called standard, followed by popular novels of various
types, and ending with books not found in the libraries. It
undoubtedly reveals, in comparison with magazines, the in-
fluence of the schools and the libraries. The titles are given
below, arranged to show by which of the four school prog-
ress and school interest groups each book was mentioned:
TITLES OF BOOKS
Kidnapped
Treasure Island
The Talisman
Kenilworth
The Man Without a Country
The Scarlet Letter
Huckleberry Finn
Tom Sawyer
Hamlet
As You Like It
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Three Musketeers
Oliver Twist .
Old Curiosity Shop
David Copperfield
A Tale of Two Cities
Nicholas Nickleby
•
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Silas Marner
The Little Minister
Vanity Fair
Lorna Doone
Arabian Nights
Aesop's Fables
·
•
•
NUMBER OF TIMES MEN-
TIONED BY GIRLS IN
GROUPS
III IV
I
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
II
11
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
farandi
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
11
││
90
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
Last Days of Pompeii
The Light That Failed
The Call of the Wild
Marie Chapdeleine
Elsie Dinsmore
Mr. Santa Claus
Little Miss Nobody
Little Red Schoolhouse
Felicia's Folks
Flabelia's Sister
•
•
Aunt Jane's Niece
Three Little Women at Work
Marguerite's Guest
Bad Little Hannah
Auto Girl at Newport
Red Cross Girl in France
Ollie the Governess .
Slipper Point Mystery
Little Lord Fauntleroy .
Black Beauty
Swiss Family Robinson
The Young Bank Messenger
Cash Boy
Rover Boy
Motor Boy
Strive and Succeed
Hoosier School Boy
Telephone Boy
Erie Train Boy
Tom Swift
Pollyanna
Emmy Lou
Mary Carey
Helen's Babies
Just David
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Little Women
Under the Lilacs
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
Anne of Green Gables
•
•
·
Camp Fire Girls
Girl Scout Books
Outdoor Girls in Army Service
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
|
1
1
1
1
I
I
11
1 1 1
1
I
1
| 1
די
1
1
1
1
1
1
| | 1
1 1
1
1
1
1
1 11
1
1
1
I
1
1
1
1
1
1
11
1
1 - 1
1 1 1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1 1
1
1
བ'', ས ཝ མོདྷནྟ
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER LEISURE
91
Jane Eyre.
John Halifax, Gentleman
Timothy's Quest
St. Elmo
In His Steps
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Self-Raised
•
Penrod and Sam.
Seventeen
Ramsey Mulholland
Alice Adams
Gentle Julia
The Harvester
Freckles
Daughter of the Land
Girl of the Limberlost
Her Father's Daughter
Michael O'Halloran
The Song of the Cardinal
Treasure of Heaven
Thelma
•
Prisoner of Zenda
When Knighthood Was in Flower
Romance of Leonardo da Vinci
The Bent Twig
The Squirrel Cage
•
•
Lena Rivers
Thorns and Orange Blossoms
Tempest and Sunshine
Little Old New York
The Covered Wagon
Orphans of the Storm
Scaramouche
•
•
•
The Winning of Barbara Worth
Shepherd of the Hills
Girl of the Golden West
•
•
•
1
1
1
1
1
I
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
-
1
1
|
1
1
1
1
1
11
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
I
| |
1
1
|
1
precard fraud
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1 1
|
1
1
| |
1
1
1 1 1
1
11
| 1
1
| | |
1
11
| 1
|
1
1
1 1 1
1
1
92
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
Flaming Forest
Call of the North
The Enchanted Barn
Voice in the Wilderness
Iron Trail
Ne'er Do Well
She
King Solomon's Mines
Rainbow Trail
To the Last Man
Wild Fire
Man of the Forest
Greatheart
Top of the World
Way of an Eagle
Lamp in the Desert
Tarzan
Son of Tarzan
•
•
Four Million
City of Beautiful Nonsense
Garden of Allah.
Tess of the Storm Country
Trail of the Lonesome Pine
Quincy Adams Sawyer.
Red Pepper Burns
Bab, a Sub-Deb
In the Palace of the King
To Have and to Hold
His Children's Children
Black Oxen
Brass
The House of a Thousand Candles
The White Sister
Romola
The Circular Staircase
The Rosary
The Virginian
Secret Garden
Butterfly
•
•
•
•
•
•
1
| │
1
1
I
1
I
| │
|
1
1
-
1
|
1
1
Sid
1
1
1
1
1
Jurand
1
1
1
I
1
1
1 1
-
1
|
1
1
1
1
l
1
1
1
1
1 1
1
1
| |
1
I
1
1
1
1
1
Jak pand
1
1
1
| |
| |
| |
1
Joh
I
| | |
1 1
Į
1
1
1
1
1
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER LEISURE
93
Judith of the Godless Valley
Sign of the Cross
His Official Fiancée
Within the Law.
Hidden Hand
Blind Love
Range Boss
Tomorrow
Kindred of the Dust
Moonstone
Young Hearts
Lucky Seventh
Madam X
Dim Lantern
Gentlemen of France
The Reason Why
Star in the Window
Salt of the Earth
Red Rock
·
Rosalind at Red Gate
The Cottage of Delight
Jimmie Dale and the Phantom Clue
The Sheik
TITLES OF BOOKS
Beyond the Rocks
Black Hawk
•
Blossoms
Bobolink
Broadway Back
Camp Number Forty-four
Comrades True
Charred Wood
Goddess of Dawn
•
Her Faithful Heart
Her Two Loves
Jan Stark.
•
•
•
1
1
| |
1
1
1
1
| |
││
| │
1
1
I
1
| |
1
1 1
11
1
II
1
| |
Jasad Jazzk
1
1
1
1
The following books were not listed in the Main Branch
of the Philadelphia Library or in either of two branch li-
braries in Kensington :
1
1
1
1
1
Jak pok
1
NUMBER OF TIMES MEN-
TIONED BY GIRLS IN
GROUPS
Junk
1
1
ידי 1
1 1
11
I I
1
1
1
Jodh
1
1 1
Jomarke
1
III IV
1
1
1 1
1
1
1
94
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
Life's Shop Window
Love at the Loom
Love's Labor Won
Mystery of Yellow Corn
One Wonderful Night
Son of Sahara
The Girl in Question
The Golden Key .
What Gold Cannot Buy
•
•
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
The standard books placed at the beginning of the list
were read almost entirely by the girls in Groups I and III,
the normal school progress groups. Not one of these was
mentioned by any girl from Group II, and only three by girls
from Group IV.
The juvenile books were read principally by the girls in
Groups III and IV, those not interested in school. Few
girls in Group I read the juvenile books, and here again not
a single girl from Group II mentioned one of them.
Group I more than any other group chose the more popu-
lar authors of the day, Booth Tarkington, Gene Stratton
Porter, Dorothy Canfield, as well as some of the more old-
fashioned popular fiction like Jane Eyre, John Halifax,
Gentleman, and Uncle Tom's Cabin. The more sensational
books and the miscellaneous popular novels were read most
by girls in Group III.
The majority of the books not to be found in the libraries
were read by Groups III and IV. Once more, not a girl in
Group II confessed to a book not found in the libraries.
4
Eighty-one books, of which twenty-two might be called
standard, were mentioned by girls in Group I; eighty-eight
books, of which fifteen were standard, were mentioned by
girls in Group III. Group IV mentioned fifty-four books,
most of which were the poorer type of popular novels.
Group II read very few books of any kind, only twelve be-
ing mentioned.
4 See Table XIX, but note that frequently girls mentioned having read books
without giving titles.
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL- -HER LEISURE
95
The type of reading done by the 500 girls studied thus
confirms strikingly the differences already noted among the
four groups. The reading list of Group I shows stability
and variety, a combination of books of genuine and lasting
value with more popular books for entertainment and amuse-
ment; the list of Group II includes too few books to indicate
anything except lack of interest in books, or lack of time for
reading. Of all the groups, this one is the most puzzling.
In connection with reading, the retardation in this group
might seem to place the emphasis on lack of interest, were it
not for the fact that Group IV is just as retarded and yet
reads a good many books, although books of a poor type.
Group II is not interested in books of any kind, and yet does
express interest in further education. Again the question
arises as to the actual cause for the retardation in this small
group, and the explanation of the interest expressed in
school.
Group III shows the greatest variety in selection of books.
The girls report every kind of book from the standard works
at one end of the list, through the juvenile boys' and girls'
books, the modern popular novels, the sentimental and sensa-
tional novels, and those which were not to be found in the
libraries, including a few which had been rejected by the
libraries. The girls in Group III seem to be experimenting
with all types. The reading list of Group IV shows a dis-
tinct tendency toward books of little value. The girls in
this group preferred exciting or sentimental literature, and,
although they did not read quite so much as did Groups I
and III, their reading was more definitely concentrated on
the poorer type novels and showed much less variety.
Movies
All but twenty-seven of the 500 girls studied went more
or less frequently to the movies, the next most important
leisure-time activity. The twenty-seven gave reasons for
96
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
not going, ranging all the way from excessive religious de-
votion at one extreme to inordinate fondness for dancing
and continuous and irksome home duties at the other ex-
treme. One feels almost justified in saying that if a girl
never goes to the movies there is some particular and pecu-
liar reason for it, and a situation which will bear investiga-
tion.
M
(
Many and various, however, are the uses to which those
who do go to the movies put a moving picture house. Some,
of course, go with their families, and the picture is selected,
or at least the picture house is selected, by the parents.
Others go with girl friends or with their "crowd," sometimes
for the sake of the picture, again for the sake of a good time
with the crowd. Others have "lady-friends" who are ushers,
and the number of passes received is quite astonishing.
Others, again, use the movie as a meeting place for either.
known or to-be-known acquaintances. The movies afford
not only recreation but meeting places, and, in case of neces-
sity, what might even be called evening-nurseries; for one
enterprising young woman discovered that she could leave
her two little sisters there for both shows, thus having her
own time free for the whole evening!
Two hundred and sixteen of the 500 girls (forty-four per
cent) went to the movies at least twice a week, and fifty-two
girls went regularly three times a week or more. Retarda-
tion at school makes no difference in the frequency of at-
tendance, for the proportion of retarded and non-retarded
girls in the two groups of frequent movie-goers, and less.
frequent movie-goers, is exactly the same. However, interest
or lack of interest in school does seem to be significant. A
division on this basis shows that thirty-eight per cent of
those who liked school went to the movies twice a week or
more, while sixty per cent of those who disliked school were
in the group which went more frequently.
There is relation, also, between attendance at movies, the
type of magazine read, and retardation. A greater propor-
-
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER LEISURE
97
tion of retarded girls who went to the movies twice a week
read the trashy magazines than of those who went once a
week. The same is true of the normal school progress
groups; the "twice-a-week or more" movie goers are more
likely to read trashy magazines than the "once-a-week or less"
movie group. The following list shows the relation between
attendance at the movies and type of magazine reading:
Of the ninety-five retarded girls going to movies twice a week or
more, fifty read magazines in the third class.
Of the 121 retarded girls going to movies once a week or less,
thirty-nine read magazines in the third class.
Of the 121 non-retarded girls going to movies twice a week or
more, thirty-six read magazines in the third class.
Of the 153 non-retarded girls going to movies once a week or less,
nineteen read magazines in the third class.
There is also a relation between frequency of attendance
at the movies and dancing. The fact seems to be that the
more often a girl goes to the movies the more likely she is
to go to dances; the less she goes to movies the less she goes
to dances. Over half (fifty-four per cent) of the 216 fre-
quent movie-goers knew how to dance, as compared with
only forty-three per cent of the less frequent movie-going
group. Slightly more of the former went to public dance
halls, and fewer to private dances.
Dances
Next to the movies, dancing is the form of recreation most
indulged in, and, as we have just seen, it frequently goes
hand in hand with the movies. Just half of the girls knew
how to dance and did dance, some in their own homes with
their own crowd, some at the homes of their girl friends, and
some at public dance halls. Ninety-one said that they went
to public dance halls, sometimes with the consent of their
parents, sometimes without. Several confessed to slipping
away under the guise of going to another place and, instead,
going to a dance hall. Sometimes the mother connived at
98
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
the girl's deception, the father usually being more strict.
Fifteen girls went to dances at the Y. W. C. A. and twenty-
seven went to church dances. Here again, as with the
TABLE XX
RELATION BETWEEN DANCING AND FREQUENCY OF ATTENDANCE
AT MOVIES
Groups
Group I ..
(Interested in
school and not
retarded)
Group II. .
(Interested in
school but re-
tarded)
Group III.
(Not interested
in school but
not retarded)
Group IV
(Not interested
in school and re-
tarded)
Unknown
Total
*
Public
Dances Who
Also Attend-
ed Movies
Once a
Week or
Less
11
6
16
Twice a
Week or
More
44
7
2
Number of Girls Who Attended
Private Dances
Who Also
Attended Movies
Once a
Week or
Less
25
7
19 31
11 19 17
Week or
Twice a
More
9
2
35
24
47 80 70
-un
known
7
No Dances
Who Attended
Movies
Once a
Week or
Less
40
30
26 11
54
Twice a
Week or
More
7 150
17
34
37
| 99
-un
known
3
3
Total
109
54
165
162
10
500
movies, those who liked school spent less time in dancing
than those who disliked school, showing, as before, the sav-
ing of leisure time by those interested in school for purposes
other than amusement. Fifty-three per cent of the girls
who liked school used some of their leisure time in dancing.
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER LEISURE
99
Only fifteen per cent of these, however, went to public dance
halls. Sixty-five per cent of those who did not like school
went to dances, and of these twenty per cent frequented the
public dances.
Domestic Occupations
A more domestic use of leisure time ranks next in popu-
larity to the delights of moving pictures and dancing. About
half the girls said they were interested in some form of
domestic work, sewing most frequently, together with cro-
cheting and embroidery. Some of them liked to make their
own clothes; others sewed for their small sisters; still others
made spasmodic attempts at work of various sorts. Only
thirty-seven out of the 500 acknowledged any liking for cook-
ing, due, probably, to the laborious nature of the processes
in large families, and to the prohibitions in small families
against "messing around." At any rate there was no enthu-
siasm about it. There was somewhat more interest in domes-
tic matters among those who disliked school than among
those who liked school, but yet not a great difference. No
differentiation on the basis of school progress appeared.
Athletics
Athletics as a form of recreation appealed to almost half
of the girls, 224 of the 500 taking some form of physical
exercise outside of their work. Swimming was the most
popular activity, eighty-four knowing how to swim and en-
joying it. The forms of exercise taken by the 224 girls are
as follows:
Swimming
Ball games
"Games"
Skating
Walking
Hiking
Tennis
•
84
63
35
41
24
23
13
100
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
"Watching ball games"
Sledding
Camping
Running
Gym teams
Bicycle
"Bars"
Not Specified
84
3
2
2
1
1
10
Retardation seemed to be no more of a factor in athletic than
in domestic interests. In fact, the difference is slight be-
tween retarded and non-retarded girls in any use of leisure
time in which amusement or recreation is the chief factor.
The two groups like the movies equally well and go equally
often. In about equal proportion they know how to dance.
They are equally fond, or not fond, of domestic work, and
there seems to be no difference between them in their atti-
tude toward athletics. It is only when the use of leisure
time assumes a more cultural or educational aspect, such as
is shown by the joining of clubs, or evening schools, or by
the type of reading, that any difference appears, except, per-
haps, in the kind of place to which they go for amusement.
It may be that the retarded girls go to the poorer moving
picture houses and the normal girls prefer a better type of
pictures. It may be that the normal girls show more dis-
crimination in dancing. This study does not show whether
such is or is not the case. It does show, however, that the
normal girls, as compared with the retarded girls, do not
seem to reduce greatly the amount of time which they give
to amusement and recreation; but they add to it other occu-
pations for leisure time.
Group Activities
Over two-thirds of the girls devoted the larger part of
their leisure time to movies, dances, and domestic or athletic
activities; but 136 girls were also interested in group ac-
tivities. The largest single group was that of the sixty girls
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER LEISURE
IOI
who belonged to the Y. W. C. A. Forty-four of the sixty,
however, were selected for interviews from Y. W. C. A.
groups instead of from the continuation schools. Only six-
teen girls, or three per cent of the remaining 456, were
found to belong to the Y. W. C. A. The number seems
very small considering the well-equipped buildings both in
TABLE XXI
RELATION OF MEMBERSHIP IN CLUBS TO SCHOOL INTEREST AND
SCHOOL PROGRESS GROUPS

Groups
Group I .
Group II
Group III
Group IV
Unknown
Total
•
•
•
Total
in
Group
109
54
165
162
10
500
In Y. W. C. A. Clubs
Fer Cent of
Total in Group
Number
17
6
22
11
4
60
15
12
13
8
12
In Other Clubs
Number
22
12
22
19
1
76
Per Cent of
Total in Group
2227:
19
13
11
15
the center of the city and at the Kensington branch. Appar-
ently the inducements, with the exception of swimming, did
not appeal to young working girls nearly so much as did the
noon-hour programs which the Y. W. C. A. conducted in the
schools. Mothers often considered the distance from home
to the Y. W. C. A. building too long for the evening use,
while girls whose mothers did not exercise supervision were
apt to seek other types of amusement.
It seemed to the investigators that a great many of the
girls were too young and too immature to settle down in the
evening to any kind of systematic club work or class work.
And if they were ambitious they preferred the evening high
schools where they could get credit toward a diploma, or
business schools where the instruction would help them to
advance. Sixty-four girls were enrolled in such schools.
-
102
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
The majority, however, seemed to seek more adventurous
and more varied evening entertainments.
Aside from the sixty girls who belonged to the Y. W. C. A.
clubs, thirty-eight belonged to church clubs, and thirty-eight
to other clubs. These "other" clubs included school alumnæ
associations, settlements, sewing circles and purely social
clubs.
As before mentioned, it is the girls interested in school
rather than those not interested, who enjoy these more sedate
pleasures. Thirty-five per cent of the former belonged to
clubs, as compared with twenty-three per cent of the latter.
The same difference appears in connection with attendance
at evening classes. As may be seen in the following table,
sixty-four girls out of the 500 were taking further business,
cultural, or domestic science courses at high schools or busi-
ness schools. Sixteen were taking educational courses at
TABLE XXII
DISTRIBUTION OF SCHOOL INTEREST AND SCHOOL PROGRESS GROUPS
ACCORDING TO CLASSES AND MUSIC LESSONS

Groups
Group I
Group II
Group III
Group IV
Unknown
•
•
Total
in
Group
109
54
165
162
10
Total •11 50
500
Number of Girls Enrolled for
Business
and
Domestic Music Other
Cultural Science Lessons Courses
Courses
22
2
17
6
47
42
6
5
сл
17
329m
17
6
4
5
16
Enrolled in
Classes or
Taking Music
Lessons
No.
35
10
37
15
97
Per
Cent
32
18
22
8
20
the Y. W. C. A., at settlements, or elsewhere. But in addi-
tion, seventeen were taking music lessons. One hundred and
eighty, beside those who were actually taking music lessons,
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL-HER LEISURE
103
showed some appreciation of music, and this interest was
confirmed by the number of pianos found in the homes. In
the 263 homes visited there were ninety-nine pianos, to say
nothing of victrolas and radios!
Desire for Recreation
It is clearly evident that what the majority of fourteen to
sixteen year old employed girls want in the evening is rec-
reation. They prefer to be actively doing something which
will yield excitement, or to be passively engaged in enjoying
the emotions of others. Companions and dancing satisfy the
first desire; movies and stories satisfy the second. Two-
thirds of the number are not indulging to excess in these
forms of recreation. Does the community realize, however,
that one-third of the number of its employed girls under
sixteen years of age spend most of their leisure in moving.
picture houses, in dance halls, and at private dances? Do
parents know how many girls spend the greater part of their
leisure reading stories of the kind described in this chapter?
Do organizations dealing with girls appreciate that what a
third of these youngsters want in their evenings is just a
good time? Is as much effort made in investigating, and
possibly in attempting to make wholesome and safe, the places
where the girls go for a good time, as is spent in trying to
induce them to go to other places? In short, is enough
thought and effort spent on the problem of recreation for
young employed girls who just want "a good time," or, in-
deed, upon the whole problem of recreation for all young
employed girls?
CHAPTER VI
CONCLUSIONS
An important though unexpected outcome of this study
has been the establishment of a norm representing a large
number of girls who become the women wage earners of the
country. The characteristics of the norm discovered and
the conclusions reached should be of use to the state and to
the community in discharging their responsibilities to the
young employed girl.
A. Characteristics of the Norm Drawn from the
Investigation
1. Three out of every five young employed girls are
handicapped for work by three conditions: lack of maturity
(less than fifteen years of life), lack of education (comple-
tion of less than the eight elementary school grades), and
lack of achievement (a school retardation of one, two, or
three years). (Page 20.)
2. School progress is not affected by the type of school
attended or by frequent change of school. (Page 21.)
3. An essential primary classification emerges from this
study and provides a working basis; there are four distinct.
types among young working girls:
I. Those who are interested in school and who are fairly normal
in school progress.
II. Those who are interested in school, but are retarded two years
or more.
III. Those who are not interested in school, but are fairly normal
in school progress.
IV. Those who are not interested in school and are retarded two
years or more. (Page 35.)
CONCLUSIONS
105
4. The two reasons for leaving school, (1) economic
pressure, and (2) dislike for school, do not furnish a work-
ing basis for classification, nor do they divide the girls into
distinct types. (Page 29.)
5. Less than one-third of the number of girls find their
positions through the help of parents or other relatives or
through the Junior Employment Service. (Page 38.)
6. The reaction of the majority of employed girls toward
their work is indifference, in comparison with their decidedly
positive or negative attitude toward school. (Page 48.)
7. Girls are not so much interested in the amount of
money contained in the pay envelope as in the amount given
back to them for spending money. (Page 49.)
8. Eighty-three per cent of the girls who are uninterested
in the work of the regular school are interested in that of
the continuation school. (Page 53.)
9. Thirty-nine per cent of the families of young em-
ployed girls are struggling against some definite form of
social maladjustment (page 59); fifty per cent of the homes
of the girls who would like to continue in school are handi-
capped by the death, desertion, illness, accident to, or unem-
ployment of, the bread-winner (page 62); thirty-one per
cent of the homes of those not interested in school are so
handicapped. (Page 62.)
10. A larger percentage of girls from the retarded groups
(II and IV) than from the non-retarded groups (I and III)
read magazines; retarded girls read the trashy magazines to
a much greater extent than do the other girls, and they tend
to concentrate upon two or three magazines of a low type.
(Page 77.)
11. Standard books are read only by the non-retarded
school progress groups (I and III); juvenile boys' and girls'
books are read almost exclusively by girls not interested in
school (III and IV); popular fiction is read most by Group
I; more sensational fiction is read most by Group III.
(Page 94.)
106
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
12. Forty-four per cent of young employed girls go to
the movies at least twice a week; ten per cent go regularly
three times a week; attendance at the movies is not related
to retardation, but there is a distinct relation between fre-
quency of attendance at the movies and lack of interest in
school; a far greater proportion of the retarded girls who
go to the movies twice a week or more read the trashy maga-
zines than of the retarded girls who go to the movies only
once a week. (Page 96.)
13. About fifty per cent of the young employed girls are
interested in some form of domestic work. (Page 99.)
14. Not quite fifty per cent take some form of physical
exercise outside of their work. (Page 99.)
B. Conclusions and Observations
1. Fourteen to sixteen year old girls who leave school
for work present different types and cannot be understood or
treated on the sole basis of the fact of their employment.
(Page 5.)
2. Investigation into the reasons for leaving school
would furnish a chance for adjustment and prevent some
girls of this age from leaving school. (Page 13.)
3. Every report dealing with the subject of boys and
girls dropping out of school stresses the need at this time
and later for wise counseling and guidance. (Page 39.)
4. Many jobs are blind-alley jobs; others may offer op-
portunities if properly directed; therefore, all employed girls
need industrial supervision. (Page 44.)
5. Schools and organizations working with girls should
understand their home conditions in order to help parents,
both American- and foreign-born, in guiding and guarding
their daughters. (Page 14.)
6. Realization of the fact that there is a group of young
employed girls, perhaps one-third of the total number, com-
posed largely of retarded girls, uninterested in school, not
CONCLUSIONS
107
much interested in work, who spend their entire leisure time
in going to movies and dances and in reading trashy stories,
suggests the opportunity of locating this group more defi-
nitely and providing supervised recreation. (Page 102.)
APPENDIX A
(1) SCHEDULES USED FOR INTERVIEW WITH THE GIRL
AT THE SCHOOL OR PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT
(2) SCHEDULE USED IN THE INTERVIEW WITH THE
GIRL'S PARENT IN THE HOME
1. Name
6. Elementary schools: (a) Types
7. Subjects: (a) Liked
8. Attendance
11. Responsibilities: (a) School
13. Money earned while in school: (a) Amt.
14. Vocational guidance
17. School: (a) Age leaving
18. Physical examination: (a) Where
19. Continuation school
22. Attitude toward school
1.
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
2. Address
a. Firm
b. Process
2. Hours of work: (a) Begin
3. Lunch: (a) Time
C.
SCHEDULE CARDS USED IN STUDY
YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRLS-Card 1.
I. EDUCATIONAL RECORD
How Secured
(b) Disliked
9. Behavior
3. Birthplace
(b) Home
(b) Type of work
(b) How many
15. Would you return to school?
(b) Grade finished
(b) Recommendations
20. Evening school
d. Time
II. INDUSTRIAL RECORD
(b) Close
(b) Where eaten
(b) Frequency
(b) Reasons
e. Weekly Wage
Entered Left Maximum
5. Rest periods: (a) Length
8. Idleness past year: (a) Amt.
10. Training offered by firm: (a) Type
12. Attitude toward fellow workers
14. Fitness for other occupations
Carola Woerishoffer Graduate Department, Bryn Mawr College. 1923-1924.
4. Age
(c) Name of last school
(c) Excelled in
10. Desire for further education
(c) Saturday
4. Travel: (a) Time
6. Posture
12. Attitude of parents toward education
(c) Time spent
(d) Age began
16. School experience
(c) Reason
(c) How carried out
21. Subjects
(b) Made use of
13. Attitude toward work
15. Occupational ambition
Source.
No..
5. Yrs. in U. S.
(d) Deficient in
f. Reason for
Leaving
Visitor.
g. Attitude
(d) Hours per week
(b) Method
7. Hazards
9. Steadiness
11. Age of fellow workers
Date.
SCHEDULES USED FOR INTERVIEWS
III

I12
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
1. Living at home
5. Apt., Dwel. Ten.
9. Father: (a) Place of birth
10. Mother: (a) Place of birth
11. Older brothers and sisters: (a) Number
12. Younger brothers and sisters: Number
15. Attitude of parents: (a) Toward recreation
16. Contribution to family: (a) Entire
17. Home duties: (a) Time
18. Health habits
20. Friendships: (a) How made
21. Neighborhood: (a) Type
22. Home: (a) Impediments
23. Attitude toward home
1.
Clubs
2. Dances
Movies
Theaters
امانه
a.
Activities
3.
b. Description
YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRLS-Card 2.
2. Boarding
6. Boarders
(b) Health
(b) Health
(b) Board
(b) General
III. HOME LIFE
c. Time d. Cost
3. No. rooms
7. Roomers
(c) Occupation
(c) Occupation
(b) Occupations
13. Others in family: Number
(b) Toward guests
(c) Other
(c) Sewing
19. Special interests
(b) Preference
(b) Nationality (c) Recreation
(b) Opportunities
IV.
LEISURE TIME
e. Auspices and
Location
(b) Magazines
4.
5.
Music
6.
Classes
7.
Lectures
8. Domestic
9.
Athletic
10. Reading: (a) Books
11. If you did not have to work what would you do?
Carola Woerishoffer Graduate Department, Bryn Mawr College, 1923-1924. Source.
4. No. sharing room
8. Father and mother living together
(d) Hours of work
(d) Hours of work
(d) Amt. rec'd back
g.
f. Attitude Preference
14. Guests: Where rec'd
(d) Care of children
h. Interested
thru
No..
(e) Savings
Visitor.
(c) Newspapers
i. Goes
j.
with whom Why not
Date.



SCHEDULES USED FOR INTERVIEWS
113

6. Home responsibilities
8. Change of school: (a) Reason
Name
1. Attitude: (a) Continuation school
2. Attitude: (a) Elementary school
3. Attitude of parents: (a) Elementary school
4. Attendance
YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRLS-Card 3
V. HOME VISIT
11. Effect of going to work
13. Difference in attitude: (a) Home
14. Present job
16. Wages: (a) Amount
(e) Use
18. Special interests
20. Home activities
9. Desire for education: (a) While in school
10. Attitude of parents: (a) School experience
Address
25. Neighborhood: (a) Type
26. Recreation of parents
28. Occupation: (a) Father
29. Health: (a) Parents
30. Menstruation: (a) Age
31. Parents: (a) Cleanliness
(c) Intelligence
33. Home
22. Reading
24. Attitude of parents: (a) Recreation
(b) Given to mother
(b) Mother
(b) Children
(b) Suffering
(b) Basis
(b) Basis
(b) Basis
No..
Parent's Name
5. Reason for leaving school
7. Wage earning
(b) Effect
(b) Since leaving school
(b) Education
12. Attitude to work
(b) Recreation
15. Sex education
(c) Financial help
17. Occupational ambition
19. Parent's ambition
21. Housework
(c) Girl
(c) Effects on work
(b) Personality
32. Children
34. House
Carola Woerishoffer Graduate Department, Bryn Mawr College, 1924-1925.
23. Recreation
(b) Companions
(b) Facilities
27. Language spoken in home
(d) Received back
Source
Visitor
Date
APPENDIX B
LIST OF REFERENCES ON THE YOUNG
EMPLOYED GIRL
LIST OF REFERENCES ON THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
Bibliographies
United States Department of Labor, Children's Bureau.
"References on Child Labor and Minors in Industry, 1916-1924.”
Bureau Publication No. 147. Washington, 1925.
Books and Pamphlets
Abbott, Edith, and Breckinridge, Sophonisba P.
Truancy and Non-Attendance in the Chicago Public Schools. Chi-
cago, 1917.
Ayres, Leonard P.
Laggards in Our Schools. New York, 1913.
Breckinridge, Sophonisba P.
The Child in the City. Chicago, 1912.
Burdge, Howard G.
Our Boys. Albany, 1921.
Colcord, Joanna C.
Broken Homes. New York, 1919.
Commonwealth Fund Program for the Prevention of Delinquency
Progress Report. New York, 1925.
Consumers' League of Eastern Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania's Rank in Child Labor Protection. 1924.
de Lima, Agnes
Our Enemy the Child. New York, 1925.
Dewey, John, and Dewey, Evelyn
Schools of Tomorrow. New York, 1915.
Eaves, Lucile, and Associates
Children in Need of Special Care. Boston, 1923.
Ellis, Mabel Broun
The Visiting Teacher in Rochester. New York, 1925.
Eubank, Earle Edward
A Study of Family Desertion. Chicago, 1916.
Hall, G. Stanley
Adolescence. New York, 1904.
Hartshorne, Hugh
Childhood and Character. Boston, 1919.
118
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
Hopkins, L. Thomas
The Intelligence of Continuation School Children in Massachusetts.
Cambridge, 1924.
Irwin, Elizabeth A., and Marks, Louis A.
Fitting the School to the Child. New York, 1924.
Keller, Franklin J.
Y
Day Schools for Young Workers. New York, 1924.
Mangold, George B.
Problems of Child Welfare. New York, 1914.
Massachusetts Superintendents' Association Committee
Report on School and Age Requirements. Boston, 1925.
Morgan, John J. B.
The Psychology of the Unadjusted School Child. New York, 1924.
National Industrial Conference Board
The Employment of Young Persons in the United States. 1925.
New York State-Department of Labor
"Children's Work Accidents." Special Bulletin No. 116. New
York, 1923.
"The Health of the Working Child." Special Bulletin No. 134.
New York, 1924.
"The Trend of Child Labor in New York State from 1910-1922."
Bulletin No. 122. New York, 1923.
"The Trend of Child Labor in New York State. Supplementary
Report for 1923," Special Bulletin No. 132. New York, 1924.
Oppenheimer, J. J.
The Visiting Teacher Movement. New York, 1924.
Patri, Angelo
School and Home. New York, 1925.
Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry
Labor Laws of Pennsylvania. Harrisburg, 1916.
Pennsylvania Department of Public Instruction
The School Law and an Appendix 1919, Harrisburg, 1920.
Courses of Study for Continuation Schools, 1923.
Philadelphia Board of Public Education
Annual Report for the years ending December 31, 1923 and 1924.
Statistical Reports of the Department of Instruction for the years
ending June 30, 1923 and 1924.
Pierce, Frederick
Understanding Our Children. New York, 1925.
Richmond, Winifred
The Adolescent Girl. New York, 1925.
LIST OF REFERENCES
119
Sayles, Mary B.
The Problem Child in School. New York, 1925.
Schoolmen's Week Proceedings
University of Pennsylvania Bulletins, 1923 and 1924.
United States Department of Labor, Children's Bureau
Thirteenth Annual Report of the Chief of the Children's Bureau,
fiscal year ended June 30, 1925.
"Industrial Instability of Child Workers"; a study of employment-
certificate records in Connecticut. Bureau Publication No. 74.
Washington, 1920.
"Administration of the First Federal Child Labor Law." Bureau
Publication No. 78. Washington, 1921.
"Physical Standards for Working Children." Bureau Publication
No. 79. Washington, 1921.
"The Working Children of Boston." Bureau Publication No. 89.
Washington, 1922.
"Vocational Guidance and Junior Placement." Bureau Publication
No. 149. Washington, 1925.
Department of the Interior. Bureau of Education
"Diagnosis and Treatment of Young School Failures." Bulletin
No. 1. Washington, 1923.
University of Michigan, School of Education, Vocational Education
Department
Occupations of Junior Workers in Detroit. 1923.
Van Waters, Miriam
Youth in Conflict. New York, 1925.
White-Williams Foundation, Philadelphia, Pa.
Monograph Series:
No. 1. The Pharmacist.
No. 2. The Librarian.
No. 3. The Hairdresser.
No. 4. The Dental Mechanic.
No. 5. The Paper Box Industry.
No. 6. Juvenile Wage Earners in Philadelphia.
Bulletin Series:
No. 1. The Watchmaking and Repair Trade.
No. 2. The Professional Photographer.
No. 3. The Working Children of Philadelphia.
No. 4. The Electrical Industries of Philadelphia.
No. 5. The Hosiery Industry.
Woods, R. A., and Kennedy, Albert J.
Young Working Girls. New York, 1913.
120
THE YOUNG EMPLOYED GIRL
Articles
Alltucker, M. M.
"Counseling Plan for Bridging the Gap between the Junior and
Senior High Schools." School Review 32: 60-6 (January 1924).
"Scientific School Counseling." National Education Association
Journal 12: 418-19 (December 1923).
Cast, G. C.
"Elimination of the Unfit; a Problem of Waste in Public Educa-
tion." School and Society 18: 84-7 (July 21, 1923).
Clark, R. S.
"Personnel Work at Its Source." School and Society 18:487-91
(October 27, 1923).
Dean, A.
"Neither Vocationist nor Leisurite." Industrial Education Maga-
zine 26: 255-6 (March 1925).
Groves, J. W.
"Elementary School Children and the Movies." School and So-
ciety 18: 659-60 (December 1, 1923).
Lambin, M. W.
"This Business of Dancing." Survey 52: 457-61 (July 15, 1924).
Lamkin, Nina B.
"Recreation for Girls." Playground 19: 442-5 (November 1925).
Mandeville, Ernest W.
"Gutter Literature." The New Republic 45: 350-2 (February 17,
1926).
Mosher, A. M.
"Fitting Girls and Jobs." Survey 47: 920-1 (March 11, 1922).
Phelps, W. L.
"American Homes and the Younger Generation." World's Work
48: 638-42 (October 1924).
Pratt, A. B., and Everett, E. M.
"Vocational, Educational and Social Guidance." School and So-
ciety 22: 145-6 (August 1, 1925).
Rand, H.
"Student Scholarships as Community Projects." Independent 111:
188-9 (October 27, 1923).
Shipley, Elizabeth T.
"Some-Kind-of-Educated." Survey 49: 519-21 (January 15, 1923).
Stone, R. I.
"Recreation for Girls." Playground 17: 207-8 (July 1923).
LIST OF REFERENCES
121
Wanamaker, Claudia
"The Relation of the Individual Problem Child to Recreation."
Playground 19: 205-8 (July 1925).
Wembridge, Eleanor
"Petting and the Campus." Survey 54: (July 1, 1925).
Whitman, E. W.
"Some Who Left School." Survey 47: 892-4 (March 4, 1922).
Wile, I. S.
"Volcanic Years." Survey 52: 304-9 (June 1, 1924).
Woolley, Mrs. Helen T.
"The Routine Job and the Routine Child." National Vocational
Guidance Association Bulletin (May 1923).
VITA
I, Hazel Grant Ormsbee, was born in Beacon, Dutchess
County, New York, July 1, 1889. My father was Laban Orms-
bee; my mother is Harriet Ormsbee. I received my elementary
and secondary education in the public school at Beacon, N. Y.
During the years 1910-11 and 1912-15 I attended Cornell Uni-
versity, receiving the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1915. I at-
tended Bryn Mawr College from 1915 to 1917 and the London
School of Economics in 1920-21.
During my graduate work I held, in turn, a scholarship and
a fellowship in the Carola Woerishoffer Graduate Department
of Social Economy and Social Research at Bryn Mawr College,
and the Mary E. Garret European Fellowship of Bryn Mawr
College.
My preliminary examination for the doctorate was held in
January 1925. Social Economy was my major subject; Social
Theory and Applied Psychology were my minor subjects.
I wish to express my appreciation of the inspiration given me
by Professor Susan Myra Kingsbury, who has directed my work
on this dissertation.
1
INDEX
A
Adams, Edwin W., 28
Adolescence, 76
Athletics, 99
Attitude of
young employed
girls: toward regular school,
9, 10, 29, 48, 54; toward con-
tinuation school, 12, 53, 54;
toward work, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48
Ayres, Leonard P., 11, 12
B
Bryn Mawr College, Carola
Woerishoffer Graduate Depart-
ment of Social Economy and
Social Research, 5, 6
Burdge, Howard G., 27, 39
с
Child Labor: former
federal
law, 46; Pennsylvania law, 46
Clubs, 101, 102
Commonwealth Fund Program,
40
Community: duty toward girls,
15, 102, 103
Continuation schools in Phila-
delphia description of, 3;
natural social center, 14; duty
toward girls, 15; retardation
in, 17, 18; floating population
of, 18; elementary classes of,
18
D
Dances attendance at, 97; rela-
tion to frequency of attendance
at movies, 98
Delinquency,
Commonwealth
Fund Program for Prevention
of, 40
Domestic occupations, 99
E
Economic necessity a reason for
leaving school, 26-36, 55, 63
G
Girl Reserve Department of the
Y. W. C. A., 4, 14
Griscom, Anna B., 41, 42
Group activities, 100
Groups: industrial and business,
42-47; school interest and
school progress, 9-11, 34-36, 41,
51, 52, 57, 60, 62, 64-67, 79, 95,
98, 101, 102
Guidance, vocational and educa-
tional, 33, 37, 39, 40, 41
H
Hall, G. Stanley, 76
Homes: number visited, 56; im-
pressions of, 56; handicapped,
33, 58, 59, 60; marginal, 63, 64;
fairly prosperous, 63, 64; for-
eign, 70; center of social in-
terests, 68, 69
Hopkins, L. Thomas, 12, 28
Hours of work, 46, 47
I
Industrial advancement, 42
Industrial supervision, 45
Industries in which girls work,
41; textile factories, 42; sew-
ing trades, 42; hosiery, 43, 44;
blind alley jobs, 44
Intelligence
of Continuation
School Children in Massachu-
setts, 12, 28
Interest in school, 9, 10, 30, 34,
102; lack of, 10, 29, 34, 38
J
Junior employment service, 37, 38
A
124
INDEX
K
Kingsbury, Susan M., 6, 26
L
Laggards in Our Schools, 12
Leaving school: age and grade
at, 19, 20; reasons for, 26, 27,
29, 31, 34; studies made of
reasons for, 26-28; regret at,
34
London: Children's Care-Com-
mittees, 38
M
Magazines read by young em-
ployed girls, 77-79; advertise-
ments, 80-83; stories, 83-88
Movies regularity of attendance
at, 95, 96; uses to which put,
96; relation to type of maga-
zines read, 97; relation to at-
tendance at dances, 97, 98
N
New York State Bureau of
Women in Industry, 2
Norm drawn from investigation,
characteristics of, 104, 105
Normal age for school grade, 7
O
Our Boys, 27
P
Parents nativity of, 23-26;
daughters of foreign-born, 23;
interest in future occupations
of children, 39; intelligence of,
58; death of, 59; desertion of,
60, 61; control of daughters,
68, 70, 71, 72
Philadelphia Board of Public
Education: Report for year
ending Dec. 31, 1923, 17; Re-
port for year ending Dec. 31,
1924, 41
Philadelphia Continuation School
Pupils, A Study of, 28
Public Education Association of
New York City, 40
R
Reading of young employed
girls: newspapers, 75; maga-
zines, 77-88; books, 89-94
Recreation, 68, 74, 75, 102
Retardation, 9-11, 16-19, 21, 23,
32, 52, 96, 100
S
Savings, 49, 51
Schedules, analysis of, 7, 8
Scholarships, 33
School attendance:
laws, 2;
standards, 46, 47
School progress, 9, 10, 17-19, 33,
34, 38, 52
Schools attended, types of, 21,
23; changes in, 21-23
Social discovery, field for, 3
Social organizations, task of, 4,
103
Spending money, 49, 50
T
Taft, Jessie, 12
Teachers: visiting, 40; coördi-
nating, 45
V
Vocational Guidance and Junior
Placement, 40
Vocational service for Juniors,
New York City, 40
W
Wages, 49
Welsh, William H., 4
White-Williams Foundation of
Philadelphia, 40
Working Children of Philadel-
phia, 41
Working papers, 37, 40
Y
Y. W. C. A., 4-6, 101, 102
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