Poor -- New York (State) -- New York; Social settlements
The club must give every educational and social opportunity that will meet
the needs of the members. As the college meets the demands of its students
in the electives it offers, so must the working-girls' club. As the college
student must meet the financial obligations he assumes when he enters
college, so must the member of the working-girls' club keep her financial
engagement. As the college makes it possible for the worthy student to
complete his course of study after financial disaster makes it impossible
for him to meet his financial obligations, so must the working girl who has
contributed to the life of the club, or who has shown her desire to profit
by what it offers, be kept in good and regular standing when financial
disaster makes personal independence impossible. In short, the
working-girls' clubs that are conducted on the broader lines, and with the
most comprehensive knowledge of our social conditions, are in management
and purpose a college for working girls. The idea of self-support may have
been strained for a time, but it was an error in the right direction, and
led to the truer conception which regulates the management of the best
clubs to-day.
It was curious, is curious, the attitude of mind with which some girls
approach the club idea. There comes to mind now the effort to form a second
club in the rooms of a club of several years' standing. The need of the
second club had grown out of the refusal of the girls who earned from five
to nine dollars a week in various employments to associate with a number of
girls working in a tobacco factory, and earning on an average three dollars
and a half per week. The last-named were rough in speech and manner, and
far from stylish in dress--the standard of the elder club. The introduction
of the girls from the tobacco factory to the club was the result of the
sentiment of one of the members of the club, a bright, wealthy, healthy
girl, a great favorite with the other club girls. She had wanted for two
years to work with girls less prosperous than the girls in the club of
which she was a member.
A large tobacco factory not far from where the club met attracted her
attention, and she invited the girls working there to join the club.
Twenty-two came to the club-room. Mentally they were in a state of nature.
This group of girls represented just what intermittent school attendance,
uninterrupted freedom of the streets, from the time they could walk alone
to the present time, might be expected to produce. They were strangers even
to the degree of social opportunities the members of the club represented.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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