Poor -- New York (State) -- New York; Social settlements
Now the working-girls' clubs have their State organizations, even their
national organization. The Pan-American Exposition brought working girls to
the number of five hundred together in a convention to consider the
questions vital to club life and management. Can any one doubt the effect
of this journey into the world, the first that hundreds of these girls had
ever made? Of the readjustment of ideas, the revelation of beauty, the new
birth of values, because of the vision of a larger world lying beyond
factory, workshop, office, school-room? For it has come to this: that the
professional as well as the manual worker finds inspiration in the
working-girls' club.
As the years went on, a new problem grew out of the working-girls' club
movement. The members married, but they were not willing to lose the social
affiliations of girlhood; they were unwilling often, reluctant always, to
sever club relationship. On the other hand, the members felt that a married
woman should remain home in the evening with her husband. Often the
married member would come carrying her baby, for the club represented the
mother's social relations. The next step was natural, the forming of a club
of the married members to meet in the afternoon. The first working-girls'
club, of which Miss Dodge is still president, formed, as the Domestic
Circle, a club of married members.
The A. O. V. Matrons at the Cottage Settlement are the married members of
the A. O. V. Club, formed when the matrons were little girls. Other
working-girls' clubs have contributed to the membership of other married
women's clubs.
Naturally, the subjects discussed in these clubs are those bearing on
housekeeping and the training of children. The training received in the
clubs enables the married members to conduct their business with dignity
and dispatch. They are trained to club life, and have learned how to avoid
unnecessary friction.
Some clubs plan a winter's work ahead. These programmes show a broadening
of interest and sympathy, not only in the technical affairs, the home and
the care of children, but the larger affairs outside of the home that makes
its environment. It must be that the girls who have been club members make
more companionable wives than the women who have not had their
opportunities. The children are always present at the meetings of the
mothers. Various devices and methods are employed to entertain and interest
them. What the mothers' club means to the little ones was unconsciously
revealed very recently in the statement of a young mother: "---- is always
home from school five minutes earlier club day. She runs home to get
ready."
The working-girls' club has in the process of its evolution become a family
institution.
CHAPTER VI.
A SOCIAL EXPERIMENT.
The Residents of the College Settlement learned in the first year of their
work in Rivington Street to sympathize deeply with the married women, the
mothers in the region.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account