Civic improvement; Urban women; Women in public life
Miss Montgomery contends that the labor of girls under sixteen is
not necessary to the continuation of any business, and, as a
buttress for her position, quotes one of the largest employers of
child labor as saying: “If we could not by law employ the girl under
sixteen years, we should find some way to make the machine do her
work,” and points to the frank declaration of another, that: “As an
employer, I can and do make money out of the work of little girls.
As a man, I know it would be better for them and for the state if I
were forbidden by law to employ them.”
The author, however, recognizes the problems of constantly changing
and inefficient employees with which the employer is faced, and
records their “growing sentiment against the employment of
children.”
She tells us of the girl who was so “sot” in her mind and so well
satisfied with what she was doing that she insisted that “pasting
labels was her trade and refused to consider anything else”; while
an example of the other type of mind is cited in one of three girls
who had held eleven “jobs” in fifteen months, and gave as her excuse
for one change: “The new boss may have red hair. Anything to change
the scenery!”
The report points out again the well-worn but vital problem of
providing normal amusement for the young girl, “carrying the
premature responsibility of the wage-earner and asserting her right
to a feverish search for evening pleasures,” and urges the city,
through the Board of Education, to provide more nearly adequate
uncommercialized recreation.
While the study is, of course, of a specialized class and of a
community with specialized problems, it includes such a keen and
sympathetic analysis of the complex factors which influence the
relations between the employer and the child worker as to make it an
extremely valuable record.[28]
The Jewish immigrant girl in Chicago was studied by Viola Paradise of
the Immigrants’ Protective League and her conclusion about the girl
whose problems and ideals she has come to know at first hand is this:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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