CHAPTER II. BOARDING HOMES, AIDS FOR WORKING WOMEN, ETC. In nearly all the cities visited it was found that many worthy institutions have been established for the purpose of securing to working women protection when protection is most needed. This is when they are first seeking employment and have little means on which to support themselves until a situation is found, or when, having been at work, through sickness or other cause, they may lose a situation, and not having been able to save anything or but little from their earnings they find themselves in a partially destitute condition while seeking another situation. These are the experiences which most thoroughly try the integrity of the working women in any city. To help them bridge over these dark places many institutions have been organized. The working girls do not want charity, and the boarding homes which have been established here and there are not charities, but they offer the advantages of coöperative work to those who can not afford to pay high prices for their living. The agents of the Department were instructed to secure information relative to such boarding homes in the different cities visited. It is possible that some institutions of this sort may have been overlooked, but diligent inquiry was made in all directions, and it is believed that at least all of prominence and effectiveness were discovered. All the facts obtainable about each have been set forth as fully and specifically as seems necessary to a proper understanding of their aim and accomplishment. The sanitary and moral value of the boarding homes-the outgrowth of practical benevolence and Christian effort-can be properly appreciated only after seeing and studying the character and surroundings of the cheap boarding and lodging houses which are the ordinary homes of the poorer paid among the working girls in large cities, and which are usually in the dingiest, filthiest quarters, in narrow, crowded streets, where drinking shops, gambling houses, and brothels abound; for it is only in such localities that the unfriended laboring woman can find a lodging low enough in cost to be within her means. In these narrow streets the roadways and pavements become recep. tacles for the garbage and dirt of all the population, while the sewerage is almost universally bad. Within doors things are very generally in harmony with their exterior surroundings. Bare and filthy floors; broken or blackened window panes and rickety furniture; meagre meals of ill-selected and ill-cooked food; the sights, sounds, and smells of the filthy surroundings-these constitute the home comforts provided by many of the cheap boarding and lodging houses of our great cities. Two girls are sometimes crowded into a little hall chamber, carpetless and fireless; three and even four share a larger room without a comfort or convenience. A bath room is unusual. The dining room is often the family kitchen, living room, and laundry. There is rarely a parlor. The girls must, as a rule, receive their male acquaintances in their rooms or meet them on the street. The sleeping rooms are so cold in winter that failing utterly to keep warm until the hour for retiring, the girls are allured by the warmth and brightness of the dance houses and saloons, where they must of necessity meet undesirable and unsafe acquaintances. Contrast this cheerless existence with its perilous freedom from all restraint with the advantages of even the poorest and plainest of boarding "homes." A quiet, respectable street; clean halls and stairways; a neat parlor, and usually a library or reading room, both well warmed, well lighted, and inviting; a well kept dining room; wholesome food prepared in a clean kitchen and served invitingly; bed rooms spacious and well ventilated, however crowded, and usually so adorned as to be pleasant to the eye; trunk space outside; privileges of a bath room and usually of a laundry, thus saving the expense of hav ing washing done; bed rooms tempered if not warmed, and a well heated sitting room for social talks, readings, or games; young men allowed to call almost every evening, and permission accorded the girls to remain out after 10 o'clock under proper escort for special entertainments; religious services regular and earnest, but not obtrusive or compulsory; a matron ready with sympathy or suggestion; medical attendance and kind nursing during illness; an air of refinement pervading the house and surrounding the inmates; no rough associations or immoral influences; such conditions make a veritable home where girl or woman may live in accordance with her individual nature, sheltered from intrusion, self supporting, self-respecting, useful, respected, and even beloved. These homes should not be regarded as "charities," for they are not such. They should be looked upon rather as coöperative enterprises, where the funds which the women would individually expend for a poor and insufficient living are, by combination and judicious management, rendered sufficient to give to all those advantages which without such combination would be beyond the reach of any. Atlanta. There is no boarding home in the city which accommodates working women of the classes embraced in this investigation. The Home of the Friendless shelters the unprotected and absolutely destitute, and the Women's Christian Association Home contains some women engaged in the higher avocations. The need of provision for factory and shop girls is recognized by the Women's Christian Association, and this organization has in contemplation the establishment of a boarding home for working girls. Baltimore. In proportion to its population, Baltimore possesses as many aids for working girls as any city in the United States. Efforts in behalf of the improvement of the poorer classes are widespread and sustained. Sectarian spirit is not conspicuous, and concert of action by churches, charitable and benevolent societies, and individuals insures the most valuable results. Prominent among these beneficent agencies, here as elsewhere, is the Young Women's Christian Association. Filled with youthful workers of wealth and leisure, whose zeal is directed by the counsels of older and more experienced heads, the association is distinguished by life, energy, and courage, and its progress and growth and the results it has accomplished are everywhere visible. The association owns a large building on Liberty street, capable of accommodating thirty permanent boarders, and also giving space for lecture, class, and lunch rooms. The lunch room or restaurant, located, as it is, within a few blocks of the business thoroughfares, and thus easily reached by working girls at the lunch hour, is a most valuable feature of the association's work. The excellent toilet facilities are particularly grateful to the frequenters of the rooms, for in many of the Baltimore shops sinks and closets are sadly neglected. The cost of the food sold here is lower than in other restaurants even of this class, in which prices are always low; the quality is excellent, and neat tables are provided, free of all cost, for those who bring lunches from home. About one hundred girls take meals here daily. The association cond ucts ten departments, including kindergartens, lecture courses, classes for varied instruction, employment bureau, bible classes, and mission work. Branches are located in the worst districts and reach the poorest, lowest, most depraved of the laboring population. Besides religious guidance and influence, and the practical instruction bestowed, the association has introduced some of the best features of the working girls' clubs of New York. The Helping Hand Society, organized on this principle, is the latest notable offshoot of the association. The society has rented two pleasant rooms-a parlor and a class room-at No. 18 High street, East Baltimore. The rest of the house is devoted to lodgings for young women, and is a recognized branch of the Young Women's Christian Association Home. In the club informal talks are given, dressmaking and other classes are in operation, and cooking lessons are proposed. The Helping Hand now consists of forty members, most of whom are employed in the factories of East Baltimore. The Christian Association lends books, furnishes amusements and social entertainments, through its "fresh air fund" sends girls to the country, and encourages economy and thrift. In its home dwell straw workers, shirt makers, overall sewers, dressmakers, milliners, and shop 20997 L-3 |