Family and Home.
While the greater number of restaurant workers are unmarried, it is rather surprising to find so large a proportion of married women in the work. ([See Diagram 4.]) This is easily explained, however, by the fact that many of them are “one-meal” girls, that is, they are employed only for the rush hour at noon. In this way they can earn a little extra money while their husbands are at work, either as “pin-money” for themselves, or to help toward the support of the children.
The majority of restaurant employees live with their family or relatives ([See Diagram 3]), but this does not mean that they are not entirely self-dependent. As large a proportion of a girl’s wage goes into the family exchequer as she would have to pay for board and lodging elsewhere. The financial advantage of living at home appears chiefly in giving her a place of refuge when she is out of a job.
Restaurant workers are a tenement house population. A few, to be sure, can afford comfortable little apartments of their own, but as a whole their lot falls within the congested tenement districts of the city. Confusion, over-crowding, dirt, lack of sunlight, air and privacy, and unwholesome surroundings are only too common in their homes. The janitor of an East Side tenement house said: “A little while ago down in Third Street there were twenty-three girls sleeping in two rooms. They’d put their mattresses down on the floor at night and pile them on top of each other in the day time. Most of them were kitchen hands at ⸺’s,” naming a well-known chain of restaurants.
The low standards of the European peasant class from which restaurant workers are largely recruited, drag down all standards. No other result is possible under present conditions. They live—but how? Low wages, miserably long hours, no opportunity to fit themselves for their new surroundings—this is what we offer these young peasant girls who come to America confidently expecting better things than they have left behind.