Protective Work
Miss Frances Kellor was one of the leading American women, outside the settlements, to take hold of the protective work for immigrants. After studying for some time the destinations of immigrants, and organizing workers to do follow-up work among foreign women, she became head of the New York Bureau of Industries and Immigration. Miss Kellor has accomplished many definite results in her work for immigrants, notably their better treatment at the hands of employment agents. She has written much that is pointed on the subject of assimilation and some of the problems involved.
Miss Kellor is also actively directing the work of the North American Civic League for Immigrants which was formed to teach law and order to immigrants, on the one hand, while it also protects them as far as it can from swindlers. This League is an organization of men and women with branches in seaboard cities where women are among the number of special agents who meet steamers and aid immigrants, especially women, in various ways. Mrs. Rudolph Blankenburg of Philadelphia has been greatly interested in the work of the League and she secured the coöperation, for the Philadelphia branch, of women’s aid societies and various civic bodies.
In Providence, Rhode Island, Mrs. E. Haight, the headworker of Sprague House, whose neighbors are largely Italians, has arranged for the North American Civic League for Immigrants to conduct an information bureau and English class, and is also working out a plan for boys’ work there. There are over 40,000 Italians in this colony and no other provision for even a modicum of assimilation of the foreign element into American life.
The New York-New Jersey Committee of the League was organized in 1909 for the purpose of developing permanent city, state, and federal policies regarding conditions created by immigration. Experiments have been tried since then and as soon as a successful policy of meeting conditions has been demonstrated, some private enterprise, or the city, state or federal government, has been urged to pursue the same policy. The necessity of definite systems of protection, education, distribution, and assimilation has been continually urged by the League upon public authorities.
The women of the League have experimented in the field of education, first in Buffalo and later in other cities. In these cities, hundreds of foreign-born housewives have been taught domestic science in their own homes. They have been taken to markets and taught to buy wisely; young members of the family have been reached as well as the mother. Domestic education among the foreign women has thus supplemented the work of the schools in such a way as to secure the coöperation of parents and teachers in the nurture and protection of their children in the new country. In order to avoid the stigma of charity, women promoters of this domestic education have been asking Boards of Education to assume responsibility for the same.
Begun in Buffalo, domestic education has now extended to New York and Rochester; to Mineville, a mining community of 3,000; to Barren Island, New Jersey, an industrial community of 1,400; a canners’ camp at Albion, New York; and an aqueduct labor camp at Valhalla. Three distinct types of cities and four distinct types of isolated communities were thus tried and the results, it is felt, amply justify the expenditure of time and effort.
The North American Civic League for Immigrants supported for some time in Rochester a Bureau of Information and Protection for Foreigners, which was the creation originally of Florence Cross (now Mrs. Kitchelt), a social worker among the Italians there. Miss Cross explained the need of this bureau in this way:
“There are in Rochester a large number of foreign-born inhabitants who are ignorant of our civic institutions, ignorant of the laws of sanitation and hygiene, ignorant of the protection offered them by our laws and our various philanthropic institutions. Except through the influence of their children in the schools, many of these adult foreigners have little opportunity to understand those municipal activities which are intended to help rather than to punish. Many of them know nothing of the Public Health Association, the Legal Aid Protection Committee, the Provident Loan Association, the evening schools and similar well-established agencies for reaching just such needs as theirs.
“Therefore this bureau was established on a modest scale as a clearing house to bring inquirers to the people who can assist them. The rooms are open every afternoon and evening, where foreigners who are in any kind of trouble or perplexity may come for advice. During four months when the bureau was first opened, the callers averaged 71 per day.”
This bureau received reports from the New York office of the Civic League for Immigrants about all newly arrived immigrant children whose destination was Rochester. The children were located on their arrival and their names sent to the School Census Board. Among these, a number of cases of child labor have been found and reported. Several positions for men out of work have also been found. Leaflets on tuberculosis have been distributed and cases, when discovered, sent to the proper authorities. A pure milk station has been maintained at the bureau and its other activities have included the preparation of Italian dances for the National Playground Congress; a series of articles contributed to the Italian press on living standards, health, duties of citizens, school laws, savings banks, honest elections and similar topics; and a suggestion made to the City Club, which was adopted, that a Fourth of July banquet be tendered the newly naturalized citizens of Rochester.
The Rochester Bureau came most prominently before the public during the directorship of Miss Cross while a strike of Italian laborers was going on in Rochester. The story of this strike illustrates fundamental elements in the work of assimilation. The Italian laborers’ union some nine years previously had succeeded in getting a wage increase. The increased cost of living in the meantime had made their wage inadequate for a decent standard of living, so the union gave contractors a six months’ notice of its demand for a second increase. The demand was ignored and the strike commenced. Mr. Kitchelt thus relates the story:
Newspapers began their campaign then. Those who had blamed the Italians for their low standard of living now criticized them for trying to improve it by the only means in their power. The chief of police held a conference with the contractors, and groups of strikers were attacked by the police.
Some men were shot and others arrested. The cases of the latter were twice postponed in spite of their desire for a speedy trial and they were finally discharged for lack of evidence. The strikers appealed to the mayor to try to effect a settlement and several conferences were held in his office. But he was himself a contractor and the results were not apparent. Arbitration through Italian lawyers was tried but with no success.
In this extremity some of the strikers’ executive board turned to the Bureau for help. Miss Cross called together a committee of prominent citizens and had the men tell them their story. It was shown that the wages of the laborers averaged $6.50 a week, an amount inadequate to maintain a family in health and strength; that the city was being injured by a continually lowering standard of living; that the injection into the community of irresponsible strike-breakers was a menace to the public peace and welfare.
The newspapers were induced to print the truth about the strikers. Public sentiment gradually changed in favor of the workmen. Petitions from residents and shop-keepers along the torn-up streets were laid before the mayor. After a strike of four weeks, the contractors consented to a conference which resulted in an immediate increase of one cent an hour and an agreement to arbitrate the wage scale before the next season’s contracts were entered into.
Among the various national associations which aid the immigrant directly and indirectly is the Council of Jewish Women, organized primarily to aid Jewish immigrants to adapt themselves to American conditions of life and labor. It has sections in all the larger cities and towns, with a central system of organization whereby rapid coöperation is secured among the sections in times of need.
The Council of Jewish Women seeks, through the promotion of better housing, labor conditions, recreation, education, health conditions, vocational guidance, travelers’ aid, probation and other protective work and institutional care, to throw about Jewish women those safeguards which will make of them creditable citizens in as short a time as possible and prevent their becoming the public burdens, delinquents, insane, and paupers which modern competitive labor conditions all too readily tend to make of them.
The real test of the sincere desire of Jew and Gentile to live together in helpful coöperation is demonstrated by the mutual appreciation which the Council of Jewish Women and the Federation of Women’s Clubs show for each other’s social services. The National Child Labor Committee, the Consumers’ League, legislative committees, and charitable organizations all testify to the helpfulness and efficiency of the Council of Jewish Women.
Like the Y. W. C. A., the Council of Jewish Women is a religious organization but owing to its peculiar relation to the problem of immigration it is forced to take a more decided position on the fundamental labor question than the former organization.
At the Sixth Triennial Convention of the Council, Miss Sadie American made a statement which indicates the serious spirit of this organization as far as the white slave traffic is concerned:
This brings me to the subject of the White Slave Traffic, upon which Resolutions were passed by your Executive Committee and sent to your Sections (which in response sent many letters praising the action), which Resolution instructed your officers to do their utmost to combat this traffic, especially to combat against such Jews as might be in it. It was in pursuance of this Resolution and the urgent invitation of the English Society for the Protection of Girls and Women, of which Mr. Claude Montefiore is the President, that I was sent to represent you to the Jewish White Slave Traffic Conference in London and to the International White Slave Traffic Conference in Madrid, and I believe that in this act alone the Council of Jewish Women justified its existence. It is impossible in a meeting such as this to go into details.
The English Association had expected only nine or ten people. There were twenty-eight delegates from nine countries, and an attendance from England that was surprising. These delegates were men and women of highest importance not only in philanthropic but in the financial and larger social world of Europe. Does not this prove the importance of the subject?
The men of America have not yet waked up on this subject. Jewish men, unless they leave a call for themselves, are going to be waked up in a way they will not like.
I take credit to the Council of Jewish Women that it has fearlessly taken a stand on this matter, as it is the duty of Jewish women to do what they can to protect the good name of the Jewess.
To go to those meetings and to listen was horror enough in itself, to realize that the things there told were true is increased horror, to see the victims is horror still more horrible, and only those who have given days and nights to this subject can know its full meaning.
When I was sent to England I thought that I had some information. I learned many things I would prefer not to have had the duty of knowing.
It had been left to my discretion whether it would be worth while to go to Madrid, but this decision was practically taken out of my hands in London when, upon talking with the European men and women who had attended other international conferences, I became convinced there could be no doubt as to its being a duty to go.
It is a matter of surprise to the leading Jewish men in Europe who are so actively interested in this matter to find that the Council of Jewish Women has stood alone for so long in this work, that the Council of Jewish Women was the only one of the organizations of Jews in the United States which thought the matter of sufficient importance to send a delegate to confer with those of Europe on the subject.