July—Looked for work.
The season also has its effect upon workroom conditions. “It’s rush, rush all the time and then nothing to do.” In 62% of the shops investigated the girls worked nine to nine and a half hours daily. A large majority had a working week of fifty to fifty-five hours. In only eight was the week less than fifty hours. In 86% of the shops the day’s work lasted regularly until six o’clock or later—an important fact when the question of evening school work is to be considered. 71% of the girls worked overtime in the busy season. During the overtime season the total hours varied from less than ten up to fifteen a day.
The wages which workers in millinery receive are not such as to compensate them for short seasons and long hours. The average wage is between seven and eight dollars. Considered from the point of view of yearly income, the weekly average of seven or eight dollars is reduced 25 or even 50% by the slack season. A liberal estimate of the average wage, allowing for loss of time, would be five dollars. But the keynote of the wage question in millinery is lack of standard. The workers have no trade union large enough to sign contracts with employers. The only bargain is the individual bargain. If the method of payment is by the piece, “you never know what you are going to get.” As one girl expressed it: “Piece work is bad because you are always fussing about the price. At that French place, they said they’d pay you seventeen cents a hat but at the end of the week you would find they had made it fourteen cents. It was awful. You had the same fight every season over the prices. Instead of giving you what you ought to get they’d say to themselves, ‘We’ll make it $2.50 a dozen, and if they will work for that, all right; if not we can make it $3.’”
A tabulation of wages received in 738 positions held by 201 workers shows what a variation in wages there is in positions called by the same name. The variations are as follows:
Learners: 0 to $5.
Improvers: less than $2 to $8.
Preparers: $2 to $15.
Milliners: $4 to $12 or $15.
Makers: $4 to $9.
Copyists: $4 to $15 or more.
Trimmers: $6 to $25 or more.
Facts such as these have been used in other countries as an argument for the establishment of minimum wage boards in millinery. Public opinion in this country does not yet demand such action.
If these facts about conditions in the millinery trade prove anything they prove that “learning to make hats” is a very different thing from “learning the millinery trade.” The experiences of millinery workers would seem to suggest that in modern times, perhaps even more than in the days when industrial conditions were less complex, apprenticeship must include learning the trade as well as one process in it, if the workers are to be efficient. A milliner who does not know that millinery means machine work and hand work, speed work and careful work, that the seasons are irregular, that the wages are unstandardized, and that conditions are constantly changing, is in no position to become efficient. Such knowledge is part of her job, and it is as necessary that she should understand her various relations to the trade in which she is working as that she should master the technique of the machine that she is operating. Power to adapt to different types of establishments, to varied kinds of work, and to fluctuating seasons, rather than specialization in a particular process, is a practical necessity for the girl who would earn her own living. According to the testimony of both workers and employers she does not get this power in the trade itself; employers have no time for learners, and the girl finds that “learning is nothing but running errands.” According to the same testimony, the schools do not know the trade and do not prepare their pupils to do any one thing well. In order to test the truth of these criticisms, millinery classes were investigated in the course of this study, and their graduates were interviewed.
The visits to these classes were profitable in three ways. They brought out the prevalent ideals in regard to women’s work, the tendencies in the past with respect to methods of teaching trade courses, and the possible questions which need to be considered in plans for the industrial education of girls. Half the group of workers investigated had attended classes where millinery was taught. There were sixty-two of these classes in the city, of which only three aimed specifically to prepare girls for trade. The others gave courses “for home and trade use”; that is, they aimed primarily to teach women to make their own hats, but girls could also enter the class if they wished to prepare for trade.
The three schools which aimed at trade preparation dealt with three different types of girls. One was founded in order to prepare the fourteen-year-old girl who is forced to leave school at the earliest time allowed by law; one would take no girls under sixteen years of age; the third gave training to immigrant girls of any age. They were all alike in that they knew little about their pupils’ previous schooling or their experiences after they went to work. Only one attempted to make any investigation of trade conditions. In regard to methods of instruction, only one sifted its applicants by requiring them to state whether they intended to work at the trade. Only one tried to eliminate the unfit by taking girls on trial. Only one attempted any instruction in trade conditions, and that one found it difficult to give such instruction to the type of girls with whom it was dealing. The aim of this “academic” work was to supply the lack in the general education of the fourteen-year-old girl. To do this, courses in English, arithmetic and civics were given. Civics included “industrial history, cultivation, manufacture, and transportation of materials, citizenship, commerce, philanthropics, history of Manhattan and social ethics.” The time allotted to English, arithmetic and civics was one hour a week for each. The course was six months long. All preparation on these subjects had to be done by the pupils during this one hour in the classroom. The graduates from only one of these schools had anything favorable to say about the work. After visiting the schools and following up the experience of the pupils who had taken courses there, it was easy to understand why the girls thought that it was “altogether different outside.” On the other hand, daily indications of the complexities of the conditions “outside” gave us a sympathetic realization of the size of the task which the schools had undertaken.
As classes in industrial training will ultimately find their way into the public school system, not only is it important to understand the aims and methods of the trade schools, but it is also desirable to know what has already been done in the way of industrial training in the public schools. At the time of this investigation millinery was taught in forty-five evening schools in New York City. Thirty-nine of these were elementary schools. The investigation of these schools was profitable because it threw light upon the function of evening schools, their connection with day schools, their conception of the aim of industrial courses for girls, and finally the effect of these ideals upon the actual formation of a trade class in one evening school.