These statements concerning employment and employment agencies in general have been repeated here because they bear upon the specific problem of the woman worker whose adjustment to present industrial conditions is so difficult. The difficulties of this problem may be illustrated by a brief history of the effort to meet it that is being made in Cincinnati.
In the year 1907, Mr. J. G. Schmidlapp, of Cincinnati, in memory of his daughter Charlotte, placed in the hands of The Union Savings Bank & Trust Company securities amounting to something over $250,000, saying that he wished the income to be used for the benefit of wage-earning girls, to increase their efficiency and power of self-support. It had seemed an easy matter “to help girls” before money for that purpose was available, but with abundant funds in hand, to decide just what to do proved a hard problem. Letters poured in from young women all over the country, until the board of trustees finally decided to restrict the use of the fund to individual young women needing financial assistance to complete their education. Even after the beneficiaries were limited to Hamilton County, the task of selecting them from the applicants was no easy one.
Accordingly the trustees were asked what they intended to do about the girls to whom assistance must be refused. When they replied that for these girls the fund was not responsible, the following facts were brought to their attention: First, we cannot intelligently assist in educating young women without a more accurate knowledge of just what lines of work will be open to them when their education is completed. Second, the number of girls who come to the office of the Schmidlapp Fund for advice, for information concerning work and for employment itself, almost equals the number who wish financial assistance. Third, the applicant who applies to be made more fit in her present industrial work cannot be assisted because there is no adequate provision in Cincinnati for industrial training for girls. Fourth, it is not at all improbable that the Schmidlapp Fund will train a young woman for a certain line of employment, only to find out later that the same employment brings to the beneficiary neither health, reasonable remuneration, nor mental development. Such a mistake will be due to lack of knowledge. Fifth, a wise expenditure for training individual girls cannot be made, and a positive waste in expenditure cannot be prevented without more definite knowledge concerning the self-supporting life of young women. The board of trustees acknowledged the seeming consistency of these statements and gave consent to a further development of these ideas.
Within a radius of a mile of the Schmidlapp Fund’s office are at least a dozen centers, to some of which for more than twenty years young women have been going to look for work. One would naturally turn to these bureaus for a few simple facts regarding the industrial life of young women in Cincinnati. Perhaps they could advise the Schmidlapp Fund as to the first step to take toward educating self-supporting young women. Perhaps they could give some information concerning the occupations in which women were engaged, not only as to numbers employed but also as to remuneration, chances for advancement, effect on health, and general advantages. Because of their unusual opportunity for coming into contact with practical shop life, they might be able to state in what way girls could be trained for any special occupation. They might be able to tell why a girl had changed her occupation a half dozen times within two years, whether it was her inefficiency or the irregular, seasonal character of the work. Such information would be a guide as to whether it was best to hold the girl to ordinary school life for a longer period, or to try to overcome her inefficiency by a different course of education. These bureaus had placed hundreds of girls, and had had constant intercourse with many more. Yet not a single bureau, even the one on which the state expended $2,500 annually, could give any definite or helpful information. There proved to be a total lack of records, of systematic knowledge concerning the applicant and the job, and even of intelligent interest in the girl’s industrial career. Here was a rich opportunity wholly lost. The Schmidlapp Fund found the most reliable way to gain the desired information to be through a bureau of its own. By this time, Mr. Schmidlapp had become so keenly interested that he decided to finance such a bureau without encroaching upon the Charlotte R. Schmidlapp Fund, which could still be used for individual girls. The bank, which Mr. Schmidlapp had made trustee of the fund and of which he had been the first president, offered to house the bureau and to allow the work to enjoy its prestige. Consequently there now appears on the door of the trust department the following sign:
The Schmidlapp Bureau for Women and Girls
Free Employment Department
Vocation Department
The Charlotte R. Schmidlapp Fund
We are beginning to attempt to do the things which ought to have been done for us twenty years ago. In the words of the annual report:
This Bureau will be based on the work of the Vocation Bureau in Boston, the Alliance Employment Bureau in New York, and on the work of Mrs. Ogilvie Gordon, of Scotland. It will have a close affiliation with all the social centers in Cincinnati, will be confined to work for women and girls, and its general scope and usefulness cannot be better formulated than in Mrs. Gordon’s Handbook of Employment and in a report of the Alliance Employment Bureau:
1st. By well-planned education and congenial employment to bring as favorable influences as possible to bear upon upgrowing girls. If the first few working years of the girl can be spent industrially and to a good purpose, the parents and public may have confidence in the future of the women.
2d. To form a center of industrial information and a connecting link between school training and trade requirements, thus aiding in the development of industrial education.
3d. To make a constructive study of the facts involved in the problem of employment.