The food served to pantry workers was much better and they could eat salads and fruit if they cared to. They ate on the job, however, and often had no time to eat their lunches. Waitresses in some hotels ate the same grade of food as maids and kitchen help, but they “picked up” extra food on the side.
Lodging
The lodging furnished women in large hotels was confined to bed space in a dormitory except in a few instances. The bedrooms varied in size, but were everywhere overcrowded. There were from two to ten girls in a room in most hotels. Cots were placed side by side and the only ventilation came from windows at the far end of the room. The rooms were often overheated and ill-ventilated. Several rooms opened on air shafts. In one hotel there were three occupants in a room with one window opening on a narrow airshaft. The air was “vicious” and it was so dark that an electric light was needed to see at noon.
In one hotel a worker, when shown to her room, was told, “This is an awful nice room, not many people in it.” It was a room 10 × 20 feet, with six beds, two dressers, no chairs and a row of lockers. There were two small windows at one end of the room. “There are twice as many girls in the room next door,” said the guide. A room in a large metropolitan hotel, 18 feet long, 15 feet wide and 10 feet high, housed eight girls. They slept in double-decker beds. There were two large windows and when the weather was hot enough so everyone was willing to have the windows open, the air was reasonably good. But when it was cold and some one of the eight girls wanted the windows closed, the air in the morning was frightful. Three dressers stood in a curtained space on one side of the room under which the clothes of the eight girls hung together. There was one straight chair apiece. The room was steam-heated, with an electric light hanging from the ceiling. When the girls who slept in the lower berths wanted to read they had to stick their heads out, as the upper berths took away the light. As the girls living in the room worked different shifts, there was always some one asleep, which meant that the rest must keep quiet. A girl coming in at midnight after a night watch had to undress in the dark. One of the maids said, “This room is one of the pleasantest in the house.”
In the smaller hotels dormitory rooms were less frequent. In one hotel two girls slept in double decker beds in an 8 × 10 room. In one hotel only were single rooms found, but this hotel had just begun to room its maids and had not yet filled the rooms with two beds apiece.
Beds had adequate linen which was usually clean, though often ragged. Towels and soap were furnished by the hotel in every case. In the larger hotels a maid cared for the rooms and made the beds. In the smaller hotels this was done by the workers, and bedrooms were very carelessly kept. There was an adequate number of baths and toilets in the largest, modern hotels of New York City, although they were often ill-kept and dirty. In the small hotels in New York City and in the hotels of the other cities of the State an inadequate number of baths and toilets were found and the plumbing was poor. Baths were ill-kept and often the hot and cold water faucets were out of order. In some hotels maids were expected to use guests’ toilets and showers at odd hours.
Laundry facilities were inadequate except in the largest New York hotels. Maids washed their clothes at night and hung them in their rooms to dry. The damp and unhealthful atmosphere in a bedroom in which wet clothes are hanging can be imagined. In some cases an iron could be secured from the linen room. In others, maids bought their own irons which they attached to electric lights in their rooms. In several hotels maids were required to wash their own uniforms under these conditions and often they washed clothes for the guests.
In no hotel in which the investigators worked was there a room in which women workers could receive guests. For social life they were forced outside the hotel to the streets. In only one hotel was there a telephone in the employees’ quarters. Three hotels had rest rooms for women workers with comfortable chairs and tables. Two had victrolas and one had a piano in its rest room. No books or magazines were ever found. In the majority of hotels there was not a comfortable chair which women workers living-in could use while off duty. They spent their recreation hours talking on trunks in the halls or lying on the beds in their rooms.