Diagram 2.—Nationality of Women Restaurant Workers.
Nationality.
The majority of restaurant workers are foreigners. Less than one-third are American-born, and of these a great many have foreign-born parents and live among members of their own race, so that they can hardly be classed as Americans. The largest single group is made up of Austro-Hungarians. ([See Diagram 2]). The demand for cheap, unskilled labor in this occupation calls for the kind of service which these girls and others of the European peasant class can give. The outdoor life in the fields of their native land fits them for the hard labor required in a restaurant kitchen. They do not remain fit long, however. After a year or two of this work, much of their sturdiness is lost, color and brightness are gone from their faces, and they have become pale and listless. A curiously dull, passive look is characteristic of many of them.
Living as they do among their own people these young peasants have no opportunity to absorb American standards and customs. Their ignorance makes it easy for employers to exploit them, demanding hours of labor and paying wages to which no American girl would submit. An employment agent said: “My ’phone rings day and night—all want peasant girls for kitchen helpers because they are the only kind that will stand such long hours.” Attempts to organize restaurant workers in New York State have never succeeded. The Secretary of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees’ International Alliance, speaking of their unsuccessful efforts along this line in New York City in 1915, says, “This is not the first attempt to organize the girls. We have had a similar experience before,—in fact have had three experiences in that city and none of them a bit more encouraging than the present one.” This is largely due to the presence of so great a number of young foreign girls in this occupation. They are not in a position to unite and work for their own protection. The only channel through which that protection can come is the law.
Diagram 3.—Living Condition of Women Employed in Restaurants.
Diagram 4.—Marital Condition of Women Employed in Restaurants.
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.