Photograph by Burke & Atwell. Courtesy of The Survey
Immigrant Girls Coming to Work in the Early Morning at the Union Stockyards
Photograph by Townsend. Courtesy of The Survey
Polish Girls Washing Dishes under the Sidewalk in a Chicago Restaurant. The only Light is Artificial
IMMIGRANT WOMEN DOING MEN'S WORK
While millions of women are being drawn from the home into industry, the popular ideal of womanhood serves as a precious safeguard, turning them away from coarsening occupations which might rob them of health or youth or refinement. But this ideal, which is higher among the American working-men than among the workers of any other people, is menaced by the new immigrants, with their peasant notions of womanhood. The Slavs and the Italians are not in the least queasy about putting their women into heavy and dirty work, such as core-making, glass-grinding, and hide-scraping, which self-respecting American girls will not touch. The employer realizes this, and continually tries these women in male occupations, with the object of substituting them for men, beating down men's wages or breaking a men's strike. Engaging in such masculine work not only prevents immigrant women from rising to the American woman's sense of self-respect, but it hinders their men from developing the American man's spirit of chivalry. What is more, the extension of woman's sphere on the wrong side underlines the native standard of womanliness, so that native girls are perhaps being drawn into work that denies them refinement and romance.