In Chicago alone there are about 306 licensed dance halls and nearly 100 unlicensed. Among these, "one condition is general: most of the dance halls exist for the sale of liquor, not for the purpose of dancing, which is only of secondary importance. A saloon opened into each of 190 halls, and liquor was sold in 240 out of 328. In the others—except in rare instances—return checks were given to facilitate the use of neighboring saloons. At the halls where liquor was sold practically all the boys showed signs of intoxication by one o'clock" (l. c., p. 385: Louise de Koven Bowen).
And just as women who have toiled hard all day long, crave some strong excitement such as can only be afforded by the dance hall or a similar place, so men in the same circumstances naturally turn to the saloon. It is in the cheerfully lighted, comfortably heated gin-shop, in the temporary stimulus of liquor, that insufficient food, unhealthful surroundings at home and at work, a cold, uninviting house are forgotten. It is often said that workmen would have enough to live on comfortably if they did not squander their wages in drink, and that to raise their pay would only be to increase the profits of saloon-keepers. In some cases this may be true. But in the vast majority, it is probable that to increase their power of getting the comforts at home that they find in the saloon would be to lessen the drink evil, rather than increase it. The marvel is not that laborers who come home day after day from hard, long toil to poor food, cold rooms, a generally comfortless home should seek out the gin-palace, but that they drink as little as they do.
These are some of the indirect, though important, moral results of economic conditions. Oftentimes the direct influences of a person's occupation also make for evil. The messenger boy, for instance, on the streets at all hours and in all sections, can hardly fail to see and hear much that no parent would want a child of fourteen, sixteen, or eighteen to know. Indeed, a great part of his employment at night comes from those indulging in debauchery, and it is his most profitable source of tips.[89]
From the nature of the case, women are probably more exposed in their work than men. Such occupations as will occur to every one, are manicure parlors where girls are peculiarly exposed to danger and insults. But most important, because employing the largest numbers, are the department stores. It has been charged over and over again, that many employers knowingly pay wages that are insufficient to support a girl in the expectation that she will be subsidized by some "gentleman friend."
How far this is true is hard to say; and it is just as difficult to determine how many department-store employees are really immoral. The report of the United States Bureau of Labor on "Wage-Earning Women and Children" combats the idea that immorality among them is widespread. Nevertheless, there is a strong opinion that store girls are not all they should be, and many careful observers have enumerated quite a startling array of individual instances where a girl's fall can be largely traced to her employment as a sales-woman.
An investigator for the Chicago Vice Commission, for instance, gives in the report of that body quite a number of cases which are said to be typical. "Violet works in a department store, salary $5.00 per week. Was seduced and left home. Baby died and she solicits on the side to support herself.... Mag 18 years old. Works in department store. Salary $5.50 per week. Tells parents she receives more. Helps support parents and 'solicits' at dances for spending money. Father is sickly.... Marcella (X913), alias Tantine (X904). Came to (X905) about three years ago, and started to work in the (X916) department store. One of the managers insisted on taking her out, which she finally had to do 'to hold her job,' as she asserts" (pp. 187, 195).
Miss Elizabeth Butler, investigating for the Pittsburgh Survey, reports the same thing in that city. "Vera ——" she says, "is twenty years old. Four years ago she was employed as a salesgirl at $3.50 a week. After a year she left for another store where she was employed as a cashier at a salary of $10.00 a week, for making concessions to her employer. After two years she left the store for a house of prostitution.... Jennie —— came to Pittsburgh from Akron, Ohio. She had no friends in the city and was obliged to be self-supporting. She obtained a position at $6.00 a week as a sales-woman. After five months in the store she consented to be kept in an apartment in the East End. She still keeps her position in the store.... A girl whose father was killed by an electric crane was the only one of the family old enough to work. Forced by financial needs to accept a wage fixed by custom at a point below her own cost of subsistence, much more below the cost of helping to maintain a family of dependents, she drifted into occasional prostitution."[90]
These are only particular instances, it is true, and one must not generalize too widely. But there is undoubtedly considerable foundation for the charge so often made and so firmly fixed in the public mind. And if many of the girls exposed to such dangers have hitherto remained pure, we must thank the sterling characters inherited from those raised under different conditions, not conclude that the system needs no improvement.
All these and certain less tangible economic influences making for evil have been well summarized by the Minneapolis Vice Commission. It points out that the advent of great numbers of young girls into industry has produced conditions that lead to the blasting of thousands of lives yearly. "The chance for the making of promiscuous male acquaintances, the close association of the sexes in employment, the necessary contact with the general public, the new and distorted view of life which such an environment compels, taken with the low wage scale prevailing in so many callings and affecting so many individuals, combine to create a situation that must inevitably weaken the moral stamina and lead to the undoing of many. The fault is plainly not so much in the individual; it is rather the results of the industrial system. The remedy lies in large part in the reforming of the system" (Report, 1911, p. 126).