The house on Henry Street

by Lillian D. Wald

When work is carried on in the home all the members of the family can be and are utilized without regard to age or the restrictions of the factory laws. One Thanksgiving Day I carried an offering from prosperous children of my acquaintance to a little child on Water Street whose absence from the kindergarten had been reported on account of illness. He had chicken-pox, and I found him, with flushed face, sitting on a little stool, working on knee pants with other members of the family. They interrupted their industry long enough to drag the concertina from under the bed and to join in singing Italian songs for my entertainment, but the father shrugged his shoulders in dissent from my protest against the continuance of the work.

Examination of the school attendance of children who do home work bears testimony to its relation to truancy. Josephine, eleven years of age, stays out of school to work on finishing; Francesca, aged twelve, to sew buttons on coats; Santa, nine years old, to pick out nut meats; Catherine, eight years old, sews on tags; Tiffy, another eight-year-old, helps her mother finish; Giuseppe, aged ten, is a deft worker on artificial flowers.

It is painful to recall the R⸺ family, who lived in a basement, all of the children engaged in making paper bags which the mother sold to the small dealers. Something, we know not what, impelled one of the five children to come for help to the nurse in the First Aid Room at the settlement. His head showed evidence of neglect, and when our nurse inquired of him how it had escaped the school medical inspection, the fact was disclosed that he had never been in school. Immediate inquiry on our part revealed the basement sweatshop and the fact that none of the children, all of whom had been born in America, had ever been to school. When the mother was questioned, she answered that she did not like to ask for more aid than she was already receiving from the relief society, and when we reproved the other children in the tenement for not having drawn our attention to their little neighbors, they answered that they themselves had not known of the existence of the R⸺ children because “they never came out to play.” The stupidity of the mother and the circumstances of the family have continually tested the endurance of their well-meaning friends; nevertheless, at this writing the eldest boy is in high school and supporting himself by work outside school hours at a subway news-stand.

What I have written thus far has been in large measure confined to the lower East Side of New York; but it may not be amiss to remind the reader that through the nursing service and other organized work our contact with the tenement home workers extends over the two boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx. The settlement has never made a scientific study of work done in the homes, but our information regarding it is continuous and current. This cumulative knowledge is probably the more valuable because it is obtained incidentally and naturally, and not as the result of a special investigation, which, however fair and impartial, must be somewhat affected by the consciousness of its purpose.

In 1899 a law was passed in New York State licensing individual workers in the tenements for certain trades. In 1904 this law was superseded, primarily at the instigation of the settlement, by one licensing the entire tenement house, thus making the owner of the house responsible. In 1913 a law recommended by the New York State Factory Investigating Commission was passed by the legislature; this law brought under its jurisdiction all articles manufactured in the tenements, prohibited entirely the home manufacture of food articles, dolls or dolls’ clothing, children’s or infants’ wearing apparel, and forbade the employment of children under fourteen on any articles made in tenements.

All our experience points to the conclusion that it is impossible to control manufacture in the tenements. Restrictive legislation (such as the law forbidding the employment of children under fourteen) is practically impossible of enforcement, for it is a delusion to suppose that any human agency can find out what manufactures are going on in tenement-house homes. The inspectors become known in the various neighborhoods; and at their approach the word is passed along, and garments on which women are working may be hidden, or the work taken from children’s hands. The more painstaking and conscientious the attempts at enforcement, the more secretive the workers become, and one is forced to the conclusion that the only practical remedy is to prohibit this parasitic form of industry outright. More of the men in these families would go to work if it were not so easy to employ the women and children; and many of the women would be able to work regular hours in establishments suitably constructed for manufacturing purposes and under state inspection and supervision. During the period of transition, suffering will doubtless come to some families whose poor living has been maintained by this form of industry, and relief measures must carry them over the time of adjustment. Most families working at home are already receiving aid from societies, which thus indirectly help to support the parasitic trade.

In 1913, 41,507 children of Greater New York secured working papers. But the record for 1914 shows a decrease of about 10,000 in the applications for papers, and consequently so many more children in school, because of the amended statute which raised the minimum educational requirement. A public sentiment which keeps boys and girls longer in school emphasizes the need of more educational facilities adapted to industrial pursuits. The children least promising in book studies may often become adepts in manual work, and respond readily to instruction that calls for exercise of the motor energies. The armies of children who go to work immature, unprepared, uneducated in essentials, with no more than a superficial precocity, are likely to be thrown upon the scrap-heap of the unskilled early in life, and yet many of these have potentialities of skill and efficiency.

It is not surprising that with increasing knowledge of the children’s condition plans for their guidance, training, and reasonable employment should have made advance in the last decade. The settlement is now interested in promoting an inquiry for New York City that should lead to the establishment of a juvenile bureau intended to combine vocational guidance and industrial supervision,—a bureau associated with an educational system and dissociated from the free employment exchanges which as yet do not inquire into the character of employment offered.