The leaven in a great city

by Lillian William Betts

A COOKING CLASS OF MOTHERS AND CHILDREN.

"Oh, mamma! the girls talk nothing but country. I can't go to-day," was the sobbing response.

The girl did not go that summer. There was no room for her until September. By that time the work at the factory had increased and not one girl could be spared. Patiently Annie commented: "It wouldn't be any good if they could spare me. My brother is out of work yet. He's awfully unlucky."

The quiet heroism of thousands of working girls can be appreciated only by those who become familiar with their lives in the natural intercourse of club life. There is, of course, the other type of girl—the girl who insists on spending the major portion, if not all, of her wages for clothes; who assumes no responsibility for the family, and who has conceded to her the right to spend her money for clothes. She would make life most uncomfortable if she were compelled to share what she earned, even when the family live under conditions that make the home merely a place of shelter—conditions that make even decency impossible. The fathers and mothers seemingly have no rights that this type of girl feels she is bound to respect. When such girls marry, the mothers will do the washing for their daughters, hold the menial relation, and neither mother nor daughter questions the justice of the relation. Sometimes the daughter will pay the mother for doing the washing, "to," as she expresses it, "help her mother out." Such families usually cannot be helped through any influence but the evolution that comes through environment and neighborhood development. There is a superficial difference in the social development of such parents and children. The parents concede the higher position to their children, and the children take it as a matter of right.

The wages of skilled workmen enable them to keep their children in school until they are sixteen or seventeen years old, if the children will stay. These fathers can support their families, but not dress them as they desire. The girls go to work for the sole purpose of dressing better than their fathers could dress them. This indulgence creates false standards, and is a serious blot on the American working-man's life. It prevents marriage. Both young men and young women understand that the wages of one cannot buy luxuries for two that the wages used for one bought. The army of clerks on small salaries increase yearly. This class, through association, develop tastes and standards of living that make impossible the establishment of homes on their incomes and at the same time the continued indulgence of developed tastes. No type of family develops less that adds to the wealth and attainment of the country than this type. The children are selfish; they marry; they discover that the wages that bought clothes to suit the extravagance of one is wholly inadequate to support a family. Discouragement, friction, ennui follow, and life becomes a grind, without hope, without inspiration. The second family slips backward, and it is but two generations from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves, with this difference, that the arms covered by the shirt sleeves of the third generation lack the muscles of the first, as the spirit lacks its moral fiber. It is this type of family that keeps alive the most vexing of social problems. The skilled working-man's family, the family of the small salaried men, present the most difficult problems not only in the use of money, but the use of time. Their daughters are often far more helpless than the daughters of men of wealth. During their school days, except in the exceptional home, they are not trained to do housework; do not learn to sew. As soon as school days end, office or store work begins, and then there is no time to learn the household arts. If in these homes the money-saving value of time were taught, independence and freedom impossible in wage-earning would be secured; the standards of life would be the essentials, not the non-essentials, that so often rob life of what is best and most valuable.

Hundreds of girls become wage-earners because they dislike housework. Anything else is preferable. Dean Gill, of Barnard College, New York, in an address recently delivered, said there were three types of college girl: The girl who never could learn any of the arts of home-making. She advised that that girl be allowed to choose a career, and that men make no attempt to interfere with it. The girl who had in her the latent qualities that, if developed, would make her a home-maker. Such a girl it might be wise to keep home for one year between Sophomore and Junior year. And the third girl had the home-making gifts so well developed naturally that no amount of college training would modify them. This classification holds good of the daughters of men earning small salaries, wages, and no wages.

As the Domestic Science department is developed in our public schools, the homes of working men of the better class will benefit by it. This distaste of housework will disappear, because it will have gained a place equal in value to geography and mental arithmetic, and these will have value because a knowledge of them adds to the home-maker's ability.

There are homes of thrift and order where all must be wage-earners; homes where the claims of parents on the wages of children are conceded. There is a bank account, but on this the children have no claim, no matter how much of their wages may have gone into it, or how much educational opportunity they may have lost because its demands have been paramount. When the children marry they establish homes without any or very little help from their parents. They do not expect it. Home, food, clothes have been given them; all claims have been met. They are as free as their parents when they began. Usually there is a gift of a piece of furniture or table linen; but money to start a new bank account is not expected. Without doubt, much of the inability to use money to prepare for future emergencies is due to the fact that financially the new home-makers from these homes are infants in practical experience. The marvel is that they keep homes as well as they do, and meet the future as well as they do without planning to meet it.