It may be that in some cases the employee is able to secure at the company store as good articles as he can obtain elsewhere and for the same prices, but this is by no means common. In West Virginia it was found necessary to enact legislation forbidding a company which ran a store to charge its own employees higher prices than the employees of other companies were charged.[34] The Immigration Commission found not only that in some cases the stock was inferior and the prices high, but that there was a sense of compulsion that made it almost impossible to adjust income and needs.
It is hardly necessary to point out that the supply of housing accommodations by the employer has the same influence as the supply of food and clothing. The power as employer may be, and often is, exerted to fix the conditions under which the family life goes on; and the tenant is deprived of the experience of selecting, of choosing, of balancing what one gives with what one gets.[35]
A similar objection may be raised to payment of wages by check. In the old days, before the world went dry, one service the saloon was frequently called on to render was that of cashing checks. Either payment in "lawful money" or an opportunity to exchange at once for lawful money is the only method of paying wages that gives the housewife her full opportunity.
SHOPPING HABITS
The immigrant housewife is restricted by her ignorance of places and methods of marketing, and so feels the necessity of buying in the immigrant neighborhood. Among the 90 Chicago families from whom schedules were obtained, representing Bohemian, Croatian, Italian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, and Ukrainian groups, 72 purchased all their food in the neighborhood stores, 2 kept their own stores, and only 16 were seeking bargains in other localities. Among these 16, 5 were going to larger business centers near their neighborhood, 4 bought in downtown department stores, 1 used a mail-order house, 1 went to a well-established "cash and carry" store, 2 bought in the wholesale markets, and only 2 took advantage of the co-operative association of their own group.
The 72 families who were marketing exclusively in their own neighborhoods were patronizing for the most part stores owned by foreign-speaking people or those employing foreign-born salesmen to attract the housewives of particular groups. A Croatian woman says that when she tries to do her marketing downtown she sees many new things and would like to ask what they are used for, but she does not know how to ask. In her neighborhood store the grocer can easily explain to her. One Polish woman reads the advertisements in the papers and buys where there is a sale. She thinks that an alleged Polish co-operative is expensive and prefers the large department stores, but for the first few years she bought everything in her neighborhood where the clerks speak Polish.
The prevalence of the immigrant store may be illustrated by a detailed study that was made of the Sixteenth Ward in Chicago. The population of the ward is predominantly Polish, with an intermingling of Jewish, German, and Slovak in the southern portion. In the twenty-five blocks there are 113 retail stores, 44 of which are grocery and delicatessen stores, meat markets, and bakeries. In one block there are 5 grocery and delicatessen stores, and at least 1 in every block which has any stores. Most of these shops are small and crowded, with family living rooms in the rear. For the most part, the nationality of the proprietor is that of the majority in the block, and there are only 14 proprietors of all the 113 stores who are not Polish.
The difficulty with the language, however, extends beyond merely talking in the store. A Ukrainian mother, who admits being afraid to go beyond her own neighborhood, is perhaps typical of many foreign-born mothers to whom a trip to the central shopping district is a strange and terrifying adventure.
There is also the question of the means with which to buy. An Italian mother says that she buys at the chain store when she has the cash, and at other times in the Italian stores where, although the prices are higher, she can run a charge account. The system of buying on credit at the local store is spoken of as practically universal in all the foreign-born groups. The purchaser carries a small blank book, in which the merchant enters in large figures merely the sum charged, with no indication of what was bought or the amount. The account is settled on pay day by the man of the family. There is, of course, every chance for inaccurate entry. It is not surprising, then, that one hears from many sources that buying food is generally extravagant.
Women often do the buying. Whether or not it is the more common among foreign-born families than among native born for the children to be sent to the store, we cannot say. Since the marketing is done so largely in immigrant stores, there is perhaps not the need for an English-speaking member of the family to do the purchasing. We find among 89, 43 mothers who still do all their own buying, 32 who allow the children to do part, 4 who share the task with the father, and only 10 who never do any of the buying. In this last group of 10 families there are 7 in which the children do all the marketing and 3 in which it is done by the father.