There is, for example, among its "commissions," an Emigration Commission for aiding immigrants, which is charged with the duty of framing rules for the proper supervision of homes established for the care of newcomers. Under this Commission the Alliance has maintained immigrant aid stations in New York, Baltimore, and Boston. In New York there is a home in which immigrant girls and women arriving alone may be accommodated until relatives can be located.
The Chicago office co-operates with the offices at the ports of entry in securing information about relatives of Alliance members, and in case of special necessity arranges to have immigrants destined for Chicago met at the station. As relatives are supposed to be notified of the expected arrival before the women leave New York, the Chicago office has done little in this direction. The need for such services, however, has been made clear in the Annual Reports of the Immigrants' Protective League, showing the numbers of unattended Polish girls coming to Chicago to be much larger than the number in any other national group.
The Polish National Alliance has been carrying on a number of projects, both for the Polish people throughout the country and for the local community in Chicago. During the war many forms of work that had been developed for the service of Poles in the United States were laid aside for the more urgent needs of the time, and the funds of this organization were devoted to the support of the Red Cross and of other relief work. When the needs especially arising out of the war have been met and the necessity for sending relief to Poland is no longer urgent, these projects, abandoned for the time, will be taken up again. Polish immigration has for a time ceased. In the opinion of the Poles in Chicago it will be very light for years after the war, so that projects hereafter undertaken will be concerned with the welfare of the community as it has become established in the United States.
POLISH WOMEN'S WORK
There is a Women's Department, directed by a committee of fifteen women members. The central government frames regulations for this department "conformably to the requirements of a given moment." An illustration of its activities can be found in a movement initiated to maintain oversight of the employment of Polish girls and women. A great many Polish girls go into domestic work in private homes and in hotels and restaurants. Because girls from the rural districts in Poland find customs and living conditions here so different the societies have undertaken to study the problem. In order to investigate places of employment the women found they must represent a regularly licensed employment agency. Some delay in securing a license has held up their work, but they plan to establish in the near future a "Polish Women's Employment Agency."
Many cases came to their attention showing the need of protective work and legal aid for workingwomen, so that in 1917 the "Polish Women's Protective League" was organized to provide free legal advice and aid to Polish workingwomen.
The official organ of the Polish National Alliance is a weekly publication, Zgoda. There is a daily, the Dziennik Zwaizkowy, that has a semi-official status. The Women's Department is represented in the official organ by one page of ordinary newspaper size, without illustration. In the daily paper one page each week is devoted to items of especial value to women. Different material is used in the two issues, but both give considerable space to such subjects as household management, the care of children, and problems of health and hygiene.
There is, in fact, a marked development among the Polish, Bohemian, Slovenian, and Lithuanian groups, of a definite division between the men's and the women's departments. This began first in the local lodges as they grew from mere meetings for the payment of dues into something more in the order of a center for the discussion of questions of importance in group or family life, or for action on those questions.
A woman who, more than eighteen years ago, organized one of the first lodges in the Polish National Alliance said that in the lodges of mixed membership women were supposed to have the same rights and privileges as men. As a matter of fact, she said that they had no voice in matters in which they felt their interest as women were especially concerned; the women were always in the minority, and there were very few who would even voice an opinion in the presence of men.
The older women in the community came, therefore, to feel that there were many problems of vital interest and importance for the immigrant woman upon which action would never be taken in the lodge meeting, in which there was a mixed membership. They believed, too, that the meetings of the local lodge might become a real source of help to the newly arrived immigrant women. The women's lodge was therefore formed, and to the first meetings came women who still wore the handkerchiefs over their heads. Some of the more prosperous members protested that they did not want such women as these in the lodge, but the leaders insisted that their purpose in organizing women's lodges had been to reach through them just such women. The leaders felt that women who knew little of American life and customs would gradually acquire that knowledge by coming into the lodge.