TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
The material for the following studies was collected by four persons. The final chapter, which deals with the Italian girl of the West Side, was prepared by one of the group working independently. This course was necessary, as the Italian girl’s life is inseparable from that of her family and the only approach to her is by way of her own home. One could not know the Italian girl of the West Side without knowing also her father, her mother, and her numerous brothers and sisters, if not, indeed, a great many of her relatives. The other three workers, including the writer, joined in the management of a small house which was used as a recreation center and club house. They also collaborated in keeping a daily journal, to which reference is made in the following pages.
It was our wish especially to gain some knowledge of the type of girl who is seen so frequently at the street corners and who refuses to be attracted to agencies which frankly declare a desire to improve her. The club, therefore, adopted an open-door policy and the leaders tried to refrain from obvious attempts to influence or control the girls who came. The aim was to encourage sincerity among them, and to prevent their “playing up” to superimposed standards “for what there was in it.” Not that we thought that these girls were especially inclined to practice fraud; but we knew from experience that work with too obvious a purpose “to do good” often encourages hypocrisy.
One of our reasons for opening the Tenth Avenue club for girls was that we had found it impossible to be on an intimate footing with them in their homes. The atmosphere of family life was far too often one of mutual reproach and recrimination, and the visitor was likely to find herself in the embarrassing position of a court of appeals. Picture an evening spent in the company of the two Katie Murphys, mother and daughter, thus: Mrs. Murphy, sitting with folded arms in the rocking-chair, rehearses the story of Katie’s sins. Katie leans against the back of the sofa with dropped eyelids and a face as expressionless as putty. All the efforts of the involuntary court of appeals to induce the girl to say a word in her own behalf are met by stony silence. Meanwhile, the mother runs on, zealously driving nails in her own coffin as far as the girl’s affection and confidence are concerned. Harassed by the problem of feeding, clothing, and housing six children on $8.00 a week, Mrs. Murphy has little strength or imagination left for the subtler problem of how to handle an adolescent daughter.
It was such experiences that taught us the necessity of providing some neutral ground on which to meet Katie Murphy, if we were to secure her confidence. This neutral ground took the form of club rooms where we established ourselves with the definite intention of giving Katie the just due of her youth,—a good time.
We continued, however, to visit the families of girls in the course of the investigation, collecting thereby material for the observations on home life contained in the following chapters. The girls themselves welcomed our visits even though they must have realized in a vague way that we were keeping “tab” on conditions in the homes from which our club members came. One day May Sipp,[63] a new girl, came to one of the club leaders and said, “Miss ——, will you come to my house tomorrow?” The leader thought that perhaps a party was being planned and asked for further details. “Why, no one has been to my house yet and I’d like to have you come,” the girl explained. It was evident that she felt a little put out because her home had not as yet been visited.
It was the middle of December when we first opened for the girls in the neighborhood the house which we had taken for the purpose. The place received no more colorful name than the number on the door, “471,” by which it was designated during the whole time we occupied it. “471” was a red brick structure consisting of three stories and a basement. It was rather a friendly looking house with a “stoop” and the remnants of front and back yards; that is, there was a small area in front guarded by a low iron fence with a gate, and a square box in the rear which became a “playground” in summer. A supervisor from Christ Presbyterian Church was placed in charge of the latter, and the children crowded into the little box in such numbers that we soon had complaints from the neighbors against the shrill chorus rising from the back yard.