Christina had grown into a forbidding girl. Her face was so lined and so hard that she looked years older than she was. The childlike effect of her flowing hair and long bangs contrasted oddly with the age and hardness of her features. She might almost have been a middle-aged woman masquerading as a little girl. The truant officer went after her time and again, only to listen to the mother’s repeated complaint. Christina was “out from under” her; she went where she listed. Threats were long since outworn and useless. She had heard them from babyhood. “Aw—they talk but they won’t do nothin’.” Occasionally she would grow frightened and penitent for the moment. But re-enter the ordinary school and sit in the classes with the younger children, she would not.
No course was left but to take the culprit before the superintendent and enter a formal complaint against her. There would then be two plans of action which might be followed: Christina’s mother—her father had died in the meantime—might be fined in the magistrate’s court or Christina might be committed to a reformatory. To fine the mother of a family already on the verge of dependency was manifestly futile. On the other hand, a reformatory sentence for a girl whose only offense was that she refused to go to school seemed much too severe. In the face of this dilemma no action at all was taken. Christina, without working papers, without work, was left to employ her illegal holidays in her own way. Her only chance for positive discipline was that she might soon become a serious offender for whom a reformatory sentence might not be too severe. For girls like Christina the only remedy seems to be that they shall grow worse before they can grow better. Such a roundabout and wasteful course might be obviated if we had a truant school for girls, as we already have for boys, especially planned for their needs.
It is a common occurrence for a girl to escape from school at thirteen or fourteen without open defiance of the labor law. Of our 65 girls, at least nine had left school illegally. Their escape was accomplished by petty frauds of various kinds. One girl gave the school a false address; another altered the date on her birth certificate. Two had been absent for illness and had never returned. Others simply “dropped out” and their defection was not followed up by the school, which with its limited number of attendance officers is bound to neglect many such cases. These are some of the usual loopholes by which the girl evades the school law.
The young refugee does not always find it easy to get her working papers at once. The required record of 130 days’ attendance during the previous year is a serious stumbling block, although it allows for 70 absences out of a possible 200 attendances. In the public schools she has to reach a 5B grade[80] and pass an educational test before the school papers which she must present at the board of health are signed. There the mental test is simpler—a mere proof of ability to read and write. She is tested on two or three primer sentences, such as, “Is my mother in this room?” She is then weighed and measured; and occasionally a child much under average is rejected. Failing in any of the requirements, the girl must wait until she is sixteen, when she may legally go to work without papers. In the meantime she helps at home, or “lives out,” or finds an employer who is willing to connive at her lack of working papers.
These are the girls who evade the law. Those who are obedient to its requirements are scarcely less eager to escape. Almost without exception, the girls of our district step eagerly forth from the school at the earliest possible moment. Not a girl of our clubs had stayed in school longer than the law required or long enough to “graduate” from the eighth grade. To continue in school after you can get your working papers is a sign of over-education and is not popular.
In thus leaving school as soon as the law allows, family need very often plays a part. Sometimes the younger girl has begun to lend a hand during vacations. The Donovans tell how “Sissy” got a job at eleven. It was the summer when both parents were ill and out of work. They still chuckle with appreciation of Sissy’s enterprise. “You’d ought to ha’ seen her. She let down her skirts and done up her hair. She was just a bit o’ a thing—not twelve then. She come out one mornin’ an’ said, ‘Ma, I’m goin’ to go to work’s well as Mame.’ We laughed at ’er but she set out. So that day she come back an’ sure enough she’d got a job in a chewin’ gum fact’ry, wrappin’ packages. There was a graphophone an’ at lunch time all the girls danced. Oh, she had a grand time, be-lieve me. There was a lot o’ little girls whose mothers were poor. When the inspector come, they’d hide Sissy under the table. We most died laughin’ when she brought her first week’s pay—85 cents! Now, what d’ye think about that? She come in here an’ give it t’ me as proud ’s if it had been dollars instead.”
It is not surprising that after a vacation adventure like this Sissy began to lose interest in school. Working in a factory is not all fun, but it brings a measure of independence which the young personality craves beyond all else. It is not always stern need alone which sends the girl out to work at such an early age. Parents may call on her in times of special stress and insist on her returning to school as soon as the pressure is removed. But public opinion among the girls themselves is strong and decided on this point. “I don’t mind studyin’, but all my friends are goin’ t’ work, an’ I don’t want t’ stay. My mother an’ brothers all holler at me, but I’m kickin’ to leave. Graduate? Gee, stay two years? Not for me—it’s too slow.”
The girl’s restlessness demands at this age something very new and vivid. This the school has so far failed to supply. She thinks she may find it in work. And by the time she has discovered that work too grows tedious and monotonous, her greater independence has enabled her to make free use of her evenings for the changes and new experiences she craves.
CHAPTER IV
WAGE-EARNING AND NEW RELATIONS AT HOME
Our West Side girl sets out some morning, short-skirted, hair in braids, absurdly childish, to find her minute place in the great industrial world. Probably she strolls through the streets, looking for “Girl Wanted” signs. She will try at one of the big factories nearby. Or, if she is fortunate, some friend who is already working there speaks for her. The more enterprising buy the World and consult its long columns of advertisements.