Part 12 (1/2)
Among 3,421 factory women investigated:
Average length of service 4.46 years Average wage: First year $4.62 per week Second year 5.34 ” ”
Tenth year 8.48 ” ”
These stores and factories were presumably filled by girls who seized the most available source of a weekly wage regardless of all but the pay envelope. Few of them remained more than five years, and those who did remain did not receive adequate increase in their pay by the tenth year for workers of ten years' experience.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
A cotton-mill worker. Unfortunately in the factories girls are too often influenced by the pay envelope rather than by any special fitness for the work they are to do]
The whole industrial situation as it concerns women would indicate that women even more than men show lack of discrimination in seeking to place themselves, and that the sources of information for them have been few if not entirely lacking. Happily these conditions are changing. We have now to teach girls to avail themselves of the information and the guidance at hand and to learn to discriminate in their choice of work.
Girls must realize that unskillful, mechanical work, done always with a mental reservation that it is merely a temporary expedient, keeps women's wages low, destroys confidence in female capacity, and has definite bearing not only on the individual woman's earning capacity, but on her character as well. Girls must learn to choose in such a way that their work may be an opening into a life career or may be an enlightening prelude to marriage and the making of a home.
Some of the women who uphold the doctrine of equality between the s.e.xes make the mistake of thinking and of teaching that there can be no equality without identical work. They take the att.i.tude that unless women do all the sorts of work that men do, they are unjustly deprived of their rights. Our contention is rather that women have higher rights than that of identical work with men. They, above all other workers, should have the right of intelligent choice of work which they can do to the advantage of themselves, their offspring, and the community. Such a choice will ignore the question of s.e.x as a drawback, accepting it, on the other hand, merely as a condition which, like other conditions, complicates but does not necessarily hamper choice. No girl need feel hampered by her s.e.x because she chooses not to do work which fails either to utilize her peculiar gifts or to lead in what seems to her a profitable direction. No girl should feel that her industrial experience, however short, has nothing to contribute to the home life of which she dreams. No girl need waste the knowledge and skill gained in industrial life when she abandons gainful occupation for the home. Homemaking education, with industrial experience, ought to make the ideal preparation for life work.
This, however, can be true only when the girl's industrial experience is of the right sort. Girls must therefore be led to choose the developing occupation. It is a part of the world's economy to lead them to this choice.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 7: From Puffer, _Vocational Guidance_, based on Census figures.]
CHAPTER XI
THE GIRL'S WORK (Continued)--CLa.s.sIFICATION OF OCCUPATIONS
It is well at the outset to recognize that vocation choosing is at best a complicated matter which, to be successfully carried out, demands not only much information, but information from different viewpoints. It is not enough to insure a living, even a good living, in the work a girl chooses. We must take into consideration the girl's effect upon society as a teacher, nurse, saleswoman, or office worker; and no less, in view of her evident destiny as mother of the race, must we consider society's effect upon her, as it finds her in the place she has chosen. In other words, will she serve society to the best of her ability, and will her service fit her to be a better homemaker than she would have been had no vocation outside the home intervened between her school training and her final settling in a home of her own making?
This double question must find answer in consideration of vocations from each of several viewpoints. We may cla.s.sify occupations open to girls (1) from the standpoint of the girl's fitness, physical and psychological; (2) from the standpoint of industrial conditions, the sanitary, mental, and moral atmosphere, and the rewards obtainable; (3) as factors increasing, decreasing, or not affecting the girl's possible home efficiency or the likelihood of taking up home life; (4) from the standpoint of the girl's education; (5) from the standpoint of service to society.
Our first cla.s.sification concerns the girl's fitness for this or that work. The everyday work of the world in which our girls are to find a part may be separated into three fairly well-marked cla.s.ses: making things, distributing things, and service. The first question we must ask concerning a girl desirous of finding work is, then: Toward which of these cla.s.ses does her natural ability and therefore probably her inclination tend? Natural handworkers make poor saleswomen; natural traders or saleswomen are likely to be uninterested and ineffective handworkers. The girl whose interests are all centered in people must not be condemned to spend her life in the production of things; nor, as is far more common, must the girl who can make things, and enjoys making them, spend her life in merely handling the things other people have made, as she strives to make connection between these things and the people who want them. Then there is the girl who is efficient and who finds her pleasure in ”doing things for people.” Service--and we must remember that service is a wide term, and that no stigma should attach to the cla.s.s of workers which includes the teacher, the physician, and the minister--is clearly the direction in which such a girl's vocational ambition should be turned.
It would be idle to a.s.sert that all women are suited to marriage, motherhood, and domestic life, although there is little doubt that early training may develop in some a suitability which would otherwise remain unsuspected. When, however, early training fails to bring out any inclination toward these things, we may well consider seriously before we exert the weight of our influence toward them.
Home-mindedness shows itself in many ways, and it should have been a matter of observation years before the girl faces the choice of a vocation. It is usually of little avail to attempt to turn the attention of the girl who is definitely not thus minded toward the domestic life. On the other hand, the girl who is naturally so minded will respond readily to suggestions leading toward the occupations which require and appeal to her domestic nature. The great majority of girls, however, are not definitely conscious of either home-mindedness or the opposite. They are in fact not yet definitely cognizant of any natural bent. It is these girls who are especially open to the influence of environment, of what may prove temporary inclination, or of false notions of the advantage of certain occupations in choosing a life work. These are the girls, too, who are likely to drift into marriage as they are likely to drift into any other occupation, and whose previous vocation may have added to or perfected their homemaking training or, on the other hand, may have developed in them habits and traits which will effectually kill their usefulness in the home life. These, then, are the girls who are most of all in need of wise a.s.sistance in choosing that which may prove to be a temporary vocation or may become a life work. The temporary idea must be combated vigorously in the girl's mind. Many an unwise choice would have been avoided had the girl really faced the possibility of making the work she undertook a life work. The temporary idea makes inefficient workers and discontented women.
There is in most cases, especially among the fairly well-to-do, no dearth of a.s.sistance offered to the young girl in making her choice.
Much of the advice, unfortunately, is not based on real knowledge either of vocations or of the girl. Knowledge is absolutely necessary to successful judgment in this delicate matter.
From a large number of letters written by high-school girls let me quote the following typical answers to the question: Why have you chosen the vocation for which you are preparing?
”Ever since I could walk my uncle has been making plans for me in music.”
”My first ambition was to be a stenographer, but my father objected. My father's choice was for me to be a teacher, and before long it was mine too.”
”My ambition until my Junior year in High School was to be a teacher. From that time until now my ambition is to be a good stenographer. My reason for changing is due partly to my friends and parents. My parents do not want me to be a teacher, as they consider it too hard a life.”
”I have been greatly influenced by my teacher, who thinks I have a chance [as a dramatic art teacher]. I am willing to take her word for it.”.