Part 14 (1/2)
One paper or talk may be on the usual hours of work, the kind of work done, the hours of overwork, the pay, the prospect of advancement. A second paper may be on the rest-room, the noon hour, the luncheon provided for pay, and especially on what is known as ”welfare work,”
which many large shops do.
A third paper may discuss the relation of the girls to their employers, or to the floor walker; telling of care or tyranny, of fines, of the sanitary conditions of cloak rooms, of the effect on health of long standing.
This may be followed by a third paper on the cost of a shop girl's living; of room rent, food, clothing, car fares and recreation; how does the result compare with her pay? Discuss the minimum wage. Is it fair to pay alike the competent and incompetent? Is immorality due to a low living wage? Can a girl save for illness? Read ”An Unfinished Story,” by O. Henry, in ”The Four Million.” (Doubleday.)
Have different women suggest what can be done to help the shop girl.
Describe what is called ”preventive work,” done largely by girls from college in the evening, and the work of the Y. W. C. A., and settlements. What can club women do by way of personal acquaintance and interest? What of short shopping hours and early Christmas shopping?
Read from a paper called ”The Club Worker,” published by the National League of Women Workers; address, Hotel Savoy, New York; and from ”Saleswomen in Mercantile Stores,” by Elizabeth B. Butler, published at 105 East Twenty-second Street, New York.
VII--THE BUSINESS WOMAN
The problems of the business woman in a larger way will naturally follow this. One paper may speak of women who are managing farms and ranches, others who have become the heads of business houses or real estate offices; some who are chemists, or designers or decorators; those who have tea rooms, who buy for importing houses or engage in catering. The work of the great army of stenographers and private secretaries would also come under this topic.
Present the different fields of work, and ill.u.s.trate with examples as far as possible, and then discuss these and similar questions: Do women naturally incline to business? Is their home training at fault for the many mistakes of the average woman? Should fathers see that their daughters understand something of banking, of keeping accounts, of investments, of managing an income? How much should a girl know of business? Should every girl be able to earn a living?
VIII--THE PROFESSIONAL WOMAN AND HER DIFFICULTIES
The problems of a professional woman may be made the subject of several meetings. Present the lives of the doctor, the nurse, the lawyer, the professor, the school teacher, the writer, the artist, the musician, and discuss in each case the difficulties she has to contend with.
Such questions as these may follow: Should professional women marry? Are their home lives well developed? Are they fitted for the career of the law? Do writers and artists tend to become bohemians? What are the relations of men and women in the same profession?
IX--WOMAN AND THE STATE
The last subject for the year's study is the relation of women and the State. One paper may take up some of the laws which govern her, concerning property; a second may speak of divorce, and show the diversity of the laws of different States; a third may tell of the influence of women on legislation, of lobbying and appearing before committees. The desirability of placing women on certain state and munic.i.p.al boards such as health, sanitation, care of defectives, vice commissions, reformatories, and schools should be fully presented.
The subject of equal suffrage will develop from this last topic of the year and both sides should be taken up as fully or as slightly as the club desires. Reports of the progress of suffrage in different States, what has been accomplished where it is established, and kindred themes, will suggest themselves. Read from Olive Schreiner's ”Woman and Labor”
(Stokes); Ellen Key's ”The Woman Movement” (Putnam); and Ida Tarbell's ”The Business of Being a Woman” (Macmillan).
CHAPTER XV
SOME GREAT MEN OF OUR TIME
I--RODIN--SCULPTOR
Ten club meetings are planned here, but as many more may be arranged by taking up the work of other men along the same lines as those mentioned.
The great sculptor of our day is Auguste Rodin. He was born in Paris in 1840, studied at the Pet.i.t ecole and later with Barye. From the latter he gained the double idea that statuary should suggest action and be literally life-like. Some of his statues are ”St. John the Baptist,”
”The Hand of G.o.d,” ”The Thinker,” ”Adam and Eve.” ”The Bronze Age,” now in the Luxembourg, caused a heated controversy, the charge being made that a plaster cast of the model had been used. Rodin is a p.r.o.nounced realist and his figures are filled with force. He has inspired this generation of sculptors with a new conception of their work.
Read from ”The Life and Work of Rodin,” by Frederick Lawton (Scribner).
For other meetings on modern sculpture study the work of St. Gaudens, Lorado Taft, MacMonnies, Niehaus, Mrs. Vonnoh, Miss Yandell, Mrs.
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and others.