The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-06-22
GIRL IMMIGRANTS "BEsPoKE.
Hundreds are Engaged Even Before
 They Arrive.

bfoOkiyn EaSle.
 | Whenever two or three are gathered together in the name of afternoon tea, or ping-pong. or golf, the servant questi n
 is discussed. The black ingratitude. the 1 culpable careiessness, the absolute in- | capacity of maids is a topic of copversa- | ton among housewives only exceeded in I,fruitfulness by the horrors of being with ! out maid.
 | Housewives read with joy that on the | last day of May 4,359 immigrants were received at Ellis Island, and that among them were 700 Irish lassies. Surely here was a solution of the servant problem, l the raw material out of which they could form TOO neat delft handed, white aproned
 becapped Phillyses. And they hied them gaily down to the barge office with visions -such visions.
 All in vain Nearly all those girls were l bespoke" Their arrangements were
 made before their passage was taken And the disappointed ladies could only | storm the immigration office in vain and
 murmur incoherent threats about the penalties attached to importing labor
 They didn't know anything about the penalties attached, hut 1t sounded we'll. It seems queer in face of the enormous immigration that the servant question remains a question, the servant famine remains unreieved. Ellis Island is busy place. During the month of May over g. 900 immigrants were landed there an average of 3.oc0 day. Of course So per cent of these are men, but even so, 1t would Eeem as if more than. enough girls were pouring into the country to meet all demands And New York. be it remembered, is only one port. There are others where the immigration office is no sinecure. The answer to the housewifely wall of What becomes of them all?'' is simply that they are bespoke.
 Of the 700 who came over a week ago. over hundred were cared for at the Mission of Our Lady of the Roseary. But Father Henry says that not one of them was without promise of employ ment. "Nlnety-nine per cent of them have friends to go to, and I cannot pro- vide servant to one out of a hundred applicants.'
 At the immigration office. they tell the same story. You see. things are going pretty badly in the old country. A fam fly makes up its mind to come to Amer lea. It saves and scrimps. every member of the family gives it's last cent, begs, borrows, perhaps steals to raise enough to see one member over. As soon as that one gets over, particularly if it's a girl. and finds work she begins saving up to bring another over, and telling everyone
 
 good. honest. willing girl. who doesn't know, but will learn Some one is always ready for such girl, ready, perhaps, to pay little of the expense of bringing her over- So she comes, hundreds of her. And thousands of servantless women hearing of her arrival, rush down here to grab her up. only to find her, as she puts it, bespoke. Then they get mad at us and talk about imported labor"
 In the intelligence offices they smile synically at the arrival of zoo wild Irish lassias. What has that to do with the servant question? It is the raw material, of course, for it's solution, but so fright fully raw. It may help them solve 1t two, three five years hence, but 1t offers no iH mediate relief. These girls come over green as the grass in the fields they come from and expect to make $16 or SIS a month and their board, when they ought to be willing to pay their first mistresses for tuition in the ordinary decencies of civilized housekeeping. They can't be sent to our customers, who want expe- rienced help. Experienced help is hard to find. A well trained maid is a rarity. So. too, is the housekeeper who knows how to train a maid. Girls go from one place to another among people who lay