The Cook County herald. [volume] (Grand Marais, Minn.) 1893-1909, 1907-03-02
M'6r1Ahs4e SPHERE
The Working Girl in the City

privileges they cover that how to pay
them is a never-settled problem. The
spectre of the rent, grim and gaunt,
stalks through the noisome and reek"
ing streets of the tenement neighbor.
hood, bows women's shoulders, deep.
ems the burrows and prematurely
ages the faces of men still young. AS
for comfort, it is an unknown guam
tity. Life is one hard, desperate, ter
rible struggle. Opportunities for
privacy are wholly lacking. When the
working girl energies from such
home in the morning trim and tidy,
looking as if she had taken bath and
combed her hair in her own room, as
her sisters on the Avenue do, the re-
suit is simply another proof of the
miraculous powers of conquering cir
cumstances that inhere in the modern
woman. The only spot in most of
these homes where any of the family
may battle and comb their hair is the
kitchen which is also living room and
dining-room by day and sleeping
room by night, for two or three per-
sons who Camp down on a mattress
spread on the floor.
A working girl who has stood at
her loom or sat at her desk or waited
on customers all day, is tired at night
fall and wants fresh air and exercise.
She wants beside these precisely
what the millionaire's daughter wants,
o. f,rr, y1@1
some entertainment and a pleasant
time. She has not single inch of
space where She may talk and jest
with her friends, under her own roof.
Therefore, she and her friends seek
relaxation where they may and the
street in good weather generally finds
them there. They are really much
better off out of doors than in when
the weather is fine. To accuse young
girls or young men in circumstances
like theirs of willful neglect of home
or of conduct bordering on indelicacy,
is arrant folly. They are merely
making fight for rest and health, and
for the fun to which young people
have a legitimate title.
But the girls by no means spend
all their evenings in the company Of
their admirers and friends of the other
sex. working girl who is ambitious
knows that her deficient education
must be supplemented by evening
study, if she is to advance in the
wage rate and to reach whatever top
notch is the goal on which her eyes
are set. Thousands of young girls
early interrupted in their studies by
the dire need in their homes, valiant
ly attack difficult text books and will
ingly work in the evening schools
during the autumn and winter.
When the girls go gayly off to spend
an evening at one of their clubs or at
college settlement, their mothers
have no fear concerning them, and
settle down without anxiety to the
neighborly chat or the low-toned gos-
sip punctuated with laughter, which
are their recreations when the hus-
band has gone to the saloon and the
babies are asleep. The saloon, the
trap into which so much money falls
bAoI ouSuL W Uo Spcut lOI LuS StOu
of the family, is the shadow forever in
the background in tenement life. 1t
has its spacious temptations for the
young working girl; its side entrances,
it's reading room where there are
cards and snowy pictorial papers and
where Turk perils of the worst stamp
for the girl and her lover. The street
is safer for the girl than the brightly
lighted saloon with it's superficial
good fellowship and it's temptation 10
drink and make merry with evil COM
panions.
The working girl cannot be expect
ed to spend very many evenings in
just the home that modern conditions
allow her to have. There. is too much
noise, there is too much crowding,
there are scolding mothers, drunken
fathers and crying babies. Well for
her if Parish House, Working
Girls Club or Settlement numbers
her among it's constant habitues.