Evening star., 1933-07-30

any sales value, riding IN DusSeS'
sneaking rides in dirty freight cars
hiking there is one OF the
strangest armies this country mas
ever known.
This nomad army is made up OF women aiio
girls. penniless or nearly penniless They range
in age from IL years to &c. And tney arc
roaming from town to town, from coast W
coast in search of work.
Nobody knows how many of them there are.
People who are in the best position to Kno"
give out cautious estimates for public con-
sumption that are far below the estimaces 'neS
give in private conversations.
The best guess is that there are more than
25O.OO0.
For lack of a better word people call THESE
drifting women hoboes But a hobo does not
want honest work. These women want 1t des-
perately.
America has always had some men and boys
drifting up and down the country the orH'-
ing woman is q new problem.
TOR many years most large cities have had
their hobo missions where the homeless
man could get nights lodging, scanty sup
per and a coffee-and- bread breakfast before
he had to move on. When the depreSSioh
drove hundreds of thousands Of men to the
road in search of work. the old hobo missions
simply enlarged their activities to take care
of them.
The few organizations that cared in the past
for the stranded woman sat back bewildered
when the women too took to hunting )oos
away from their home towns
These organizations, whose main function
had been the making of arrangements to get
penniless women back home have continued 10
work on the Victorian theory that woman
is a dependent for whom some one should be
responsible
But although q "case worker" may insist that
destitute woman has a brother somewhere
she should go back to him for support, the
woman herself knows that her brothers wife
feels no responsibility to share her family's
tiny income with her. an able-bodied woman
who has been self-supporting.
The girl whose family is already receiving
q charity dole is not going to be turned from
her search for work and sent back to share
the dole.
Mo city or county in these times takes any
~ responsibility for relief for stranded
strangers.
Indeed, very few cities or towns give any
relief to what they call unattached" residents,
male or female Families first" they say.
Unfortunately starvation is just as painful to
the unattached as to the member of family
At Bear Mountain Park N. Y, the Federal
Government has started project designed to
designed to accommodate 300 women started
by Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins at the
suggestion of Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Women are recruited through the New YORK
State relief agencies, and the expenses are
borne by Federal funds.
Because we have yet no adequate sys-
tenn for reporting the total number of unem-
ployed people in the whole country we can not
know how many women are actually unem-
ployed today. Providence, r. l., says it has
$4,000 jobless women; Milwaukee. $4,000;
Kansas City 1000, with more than 1000 OF tnat
number with one to nine dependents
How do these women live, since the majority
of them never had wages large enough to allow
them to save much against rainy day?
COME have gone to relatives in spite Of their
y pride Some are allowing themselves to
be exploited as houseworkers for mere bed and
board with no allowance even for clothing
Others in such jobs get very microscopic
wages.
Others are living three or four in q room
ON which the rent is long overdue. pooling
their resources to buy the scanty amount OF
food that keeps them from dropping in the
streets.
They spend their days going from Office to
Office, from store to store, from agency to
agency, hunting the jobs that do not exist.
At night they wash and iron what clothes they
have left, in order to present a respectable
front for the following days fruitless search.
Every work agency has its story Of women
and girls who have been asked how they are
managing to exist and who have left abruptly
with stiRened lips or burst in nerve-wracking
tears.
Remembering the stories we have read OF
old-diggers. almony parasites and other fe-
.,sVvr'i ls,,t ~ >.