New Homes for Old
by Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge · English · Gutenberg #41291 · 520,249 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: New Homes for Old
Author: Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW HOMES FOR OLD ***
NEW HOMES FOR OLD
* * * * *
_Americanization Studies_
SCHOOLING OF THE IMMIGRANT.
Frank V. Thompson, Supt. of Public Schools, Boston
AMERICA VIA THE NEIGHBORHOOD.
John Daniels
OLD WORLD TRAITS TRANSPLANTED.
Robert E. Park, Professorial Lecturer, University of Chicago
Herbert A. Miller, Professor of Sociology, Oberlin College
A STAKE IN THE LAND.
Peter A. Speek, in charge, Slavic Section, Library of Congress
IMMIGRANT HEALTH AND THE COMMUNITY.
Michael M. Davis, Jr., Director, Boston Dispensary
NEW HOMES FOR OLD.
Sophonisba P. Breckinridge, Professor of Social Economy,
University of Chicago
ADJUSTING IMMIGRANT AND INDUSTRY. (In preparation)
William M. Leiserson, Chairman, Labor Adjustment Boards,
Rochester and New York
THE IMMIGRANT PRESS AND ITS CONTROL. (In preparation)
Robert E. Park, Professorial Lecturer, University of Chicago
THE IMMIGRANT'S DAY IN COURT. (In preparation)
Kate Holladay Claghorn, Instructor in Social Research,
New York School of Social Work
AMERICANS BY CHOICE. (In preparation)
John P. Gavit, Vice-President, New York _Evening Post_
SUMMARY. (In preparation)
Allen T. Burns, Director, Studies in Methods of Americanization
_Harper & Brothers Publishers_
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE COMING OF NEW AMERICAN HOME MAKERS]
AMERICANIZATION STUDIES
ALLEN T. BURNS, DIRECTOR
NEW HOMES FOR OLD
BY
S. P. BRECKINRIDGE
PROFESSOR OF SOCIAL ECONOMY
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
[Illustration]
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
1921
* * * * *
NEW HOMES FOR OLD
Copyright, 1921, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
* * * * *
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
The material in this volume was gathered by the Division of Adjustment
of Homes and Family Life of Studies in Methods of Americanization.
Americanization in this study has been considered as the union of
native and foreign born in all the most fundamental relationships and
activities of our national life. For Americanization is the uniting of
new with native-born Americans in fuller common understanding and
appreciation to secure by means of self-government the highest welfare
of all. Such Americanization should perpetuate no unchangeable
political, domestic, and economic regime delivered once for all to the
fathers, but a growing and broadening national life, inclusive of the
best wherever found. With all our rich heritages, Americanism will
develop best through a mutual giving and taking of contributions from
both newer and older Americans in the interest of the commonweal. This
study has followed such an understanding of Americanization.
FOREWORD
This volume is the result of studies in methods of Americanization
prepared through funds furnished by the Carnegie Corporation of New
York. It arose out of the fact that constant applications were being
made to the Corporation for contributions to the work of numerous
agencies engaged in various forms of social activity intended to
extend among the people of the United States the knowledge of their
government and the obligations to it. The trustees felt that a study
which should set forth, not theories of social betterment, but a
description of the methods of the various agencies engaged in such
work, would be of distinct value to the cause itself and to the
public.
The outcome of the study is contained in eleven volumes on the
following subjects: Schooling of the Immigrant; The Press; Adjustment
of Homes and Family Life; Legal Protection and Correction; Health
Standards and Care; Naturalization and Political Life; Industrial and
Economic Amalgamation; Treatment of Immigrant Heritages; Neighborhood
Agencies and Organization; Rural Developments; and Summary. The entire
study has been carried out under the general direction of Mr. Allen
T. Burns. Each volume appears in the name of the author who had
immediate charge of the particular field it is intended to cover.
Upon the invitation of the Carnegie Corporation a committee consisting
of the late Theodore Roosevelt, Prof. John Graham Brooks, Dr. John M.
Glenn, and Mr. John A. Voll has acted in an advisory capacity to the
director. An editorial committee consisting of Dr. Talcott Williams,
Dr. Raymond B. Fosdick, and Dr. Edwin F. Gay has read and criticized
the manuscripts. To both of these committees the trustees of the
Carnegie Corporation are much indebted.
The purpose of the report is to give as clear a notion as possible of
the methods of the agencies actually at work in this field and not to
propose theories for dealing with the complicated questions involved.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Publisher's Note v
Foreword vii
Table of Contents ix
List of Tables xiii
List of Illustrations xv
Introduction xvii
CHAPTER
I. FINDING THE NEW HOME 1
The First Adjustments 1
Homes Studied 6
Dissolving Barriers 14
II. FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS 19
Separated Families 20
Keeping Boarders 23
The Man Without a Family 27
The Single Woman 29
The Migrant Family 32
From Farming to Industry 34
The Wage-earning Mother 39
Changed Duties of a Mother 43
Paternal Authority Passing 47
III. THE CARE OF THE HOUSE 54
New Housekeeping Conditions 54
Demands of American Cookery 58
Water Supply Essential 60
Overcrowding Hampers the Housewife 62
Women Work Outside the Home 65
Housing Improvement 66
Government Building Loans 75
Instruction in Sanitation 80
IV. PROBLEMS OF SAVING 85
Present and Future Needs 85
Unfamiliarity with Money 88
Irregularity of Income 91
Reserves for Misfortunes 92
The Cost of Weddings 98
Christenings and Fête Days 103
Buying Property 105
Building and Loan Associations 109
Postal Savings Banks 111
Account Keeping 115
V. THE NEGLECTED ART OF SPENDING 117
The Company Store 119
Shopping Habits 122
Modification of Diets 130
Furniture on the Installment Plan 134
New Fashions and Old Clothes 135
Training Needed 138
Co-operation in Spending 141
VI. THE CARE OF THE CHILDREN 149
The Unpreparedness of the Immigrant Mother 150
Breakdown of Parental Authority 153
Learning to Play 157
Parents and Education 159
Following School Progress 163
The Revolt of Older Children 169
Relations of Boys and Girls 174
The Juvenile Court 181
VII. IMMIGRANT ORGANIZATIONS AND FAMILY PROBLEMS 187
Safety in Racial Affiliations 188
Local Benefit Societies 192
National Croatian Organizations 196
Care of Croatian Orphans 199
Organizations of Poles 201
Polish Women's Work 203
Lithuanian Woman's Alliance 209
Ukrainian Beginnings 215
Growth of National Organizations 218
VIII. AGENCIES OF ADJUSTMENT 222
Immigrant Protective League 223
A National Reception Committee 227
The Public School 230
The Home Teacher 236
Settlement Classes 238
Co-operation of Agencies 240
International Institutes 243
Training for Service 248
Home Economics Work 254
Government Grants in England 263
The Lesson for the United States 266
Mothers' Assistants 268
Recreational Agencies 272
IX. FAMILY CASE WORK 277
The Language Difficulty 280
Standards of Living 286
Visiting Housekeepers 289
Knowledge of Backgrounds 298
Training Facilities Needed 301
The Transient Family 304
Need for National Agency 307
APPENDIX 313
Principal Racial Organizations 313
Czech 313
Danish 314
Dutch 315
Finnish 315
German 316
Hungarian 317
Italian 318
Jewish 319
Jugoslav 324
Lithuanian 326
Polish 327
Russian 329
Slovak 330
Swedish 331
Ukrainian 331
Menus of Foreign Born 333
Bohemian 333
Croatian 335
Italian 335
Slovenian 340
INDEX 343
LIST OF TABLES
TABLE PAGE
I. Number and Per Cent of Families Carrying Life
Insurance and Average Amount of Policy
According to Nativity of Head of Family 94
II. Number and Per Cent of Immigrant Home
Owners in Different Chicago Districts 107
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The Coming of New American Home Makers _Frontispiece_
A Railroad Camp for Immigrant Workers in a
Prosperous Suburban Community, 1920 _Facing p._ 4
An Immigrant Railway Worker Lives in this
Car with His Wife, Six Children, and Three
Dogs " 4
Even a Boarding House of Eighteen Boarders
in Five Rooms is More Cheerful than a
Labor Camp for Men Alone " 24
Almost at the End of the Journey " 32
Floor Plan of Houses in Poland _Page_ 55
This Pump Supplies Water to Four Families _Facing p._ 60
A Community Housing Plan _Page_ 73
Italians Have Their Own Financial Center and
Labor Market in Boston _Facing p._ 110
It's a Long Way from This Elaborate Czecho-Slovak
Costume to the Modern American
Styles " 136
A Slovak Mother, Newly Arrived " 150
Immigrant Children Acquiring Individual Initiative
in a Montessori Class at Hull House " 160
Who Will Welcome Them? " 192
Lithuanian Mothers Have Come to a Settlement
Class " 238
A Case-work Agency Found Four Girls and
Eighteen Men Boarding with This Polish
Family in Four Rooms " 288
INTRODUCTION
The following study is the result of effort on the part of several
persons. Miss Helen R. Wright, formerly research assistant of the
Chicago School of Civics and member of the staff of the Massachusetts
Immigration Commission of 1914, had much to do with the planning of
the inquiry, the framing of such schedules as were used, and the
organization of certain portions of the information gathered. Through
Miss Laura Hood, long time a resident of the Chicago Commons, it
proved to be possible to obtain many intimate views with reference to
the more subtle questions of family adjustment in the groups that are
of special interest in such an inquiry as this.
Certain questions of uniformity in method and style of presentation
were determined by the editorial staff of the Study of Methods of
Americanization. For the final drafting of a considerable portion of
the study, especially in the earlier chapters, the members of this
editorial staff are responsible, though the writer is glad to
acknowledge full responsibility for all conclusions drawn or
recommendations offered.
SOPHONISBA P. BRECKINRIDGE.
_April_ 15, 1921.
NEW HOMES FOR OLD
I
FINDING THE NEW HOME
The great westward tide of immigration has again begun to rise.
Annually to the ports of entry and to the great inland centers of
distribution come thousands of immigrant families, strange men and
women with young children, unattached girls, and vigorous, simple
lads. With few exceptions no provision by native Americans has been
made for their reception in their new places of residence. Communities
of kindly-intentioned persons, because of their lack of imagination
and their indifference, have allowed the old, the young, the mother,
and infant to come in by back ways, at any hour of day or night.
Frequently they have been received only by uncomprehending or
indifferent railroad officials or oversolicitous exploiters.
THE FIRST ADJUSTMENTS
It is not strange that in most American communities there is no habit
of community hospitality. Communities are in themselves transitory
and fluid. Many of the native born have as yet become only partially
adjusted to their physical and social environment. At least the
childhood of most of our older generation was spent under the
influence of those who had either migrated or immigrated. "_Nous
marchons tous._" We are all "pilgrims and strangers." Some have come
sooner, and some have come later, and except for the colored people
and those in territory acquired in 1848 and in 1898, all have a common
memory of having come deliberately either _from_ something worse or
_to_ something better. All have come from where they were into what
was a far country.
While the earlier arrivals are making their own adjustments, there are
knocking at their gates strangers from a more distant country speaking
a foreign tongue, accustomed to totally different ways of living and
working. Their reception, however, need not be an impossible task. On
their arrival they are formally admitted, and information as to their
origin and destination must be supplied. Methods could be devised for
receiving them in such a way as to make them feel at ease, and for
interpreting to them the changed surroundings in which they must find
a home and a job in the shortest possible time.
If discomfort and confusion were the only distress into which the
strange group fell, the situation might be only humiliating to our
generous and hospitable spirit and could be easily remedied. But the
consequences of failure to exercise hospitality at the beginning
endure in lack of understanding on the part of both groups. The
immigrant fails to find natural and normal ways of sharing in the life
of the community, and becomes skeptical as to the sincerity of
perfectly well-meaning, but uninformed, professions on the part of the
older residents. Spiritual barriers as definite, if not as easily
perceived, as the geographical boundaries of the "colonies" formed in
the different sections of our cities, develop.
This is often true in connection with the foreign-born men and
tragically more true of the women. One Italian woman in Herrin,
Illinois, for example, who had lived nineteen years in this country,
told an investigator for this study that she had never received an
American into her home as a guest, because no American had ever come
in that spirit. A Russian woman had lived in Chicago for nine years
and had, so far as she knew, not become acquainted with any Americans.
Several instances were found in which efforts have been put forward to
secure the united effort of the whole community, and yet large groups
of immigrants have remained substantially unaware of these efforts and
were entirely untouched by them.
There are several other attitudes, too, that have perhaps blinded some
to the need of provision for community hospitality. One attitude might
be characterized as that of the "self-made man." Hardship may have
either of two different effects. In one person it will develop
sympathy, compassion, and a desire to safeguard others from similar
suffering. In others it may lead to a certain callous disregard of
other people--a belief that if one has been able to surmount the
difficulties others should likewise be able. If not, so much the
worse. This kind of harshness characterizes the attitude of some of
those immigrants who have come at earlier dates toward those who have
come later.
[Illustration: A RAILROAD CAMP FOR IMMIGRANT WORKERS IN A PROSPEROUS
SUBURBAN COMMUNITY, 1920]
[Illustration: AN IMMIGRANT RAILWAY WORKER LIVES IN THIS CAR WITH HIS
WIFE, SIX CHILDREN, AND THREE DOGS]
It is like the occasional successful woman who is indifferent to the
general disadvantages of her sex, and to the negro who makes for
himself a brilliant place and argues that color is no handicap. In
talking to women about bringing up their children, it was a
significant fact that some of the women who had had no trouble with
their own children said that where there is trouble it is the fault of
the parents. The following comment, for example, was on the schedule
of Mrs. D., a Polish woman who has been in this country since 1894,
and has three children, aged twenty-five, twelve, and six. "If a child
is not good, Mrs. D. blames his mother, who does not know how to
take care of children. She thinks they are too ignorant."
There is also the sense of racial, national, or class superiorities.
The virtue of the Anglo-Saxon civilization is assumed; the old, as
against the new immigration, is valued. There are many who crave the
satisfaction of "looking down" on some one, and it makes life simpler
if whole groups--"Dagoes," "Hunkies," "Polacks," what you will--can be
regarded as of a different race or group, so that neither one's
heartstrings nor one's conscience need be affected by their needs. The
difficulty is increased by a similar tendency of immigrants to assume
the superiority of their people and culture and so hold aloof from the
new life. This assumption of superiority on both sides tends to hinder
rather than to further mutual understanding.
Clearly, if we are to build up a united and wholesome national life,
such attitudes of aloofness as have persisted will have to be
abandoned. If that life is to be enriched and varied--not monotonous
and mechanical--the lowly and the simple, as well as the great and the
mighty, must be able to make their contribution. This contribution can
become possible, not as the result of any compulsory scheme, but of
conditions favoring noble, generous, and sympathetic living. The
family is an institution based on the affection of the parents and
their self-sacrifice for the life and future of their children. Of
all institutions it exemplifies the power of co-operative effort, and
demands sympathetic and patient understanding. This is perhaps
especially true of the foreign-born family.
This discussion of the family problems of the foreign-born groups in
relation to the development of a national consciousness and a national
unity is based on the belief that no attempts at compulsory adjustment
can in the nature of things be successful. Sometimes the interests of
the common good and of the weaker groups demand for their own
protection the temporary exercise of compulsion, but the real solution
lies in policies grounded in social justice and guided by social
intelligence.
HOMES STUDIED
The material in this study is of a qualitative sort. No attempt has
been made to organize a statistical study. The problems of family life
do not lend themselves to the statistical method except at great cost
of time and money.
A large body of data with reference to conditions existing during the
decade just prior to the Great War, exists in the reports of several
special government investigations, especially the report of the United
States Immigration Commission, that of the United States Bureau of
Labor relating to conditions surrounding women and child wage
earners, and that of the British Board of Trade on the "Cost of Living
in American Towns." The regular publications of certain government
bureaus, especially the United States Children's Bureau, the Bureau of
Home Economics in the United States Department of Agriculture, and the
United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, were found useful. These
publications have been studied so far as they discuss the problem of
family life. Their contents are presented only in illustration or in
confirmation of statements made.
The material collected is of two kinds. First, there are facts dealing
with the different agencies organized to help in solving these
problems. This information was gathered largely by correspondence.
Questionnaires were sent to case-work agencies dealing with family
problems, which are members of the American Association for Social
Work with Families and Home Service Bureaus of various Red Cross
Chapters, asking their methods for attacking these difficulties and
their advice as to the best methods worked out. The supervisors of
Home Economics under the Federal Board for Vocational Education were
asked to what extent they had included foreign-born housewives in
their program and the special plans that had been worked out for them;
the International Institutes of the Young Women's Christian
Association were asked to describe their work with married women.
The methods of certain agencies in Chicago--the United Charities, the
Immigrants' Protective League, some of the settlements--were studied
more carefully through interviews with their workers and through a
study of individual records. Officers of the national racial
organizations were interviewed about their work on family problems. In
addition to these a limited number of co-operative stores in Illinois
were studied. Mining communities in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and West
Virginia were visited, as well as certain of the newer housing
projects, such as Yorkship Village in New Jersey, Hilton Village in
Virginia, Bridgeport, Connecticut, Lowell and North Billerica,
Massachusetts and several towns in New Mexico.
The government investigations already referred to had made certain
needs of the foreign born very clear. It seemed unnecessary to go over
that ground again, but it was necessary to know whether those needs
still existed. An attempt was made to learn this through interviews
with leaders of various national groups and by obtaining schedules
from a limited number of selected families. A word should be said as
to the information obtained from these sources. The leaders selected
were, in the first instance, men and women whose leadership in their
own group had been recognized by election to important offices in
their national organizations. These men and women then frequently
suggested others whose position was not so well defined to an
outsider, but whose opinion was valued by members of the group.
Most of the persons interviewed were able to speak English readily.
They were people who were close enough to the great mass of immigrants
to be familiar with their problems, their needs, their shortcomings,
and their abilities, and at the same time were sufficiently removed
from the problems to be able to view them objectively. Some were
persons of more educational and cultural background than the majority
of immigrants, some of them had been born in this country or had come
when they were young children; but there were more who came to this
country from the same Old-World conditions as the majority of their
countrymen and had worked their way through the same hard conditions.
They were probably exceptional in their native ability.
No attempt was made to fill out a questionnaire from these interviews.
An outline was prepared of points to be covered, but frequently no
attempt was made to adhere to the outline. Rather, these persons were
encouraged to talk on the family problems in which they were most
interested, and to which they had given most thought--to enable us to
see them as they saw them with their knowledge of the Old-World
background from which their people had come. They were also asked to
suggest possible ways of meeting the more pressing needs of their
people.
Adequate expression can never be given to the obligation under which
those busy men and women who gave so generously and graciously their
time and their thoughts have placed us. Our very great indebtedness to
them is acknowledged, as without their aid this study in the present
form would have been impossible. The demand made upon them could be
justified only by the hope that the contacts thus established may
prove in some slight degree profitable to them if only in giving them
assurance that there are those to whom their problems are of real
interest.
The women from whom family schedules were obtained were slightly
different, and the information sought from them was obtained in a
different way. They were for the most part women who did not speak
English well enough to carry on an extended conversation in it. While
they were not very recent immigrants and hence were not going through
the first difficulties of adjustment, most of them were women who had
not yet worked their way through to the same place reached by the
women with whom the more general interviews were had. They were, in
general, very simple people, too absorbed with working out their
problems to have had much time for reflection. We asked them to tell
us of their early experiences and difficulties as they recalled them,
and of their present ways of treating some of the problems. This
information was taken in schedule form.
Not enough schedules were obtained to be of statistical value--there
were only ninety in all--but the families chosen are believed to be
more or less typical. They were selected with the advice of leaders of
their group or were known to our foreign-speaking investigators, who
had a wide acquaintance in several groups. That is, we have tried so
far as possible to see the problem with the persons, if not through
the eyes of the persons whose fellow countrymen we wished to know.
We do not mean to suggest that other and very important groups might
not have been studied, but we tried to learn of others; and sometimes
because we could not find the clew, sometimes for lack of time, it
proved impossible to go farther. We feel that we have obtained an
insight into the situation among the Polish in Chicago and in Rolling
Prairie, Indiana; the Lithuanians, Bohemians, Slovaks, Croatians,
Slovenians, nonfamily Mexicans, Russians--both family and
nonfamily--and Italians in Chicago; Italians in Herrin and Freeman,
Illinois, and Canonsburg and Washington, Pennsylvania; and the
Ukrainians in Chicago and in Sun, West Virginia.
Besides the large body of evidence with reference to these groups, we
have suggestions from many interested and kindly persons of other
groups. The Magyars and the Rumanians, particularly, we should have
liked to know better, and we have had most suggestive interviews with
certain of their leaders. We were not able, however, to follow the
leads they gave, and therefore do not claim to speak for them, except
to express the feeling of the need for greater understanding and
appreciation.
With reference to those groups discussed, it should be noted that
some, such as the Polish, Bohemian, Lithuanian, Italian, are among the
largest of the great foreign colonies in Chicago, the growth of a
long-continued immigration. They live in the different sections of the
city, in crowded tenement districts, or in more recently developed
neighborhoods for whose growth they are responsible. The Croatian and
Ukrainian groups are newer groups, and are therefore poorer. The
Croatians are moving into houses which the Bohemians are vacating. In
the Russian and Mexican groups we have the current evidence that the
old problem of the nonfamily man is still with us.
The Poles in Rolling Prairie, Indiana, are a prosperous farming
community living in modern farmhouses with yards and orchards. There
are women still alive who can tell of the earlier days, when just
after their arrival they lived in one-room houses made of logs and
plastered with mud. Then they helped their husbands to fell trees and
clear the land. Like other pioneer women, these women have contributed
to the "winning of the West." The grandmothers tell of these things.
The mothers remember when, during the winter, the children went to
school for a few months, they were laughed at because of their meager
lunches, their queer homemade clothes, and their foreign speech. The
young people now go to school at least as long as the law requires and
sometimes through high school.
The mining towns in Illinois and Pennsylvania need not be described.
Their general features are familiar. Although extended information
with reference to the life of the various groups was not obtained,
mention will be made of certain facts that are of importance to this
study.
While the numbers are not great, it is hoped that certain methods may
be worked out for approach to the problems of the groups studied, that
will prove suggestive in attacking the problems of other groups not
included here. No two groups are alike; but the experience with one or
with several may develop the open-minded, humble, objective attitude
of mind and that democratic habit of approach that will unlock the
doorway into the life of the others and exhibit both the points at
which community action may be desirable and the direction such action
should take.
DISSOLVING BARRIERS
The purpose of this book is to help in the adjustment of immigrant
family life in this country. The immigrant will feel America to be his
own land largely to the extent that he feels his American home to be
as much his home as was his native hearth. To define what makes a home
is harder even than to achieve one. Perhaps more than any other human
institution the home is a development, the result and component of
innumerable adjustments. This growth comes about largely
spontaneously, without conscious effort on the part of its members,
except that of living together as happily as possible.
There is among most housewives, whether native or foreign born, a
certain complacency about housekeeping and bringing up children.
Housekeeping is supposed to come by nature, and few women of any
station in life are trained to be homemakers and mothers. The native
born, in part consciously through their own choice and in part blindly
moved by forces they do not understand, have been gradually moving
away from the old tradition of subordination on the part of the wife
and of strict and unquestioning obedience of children. In the general
American atmosphere there are suggestions of a different tradition.
In the old country the mother knew what standards she was to maintain
and, moreover, had the backing of a homogeneous group to help her. In
this country she is a stranger, neither certain of herself nor sure
whether to try to maintain the standards of her home or those that
seem to prevail here. As a matter of fact, these difficulties are
usually surmounted, so that by the time the foreign-born housewife has
lived here long enough to raise her family she has learned to care for
her home as systematically and intelligently as most of her
native-born neighbors, who have not had her difficulties. Sometimes
they have learned from the members of the group who have been here
longer; and sometimes they have learned by going into the more
comfortable American homes as domestic servants.
In the American domestic evolution a scientific and deliberate factor
has been introduced. Students of family life have conducted inquiries
into domestic practices, needs, and resources, and applied the
researches of physiologists, chemists, economists, and architects. The
result has been the discovery of certain standards and requirements
for wholesome family life. It must be admitted that the attempt at
formulation of standards for family life encounters difficulties not
found in the field of education or of health, where the presence and
service of the expert are fairly widely recognized. For many reasons
the subject of the _minima_ of sound family life has been more
recently attacked and is, in the nature of things, more difficult of
analysis and especially of formal study. The impossibility, for
example, of applying to many aspects of the family problem the
laboratory methods of study or of examining many of the questions in a
dispassionate and objective manner, must retard the scientific
treatment of the subject.
There are, however, some aspects of family life with reference to
which there may be said to be fairly general agreement in theory if
not in practice in the United States. The content of an adequate food
allowance is generally agreed upon by the students of nutrition, and
the cost and special features of an adequate diet for any group at any
time and place can therefore be described and discussed. In the matter
of laying the responsibility for support of the family on the husband
and father, at least to the extent of enabling the children to enjoy
seven years of school life and fourteen years free from wage-paid work
and the resulting exploitation, there is wide agreement embodied in
legislation.
Such standards are becoming gradually adopted and incorporated into
domestic life through the slow processes of suggestion, imitation, and
neighborly talks already mentioned. While the slow establishment of
social standards is required for a complete and adequate adjustment of
family life on the basis of specialists' discoveries, many systematic
and formal efforts can be made which will forward and accelerate the
process. These efforts can help to remove the feeling of strangeness,
perhaps the greatest obstacle in adjusting home life; they should seek
to connect with the appreciations and sense of need already felt by
the women who are to be influenced.
There is necessity for thorough inquiry into what are the points of
contact in these problems for immigrant women; what are their present
customs and standards in which the specialists' knowledge can be
planted with the prospect of a promising combination of seed and soil.
This study indicates how great is the need of search for the
possibilities of just such organic connections. Pending such further
studies, this report can do two things:
First, it can exhibit, so far as possible, the difficulties
encountered by foreign-born families in attaining in their family
relationships such satisfaction as would constitute a genuine feeling
of hominess, and make the immigrant home an integral part of the
domestic development in this country.
Second, the report can suggest the deliberate and systematic methods
which can be effective in introducing the immigrant family and
specialists' standards to each other. The services of social agencies
have been largely in this field, and it is hoped that they may find in
this book lines for increased usefulness. Incidentally, evidence will
be presented to show that, in allowing many of these difficulties to
develop or to remain, the community suffers real loss, and it is hoped
that in the following chapters suggestion will be found of ways by
which some of these difficulties may be overcome and some of the waste
resulting from their continued existence be eliminated.
II
FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS
It is impossible to discuss the problems of adjustment of the family
life of the immigrant to life in this country without taking notice of
several factors that complicate the problem. There is first the
disorganization in family life that is incident to the migration
itself. The members of most of the families that come to this country
are peasants who are almost forced to emigrate by the fact that the
land they own will not support the entire family as the children grow
up and establish families of their own.
There was, for example, among the families visited for this study, a
family from the Russian Ukraine. The man's father was a peasant farmer
with six acres of land and a large family of children. The income from
this small property was supplemented by hiring out as laborers on the
large estates near by. As the boys grew up they left home. Two had
already come to America when the father of this family left in 1910.
At the time he left there were thirteen people trying to get their
living from six acres of land.
Another family from the same country were trying to live on the income
from the farm of the man's father, who had four acres of land and five
sons.
SEPARATED FAMILIES
In such families, and even in less extreme cases, it is evident that
the cash needed for the emigration of the whole family is difficult to
secure. It often happens, therefore, that the family does not emigrate
as a group, but one member--usually the man--goes ahead, and sends for
the rest as soon as he has earned enough to pay their passage. It is
then some time, usually from two to four years and occasionally
longer, before he is able to send for his family.
One Ukrainian man interviewed in this study came in 1906, leaving his
wife and four children in the old country. He had difficulty in
finding work he could do, wandered from place to place, never staying
long in one place, and it was eight years before he had saved enough
to send for his family. Another man, a Slovenian, came in 1904, and
was here seven years before he sent his wife money enough so she could
follow him.
Separations of this kind are often destructive of the old family
relationships. What they mean in suffering to the wife left behind has
been revealed by some of the letters of husbands and wives in a
collection of letters in _The Polish Peasant_,[1] especially in the
Borkowski series. These are letters written by Teofila Borkowski in
Warsaw, to her husband, Wladek Borkowski, in America, between the
years 1893 and 1912. During the early years the letters usually
thanked him for a gift of money and referred to the time when she
should join him in America. "I shall now count the days and weeks. May
our Lord God grant it to happen as soon as possible, for I am terribly
worried," she wrote in 1894.
As time goes on the intervals between the gifts grew longer, and she
writes imploring him to send money if he is able, as she is in
desperate need of it. In 1896 she had been ill and in the hospital.
"When I left the hospital I did not know what to do with myself,
without money and almost without roof ... so I begged her and promised
I would pay her when you send some money" (p. 353). And in 1897 she
wrote:
For God's sake what does it mean that you don't answer?...
For I don't think that you could have forgotten me
totally.... Answer me as soon as possible, and send me
anything you can. For if I were not in need I should never
annoy you, but our Lord God is the best witness how terribly
hard it is for me to live. Those few rubles which you sent me
a few times are only enough to pay the rent for some
months.... As to board, clothes, and shoes, they are earned
with such a difficulty that you have surely no idea. And I
must eat every day. There are mostly days in my present
situation when I have one small roll and a pot of tea for
the whole day, and I must live so. And this has lasted almost
five years since you left (p. 353).
She is pathetically grateful when money is sent. Thus in 1899 she
writes:
I received your letter, with twenty rubles and three
photographs, for which I send you a hearty "God reward!" I
bear it always in my heart and thought and I always repeat it
to everybody that you were good and generous, and you are so
up to the present (p. 358).
Her sufferings are not confined to financial worries and lack of a
place to eat and sleep. There is apparently a loss of social prestige
and a falling off of friends. The letters also show what was evidently
a real affection for her husband, and that at times his silence was
even worse than his failure to send money. Thus in 1905, when the
money and the letters were very irregular, she writes a letter (p.
362) in which no reference is made to her economic situation. After
asking if he received her last letter, she continues:
It is true, dear Wladek, that you have not so much time, but
my dear, write me sometimes a few words; you will cause me
great comfort. For I read your letter like a prayer, because
for me, dear Wladek, our Lord God is the first and you the
second. Don't be angry if I bore you with my letters, but it
is for me a great comfort to be able to speak with you at
least through this paper.
Her financial situation grows steadily worse, and in 1912 she writes
that she is "already barefooted and naked." The series closes with a
letter from a friend stating that she is ill and in the hospital, "not
so dangerously sick, but suffering very much ... and very weak from
bad nutrition and continuous sorrows." He closes: "And please write a
little more affectionately. Only do it soon, for it will be the best
medicine for your wife, at least for her heart" (p. 368).
KEEPING BOARDERS
The life of the man who has come ahead has been made the subject of
special study from time to time,[2] especially with regard to the
housing conditions in which he lives--as a lodger or a member of a
nonfamily group of men. It has been shown in all these studies that
whatever the plan worked out, he adapts himself either to a life of
intimate familiarity with women and children not his own, or to a life
in which children and women have little part.
In connection with the present study, the living conditions of some of
the Mexicans and Russians in Chicago were studied. As in the past, the
men were found living in one of the following ways: as a lodger in the
family group, as a boarder paying a fixed sum for room and board, or
as a member of a group of men attempting to do their own housekeeping.
The Mexicans studied included 207 men, of whom 197, or 95 per cent,
are unmarried. The Russians included 112 men, of whom 65, or 58 per
cent, had wives in Russia. It is interesting to note that 136 of the
207 Mexican men were boarding, usually with a Mexican family, 37 were
lodgers, and 34 were doing co-operative housekeeping. Among the
Russians, on the other hand, there were 25 doing co-operative
housekeeping, and 85 living with family groups, of whom only a few
paid a fixed sum for room and board, while the others paid a fixed
rate for lodging and the food bill depended on the food that was
consumed.
[Illustration: EVEN A BOARDING HOUSE OF EIGHTEEN BOARDERS IN FIVE
ROOMS IS MORE CHEERFUL THAN A LABOR CAMP FOR MEN ALONE]
Four variations were found in the method of paying for food: (1) The
landlady buys all the food for the group and her family on one
account. The total bill is divided by the number of boarders plus the
head of the family, the wife and children getting their food as
partial compensation for her services. (2) Each lodger has his own
account book, in which is entered only the meat purchased for him. He
pays this account himself. The other food purchased is entered in the
landlady's book, and divided in the same manner as before. (3) Each
lodger has his own account and buys what he wants. Instead of paying
for what he has bought, he pays his share of the total food bought
during the week. (4) Each lodger has his own account, the family
has its own, and each pays his own.
Whatever expedient is adopted as a substitute for normal family life,
the result is unsatisfactory. The men studied almost without exception
preferred living as boarders with a family group, if possible. This
preference is easily understood, as it meant less work for the men,
who, in co-operative groups, had to do women's work as well as their
own, and it also seemed a closer approximation to normal living. For
the sake of these advantages they were willing to put up with housing
conditions that were worse than those of the men who tried
co-operative housekeeping. Thus 56 per cent of the Russian men in
co-operative groups had the four hundred cubic feet of air per man
that is required by law, and only 35 per cent of those living with
family groups had this requirement.
The presence of a lodger in the family, moreover, is attended with
great discomfort to the family. He is given the best accommodations
the house affords and the family crowds into what is left. Thus, in
the family groups with whom the Russians were living, only 18 per cent
of the adult members of the family had the four hundred cubic feet of
air required by the city ordinance for a person over twelve, as
compared with 35 per cent of the boarders or lodgers, and forty of the
fifty-three children in the groups were deprived of the two hundred
cubic feet of air space that is prescribed for them.
The people with whom we have conferred in this study have said again
and again that the lodger in a family meant restriction and
deprivation for the family, and especially for the children. One
Lithuanian woman who came to this country when she was two years old,
says she well remembers the "utter misery" of her childhood, due to
the lodgers. They were given all the beds and any other sleeping
arrangements that could be contrived, and the children slept on the
floor in any corner. Their sleep was often disturbed by people moving
about. Sometimes they were wakened and sent to the saloon to get beer
for a group of lodgers who sat up late playing cards and drinking. She
remembers, too, the constant quarreling over the food bill, and thinks
that is very common.
The complicated system by which the accounts are kept, to which
attention has already been called, makes suspicion on the part of the
lodger only too easy. Several people have spoken of the unsteady
character of the lodger and the practice of staying up late, drinking.
One of the women interviewed said that the family life was much
easier, now that it was no longer necessary to keep lodgers, for when
there were lodgers in the house they always had beer, and her husband
would drink with them. Other people have spoken of the women drinking
with the lodgers, and it was said that anyone who read the
foreign-language newspapers would see many such advertisements as: "I
am left alone with my three children; my wife has gone off with a
lodger. Anyone having information, please communicate with..."
THE MAN WITHOUT A FAMILY
Life in a men's co-operative housekeeping establishment is usually
more difficult, for upon them falls the burden of maintaining
cleanliness in the household, and in many cases preparing their own
meals. Some of the Mexican men visited at nine o'clock in the evening
were preparing food for the next day's lunch. An important
consideration here is the high cost of living under such conditions.
The immigrant woman may not be a skillful buyer, but the immigrant man
is evidently a most extravagant one. Among the Mexicans, for example,
it was found that the men living in co-operative groups paid
practically as much for the food which they themselves prepared as the
men living in boarding houses paid for board and room. Their food cost
seven to eight dollars per man per week.
These studies showed the same lack of opportunities for wholesome
recreation and for meeting nice girls, as well as the same
restlessness of the men as did earlier studies. This was especially
noticeable among the Mexicans, who spoke with longing of their Mexican
dances that lasted two days and were held almost every week-end, and
of the band concerts to which they could often go. No matter how poor
their furniture, most of them had one or two musical instruments which
they played, and usually there was one phonograph for the group. They
found these poor substitutes for group music, where they could have
not only the music but the social time.
In brief, these studies of nonfamily men in 1919 show that the problem
of adequate housing and some form of normal social life for the men
who come ahead of their families is a recurring one. The nationality
of the group changes as one immigration wave succeeds another. With
the change in nationality come minor changes in the needs and desires
of the group, but the main problem remains the same. It should never
be forgotten that the impressions these men receive during their early
life in the United States form the basis of their judgment concerning
American life. Moreover, the life they lead during this period of
separation from their families must inevitably affect their family
relationships when family life is re-established, whether it be in
this country or in the country from which they come.
The first national recognition of the needs of the men was evident in
the plans of the United States Housing Corporation.[3] These provided
for separate lodging houses for men, where each man had a room of his
own, with an adequate amount of air space, and where bathing and
toilet facilities were provided. Recreational needs were met by having
a smoking room, reading room, and billiard room in each house, and,
unless provided elsewhere in the community, bowling alleys in the
basement. It has been repeatedly emphasized to us that the men would
not be satisfied unless a lodging house for them were run by some one
who could speak their language, knew their national tastes, and could
understand their problems. The availability of houses of this type to
the immigrant men in nonfamily groups would depend to a great extent
on their administration, but it is apparent that such a housing plan
is not impossible of attainment.
THE SINGLE WOMAN
It is not always the man who comes alone to this country. Often the
girl comes in advance of the others and sends money back to bring over
her parents and younger brothers and sisters. Attention has been
called again and again to the hazards for the girl thrown on her own
resources in a strange country among people she does not know, whose
language she does not understand.[4]
She has, in fact, the same problem to solve as the man who has come
alone, but she is further hampered both by economic and social
handicaps. She is probably from a country where the life of a woman
has been protected and circumscribed, and to find herself in a country
where the conditions and status of women are freer, makes both for
confusion and complications. A false step is of more serious
consequence to her than to a man, and without guidance and assistance
she may sometimes take this in ignorance or thoughtlessness.
Equally changed are her living conditions here. She has the same ways
of living open to her that are open to the man--boarding or lodging
with a family group or setting up a co-operative household with a
group of girls. The girl living in the latter way does not have as
many difficulties as the man in the same situation, for women are used
to doing housework. Yet if men find it too difficult to be both wage
earners and housekeepers, it is surely too hard for girls.
If, on the other hand, the girl finds lodging with a family group,
life is not much easier, for she is expected to help with the
household tasks, even though she is charged as much as the man
lodger, who usually is exempt from any household responsibility. The
inevitable assumption that any extra tasks of housework or sewing
should fall to the women may make for a disproportionately long and
tedious day for the woman lodger. The compensation of having the
protection and sociability of a family group may thus be outweighed by
the burden of overwork. Added to this, the prevalent necessity of
overcrowding the households with boarders, puts a hardship upon women
that often is not felt by men.
The need of providing adequate and safe lodging for the girl away from
home has been felt in many places and by numerous organizations. Too
often facilities have appealed only to the native born or thoroughly
initiated immigrant girl. The International Institute of the Young
Women's Christian Association has helped immigrants to find suitable
homes. This has local branches in more than thirty cities, many of
which are helping to meet the housing problems of the immigrant girls.
The government, in its housing projects, provided accommodations for
the single girls similar to those provided for single men. They built
boarding houses for from seventy-five to a hundred and fifty girls,
with separate rooms and adequate toilet and bathing facilities. Each
floor had a matron's office, so placed as to overlook the entrance
and access to the sleeping quarters, and there was either a reception
parlor or alcove for every twenty women, or a large parlor with
furniture arranged for privacy in conversation. An assembly hall was
provided with movable partitions and set stage. Kitchenette, sitting
room, and sewing room were provided on at least alternate floors, and
the building contained an infirmary and laundry for the use of the
girls.[5]
Information is not at hand as to whether any of these houses were used
by groups of immigrant girls. Similar houses could, however, easily be
made useful for them if care were taken to put them in charge of some
one who understood the problems of the foreign-born girl. More
desirable still are projects undertaken by groups of foreign-born
women themselves.[6] In this way the problems and tastes of the
different nationality groups are taken into consideration, confidence
and co-operation on the part of the girls more easily won, and an
independent and ultimately self-directed plan will be realized.
[Illustration: ALMOST AT THE END OF THE JOURNEY]
THE MIGRANT FAMILY
Even when all the family has reached this country the problems of
migration have not always ended. Many families do not establish a
permanent home in the first place in which they settle, but move from
place to place, and in each place there is a new set of conditions to
which to adjust themselves. Of the ninety families visited in Chicago
for this study, information on this point was obtained from only
forty-two. Nineteen of these came directly to Chicago, but
twenty-three had lived in other places. Five of them had been in the
Pennsylvania mining district around Pittsburgh, two had been in North
Dakota on a farm, two had been in a New Jersey manufacturing town, and
the others had been at widely different places in other cities--New
York, Philadelphia, Galveston, Texas, Boston--in small towns in the
Middle West, and on plantations in Louisiana.
Some had moved several times. A Polish family, for example, had lived
first in Boston, then in New York City, then somewhere in Canada,
before they finally settled in Chicago. Another Ukrainian family, from
Galicia, lived first in one mining town in Pennsylvania, then in
another in the same state, and later moved to Chicago. The mother, who
is a very intelligent woman, described her first impression of America
when she, with her four children, arrived in the little mining town.
She said that immigrants were living there, everything was dirty and
ugly, and she was shocked by the number of drunken men and women she
saw on the streets, "having not been accustomed to see them in the old
country." She wished to return immediately and did not even want to
unpack her belongings. For a whole year she lived amid these squalid
surroundings, until her husband got work in another town where
conditions seemed a little better.
Sometimes these changes mean family separations, as the man again goes
ahead, as he did in coming to this country. The experience of a Polish
family is typical. When the family first came to this country they
went to Iron Mountain, Michigan, where the father worked in the ore
mines until he lost his health. Then a sister of his wife, who was
living in South Chicago, invited him to visit her family, and offered
to get work for him in the steel mills. He came, living with his
sister-in-law, and after a few months obtained work in the mills. Then
the mother and children followed him.
FROM FARMING TO INDUSTRY
Another fact to which attention should be called is the adjustment in
family life required by contact with the modern industrial system.
Some of the immigrant groups come from countries more developed in an
industrial way than others, but none of the newer groups come from any
country in which the factory system has become so prevalent as in the
United States. In the old country the family still exercised
productive functions as a unit. It had access to tillable land, and
was an essential part of an industrial system that is still
organically related to the stage of development of the country. It
had, therefore, within itself, the sources of self-support and
self-determination. The civilization of which it was a part may be a
declining civilization; but the conditions of life were those to which
the wife and mother were accustomed. She took them for granted, felt
at home among them, and was not conscious of being overwhelmed by
them.
In the modern American industrial community, however, the family as a
whole is generally divorced from land. It is not a unit in relation to
the industrial organization, but in its productive function is usually
broken up by it. For the family must live, and yet its income is
dependent, not upon its size nor the volume of its needs, but upon the
wage-earning capacity of the man under the prevailing system of
bargaining. That the resulting income has often been wholly
inadequate, even according to the modest standards set by dietetic
experts and by social investigators, is testified to by an enormous
body of data gathered during the decade preceding the Great War.[7]
It is unnecessary to review these studies in detail, but attention may
be called to the findings of the Immigration Commission. Of the
foreign-born male heads of households studied, 4,506, or 34.1 per
cent, earned less than four hundred dollars a year at a time when
dietetic experts agreed that five hundred dollars was a minimum below
which it was dangerous for families to fall. Seventy per cent earned
less than six hundred dollars.
These figures may be said to come from "far away and long ago," but
while there has not been time for widespread inquiry, there is a
considerable body of evidence indicating that the same condition
prevails to-day. Wages have increased greatly during the war, but with
the increase in prices there is doubt as to whether real wages have
increased or decreased. Certainly the increase has been irregular and
uneven, affecting the workers in some industries much more than in
others.
The New York State Industrial Commission made a study of the average
weekly earnings of labor in the factories of the state. They found
that between June, 1914, and June, 1918, wages had increased 64 per
cent.[8] The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics made a study of
food. Taking the year 1913 as the base, or 100, wages in 1907 were 92
and the retail prices of food, 82, and in 1918 wages were 130 and food
168. That is, the price of food increased much more rapidly than the
average union wage scale between 1907 and 1918.[9]
As a result of these low earnings, the wife and children in many
immigrant families have been forced into the industrial field and even
then the resulting incomes have often been inadequate. The Immigration
Commission found that almost one third of the foreign-born families
studied had a total family income of under five hundred dollars, and
almost two thirds had incomes less than seven hundred and fifty
dollars.
Not only is the family income often inadequate and composite, but
precarious and uncertain. The need for food is a regularly recurring
need; the demand for labor may be seasonal, periodically interrupted,
and in time of crisis wholly uncertain.
Although child labor laws have been enacted in many states and by the
United States Congress, they are comparatively recent. Their absence
in earlier years has had its inevitable effect on many foreign born.
Many of the leaders in the immigrant groups who came here when they
were still children, tell of stopping school and going to work. One
Lithuanian woman, who is among the more prosperous of the group in
Chicago, said that she stopped school when she was twelve, and went to
work in a fruit-packing concern, working ten hours a day and earning
five dollars a week, which she gave to her father. Another worked as a
cash girl in a downtown store at the age of thirteen. Similarly, in
one of the Russian families now living in Chicago, the girls were
fourteen and nine when they came to this country and settled in a New
Jersey town. The older was sent to work at once, and the younger a
year later. Now, after nine years in this country, neither girl can
speak English.
The present laws are not always efficiently enforced, and the child of
the foreign born suffers especially from such failure to enforce the
law. In one of the mining communities of Illinois, visited in the
spring of 1919, Italian boys as young as twelve were found working in
the mines. In New Mexico, children of twelve and ten, and even
younger, were taken out of school each year in the spring to go with
their fathers to work on other men's farms or to herd sheep. Our
investigator was impressed, in Rolling Prairie, with the need of
including agriculture among the occupations from which young children
are prohibited as wage earners.
THE WAGE-EARNING MOTHER
Of the mother's work, notice must be taken. People interviewed in this
study were almost unanimously of the opinion that immigrant women were
adding to the family income in many cases. If the children are too
young to be left alone, the father's inadequate income is supplemented
by taking lodgers. Too often, however, the mother works outside the
home for wages.
Indeed, a number of people were of the opinion that the employment of
women has increased during the war. Among the more recently arrived
Bohemians, for example, it was said that mothers of small children
were going to work as never before, because taking lodgers was not
possible, as single men have not been coming in such large numbers
since the war. The older settlers felt that they must take advantage
of the relatively high wages offered women to make payments on
property. Lithuanian observers say that partly because of prejudice
against it, Lithuanian married women have not gone out of their homes
to work until recently. With the war, the increased cost of living,
the higher wages offered to women, and the appeal that was made to
their patriotism, many women had gone into industry, especially to
work in "the yards." Ukrainian and Slovenian women are also said to be
working in large numbers, but Croatian women are still said to stay in
their homes and contribute to the income by taking lodgers.
In addition to this testimony, which was obtained from leaders of the
national groups, there is also the information obtained from
individual families. Of the ninety women from whom information was
obtained in Chicago, twenty were working outside their homes and
twenty-four had lodgers at the time of the study. When it is
remembered that these families were those who have worked their way
through the first difficulties, these figures become doubly
significant.
There is, for example, a Ukrainian family from the Russian Ukraine. It
consists of the parents and four children between the ages of three
and fifteen. Ever since the family came to the United States they have
had one or more lodgers to help them pay the rent. At present they
have three men paying four dollars a month each; and as the father,
who had been working in the stockyards for nineteen dollars a week,
was discharged two months ago, the wife has been working in a spring
factory to support the family.
Then there is a Polish family, composed of the parents and four
children under fourteen, two of them children of the man by a former
wife. The father has been in this country since 1894, but his wife
has been here only since 1910. For two years after their marriage the
wife worked at night, scrubbing from 6.30 to 9.30 p.m., and received
twenty-four dollars a month. Then there was an interval while her
children were babies, during which she did not work, but the family
lived on the earnings of the father. For the last two years, however,
his work has been slack, first because of a strike, and later due to
an industrial depression in his trade, and the mother is again at
work, this time in a tailor shop, earning ten dollars a week.
The effect of the mother's work in decreasing the child's chances for
life has been made clear by the studies of the Children's Bureau in
Johnstown,[10] Montclair,[11] and Manchester,[12] in all of which a
higher rate of infant mortality was shown for children of mothers
gainfully employed.
The effect of the mother's work on the family relationship and the
home life of the family group is, of course, not measurable in
absolute terms. The leaders of the various national groups, however,
have repeatedly emphasized the fact that the absence of the women from
the home has created entirely new problems in the family life. They
have pointed out that while the peasant women have been accustomed to
work in the fields in the old country, their work did not take them
away from their homes as the work in this country does. If they were
away there was usually some older woman to take care of the children.
Here the work of the mother frequently results in neglect of the
children and the home.
In recognition of this fact attempts have been made to solve the
problem. Among Slovenians it was customary, before the war made it
impossible, to send the children back to the old country to their
grandmothers to be cared for. One priest said he had seen women taking
as many as twelve children to a single village. The Ukrainians in
Chicago have talked of establishing a day nursery to look after their
children, but the people are poor, and it has not been possible to
raise the money. In the meantime children are not sent to the day
nurseries already established, but are commonly taken to neighbors,
some of whom are paid for taking care of ten or twelve children. This
arrangement constitutes a violation of the city ordinance requiring
day nurseries to be licensed, but is evidently a violation quite
unconsciously committed by both parties to the transaction.
A group of nonworking Lithuanian women heard that neglected children
were reported to the settlement in the neighborhood. One of the women
investigated, and found many children locked in houses for the day,
with coffee and bread for lunch. One child, too small to shift for
himself, was found with his day's supply of food tied around his neck.
The women decided to open a nursery in charge of a Lithuanian woman
who would be able to speak to the children in their own language, as
few children below school age spoke English. The original plans were
to accommodate ten or twelve children, but as soon as the nursery
opened there were so many women wanting to leave their children there
that it took as many as thirty children. The nursery was maintained
for about eighteen months, and was then closed because of the
difficulty of raising the necessary funds.
Some such plan must be developed that takes care of the foreign-born
mother's work if she is forced to supplement the family's income
outside of the home. The organization of family life that has grown up
parallel with the industrial system assumes her presence in the home.
When misfortune makes this impossible some provision for caring for
the children must be found.
CHANGED DUTIES OF A MOTHER
Another changed condition in the life in this country is that the
family group is usually what the sociologist calls the "marriage"
group, as distinguished from the "familial" group, which is generally
found in the old country. The grandmothers and maiden aunts, who were
part of the group in the old country, and who shared with the mother
all the work of the household, are not with them in this country. The
older women are seldom brought on the long journey, and the maiden
aunt is either employed in the factory system, or she sets up a house
of her own, so that in any event her assistance in the work of the
household can no longer be relied on. It is perhaps the grandmother
that is missed the more, because it was to her that the mother of a
family was wont to turn for advice as well as assistance.
This decrease in the number of people in the household is not
compensated for by the diminution in the amount of work, which is
another fact of changed conditions. For in this country the housewife
no longer spins and weaves, or even, as a rule, makes the cloth into
clothing. She does not work in the fields, or care for the garden or
the farm animals, all of which she was expected to do in the old
country. The loss of the older women in the group, however, means that
what tasks are left must all be done by her.
The duties of the housewife may not be as many, but the work they
involve may be more. This is true, for example, in the matter of
feeding the family. In Lithuania soup was the fare three times daily,
and there were only a few variations in kind. Here the family soon
demands meat, coffee, and other things that are different from the
food she has cooked in the old country.... Occasionally the situation
is further complicated by the insistence of dietetic experts that the
immigrant mother cannot feed her family intelligently unless she has
some knowledge of food values. In other words, the work of the
housewife was easy in the old country because it was well done--if it
was done in the way her mother did it--and conformed to the standards
that she knew. It could thus become a matter of routine that did not
involve the expenditure of nervous energy. Here, on the other hand,
she must conform to standards that are constantly changing, and must
learn to do things in a way her mother never dreamed of doing them.
And there is the new and difficult task of planning the use of the
family income, which takes on a new and unfamiliar form.
In spite of all that has been taken out of the home the duties of the
housewife remain manifold and various. She is responsible for the care
of the house, for the selection and preparation of food, for spending
the part of the income devoted to present needs, and for planning and
sharing in the sacrifices thought necessary to provide against future
needs. She must both bear and rear her children. The responsibilities
and satisfactions of her relationship with her husband are too often
last in the list of her daily preoccupations, but by no means least in
importance, if one of the essentials of a home is to be maintained.
The enumeration of the tasks of any wife and mother throws into relief
the difficulties of the foreign-born mother. The all too frequent
cases where homes are deprived of her presence emphasize how
indispensable she is. All case-work agencies have had to grapple with
the problem of families suffering this deprivation. It is these
motherless families that make us realize how many tasks and
responsibilities fall to the lot of the mother.
There was a motherless Russian family, consisting of the father and
six children, the oldest a girl of thirteen and the youngest a
five-month-old boy. For a time the family tried to get along without
asking advice of an outside agency. The baby was placed with friends,
and the thirteen-year-old girl stopped school to care for the
five-room flat and the other four children. In a short time the family
with whom the baby was placed wanted to adopt him, and refused to keep
him longer on any other condition. At this time the Immigrant's
Protective League was appealed to for help in placing the baby where
he would not have to be given for adoption. They found the father
making a pathetic attempt to keep the home and children clean, and
the oldest girl, Marya, trying hard to take her mother's place. The
best plan they were able to work out for the family was institutional
care for the youngest two children, nursery care outside of school
hours for the next two, and the two oldest left to take care of
themselves, although given lunch at the school. Marya, of course, was
sent back to school, and she and her father share the housekeeping.
PATERNAL AUTHORITY PASSING
A third change should be taken into account. There is a marked
difference between the general position of women and children in
relation to the authority of the husband and father in this country
and that in the old country. It is indicated in both general opinion
and express statutory amendment in this country, although not in the
so-called common law. The latter, in common with practice in the
native lands of immigrants, provided that marriage gave the husband
the right to determine where the domicile should be, the right
"reasonably to discipline" wife and children, the right to claim her
services and to appropriate her earnings and those of the children,
the right to take any personal property (except "_paraphernalia_" and
"_pin money_") she might have in full ownership, the right to manage
any land she might become entitled to, and the right to enjoy the
custody of the children, regardless of the maintenance of his
conjugal fidelity, in the absence of such obscene and drunken conduct
on his part as would be obviously demoralizing to the young child.
There existed no adequate provision for enforcing the father's
performance of either conjugal or parental obligations, and the result
has been the development of two bodies of legislative change. One of
these has granted to the wife certain rights as against the husband,
on the theory that the wife retains her separate existence after
marriage and should retain rights of individual action. The other body
of statutes imposes on the man the duty of support, making abandonment
or refusal to support punishable by fine or imprisonment, or both.
The theory of this legislation is that the support of wife and
children is to be a legally enforceable duty, which may rightly be
laid upon the man because of his special interest and special ability.
Moreover, through the establishment of the juvenile court, the
community has undertaken, not only to say that support must be given,
but to set a standard of "proper parental care" below which family
groups are not to be allowed to sink and still remain independent and
intact. By creating the juvenile probation staff, an official
assistant parent is provided. In the same way, by authorizing
commitment of children to institutions, the dissolution of the home
that falls persistently to too low a standard is made possible.
The common law, as accepted in the various states, was not entirely
uniform, but it was substantially the universal family law; now the
states differ widely in the body of statutory enactments developed in
this field. All have some laws recognizing the claims of children to
have their home conditions scrutinized--though they may have no
express juvenile-court law, all recognize to some extent the separate
existence of the married women--though only twenty-one have given the
mother substantial rights as against the father over their children,
and they all recognize the parent's duty to secure the child's
attendance at school, and have imposed some limitation on the parent's
right to set his young child to work. In other words, in all the
states the idea of the separate existence of the wife and of the
interest of the community in the kind of care given the child has been
embodied in legislation.
These statutes have been enacted by legislatures composed largely, if
not exclusively, of men, and register the general change in the
community attitude toward the family group. An unlimited autocracy is
gradually becoming what might now be termed a constitutional
democracy. But the law of the jurisdictions from which most of the
immigrant groups come, undoubtedly represents a theory of family
relationship not widely different from that underlying the common law.
The South Italian group, in which the right of the father to
discipline wife and daughter is passed on to the son, may represent an
extreme survival of the patriarchal idea; but almost all the
foreign-born groups hold to the dominion of man over woman, and of
parents over children.
Immigrant groups evidence their realization of the changed conditions
in different ways. Among the Ukrainians in Chicago, for example, it is
said that, whereas in the old country the men kept complete control of
the little money that came in, here they very generally turn it all
over to their wives. Some of them have laughed, and said that America
was the "women's country." Among other groups, notably the Jugo-Slav
and the Italian, there is said to be a general attempt to keep the
women repressed and in much the same position they held in the old
country. Sometimes the woman perceives the difference in the situation
more quickly than her husband. Then if he attempts to retain the old
authorities in form and in spirit, she may submit or else she may
gradually lead him to an understanding. But she may not understand and
yet may rebel and carry her difficulty to the case-work agency.
One of the settlements in Chicago is said to have become very
unpopular with the men in its neighborhood, as it has the reputation
of breaking up families, because women who have been ill treated by
their husbands have gone to the settlement to complain, and have there
been given help in taking their complaints to court.
The Immigrant's Protective League in Chicago receives many complaints
from women who have learned that their husbands have not the right to
beat them or their children. One Lithuanian woman, who had been in
this country six years, came to the league with the statement that her
husband often threw her and their eight-year-old son out of the house
in the middle of the night. Another Lithuanian woman living in one of
the suburbs took her three children and came to Chicago to her
sisters, because her husband abused her, called her vile names, and
beat her. When the husband was interviewed he agreed not to do so
again, and his family returned to him.
Of course, the theory underlying even the feminist "married woman's
property laws" included not only her enjoyment of rights, but her
exercise of legal responsibility; but the restrained exercise of newly
acquired freedom is evidence of high social and personal development.
And the women in the foreign-born groups come from the country, the
village, the small town. They have had little education, their days
have been filled with work, so that there has been little time for
reflection, they come from a simple situation in which there was
little temptation to do wrong. They find here, on the other hand, a
situation which is complex in the extreme, and in which there are
elements that tend to make matters especially difficult for women.
Attention has already been called to the confusion created by the
lodger in the home and the special temptation to the woman to desert
her husband for the lodger. The relative scarcity of women in the
group, the presence of large numbers of men who cannot enter a legal
marriage relationship because they have wives in the old country, the
spiritual separation that often results from physical separation
caused by the man's coming ahead to prepare a place--all these are
undoubtedly factors that enter in to make difficult the wise use of
her freedom. Native endowment, moral as well as physical and mental,
varies among these women as among other women. Confronted with this
confused and difficult situation, the change from the old sanctions,
the old safeguards, even the old legal obligations, is difficult.
It is inevitable that a few will find themselves unequal to the task
of readjusting their lives. The father of one family came to the
Immigrant's Protective League in Chicago, asking help because his wife
had turned him out of his home. He said that she drank and was
immoral. Instead of caring for the home and the two-year-old child,
she spent her time behind the bar in her brother's saloon, having "a
good time" with the customers. She had deserted six weeks before, but
he had found her and had had her in the Court of Domestic Relations,
where he had been persuaded to take her back. He said she was still
drinking and still neglecting the child. Shortly after asking the help
of the league, the father ran away, taking with him the child whom the
mother left alone in the house while she went to the "movies."
The women who assert themselves in their new rights are in a small
minority. A young Polish woman complains that the women of her group
are too submissive even in this country, and "bear beatings just as
their mothers did in the old country." In the great majority of
foreign-born families, as in all families, the question of the legal
rights of the woman is never raised. The habits and attitudes formed
under the old system of law and customs are carried over into the life
in the new country, and are changed so gradually and imperceptibly
that no apparent friction is caused in the family group. Moreover, in
many cases where the woman perceives her changed position she is able
to make her husband see it too, and she herself is able to work her
way through to a new understanding. It is interesting to note that the
women of the foreign-born groups who have worked their way through are
now bending their energies toward helping the women who have not yet
started.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Thomas and Znaniecki, _The Polish Peasant_, vol. ii, pp. 298-455.
[2] See _Report of U. S. Immigration Commission_, vol. viii, pp.
662-664. Also _Report of Massachusetts Immigration Commission_, 1914,
pp. 64-69. Also "Studies in Chicago Housing Conditions," _American
Journal of Sociology_, vol. xvi, no. 2 (September, 1910), pp. 145-170.
[3] United States Department of Labor, _Report of United States
Housing Corporation_, vol. ii, p. 507.
[4] See Annual Reports of the Immigrants' Protective League, 1909-18;
Massachusetts Immigration Commission, 1914, pp. 58-64; Abbott, Grace,
_The Immigrant and the Community_, pp. 55, 56, and 68 fol.
[5] _Report of the United States Housing Corporation_, vol. ii, p.
508.
[6] See John Daniels, _America via the Neighborhood_, chap. iii.
[7] See among other studies Chapin, _The Standard of Living Among
Workingmen's Families in New York City_ (Russell Sage Foundation
Publication, 1909), p. 234; Byington, _Homestead, the Households of a
Mill Town_ (Russell Sage Foundation Publication, 1910), p. 105;
Kennedy and others, _Wages and Family Budgets in the Chicago Stock
Yards District_ (University of Chicago Settlement, 1914), pp. 78-79;
_Eighteenth Annual Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Labor_; U. S.
Bureau of Labor, _Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners
in the United States_, vol. xvi, "Family Budgets of Typical
Cotton-mill Workers," pp. 142, 250; _Report of the U. S. Immigration
Commission_, vol. xix, p. 223.
[8] _United States Bureau of Labor Monthly Review_, July, 1919, p. 48.
[9] _Ibid._, March, 1919, p. 119.
[10] "Infant Mortality, Results of a Field Study in Johnstown,
Pennsylvania," U. S. Children's Bureau Publication No. 9.
[11] "Infant Mortality, A Study of Infant Mortality in a Suburban
Community," U. S. Children's Bureau Publication No. 11.
[12] "Infant Mortality, Results of a Field Study in Manchester, New
Hampshire," U. S. Children's Bureau Publication No. 20.
III
THE CARE OF THE HOUSE
The work that the housewife must do in the care of the house is the
maintenance of such standards of cleanliness and order as are to
prevail. It includes the daily routine tasks of bedmaking, cooking,
sweeping, dusting, dishwashing, disposing of waste, and the heavier
work of washing, ironing, and periodic cleanings.
NEW HOUSEKEEPING CONDITIONS
The foreign-born housewife finds this work particularly difficult for
many reasons. In the first place, housekeeping in the country from
which she came was done under such different conditions that it here
becomes almost a new problem in which her experience in the old
country may prove of little use. The extent to which this is true
varies from group to group. To understand the problems of any
particular group, careful study should be made of the living
conditions and housekeeping practices in the country from which it
came.
Some of the women with whom we have conferred have described
housekeeping as they knew it in the old country. These descriptions
are suggestive of the character of the change and the difficulties
involved. Mrs. P., a Polish woman from Posen, for example, said that:
Houses in the village in which she lived were made of clay,
with thatched roofs, clay floors, and about ten feet high.
They were made in rows, for four families or two families,
with one outer door opening from a hall into which the doors
from all the dwellings opened. Each dwelling had one small
window, and a fireplace. Water was out of doors. In the
four-family house there were two chimneys. The outside door
did not open into the road.
[Illustration: FLOOR PLAN OF HOUSES IN POLAND]
The floors were covered with sand, and new sand was put on
when the room was cleaned. The fireplace had a hook from
which hung the kettle, and in one corner was the oven, a
little place set off by a board covered with clay. Walls were
whitewashed. Mrs. P. said that the housework is much more
difficult in this country, with the cleaning of woodwork,
washing windows, care of curtains, carpets, and dishes, and
more elaborate cooking. In the old country the family washing
was done only once a month, except in cases where there were
small children. Then it was done weekly; and if the family
lacked sufficient clothing, the washing had to be done
oftener. There the meal was one dish, from which the entire
family ate; here there is a variety of food and each person
has his own plate and eating utensils, so that even the
dishwashing is a greater task. In coming to this country many
women do not see that the windows need washing or that the
woodwork should be cleaned, etc.
The beds were made of boards covered with straw, not as a
straw mattress. Sheets were laid over the straw to make it
softer. Each person had two pillows, very large and full, so
that they sleep in a "half sitting" position. Feather beds
are used for warmth, and no quilts or blankets were known in
the old country.
Lithuanian women, likewise, have pointed out that at home most of the
women worked in the fields, and that what housekeeping was done was of
the simplest kind. The peasant house consisted of two rooms, one of
which was used only on state occasions, a visit from the priest, a
wedding, christening, or a funeral. In summer no one sleeps in the
house, but all sleep out of doors in the hay; in winter, women with
small children sleep inside, but the others sleep in the granary.
Feather beds are, in these circumstances, a real necessity. Thus the
bed that is found in this country is unknown in Lithuania, and the
women naturally do not know how to care for one. They not only do not
realize the need of airing it, turning the mattress, and changing the
bedding, but do not even know how to make it up properly.
Other processes of housekeeping--dishwashing, scrubbing, and
washing--prove equally difficult, and it is said that most of the
women do things in the hardest possible way, chiefly because the
processes are different here and they lack the technique to do their
work in the easier way. Naturally, too, when work in the fields has
occupied most of their time, they lack also habits of order and
routine in their household tasks.
The Italian women, especially those from southern Italy and Sicily,
have also spoken of their difficulties in housekeeping under new
conditions. In Italy the houses, even of the relatively well-to-do
peasants, were two-room affairs with earthen floors and little
furniture. The women had little time to give to the care of the house,
and its comfort and order were not considered important.
The experience in doing the family washing is said to typify the
change. In Italy washing is done once a month, or at most, once a
fortnight, in the poorer families. Clothes are placed in a great vat
or tub of cold water, covered with a cloth on which is sprinkled wood
ashes, and allowed to stand overnight. In the morning they are taken
to a stream or fountain, and washed in running water. They are dried
on trees and bushes in the bright, Italian sunlight. Such methods of
laundry work do not teach the women anything about washing in this
country, and they are said to make difficult work of it in many cases.
They learn that clothes are boiled here, but they do not know which
clothes to boil and which to wash without boiling; and as a result
they often boil all sorts of clothing, colored and white, together. In
Italy washing is a social function; here it is a task for each
individual woman.
DEMANDS OF AMERICAN COOKERY
Cooking in this country varies in difficulty in the different national
groups. In the case of the Lithuanians and Poles, for example, the
old-country cooking is simple and easily done. Among others it is a
fine art, requiring much time and skill. The Italian cooking, of
course, is well known, as is also the Hungarian. Among the Bohemians
and Croatians, too, the housewives are proverbially good cooks and
spend long hours over the preparation of food. Croatian women in this
country are said to regard American cookery with scorn. They say that
Croatian women do not expect to get a meal in less than two or three
hours, while here all the emphasis is on foods that can be prepared in
twenty or thirty minutes.
It is not always easy to transplant this art of cookery, even if the
women had time to practice it here as they did at home. The materials
can usually be obtained, although often at a considerable expense, but
the equipment with which they cook and the stoves on which they cook
are entirely different. The Italian women, for example, cannot bake
their bread in the ovens of the stoves that they use here. Tomato
paste, for example, is used in great quantities by Italian families,
and is made at home by drying the tomatoes in the open air. When an
attempt is made to do this in almost any large city the tomatoes get
not only the sunshine, but the soot and dirt of the city. The more
particular Italians here will not make tomato paste outdoors, but
large numbers of Italian families continue to make it, as can be seen
by a walk through any Italian district in late August or early
September.
In general, in the groups in which cooking was highly developed, a
great deal of time was devoted to the preparation of food. If the
housewife wishes to reduce her work in this country, she finds that
some of the ingredients which make our cooking simpler are unknown to
her. The Bohemians, for example, do not know how to use baking powder,
and the same is true of the women in Lithuanian, Polish, and Russian
groups, where the art of cooking is less developed.
With this lack of experience in housekeeping under comparable
conditions, the foreign-born housewife finds the transition to
housekeeping in this country difficult at best. As a matter of fact,
however, the circumstances under which she must make the change are
often of the worst. She is expected to maintain standards of
cleanliness and sanitary housekeeping that have developed with modern
systems of plumbing and facilities for the disposal of waste that are
not always to be found in the districts in which she lives. Even a
skillful housewife finds housekeeping difficult in such houses as are
usually occupied by recently arrived immigrants.
WATER SUPPLY ESSENTIAL
In the first place, there is the question of water supply. Cleanliness
of house, clothing, and even of person is extremely difficult in a
modern industrial community, without an adequate supply of hot and
cold water within the dwelling. We are, however, very far from
realizing this condition. In some cities[13] the law requires that
there shall be a sink with running water in every dwelling, but in
other cities even this minimum is not required. The United States
Immigration Commission, for example, found that 1,413 households out
of 8,651 foreign-born households studied in seven large cities, shared
their water supply with other families. Conditions have improved in
this respect during the last decade, but it is a great handicap to
efficient housekeeping if water has to be carried any distance.
Further inconvenience results if running hot water is not available,
which is too often the case in the homes of the foreign born.
[Illustration: THIS PUMP SUPPLIES WATER TO FOUR FAMILIES]
Cleanliness is also dependent, in part, upon the facilities for the
disposition of human waste, the convenient and accessible toilet
connected with a sewer system. These facilities are lacking in many
immigrant neighborhoods, as has been repeatedly shown in various
housing investigations. For example, in a Slovak district in the
Twentieth Ward, Chicago, 80 per cent of the families were using
toilets located in the cellar, yard, or under the sidewalk, and in
many cases sharing such toilets with other families. One yard toilet
was used by five families, consisting of twenty-eight persons.[14] The
danger to health, and the lack of privacy, that such toilet
accommodations mean have been often emphasized. In addition, it
enormously increases the work of the housewife and makes cleanliness
difficult, if not impossible.
There is also the question of heating and lighting the house. Whenever
light is provided by the oil lamp, it must be filled and cleaned; and
when heat is provided by the coal stove, it means that the housewife
must keep the fires going and dispose of the inevitable dirt and
ashes. In the old country the provision of fuel was part of the
woman's duties; and in this country, as coal is so expensive, many
women feel they must continue this function. Here this means picking
up fuel wherever it can be found--in dump heaps and along the railroad
tracks. A leading Bohemian politician said that he often thought, as
he saw women prominent in Bohemian society, "Well, times have changed
since you used to pick up coal along the railroad tracks."
OVERCROWDING HAMPERS THE HOUSEWIFE
The influence of overcrowding on the work of the housewife must also
be considered in connection with housekeeping in immigrant households.
That overcrowding exists has been pointed out again and again.
Ordinances have been framed to try to prevent it, but it has
persisted. In the studies of Chicago housing a large percentage of the
bedrooms have always been found illegally occupied. The per cent of
the rooms so occupied varied from 30 in one Italian district to 72 in
the Slavic district around the steel mills. The United States
Immigration Commission found, for example, that 5,305, or 35.1 per
cent, of the families studied in industrial centers used all rooms but
one for sleeping, and another 771 families used even the kitchen.
Crowding means denial of opportunity for skillful and artistic
performance of tasks. "A place for everything and everything in its
place," suggests appropriate assignment of articles of use to their
proper niches, corners, and shelves. One room for everything except
sleeping--cooking, washing, caring for the children, catching a breath
for the moment--means no repose, no calm, no opportunity for planning
that order which is the law of the well-governed home. Yet there is
abundant evidence that many families have had to live in just such
conditions.
The housework for the foreign-born housewife is often complicated by
other factors. One is the practice to which reference has been already
made of taking lodgers to supplement the father's wages. In discussing
this subject from the point of view of the lodger, it has been pointed
out that the practice with reference to the taking of boarders and
lodgers varies in different places and among different groups. The
amounts paid were not noted there, but they become important when
considered together with the service asked of the housewife. Usually
the boarder or lodger pays a fixed monthly sum--from $2 to $3.50, or,
more rarely, $4 a month--for lodging, cleaning, washing, and cooking;
his food is secured separately, the account being entered in a
grocery book and settled at regular intervals.
Sometimes the lodger does his own buying, but the more common custom
is to have the housewife do it. Occasionally he does his own cooking,
in which case payment for lodging secures him the right to use the
stove. More rarely, as in some of the Mexican families visited in
Chicago in 1919, he is a regular boarder, paying a weekly sum for room
and board.
Just what keeping lodgers means in adding to the duties of the
housewife can be seen from the following description of the work of
the Serbo-Croatian women in Johnstown, Pennsylvania:[15]
The wife, without extra charge, makes up the beds, does the
washing and ironing, and buys and prepares the food for all
the lodgers. Usually she gets everything on credit, and the
lodgers pay their respective shares biweekly. These
conditions exist to some extent among other foreigners, but
are not so prevalent among other nationalities in Johnstown
as among the Serbo-Croatians.
In a workingman's family, it is sometimes said, the woman's
working day is two hours longer than the man's. But if this
statement is correct in general, the augmentation stated is
insufficient in these abnormal homes, where the women are
required to have many meals and dinner buckets ready at
irregular hours to accommodate men working on different
shifts.
The Serbo-Croatian women who, more than any of the others, do
all this work, are big, handsome, and graceful, proud and
reckless of their strength. During the progress of the
investigation, in the winter months, they were frequently
seen walking about the yards and courts, in bare feet, on the
snow and ice-covered ground, hanging up clothes or carrying
water into the house from a yard hydrant.
WOMEN WORK OUTSIDE THE HOME
Another factor that renders housekeeping difficult is the necessity of
doing wage-paid work outside the home, to which reference has already
been made. Women interviewed have repeatedly emphasized the
difficulties that this practice creates in connection with the
housekeeping.
A recent study of children of working mothers, soon to be published by
the United States Children's Bureau, carried on at the Chicago School
of Civics and Philanthropy, obtained the testimony of the mothers as
to the difficulties involved. This study showed that in many cases the
household duties could not be performed at the proper time; 60 women,
for example, of the 109 reporting on this question, said that they did
not make their beds until night; 105 said their dishes were not washed
after each meal, but in 41 cases were washed in the mornings, and in
56 not until night. Three washed them in the morning if they had time,
and five left them for the children, after school.
Many women who worked outside the home did their housekeeping without
assistance from other members of the family. This meant that they had
to get up early in the morning and frequently work late at night at
laundry or cleaning; 49 women, for example, washed in the evening; 25
washed either Saturday, Sunday, or evenings.
HOUSING IMPROVEMENT
Enough has probably been said to show that the work of caring for the
house under the conditions existing in most immigrant neighborhoods,
is unnecessarily difficult for the foreign-born housewife. The most
obvious point at which these burdens might be lightened so that the
housewife could have time for other duties, would appear to be through
improvement of housing. With an awakened realization of this fact,
both on the part of the foreign-born woman herself and the community
of which she is an inevitable part, will come the solution of these
difficulties. A protest, however inarticulate or indirectly expressed
by her, will find its response in a growing realization that plans for
improvement must be developed.
The several housing projects that have already been offered are
suggestive of the problems and possibilities along this line rather
than useful as hard-and-fast solutions. They not only meet the needs
of the more inadequate immigrant housing conditions, but provide
improvement upon most native-born conditions. In this connection
interest naturally centers on the war-time housing projects of the
United States government, on the experiment of the Massachusetts
Homestead Commission at Lowell, and on certain enterprises carried out
by so-called limited dividend companies. The first two are especially
interesting, in that they recognize that supplying houses to the
workers is not a function that can be wholly left to private
initiative.
It is not possible to discuss these projects in detail, nor is it
necessary.[16] It is sufficient to consider them here with reference
to the contributions they might make in helping the immigrant
housewife. In the first place, they provide for a toilet and a bath in
every house, and a supply of running water that is both adequate and
convenient. In the matter of kitchen equipment there is an attempt to
provide some of the conveniences. Both provide a sink and set
wash-tubs equipped with covers. They must be set at a minimum of
thirty-six inches from the floor in the United States plans. Both make
provision for gas to be used for cooking, although the coal stove is
accepted. The kitchens in the Massachusetts houses are also provided
with kitchen cabinets, with shelves under the sink, and with a drain
for the refrigerator.
In other ways also consideration for the housewife is evidenced.
Electricity is urged for lighting, passages through which furniture
would not go are avoided, the size of the living room is adapted to
the sizes of the most commonly purchased rugs, etc. Study of the
Massachusetts plans reveals other interesting features, such as the
care given to the location of the bathroom and the attention to the
size of the doors, so that the mother at work in her kitchen can watch
the children at play in other rooms.
Both projects are interesting also in that they realize the necessity
of a "front room" or parlor, and prescribe a minimum number of
bedrooms--three in the Massachusetts, and two in the United States
experiment. Both require closets in every bedroom wide enough to
receive the men's garments on hangers, and rooms of such size that the
bed can stand free of the wall and out of a draught. It is evident
that the plans for houses in both projects provide very definite
improvements in the matter of the conveniences to which the immigrant
is not accustomed in the houses at present available to him.
Some limitations, however, become apparent by comparing them with the
recommendations of the Women's Subcommittee of the Ministry of
Reconstruction Advisory Council, England. That committee emphasizes
the importance of electricity for lighting, and urges "that a cheap
supply of electricity for domestic purposes should be made available
with the least possible delay." The American plans agree that
electricity is the preferred lighting, but gas is accepted by the
United States government, although not by the Massachusetts plan.
There is no suggestion of developing a cheaper supply of electricity.
The English women also suggest the desirability of a central heating
plant as a measure that would lessen the work of the household, afford
economies in fuel, and render a hot-water supply readily available.
They urge, therefore, further experimentation with central heating.
The American plans have no suggestions to make at this point, but
accept the coal stove or the separate furnace in the higher-priced
houses as the means of heating. While they provide for hot water, no
suggestions are made as to how this is to be supplied. It is
presumably done by a tank attached to the range, which means that hot
water is not available when there is no fire in the range; that is, in
summer and during the night. It should also be noted that these plans
make no suggestions for co-operative use of any of the equipment of
the household.
There is another point at which the architects and builders failed to
take sufficient notice of the problem of lightening the women's
work--namely, in their attitude toward the separate family home as
compared with the multiple family dwelling. The Massachusetts
Commission was, by the terms of the Act creating it, limited to the
provision of one or two-family houses; the United States government
standards were definitely against the building occupied in whole or in
part by three or more families.
Tenement and apartment houses are considered generally
undesirable, and will be accepted only in cities where,
because of high land values, it is clearly demonstrated that
single and two-family houses cannot be economically provided,
or where there is insistent demand for this type of multiple
housing.
This judgment, however, has by no means met with universal approval.
Those architects who think in terms of the woman's time and strength
consider the merits of the group and of the multiple house. For
example, those who planned the Black Rock Apartment House Group in
Bridgeport, Connecticut, the open-stairway dwellings, the John Jay
dwellings on East Seventy-seventh Street, New York City, and the
Erwin, Tennessee, development, maintain that the advantages of the
separate house in privacy, independence, and access to land can be
secured by the multiple arrangement. Not only can economies in the use
of the land be practiced, but protection and assistance for the women
and children can be obtained, and there is the possibility of devices
for convenient and collective performance of many tasks.
It is unnecessary to review the arguments for the one or for the
other. It is evident that the group house, and perhaps the multiple
house, offer such inducements in the economy of space and the
possibility of assigning areas of land to definite and anticipated
uses, that their further adaptation to family needs must be
contemplated. It is generally assumed that the family group wants the
separate house. The question of interest for this study is one of the
desire of the immigrant groups in this respect. Their preference
should be an indispensable element in the formulation of housing
standards.
There is not, however, a great deal of evidence on this subject. The
fact that immigrants live in the city in the congested districts may
only indicate that they have had no choice in the matter. Most of the
officers of certain immigrant building and loan associations
interviewed for this study thought there was a preference for the
single-family dwelling when it could be afforded. That also is the
belief of the investigators in this study, who think that the use of
multiple houses indicates not the immigrants' desires, but their
acceptance of what is before them, and that the dream of almost every
immigrant family is to have a house of its own, to which is attached a
little garden.
How far the desire for the separate house is confused with the desire
for the garden would be difficult to say. It is certain, however,
that in general the immigrant has known only one way to have the
garden, and that was by having a separate house. There is universal
agreement that especially the foreign-born family desires access to
land for whose cultivation they may be responsible, and whose produce
both in food and in flowers they may enjoy. Recently, however, certain
architects have been interested in working out plans by which this
advantage might be retained for dwellers in group or tenement houses.
They have pointed out that one advantage of the group and multiple
house is the setting free of spaces to be more skillfully adapted to
the size and composition of the family.
Attention may be called to certain devices that are urged by
experienced architects in the matter of the use of land. For example,
in the Morgan Park, Minnesota, development of the Illinois Steel
Company, the architects have developed interesting plans in connection
with their low-cost houses. These are all group houses, with a front
space opening on an attractively planned street. At the rear of the
house is a latticed porch--a small area graveled, but not grassed--and
then the alley. Across the alley is the rear garden, which may thus be
fenced in and kept separate from the house lot.
[Illustration: A COMMUNITY PLAN SUBMITTED BY MILO HASTINGS IN THE
AMERICAN HOUSING COMPETITION, 1919, SHOWING THE U VARIATIONS, THE BACK
SERVICE STREET, THE PROVISION FOR REAR GARDENS, AND THE OPEN AREAS ON
WHICH ALL THE HOUSES WILL FRONT
(Reprinted by permission from the Journal of the American Institute of
Architects, June, 1919)]
Interesting suggestions on this point are to be found in the two
articles, to which prizes were given by the American Institute of
Architects in the June and July, 1919, numbers of their journal. There
is much experimentation yet to be done, as the question of the
separate house with its separate plot of ground is by no means a
settled one. It is particularly desirable that the interest of the
foreign born be enlisted, both that they may contribute to the
solution of the question and that they may become acquainted with all
the possibilities of access to the land which are being worked out.
In spite of some defects and the need for further experimentation
along the lines suggested above, there is no doubt that the projects
of Massachusetts and of the Federal government mark a very real
advance. The most pressing need is to construct a sufficient number of
these houses so that they may be available for immigrant groups. One
means of doing this is by the employer's building houses for the
workers to buy or to rent. Although this has sometimes been found to
help solve the housing situation, factors may enter that limit its
usefulness. The industrial relationships between employer and employee
may be such that subsidy for housing by employer would hinder rather
than help. Where a community is largely comprised of one industry it
may be very unwise for the industry to go so far toward the control of
community affairs. Labor unrest in the northern iron ranges can be
traced in part to such company provision of housing and sanitation.
The limited dividend company, organized not for profit, and operating
under the careful supervision of a governmental department, is another
solution. This agency has been particularly successful in
Massachusetts under the stimulus as well as under the supervision of
the Massachusetts Homestead Commission, and is undoubtedly capable of
further development.
GOVERNMENT BUILDING LOANS
Another possibility is that the local or state government advance the
money and enable the worker to buy his own home. That is the plan
adopted by the Massachusetts Homestead Commission in its experiment at
Lowell. It is also one of the policies adopted by the Canadian
government, which will loan money to provincial governments to be
advanced for building houses on land owned (a) by the provincial or
municipal government, (b) by the limited dividend company, (c) by the
workman himself. This latter plan would probably commend itself most
readily to the foreign-speaking groups.
Direct loans by the local government to the worker are advocated in
the careful and thorough plan worked out by Mrs. E. E. Wood.[17] One
suggestion is a proposed amendment to the Postal Savings Law,
authorizing loans from postal savings deposits to workers with annual
incomes not in excess of twelve hundred dollars. The investigation of
the application is to be in the hands of the nearest local housing
board. A suggested amendment to the Farm Loan Act is that housing
loans be made by the Farm Loan Board on the same terms on which farm
loans are now authorized. It is interesting to note that this plan
contemplates the continued activity of the building and loan
associations with which the foreign born are already familiar. It
suggests that the first loan be given by the government and the
association be content with a second mortgage, receiving in return the
greater stability that is secured from a transaction carried on under
governmental supervision.
According to Mrs. Wood's report, before 1915, 700,000 houses had been
built or acquired in the United States through the aid of building and
loan associations.[18] She thinks that the moderately paid wage
earner, but not the unskilled worker, was benefited. This conclusion
is disputed by officers of four building and loan associations in
Chicago interviewed in connection with this study. That the
associations reach the foreign-speaking groups seems to be evident
from the names in the Annual Report of the auditor of the state of
Illinois for 1918. The Bohemians had the largest number of societies,
and the Poles were second. The Italians alone of the large national
groups were unrepresented.
Mrs. Wood's plan also calls for a national housing commission in the
Department of Labor, to be created under congressional act, with
organization and powers analogous to those exercised by the Federal
Board for Vocational Education. For the use of this commission it is
proposed that a fund be created by the issue of bonds, from which
loans could be made to certain designated agencies for the clearance
of congested areas and the increase of housing facilities.
The Federal legislation is to be supplemented according to Mrs. Wood's
plan by state legislation, including:
1. A restrictive housing law, a constructive housing law, and a Town
Planning Act. This plan contemplates a state commission on housing and
town planning through which the Federal aid for the state would be
made available; to which should be intrusted the responsibility of
investigating and approving or disapproving housing schemes proposed
by local agencies and associations.
2. A state fund similar to the Federal fund is proposed, and definite
suggestions for its use are worked out. For the local authorities,
local housing and town-planning boards, probably with the county as
the basis of organization, are proposed.
This housing fund, composed of the Federal fund, the state fund, and
in some cases local funds, is to be used to make loans to
municipalities, housing organizations that are not organized for
profit, limited dividend companies, co-operative associations, or even
employers. The plan contemplates that the lowest paid wage earners,
among whom are numbered a large per cent of the foreign born, should
continue to rent; but the landlord should not be a private individual
seeking to make profit from providing the workers with shelter.
The plan also takes note of the plan for co-partnership ownership
adopted by the United States Housing Corporation. The main features of
this arrangement are:
1. Ownership vested in a local board of trustees bound to operate the
property in the interest of the tenants and until the property is
fully amortized in the interest of the government.
2. Formation of a tenants' association to which all residents of three
months are eligible on payment of small yearly dues. This association
to elect a tenants' council to act as directors of the association, to
confer with the board of trustees, and to carry out such duties as
trustees direct.
3. Any tenant may become a co-partner by applying for bonds to the
amount of 25 per cent of the value of his dwelling, and accompanying
his application with a cash subscription of one half per cent of this.
4. Tenant co-partners are given a voice in the management by the right
to elect trustees, the number increasing with the amount of
subscriptions to bonds.
5. Tenant co-partners granted remission of one month's rent a year.
6. Tenant co-partners leaving or desiring to discontinue as
co-partners have the right to sell their bonds to trustees at par.
Mr. A. C. Comey, the author of the plan, says of it:[19]
Such a co-partnership scheme as this will present to workmen
a unique opportunity for saving, for not only will they get
as high a rate of interest as a safe investment justifies,
but they will be to a large degree custodians of their own
security and will thus be able to protect their investments
in much the same way as actual home owners. On the other hand
they will avoid most of the pitfalls of home owning, such as
loss through deterioration of a neighborhood, forced sales in
case of departure, and inability to realize on assets locked
up in private homes. Moreover, they will tend to develop a
high degree of community spirit, usually so lacking among
apartment dwellers, and thus take more interest in public
affairs and become better citizens generally.
These are advantages which it would be especially desirable for the
foreign-born groups, as many of them have experienced the pitfalls of
home ownership. It is a complicated system and would have to be
explained in detail to the various groups. The medium for such
explanations is at hand in the foreign-language press and in the
immigrant societies, and the effort that it would involve is surely
worth making. It should also be noted that it is not so complicated a
system as the land tenure in many of the countries from which the
immigrants come.
INSTRUCTION IN SANITATION
The subject of housing reform as a means of easing the housewife's
task was considered first, as it is useless to talk of helping her in
her work until she is given some of the conveniences with which to
work. It is evident, however, that that is not all that is necessary
for the foreign-born housewife. She is not accustomed to the use of a
house of the size contemplated by the proposed plans--the Italians,
Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, Hungarians, and doubtless others have
known only the one and two-room house--and there is always the
possibility that, given more rooms, they may be used to take in more
lodgers. Such was the case, for example, in the relatively adequate
houses provided by the United States Steel Corporation at Gary.
It is not necessary, however, to use the method of that corporation,
and turn out of the houses persons who need instruction in the use of
the house. Persuasion and instruction in the uses of the special
features of the house could have been tried. It might have been
possible for the rent collector or a sanitary inspector with a social
point of view to establish friendly relations on their regular visits
to the families. With confidence gained and tact displayed, much in
the way of education could be accomplished. To construct houses so
that each room can serve one and only one purpose would in part meet
the difficulties. Above all, patience and a realization of the
difficulties that the foreign-born housewife meets, are essential.
A point on which some architects lay special stress in the structure
of low-cost houses is the devotion of the entire first floor to
cooking and living uses--not sleeping. That is, the living room,
dining room, and kitchen are either combined or so open into each
other that no temptation is offered to close off part for sleeping
purposes. The bedrooms are then on the second floor, each room having
only one door, and the bathroom and the storage space are slightly
elevated above the second and offer no temptation to be used for
purposes other than those for which they are designed. If, then,
families inexperienced in the use of modern accommodations come into
the community, they may perhaps be helped to an understanding of
modern devices by the experience of living in houses arranged in this
way.
Both the rent collector, if it be a case of tenancy, and the building
official, if it be a case of ownership, should not only understand the
principles of sanitation and hygiene, but should understand the people
they serve. To render the best service to immigrant groups, such
officials must speak the language of the group and understand
something of its peculiarities. They should, in fact, be public
assistant housekeepers, through whose assistance the gradual and
voluntary initiation of our foreign-born neighbors into community life
can take place. New standards of efficiency and new amenities can be
developed. Our community life might, then, be freed from the old
physical dangers connected with human adjustment to physical
surroundings, and take on new dignities suitable to a democratic and
adequate life for the whole people.
There remain the difficulties described at the beginning of the
chapter, which come from the fact that the processes of the work of
caring for the house are different in this country from those in the
country from which the foreign-born housewives came. These
difficulties are not so easy to solve as those of housing. They are
undoubtedly surmounted as time goes on, but it is a gradual process.
Many forces are at work. Necessity is probably the primary one. The
foreign-born woman early learns to use American cooking utensils and
fuel because they are all she can get. She has to feed her family with
the only food the store at the corner furnishes. American furniture
and furnishings soon attract her attention, and she is curious as to
their purposes and uses.
In part, the foreign-born housewives have learned from one another;
that is, from the members of the group who have been here longer; and
in part they have learned by going into the more comfortable American
homes as domestic servants. Those who have done the latter are,
usually, the girls who come alone or the elder daughters of the
family. In some communities, such as a Bohemian community near Dallas,
Texas, it is said to be well understood that the girl will learn
domestic science by a kind of apprenticeship in the home of her
employer. When she has learned what she thinks sufficient, she leaves
to practice in her own home and to show her family how things should
be done. The limitations and difficulties of domestic service for the
inexperienced immigrant have been well set forth in the reports of
various protective societies.[20] But the foreign-born women with
whom we have conferred in this study have repeatedly emphasized the
advantages that come from being shown how to do housework under the
conditions in this country. Yet women of the "new" immigrant groups
enter domestic service much less than those from the "old" ones.
In the end, no doubt, many foreign-born housewives have learned to
care for their homes and raise their families as systematically as
their American neighbors, who have had fewer difficulties to contend
with. It is, however, a wasteful system which leaves the instruction
of the immigrant housewife to the chance instruction she can gain from
fellow countrywomen who have themselves learned only imperfectly. If
the community only realized what the difficulties were for the
housewife from a different civilization, it would undoubtedly stretch
out a friendly and helping hand to assist her over the first rough
path. Whatever form this help takes, it must be offered in the spirit
of friendly co-operation, and not of didactic superiority, if the
desired result is to be gained.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] Details may be secured from the National Housing Association, 105
East Twenty-second Street, New York City.
[14] Chicago Housing Studies, _American Journal of Sociology_, vol.
xx, p. 154.
[15] Children's Bureau Publication No. 9, "Infant Mortality,
Johnstown, Pennsylvania," p. 29.
[16] See Edith Elmer Wood, _The Housing of the Unskilled Wage Earner_;
_Report of Massachusetts Homestead Commission_; _Reports of United
States Housing Corporation_.
[17] Edith Elmer Wood, _Housing of the Unskilled Wage Earner_, chap.
viii.
[18] Edith Elmer Wood, _Housing of the Unskilled Wage Earner_, p. 233.
[19] _Survey_, June 28, 1919.
[20] See _Annual Report of the Immigrants' Protective League,
1910-1911_, and Abbott, _The Immigrant and the Community_, chap. v,
"The Special Problems of the Immigrant Girl."
IV
PROBLEMS OF SAVING
There has been in the past much harsh and thoughtless criticism of the
foreign-born groups, because of the extent to which they have seemed
able and willing to subordinate present necessities and enjoyments to
provide for certain future contingencies.
PRESENT AND FUTURE NEEDS
Many of those who come to this country are in debt for their passage.
Others have left near relatives at home who must be helped to come
over. Some have come, intending to establish themselves and to be
married here. Some expect to take back a part of their earnings to
better the condition of those left behind. Their coming, whether to
stay permanently or to return, often does not relieve them of their
obligations to the group in the old country.
One of the strongest impressions that the reader gets from the letters
in _The Polish Peasant_ is that of the frequency with which relatives
in the old country ask for money from the one who has gone ahead. It
is not only his wife and children, or aged parents, that ask for
money, but all the members of the wider familial group, and sometimes
even friends with no claim on the score of kinship.
The purposes for which they ask money are various; in the Borek
series, for example, a son of the family is asked to send money
because the family is in debt and has taxes to pay; to send money for
the dowry of his sister; for a forge; for a sewing machine, and for a
phonograph. He is also told that if he sends money home it will not be
wasted, but will be put out at interest. Other claims for money are
put forward in other series, possibly the most common one being a
request for a steamship ticket. The letters show clearly that it is
customary to send money for fête days, "name days," or birthdays,
Christmas, Easter, and other occasions. A failure to do so brings
reproach coupled with a reminder that others who had gone from the
village had sent money. In the Wrobelski series the family ask money
from the member in this country for a new church at home. Every Sunday
the priest reads aloud the names of those who have contributed. It
therefore seems to the immigrant imperative that from his present
earnings certain amounts shall be set aside.
When the first hard times are past and the members of the immediate
family are reunited, there comes the reaction to the experience of
depending on the money wage. There arises the fear of disaster growing
out of interruption of the income, or misfortune involving especially
heavy expenditure.
The United States Treasury Department in its "Thrift" campaign lays
down the doctrine _save first_ and _spend afterward_.[21] This is what
the members of the foreign-born groups have long been doing, and
probably this policy is the only possible basis for a rational use of
one's resources. Yet doing this gives rise to comment on the "low
standard of life." And thrift often seems to border on miserliness.
Indeed, the problem is by no means so simple as the use of the
categorical imperative would indicate. The whole question of deciding
between the claims of the present and of the future is a very
difficult one. The economist gives us little definite help. He lays
down the so-called "rule of uses" and tells the housewife so to apply
her resources that the utility extracted from any unit may be at least
as great as if that unit were applied elsewhere. Now the foreign-born
housewife, like other housewives, has certain resources of money and
time and strength, and these she wishes to distribute wisely. But she
labors under many disadvantages, of which it is only fair to take
notice.
UNFAMILIARITY WITH MONEY
In the first place, her income is in an unfamiliar form. There is
first the fact that the money units are strange to her. A woman who
recently came over, being called on to make an unexpected payment,
handed her purse to a fellow traveler, asking that the required amount
be taken out. In the second place, for many there is the difficulty
growing out of the exclusive dependence upon money payments, when
before there were both money and the products of the land.
The fact should always be kept in mind that, to the extent to which
the foreign born are from rural districts, they have the difficulty
experienced by all who are forced to adjust themselves to an economy
built on money, as distinguished from an economy built on kind. In the
country where things are grown, there is little opportunity for
acquiring a sense of money values.
It is then peculiarly difficult to value in terms of the new measure
those articles with which one has been especially familiar under the
old economy. For example, when vegetables and fruits have been enjoyed
without estimating their value, it is difficult to judge their value
in money. While meat was before thought out of reach, it may be
purchased at exorbitant rates under the new circumstances, because one
has no idea of how much it should cost. Evidence as to this kind of
difficulty is found among all groups. It takes the form, sometimes, of
apparent parsimony, sometimes of reckless and wasteful buying.
The Lithuanians seem, for example, to experience difficulties of this
kind everywhere. The small farmer in Lithuania was accustomed to an
irregular cash income at harvest time. Sometimes it carried over from
one year to another, while young stock was growing. He had little need
of money except for extraordinary expenses, such as those for farm
machinery, or building. The local store, which was usually
co-operative, carried only such imported articles as salt, sugar,
spices, tea, and coffee. All other foods were produced at home or
secured through neighborly exchange. All the clothing for the family
was of home manufacture, even to the cloth. If a boy were sent to
school in the nearest large town, his board was paid with poultry and
dairy products.
The tenant laborer had house rent free, a garden, a cow, a few pigs,
and all the poultry he cared to raise, in addition to the yearly wage
of from 125 to 150 rubles a year.
Other farm laborers had board and clothing in addition to their wage
of 25 rubles a year. Women received 3 rubles a year for farm labor,
in addition to board and all ordinary clothing. The food provided by
the farmers was coarse and monotonous, but it was plentiful and
nourishing. Laborers were housed in two-room log or board houses, with
thatched roofs; farm workers without families slept in the farmer's
granaries and ate at a common table.
To the inexperienced peasant the daily wage of $1.50 and $2 in the
United States seemed ample, but it was not long after the family
arrived before it was found inadequate. The situation becomes still
more confusing if employment is seasonal and irregular. In Lithuania,
contracts were made by the year and unemployment was unknown. Through
apprehension they begin to adopt a low standard of living in order to
economize, a practice now common in many Lithuanian communities in
this country. They have never paid rent in their native country, so
one of their first instincts is to economize at that point in the new
country by taking lodgers.
Among other national groups there are evidences of the same
difficulties. Bohemian women, it is said, buy recklessly at first,
spending money for jewelry and all sorts of things they see for sale
in the neighborhood stores. Ukrainian women control the expenditure of
the family income here, but in the village life in Galicia they never
had much money to spend; the table was supplied from the farm,
clothing was of home manufacture, furniture was seldom bought. They
are, therefore, when they first come, little fitted by previous
experience for wise expenditure of the family income.
IRREGULARITY OF INCOME
To these difficulties are added those connected with the uncertainty
and irregularity of wage payments and with the length of intervals
recurring between these payments. The ways in which periods of
unemployment and consequent cessation of income are met are
illustrated by the following experiences described by those with whom
we have conferred.
The story of how the mother or children have gone out to work, of how
boarders have been taken into the home, savings have been spent, money
has been borrowed from friends, or charity has been accepted, occurs
over and over in the experience of all the national groups. A
Ukrainian mother tells how she and the older children at various times
have worked during the father's unemployment. A few years ago, when it
lasted for two years, she was no longer strong enough to work, and
they sold their home in order to keep the children in school.
Another Ukrainian family has of late depended upon the earnings of the
children and savings, but there have been times when they had nothing
in the house but water, and could not buy food. A Polish mother
borrowed money of the Jewish grocer when her savings were gone and her
earnings insufficient. One Bohemian family had to draw on their
savings in the building and loan association during a year of
unemployment.
RESERVES FOR MISFORTUNES
It is easy, then, to understand how out of the most meager present
income some provision for possible disasters will be attempted. The
urgency of this claim of the future explains the fact that the
possession of a balance at the end of the year constitutes no evidence
that the income for the year has either been adequate or been regarded
as adequate. The social investigator has found savings taken from the
most inadequate incomes; and judgment has been sometimes passed on the
"low standard of life" of the immigrant, when a moment's sympathetic
consideration of the problem would have discovered the explanation in
the ever-present fear of being caught unprepared.
The occasions for which this provision is made are, to be sure, not
all of the nature of an unexpected disaster; they are, often, the
ordinary events of life. There is, first, the constant possibility of
sickness and of death. After the establishment of the family group,
these perhaps make the first claim on the family's savings. The fear
of these events may be so great that even the well-being of the
children in the present may be sacrificed. For example, a Polish widow
with two children, who was being supported by the United Charities in
Chicago, was found to have a bank account of $192.57 which she had
saved from her allowance of $3 a week in addition to her rent. When
the visitor talked with her about it, she explained that she was
afraid of dying and leaving her children unprovided for, and that her
husband had always told her to put away part of her income.
While the need for providing for dependents is thus felt, most wage
earners realize that they cannot during their own lifetime lay aside
enough money to provide for their children. The most that they can do
is to provide some life insurance. Even this, in most cases, must be
entirely inadequate, since the premiums mean a great drain on the
family's resources.
In a study of 3,048 families in Chicago, the Illinois Health Insurance
Commission found that 81.9 per cent of all the families carried some
kind of life insurance. The average amount of the policy, however, was
only $419.24. The following table shows for the various nationalities
in the group the per cent carrying insurance and the average amount of
the policy.[22]
TABLE I
NUMBER AND PER CENT OF FAMILIES CARRYING LIFE INSURANCE,
AND AVERAGE AMOUNT OF POLICY ACCORDING TO NATIVITY
OF HEAD OF FAMILY
=================================================================
| TOTAL | PER CENT | AVERAGE
NATIVITY OR RACE OF HEAD OF | NUMBER OF | WITH LIFE | AMOUNT
FAMILY | FAMILIES | INSURANCE | OF POLICY
-----------------------------|-----------|-----------|-----------
All families | 3,048 | 81.9 | $419.24
| | |
United States, colored | 274 | 93.8 | 201.48
Bohemian | 243 | 88.9 | 577.58
Polish | 522 | 88.5 | 353.48
Irish | 129 | 88.4 | 510.72
United States, white | 644 | 85.2 | 535.56
German | 240 | 85.0 | 416.49
Lithuanian | 117 | 79.5 | 170.38
Scandinavian | 232 | 75.4 | 401.58
Other | 225 | 75.1 | 410.96
Jewish | 218 | 63.8 | 465.09
Italian | 204 | 57.8 | 403.94
=================================================================
It is interesting to note that the Bohemians are among the national
groups showing the largest per cent (88.9) of families having
life-insurance policies. They also show the largest average policy
($577.58) of any national groups, including the native-born white.
The method by which this particular provision is made is often through
the fraternal order, the benefit society, and the form of commercial
insurance known as industrial insurance. The fraternal orders that are
used by foreign-born groups are usually societies of their own
national group, such as the Polish National Alliance, the Croatian
League of Illinois, the Lithuanian National Alliance. They differ
from the benefit societies, such as the Czecho-Slav Workingman, the
Znanie Russian Club, and the Congrega di Maria Virgine del Monte
Carmelo, in that the fraternal orders are organized under the state
laws governing fraternal insurance societies, are incorporated, and
usually have a more than local membership. Most of the benefit
societies are small local societies without national affiliation,
often not observing good insurance principles and without the needed
succession of young lives.
These types of insurance were made the subject of special study by the
Illinois Health Insurance Commission of 1919. The judgment of the
Health Commission as to the value of these organizations is, that the
fraternal societies, although they are democratic, co-operative, and
nonprofit-seeking organizations, thus being particularly attractive to
wage earners, are often not on an actuarially sound basis.[23] The
benefit societies of the foreign born present an even more precarious
means of providing for future needs.[24] Sooner or later they find
that the dues must be increased, their membership declines, and the
period of decay sets in.
Industrial insurance provides a safer method than either of these, but
it presents a number of other disadvantages.[25] The policies are
usually small, sufficient only for burial expenses, and the rates are
relatively high because of the bad risk among the wage earners, and
especially because of the expense of weekly collections. Here, as
everywhere, the poor who must buy in small quantities get relatively
less for what they pay.
It is often urged against industrial insurance that it makes no real
provision for dependents, and merely pays for a somewhat elaborate
funeral. It must be borne in mind that the funeral, however modest, is
an expense that often places the family in debt, and that even the
thriftless will try to make some provision for it. The following
expense account of the funeral of a Polish man is typical of the
accounts received during this inquiry, and exhibits no unusual
expenditure when compared with American customs:
Embalming $ 11.00
Casket 65.00
Crape and gloves 2.50
Candles 3.00
Hearse 11.00
Carriage 9.00
Grave 12.00
Outside box 6.00
Total $119.50
It is a matter of common knowledge that unscrupulous undertakers often
obtain possession of the insurance policy and make the charge for the
funeral equal to the whole amount. This may, in part, explain the
criticism that the funerals in foreign-born families are often
unnecessarily expensive. An Italian woman interviewed, the president
of one benefit society and a member of four others, speaks of going to
buy a casket at the time of the death of a friend during the influenza
epidemic. The cheap, wooden casket cost $150. The next day, when she
went with another friend to the same undertaker, the casket which had
been $150 cost $175. She could not understand how such prices could be
allowed, and exclaimed, "The government regulates prices of flour and
sugar, and why not such things as the cost of coffins in times like
these!"
There may also be expenses connected with the service itself. In some
churches the tolling of the bells must be paid for by the mourners,
and sometimes it is the poorest who will insist that the bells be
tolled the longest. In a church in South Chicago it is said that the
parishioners paid for the chimes with the definite understanding that
the bell-tolling at funerals should no longer be a special charge. The
need of provision against sickness and death is keenly felt in every
immigrant community. One of the older women, who had been frequently
called into the homes in cases of sickness and death, said that in
sickness there was never money for the doctor, or night clothes, or
bedding, and in case of death never enough of anything.
THE COST OF WEDDINGS
After providing for sickness and death, a family must lay aside the
sum necessary to secure an advantageous marriage for the daughter, and
to meet her family's share of the wedding. Similarly, the young man
anticipates marriage as a natural development in his life. It is
interesting to consider the share of the cost borne by the girl's
family and that borne by the young man, and to notice also certain
customs connected with the wedding itself that contribute toward the
expense.
The customs connected with weddings which have grown up in the old
country may, when transplanted, mean an expense which seems entirely
out of proportion to the family's economic status, especially when
American customs are added to those of the native country. An Italian
woman says that weddings were, as a rule, much simpler in Italy than
in the United States. There a maid of honor and "other frills," such
as automobiles, flowers, and jewelry, were unknown. A large feast,
usually of two days' duration, was customary, and is continued here,
even in a city. A hall must be rented for the dance, and when food
prices are high the cost is enormous.
To avoid the expense of renting a hall which would cost $100 for six
hours, a recent Italian wedding reception in Chicago was held in the
butcher shop owned by a cousin of the bridegroom. The living rooms in
the rear were used for the dinner, and the shop itself became the
ballroom. The floor was crowded, and the children had to be turned out
into the street to play, but the enjoyment of the party was evidently
not at all lessened by the somewhat incongruous surroundings. The fact
that there is near by not only a great settlement where a comfortable
hall might have been available, but likewise a park house similarly
equipped, is perhaps indicative of a failure of these institutions to
meet the very needs of the neighborhood they are designed to serve.
It is an Italian custom for the father of the bride and the father of
the bridegroom to share the expense of the feast, although the
bridegroom sometimes pays for the music and the hall, and the bride's
family furnish the food. An Italian pastry dealer says that the amount
spent for pastries varies from $15 to $120, and an equal amount is
spent in home baking. For well-to-do families the expenditures may be
much larger; for example, one family recently spent $200 for pastry
alone.
There is, however, a feature of the wedding feast which reduces the
cost to the family. It is customary, when the party is assembled
after the wedding, for the bride to be placed on a "throne," and the
guests place their presents of money in her lap. Money is usually
given, although useful articles for the home are sometimes included.
The greater the number of guests invited perhaps the lower the net
cost of the ceremony.
The other principal expense of the Italian bride's family is for the
bridal linen and the girl's underwear. These, of course, vary with the
circumstances of the family. These articles are usually the
accumulation of several years.
The bridegroom pays the other costs. He buys not only the household
furniture and his clothing, but the wedding ring, earrings, a gift for
the bride, and some of her clothing. If the girl is poor he may even
buy her underwear and the linens. It is said that these things often
cost all the bridegroom's savings, and that the couple start married
life with nothing saved for emergencies. The expense of the bridegroom
in a recent Italian wedding in Chicago was $2,000.
It is the custom for the man to buy for the bride a complete costume
for two days--the wedding day and the eighth day--when the newly
married couple return the calls of the wedding guests. An Italian
saleslady in a store in the Italian district says that the amount
usually spent on the bride's clothes is $200 or $250. The very least
spent in these days is $100, and the outfit may cost as much as $500.
When the family is a recently arrived one, the man usually accompanies
the girl or her mother to the store and pays the bills on the spot.
Among other groups as well as among the Italians it seems to be
customary for the bridegroom to bear part of the expense of the
wedding and of the bride's outfit. The Polish bridegroom often gives
$50 to the bride, and she buys her clothes, linens, and the food for
the feast. The Russian girl gives a white handkerchief to the groom,
and he pays for her dress.
Another item in the expenses of a wedding is the cost of photographs.
It is the custom in most foreign-born groups to have large
photographs, not only of the bride and groom, but of the whole wedding
party. The Polish people also have another picture of the bridesmaid
taken with the best man. These photographs cost as much as $30 a dozen
and at a higher rate if less than a dozen are ordered. The number
ordered depends on the economic condition of the family, but the
minimum is six of each. The pictures of the bridal party are the
largest and most expensive and are usually given only to the immediate
family and the attendants. The smaller pictures of the bride and groom
are given to all the friends and relatives, especially those in the
old country. This is an important means of keeping up the connection
with those at home. An enlarged and colored copy framed in an ornate
gilt frame is usually ordered for the newly married couple, and is an
added expense.
The cost of automobiles is also important. The bridal party, and
sometimes the guests whom it is desired to honor, are taken to the
church, then to the photographer's, and then to the hall where the
feast and dance are held. Sometimes as many as six automobiles are
observed drawn up in front of one of the little photographers' shops
in an immigrant district.
Many people seem to think that the festivities among the foreign born
are becoming simpler. The extravagance is perhaps again a question of
the transition to a money economy. The ceremony in the old country was
an occasion for great celebration, with feasting and dancing for
several days, but was perhaps not expensive when the necessary
articles were produced at home or received in exchange for home
products. Here the immigrant family does not at first realize the real
value of the money which seems so plentiful, and the old customs are
not only carried out, but elaborated because of the added feeling of
prosperity.
In many ways the old customs are now being modified. Among the Polish,
for instance, the guests used to give presents of money, practically
buying a dance with the bride. The custom has been frequently abused
here, as the men have divided their gifts into small parts and
demanded many dances with the bride, often causing her to dance so
much as to cause serious fatigue. For this reason we heard of one
bride who simply "walked with the plate" instead of dancing. Another
story is told of a wedding in a Polish community, at which the men
threw dollars at a plate. The one who was successful in breaking the
plate might dance with the bride.
This Polish custom of giving money gifts offsets to a large extent the
cost of the wedding. Among three Polish families visited, one whose
wedding cost $200 collected $60; another spent $150 and collected
$160; and a third spent $200 and collected $300. But this custom, too,
tends to disappear in the second generation. A young Russian couple,
for instance, were opposed to a regular collection, but the parents,
who consider it the blessing to their daughter, could not resist each
leaving a ten-dollar bill as they left. The young people were
embarrassed, but the other guests quickly followed the suggestion, and
$100 was collected.
CHRISTENINGS AND FÊTE DAYS
This naïve solicitation of gifts is also practiced on the occasion of
the christening of the infant. An unmarried godmother may be preferred
because, having no children of her own, she is more able to make
handsome gifts at the time and to continue her contributions. One
young Russian girl, whose marriage with the father of her unborn child
was arranged by a social worker, asked the new friend to serve as
godmother, and then expected an outfit for the infant in christening
robes, little veils, and other articles, costing about $75.
Observers interested in customs in immigrant districts say that the
custom of soliciting gifts at christenings was modified during the
war. Among Polish families, for example, each guest used to make a
present in money to the child who was christened. During the last few
years it has become more and more customary for the collection to be
taken for the benefit of Polish war orphans. The amount collected is
then announced in the paper and serves as a source of prestige to the
family.
There are also numerous fête days and religious celebrations which
call for special expenditure. It is impossible to consider all these
here, but attention should be called to an important event in the
religious life; namely, the occasion of the first communion. The
expenses for the confirmation of a boy are not great. He usually has a
new suit and wears a flower in his buttonhole. He must have beads,
prayer book, and, if he is Polish, a candle.
One little Polish girl who made her first communion in the summer of
1919 had an outfit that cost her $30. This did not represent the
entire cost, as she had several parts of the outfit given to her; her
godmother made the dress, although the little girl herself furnished
the material; the veil with the wreath of flowers was given her by a
nun who had taken an interest in her, and the candle, which it is
still customary in Polish churches to carry, was given by a cousin who
is a nun. She had to buy the material for her dress, white slippers,
stockings, and long white gloves, beads, flowers, and photographs. If
she had herself borne all the expense, a minimum estimate of the cost
would be $50.
BUYING PROPERTY
A third motive for saving is the desire for home ownership or for
acquiring land. There is no doubt that to own a home of their own is
the desire of most immigrant families. Many of them come from
countries where the ownership of land carries with it a degree of
social prestige that is unknown in more highly developed communities
of the modern industrial civilization.
Representatives of the Bohemians, Lithuanians, Poles, and Italians
have all emphasized the fact that their people want to own their own
homes, and bend every energy toward this end, so that the whole family
often works in order that first payments may be made or later payments
kept up. The Croatians, Slovaks, Hungarians, and Slovenians are also
said to be buying houses, although, as they are newer groups, they
have not yet done so to the same extent as the other groups. The
Serbians, Rumanians, Bulgarians, and Russians in Chicago are, on the
other hand, said to be planning to return in large numbers to the old
homes in Europe, and hence are not interested in buying property in
this country. Their feeling for the land and their desire to own their
homes in the country in which they decide to settle is said to be as
strong as in the other groups.
The longing for home ownership was apparent in the family schedules we
obtained, and in studies of housing conditions[26] in certain
districts of Chicago we find additional evidence of the immigrants'
desire to own their own homes, and the way in which this desire leads
many to buy, even in the congested districts of the city. The
following table gives the number and the percentage of home owners in
eight selected districts. It will be noted that the percentage of
owners varied from eight in one of the most congested Italian
districts known as "Little Sicily," to twenty-four in the Lithuanian
district.
The strength of the desire for homes can also be measured by the
sacrifices which many of the families make to enable them to acquire
property. It means in some cases the sacrifice of the children's
education, the crowding of the home with lodgers, or the mother's
going out to work. In fact, immigrant leaders interviewed seem to
think that women's entrance into industry during the war was largely
due to the desire to own their own homes. After the title to the house
is acquired, it is often crowded with other tenants to help finish the
payments.
TABLE II
NUMBER AND PER CENT OF IMMIGRANT HOME OWNERS IN DIFFERENT
CHICAGO DISTRICTS
================================================================
| | NUMBER |
DISTRICT | TOTAL | OF | PER
|FAMILIES| OWNERS | CENT
--------------------------------------|--------|--------|-------
Bohemians--10th Ward | 295 | 36 | 12
Polish--16th Ward | 2,785 | 355 | 13
Italian--"Lower North" Side | 1,462 | 119 | 8
Italian--19th Ward | 1,936 | 208 | 9
Polish and other Slav--South Chicago | 545 | 100 | 18
Lithuanian--4th Ward | 1,009 | 241 | 24
Slovak--20th Ward | 869 | 148 | 17
Polish, Lithuanian, other Slavic--29th| | |
Ward, Stockyards District | 1,616 | 298 | 18
================================================================
The housing studies in Chicago furnish many illustrations of this
sacrifice.[27] For example, among the Lithuanians in the Fourth Ward,
there was a landlord who lived in three cellar rooms so low that a
person more than five feet eight inches tall could not stand upright
in them. The kitchen, a fair-sized room with windows on the
street--though its gray-painted wooden walls and ceiling served well
to accentuate the absence of sunlight, was merely gloomy, but the
other two rooms were both small and dark, with tiny lot-line windows
only four square feet in area. In one of these rooms, 564 cubic feet
in contents, the father and one child slept; the other, which
contained only 443 cubic feet, was the bedroom of the mother and two
children. One of the highly colored holy pictures common among the
Lithuanians and Poles, though it hung right by the window, was an
indistinguishable blur.
The agency through which the purchase is made may be either the
real-estate dealer of the same national group, or, more commonly, the
building and loan association. The real-estate agents to whom the
foreign-speaking immigrants go are like the steamship agents, the
immigrant bankers, the keepers of special shops. Those who are honest
and intelligent render invaluable services; those who wish to exploit
have the same opportunity of doing so that is taken advantage of by
the shyster lawyer, the quack doctor, the sharp dealer of any kind who
speaks the language and preys upon his fellow countrymen. Reference
has been made in an earlier chapter to the services rendered by the
building and loan associations in enabling the foreign born to obtain
homes. They also render services in providing the means for safe
investment for those with only small sums to invest.
BUILDING AND LOAN ASSOCIATIONS
These societies are frequently organized along national lines. For
example, among those listed in 1893 by the United States Commissioner
of Labor[28] are the Bohemian Building and Loan, organized February 1,
1886; the Bohemian California Homestead (February 15, 1892); the
Bohemian National Building Loan and Homestead (January 30, 1888); the
Bohemian Workingmen's Loan and Homestead (April 20, 1890); the Ceska
Koruna Homestead (May 6, 1892); the King Kazimer the Great Building
and Loan (January 27, 1886); the King Mieczyslaus the First National
Building Loan and Savings Bank (June 3, 1889); King Zigsmund the First
Building and Loan (April 15, 1891). December 1, 1918, there were 681
such organizations in Illinois; 255 of these were in Chicago and the
majority were conducted and patronized by the foreign born.
The following is briefly the method by which the building and loan
associations perform the two services of providing for investment and
lending money on homes:[29]
The stockholder or member pays a stipulated minimum sum, say
one dollar, when he takes his membership, and buys a share of
stock. He then continues to pay a like sum each month until
the aggregate of sums paid, augmented by the profits, amounts
to the maturing value of the stock, usually $200, and at this
time the stockholder is entitled to the full maturing value
of the share, and surrenders the same.
A shareholder who desires to build a house and has secured a
lot for that purpose, may borrow money from the association
of which he is a member. Suppose a man who has secured his
lot wishes to borrow $1,000 for the erection of a house. He
must be the holder of five shares in his association, each
share having as its maturing value $200. His five shares,
therefore, when matured, would be worth $1,000, the amount of
money which he desires to borrow.... In a building and loan
association the money is put up at auction, usually in open
meeting on the night or at the time of the payment of dues.
Those who wish to borrow bid a premium above the regular rate
of interest charged, and the one who bids the highest premium
is awarded the loan. The man who wishes to build his house,
therefore, and desires to borrow $1,000, must have five
shares of stock in his association, must bid the highest
premium, and then the $1,000 will be loaned to him. To secure
this $1,000 he gives the association a mortgage on his
property and pledges his five shares of stock. To cancel this
debt he is constantly paying his monthly or semimonthly dues,
until such time as the constant payment of dues, plus the
accumulation of profits through compounded interest, matures
the shares at $200 each. At this time, then, he surrenders
his shares, and the debt upon his property is canceled.
[Illustration: ITALIANS HAVE THEIR OWN FINANCIAL CENTER AND LABOR
MARKET IN BOSTON]
In some cases the sums paid are fifty or even twenty-five cents a
week, and the shares may be $100 instead of $200. Among some groups
shares are taken in the name of each of the children, and the
investment constitutes an educational fund. There are those,
however, for whom the building and loan has not provided adequate
opportunity for deposit and safe investment. It is probable that the
building and loan has proved most efficient for the income group
$1,500-$1,800. For the group below that, home ownership is for the
time impossible. As a device for saving, for both the lower and higher
income groups, who come from countries familiar with similar devices,
the postal savings banks are supposed to offer efficient, honest, and
convenient service.
POSTAL SAVINGS BANKS
These banks were established under an act that went into effect June
25, 1910. Under this law, as amended May 18, 1916, persons over ten
years of age may deposit any amount, providing the balance to the
credit of one depositor does not exceed $1,000. Two per cent interest
is paid on deposits, and there is provision for exchange of deposits
for United States bonds of small denominations.
The facilities thus provided were immediately taken advantage of by
the foreign-born groups, and the postal savings banks became almost
banks for the foreign born. That is, in September, 1916, 375,000, or
80 per cent, of the total number of depositors were persons of foreign
birth, and they owned 75 per cent of the deposits. In proportion to
population the deposits were in 1916 about eleven times as great as
those of the native born (due allowance being made for the age of the
two population groups). The Greeks, Italians, Russians, and
Hungarians, all coming from countries in which there are postal
savings arrangements, found it especially easy to make use of them.
The department felt, however, that the facilities could be greatly
extended, even among the foreign born. Therefore, circulars describing
the organization, methods, and advantages were distributed. They were
written in the following languages: English, Bohemian, Bulgarian,
Chinese, Croatian, Danish, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian,
Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian,
Ruthenian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, and Yiddish.
In spite of the fact that this system is characterized not only by
security, but also by certain democratic and convenient features
especially serviceable to many foreign born, there are certain
limitations to which Professor Kemmerer has called attention in the
following statement:
As a matter of fact, the interest rate paid is so low that it
makes a very weak appeal to the class of people who deposit
in the postal savings banks. Their motive is primarily
security. The government is now realizing large profits from
the postal savings system--for 1916 the estimated profit was
$481,816--and this profit is coming from a class of people in
the community, the thrifty poor, from whom it is bad social
policy to take it. Of course it would be administratively
impracticable to pay interest to depositors on average daily
balances--no savings banks do that. Would it be expecting too
much, however, to ask for our postal savings depositors the
allowances of interest on half yearly or even quarterly
balances? Moreover, is it unreasonable to ask the Board of
Trustees, in view of the nomadic character of our
foreign-born population which patronizes the postal savings
system most, to devise a simple system of transfer by which a
depositor who is changing his place of residence may transfer
his postal savings account without forfeiting his accumulated
but yet undue interest?[30]
Not only should the postal savings bank law be amended, rendering it
more flexible and more attractive, but there should also be enacted in
those states in which no such legislation is yet on the statute books,
laws regulating the conduct of banks, steamship companies, and all
agencies receiving deposits or otherwise performing banking functions.
It is clear that the foreign born, during the early years of their
residence in the United States, encounter all the difficulties of
others whose incomes are inadequate and precarious, and are also the
easy victims of special forms of exploitation. In addition, they find
themselves unfamiliar with the standards and customs connected with
the great events of family life. In the matter of weddings and
funerals and other ceremonial occasions there is no reason to expect
them to be wiser, more economical, and farsighted than the native-born
group.
In the adjustment between future and present needs, foreign-born
housewives need, as most housewives need, instruction in the art of
spending, in the selection of food and clothing, and the variety of
demands for which provision must be deliberately made in a modern
industrial community. In an earlier and simpler situation provision
for these needs was made without conscious effort.
In this connection it is interesting to note that the "Thrift
Leaflets" prepared by the United States Department of Agriculture and
the Department of the Treasury for the war saving stamps thrift
campaign, urged care in the use of articles and dealt with prevention
of waste rather than with saving. Obviously, if goods were more
carefully used, more could be saved and invested in the securities
thus being indirectly urged. It is conceivable, however, that wise use
may mean the purchase of better food, the selection of more
satisfactory clothing, and the enjoyment of better housing, rather
than investment in government or any other securities. The thrift
campaigns of the United States Treasury proposed standards of saving
only for those receiving an income of $1,200 or more, with the
exception of unmarried persons earning as much as $780.
ACCOUNT KEEPING
The basis of sound saving or spending is the account book, carefully
kept over an interval of time, allowing comparison between the outlay
and enjoyment as experienced at different periods. Such account books
are being urged by the extension departments of the state agricultural
colleges in co-operation with the Departments of Agriculture.
Most account books that have been so far devised are, however, quite
difficult and uninteresting, even for the American housewife,
demanding classifications of items which require too much time and
consideration. An account book on a weekly basis, providing very
simple divisions of the expenditures of the household, and giving
space also for the personal expenses of the various members of the
family, has been published by the Committee on Household Budgets of
the American Home Economics Association.[31]
These books could be easily issued in different languages and be made
available for the foreign-born housewife. She, like all housewives,
would be benefited by seeing what she is spending her money for. It
would lead to a definite planning of her expenditures. By this means
it could be suggested that things may have changed in value for her in
the new country. Old wants are replaced by new ones, and a new system
of saving and spending might be worked out.
FOOTNOTES:
[21] Haskins, _How Other People Get Ahead_, Savings Division, United
States Treasury Department, p. 4.
[22] _Report of the Health Insurance Commission of Illinois_, p. 223.
[23] _Report of the Health Insurance Commission of the State of
Illinois_, pp. 443-483.
[24] _Ibid._, pp. 523-532.
[25] _Ibid._, pp. 483-497.
[26] Chicago Housing Conditions, _American Journal of Sociology_, vol.
xvi, p. 433; vol. xvii, pp. 1, 145; vol. xviii, p. 509; vol. xx, pp.
145, 289; vol. xxi, p. 185.
[27] Chicago Housing Conditions, ix, "The Lithuanians in the Fourth
Ward," _American Journal of Sociology_, vol. xx, p. 296.
[28] _Ninth Annual Report of the United States Commissioner of Labor
on Building and Loan Associations_, p. 56.
[29] _Ibid._, pp. 12-13.
[30] Kemmerer, _Postal Savings Banks_, pp. 100-104.
[31] _Thrift by Household Accounting and Weekly Cash Record Forms_,
published by the Committee on Household Budgets, American Home
Economics Association, 1211 Cathedral Street, Baltimore, Maryland.
V
THE NEGLECTED ART OF SPENDING
Saving is the problem of _over there_, and of the future. Spending is
the problem of _here_ and _now_, and in the expenditure for present
needs as well as in saving for future wants the foreign-born housewife
meets with special difficulties. She is handicapped by the kinds of
places at which she must buy, because of language, custom, and time
limitations, as well as the grade of article available. Through the
complicated maze of choices open to her she must steer her way to
obtain for her family the highest returns for an all too small
expenditure. The art of spending, too often neglected by her
native-born sisters, takes on added difficulties for the untrained
immigrant woman.
From the point of view of the housewife the desirable thing is that
the transaction of buying her household goods and food and of
selecting her house, shall be as simple as possible. It should be made
easy for her to know the quantity and to judge the quality of any
article she considers, so that she may the more easily compare its
possible use to her with the use of other articles that might be
secured for the same amount of money. It is also important that she
have as definite ideas as possible as to the range of the demand for
different kinds of goods, so that she may buy as few as possible of
the goods on which the price of special risk is placed. In many cases
she needs really expert advice. In the absence of such help she may do
her buying in either of two states of mind. She may think that all
merchants are cheats, there "to do her and to do her first," or she
may think that she has a right to expect from the dealer frank and
kindly advice.
In the present state of the retail organization she may find either
attitude. In shops kept by her co-nationals she will naturally have
the utmost confidence. This puts the small neighborhood stores in a
position of peculiar privilege, and makes it doubly easy for them to
take subtle advantage of the unwary customer. Even when the dealer
takes no special advantage of his customer, in following the general
practice of the trade, he can create innumerable situations in which
her problem is rendered more, rather than less, complicated. The
indefinite package is substituted for the definite weight or measure.
The "bars" of soap vary in weight and in composition. The trade _mark_
used to tell her that X made goods whose quality she knew; the trade
_name_, based on incalculable sums spent in skillful advertising,
tells her nothing that is of intrinsic use to her. It connects a name
with a repeated suggestion that she buy. By the trading stamp, the
premium, and the bargain counter the merchant tries to persuade her
that she is getting more than she pays for. He appeals to the gambling
instinct and introduces into a drab life something of the excitement
of the roulette table.
THE COMPANY STORE
In mining communities and other places in which there are "company
stores," there is the pressure exercised by the employer to force the
employee to deal only with the company store, even when there are
other stores in the neighborhood.
The United States Immigration Commission had something to say on this
point. It made it clear that, while there are instances of an employer
giving his employees a fair deal when he becomes merchant and they
purchasers, the combination of employing and merchandising functions
is often perilous. Even if the employee appears to have a choice, he
fears the loss of his job if he does not buy at the company store. The
evils connected with so-called "truck payments" have long been
recognized. They change only in form when the company check replaces
the old payment in kind.[32]
In some states this evil has been recognized by legislation
prohibiting the combination of industrial and merchandising functions.
Where such is the case, as in Pennsylvania, the statute is evaded. A
separate corporation is organized by the same individuals, or a store
is conducted by an individual who is a member of the mining
corporation. Where there is a "store" administered in any of these
ways, "company checks" may be issued between pay days. Or "store
books" may be issued, the items purchased being recorded, and deducted
on pay day from the wages of the employee.
The Immigration Commission published a table[33] of the expenditures
at such stores, the amounts deducted from the wages, and the
proportion of earnings left to be collected at the end of the month,
illustrating the confusing effect of these practices on the housewife
whose income should be a settled and regular amount. While some of the
Croatians and Magyars spent hardly a fourth or a third of their
earnings at the company store, others in the same national groups
collected on pay day less than a fifth or even less than a tenth of
their earnings. From this balance must come the payments for rent,
medical service, entertainment, school, for all things other than
food, clothes, and furniture.
It may be that in some cases the employee is able to secure at the
company store as good articles as he can obtain elsewhere and for the
same prices, but this is by no means common. In West Virginia it was
found necessary to enact legislation forbidding a company which ran a
store to charge its own employees higher prices than the employees of
other companies were charged.[34] The Immigration Commission found not
only that in some cases the stock was inferior and the prices high,
but that there was a sense of compulsion that made it almost
impossible to adjust income and needs.
It is hardly necessary to point out that the supply of housing
accommodations by the employer has the same influence as the supply of
food and clothing. The power as employer may be, and often is, exerted
to fix the conditions under which the family life goes on; and the
tenant is deprived of the experience of selecting, of choosing, of
balancing what one gives with what one gets.[35]
A similar objection may be raised to payment of wages by check. In the
old days, before the world went dry, one service the saloon was
frequently called on to render was that of cashing checks. Either
payment in "lawful money" or an opportunity to exchange at once for
lawful money is the only method of paying wages that gives the
housewife her full opportunity.
SHOPPING HABITS
The immigrant housewife is restricted by her ignorance of places and
methods of marketing, and so feels the necessity of buying in the
immigrant neighborhood. Among the 90 Chicago families from whom
schedules were obtained, representing Bohemian, Croatian, Italian,
Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, and Ukrainian groups, 72
purchased all their food in the neighborhood stores, 2 kept their own
stores, and only 16 were seeking bargains in other localities. Among
these 16, 5 were going to larger business centers near their
neighborhood, 4 bought in downtown department stores, 1 used a
mail-order house, 1 went to a well-established "cash and carry" store,
2 bought in the wholesale markets, and only 2 took advantage of the
co-operative association of their own group.
The 72 families who were marketing exclusively in their own
neighborhoods were patronizing for the most part stores owned by
foreign-speaking people or those employing foreign-born salesmen to
attract the housewives of particular groups. A Croatian woman says
that when she tries to do her marketing downtown she sees many new
things and would like to ask what they are used for, but she does not
know how to ask. In her neighborhood store the grocer can easily
explain to her. One Polish woman reads the advertisements in the
papers and buys where there is a sale. She thinks that an alleged
Polish co-operative is expensive and prefers the large department
stores, but for the first few years she bought everything in her
neighborhood where the clerks speak Polish.
The prevalence of the immigrant store may be illustrated by a detailed
study that was made of the Sixteenth Ward in Chicago. The population
of the ward is predominantly Polish, with an intermingling of Jewish,
German, and Slovak in the southern portion. In the twenty-five blocks
there are 113 retail stores, 44 of which are grocery and delicatessen
stores, meat markets, and bakeries. In one block there are 5 grocery
and delicatessen stores, and at least 1 in every block which has any
stores. Most of these shops are small and crowded, with family living
rooms in the rear. For the most part, the nationality of the
proprietor is that of the majority in the block, and there are only 14
proprietors of all the 113 stores who are not Polish.
The difficulty with the language, however, extends beyond merely
talking in the store. A Ukrainian mother, who admits being afraid to
go beyond her own neighborhood, is perhaps typical of many
foreign-born mothers to whom a trip to the central shopping district
is a strange and terrifying adventure.
There is also the question of the means with which to buy. An Italian
mother says that she buys at the chain store when she has the cash,
and at other times in the Italian stores where, although the prices
are higher, she can run a charge account. The system of buying on
credit at the local store is spoken of as practically universal in all
the foreign-born groups. The purchaser carries a small blank book, in
which the merchant enters in large figures merely the sum charged,
with no indication of what was bought or the amount. The account is
settled on pay day by the man of the family. There is, of course,
every chance for inaccurate entry. It is not surprising, then, that
one hears from many sources that buying food is generally extravagant.
Women often do the buying. Whether or not it is the more common among
foreign-born families than among native born for the children to be
sent to the store, we cannot say. Since the marketing is done so
largely in immigrant stores, there is perhaps not the need for an
English-speaking member of the family to do the purchasing. We find
among 89, 43 mothers who still do all their own buying, 32 who allow
the children to do part, 4 who share the task with the father, and
only 10 who never do any of the buying. In this last group of 10
families there are 7 in which the children do all the marketing and 3
in which it is done by the father.
Even the skilled housekeepers have little experience in buying. At
home they were used to storing vegetables in quantities; potatoes in
caves, beets and cabbage by a process of fermentation, other
vegetables and fruits by drying. In the United States this sort of
thing is not done. There is, in the first place, no place for storage,
and the initial cost of vegetables is high and quality poor, and the
women know nothing of modern processes of canning.
It is difficult to discover the general practice with regard to the
quantity of food bought at one time, since it must necessarily vary
considerably. Meat, milk, bread, perishable fruits and vegetables must
usually be purchased daily. As for staple food, the thrifty housewife
will buy in as large quantities as she can afford in order to save
both money and time.
Reference has been made, however, to the lack of storage space and the
consequent necessity of buying very little at one time. Thirty-three,
or two fifths, of the 81 foreign housewives who were interviewed on
this subject report that they buy food in daily supplies; 1 buys twice
a day and 1 for each meal. Forty, however, buy in larger quantities.
Twenty-nine for the week and 11 for a month at a time. Six say that
they buy whenever they have the money. It must never be forgotten that
among the lower-income groups, to have more in the house is to have
more eaten, and that cannot be afforded.
Besides the high prices, one of the other limitations of the
foreign-born neighborhood store is the low quality of the food. This
may be illustrated by a description of the markets in one Lithuanian
neighborhood back of the stockyards, where men are working at
low-grade labor in the yards, and the women are keeping lodgers, where
few speak English and not many ever go more than a few blocks from
home. The typical market in this neighborhood--and there are sometimes
as many as ten in a block--is a combined meat market and grocery
store. Such stores are found in the poorer neighborhoods of every
settlement.
Stock in all these stores is the same; there is a great deal of fresh
meat, apparently the poorer cuts, scraps, etc.; shelves are filled
with canned fruits, canned vegetables, canned soups, and condensed
milk; there is much of the bakers' "Lithuanian rye bread," and
quantities of such cakes as are sold by the National Biscuit Company.
No fresh vegetables are to be seen in any of these stores. The reason
given by shopkeepers is that they are little used in the neighborhood
and that the truck wagons supply the demand.
Women who actually depend upon these stores and the truck wagons for
all their supplies find them very unsatisfactory. No really fresh
vegetables are to be found in either stores or wagons, they say. In
commenting upon this situation, several persons have expressed a
belief that the restriction of diet among Lithuanian immigrants was
largely due to the fact that the markets afford so little variety, and
that an effort to extend the stock in the stores would find a response
in the community.
These stores, however, are widely different from those found in
Italian neighborhoods. Practically all the food used by the Italian
families of one such neighborhood is bought in these stores. In this
district the population is as dense as back of the stockyards, and the
families have comparable incomes, the men being engaged in unskilled
occupations and their earnings being supplemented by the earnings of
women and children. The number of food stores in a block is about the
same as in the other district, but the stock carried differs greatly.
Here, in place of shops that carry only meat, canned goods, and
potatoes, cabbages, and beets, the greengrocery stores largely
predominate.
There are four or five greengrocery shops to one meat market, and
these stores have a surprising variety of fresh vegetables and fruits
all the year. The variety of salad greens is remarkable. More Swiss
chard, mustard, dandelion leaves, endive, squash blossoms and leaves,
escarole, are to be seen in one little Italian store than in a half
dozen American markets. Legumes are in stock in great quantity and
variety--there are some little stores that do not handle
greengroceries, but carry large stocks of legumes. Every store has a
large case of different varieties of Italian cheese, and the variety
of macaroni, spaghetti, and noodles is amazing to an American. Fish is
frequently sold from stalls along the street, and on Friday fish
wagons go about through the district. Sometimes meat is sold from
wagons, but less to Italians than to other nationalities living in the
neighborhood.
Certainly one effect of the organization of these shops on the basis
of nationality is to prevent the members of one group from gaining the
advantage of dietetically better practices followed in other groups.
The Lithuanian and Italian neighborhoods described happened to be in
widely separated districts of the city, but often similar differences
may be observed between two shops within the same block that serve
different national groups.
It is clear that the retail trade, being unstandardized, gives no help
to the immigrant woman in the matter of efficient buying. There is as
yet no fine art of service in this field based on careful accounting
of cost and service. Obviously there is great waste in the number of
stores, in the number of persons engaged in conducting them, in the
needless duplication of even such meager equipment as is found in
them. This waste will reflect itself in needlessly high prices which,
while they mulct the buyer, bring the seller little gain.
Evidently, then, little or no help is given through the system of
retail trading to the foreign-born housewife in the matter of adapting
the diet of her family to American or dietetic requirements. Yet food
demands a large share of the income. In the latest report on the cost
of living in the United States, in only 8 out of 45 cities were the
food demands met by less than 40 per cent of the entire expenditure in
the group whose incomes were between $900 and $1,200.[36] Those cities
were:
Pana, Illinois 39.4
Buffalo, New York 38.9
Wilmington, Delaware 38.9
Dover, New Jersey 38.8
Indianapolis, Indiana 37.6
Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota 37.6
Steubenville, Ohio 37.3
Fort Wayne, Indiana 35.6
The lowest proportion was in Fort Wayne, where over a third of the
income was required for feeding the families in this income group.
MODIFICATION OF DIET
No extensive study of the dietary practices of the different groups,
either here or in the old country, has been undertaken, but
considerable evidence has been secured in substantiation of the fact
that their old-country practices are being modified in this country.
This is not being done consciously in response to dietetic
requirements, but often blindly in response to what seem to be
American customs or necessities. There has been some conflict of
testimony with regard to the changes in the Czecho-Slovak and Croatian
groups. The Italians are said by all to have made very slight changes
in their diet in this country. The Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, and
Ukrainians, on the other hand, are said to have made very radical
changes.
The modification that is spoken of most frequently and that is of
gravest concern to many of their leaders, is the increased use of
meat. Attention has already been called to the explanation of this in
the fact that the price of meat was prohibitive at home, and that
fruit, vegetables, and dairy products were enjoyed without expenditure
of money. The large number of stores in which meat is offered for
sale, although undoubtedly reflecting the general wishes of the
group, offers constant suggestion to the individual purchaser to buy
meat. The naïve belief that much meat must be eaten by men doing
manual labor is said to be another factor.
Excessive use of coffee is said by visiting housekeepers and others
familiar with dietetic problems to be one of the most serious faults
of the diet of many groups, especially the Slavic groups. It is a
general custom to put the coffee pot on the stove in the morning and
leave it there all day for any member of the family to help himself to
coffee when he wants it. This is entirely a new habit which has been
learned in America, as coffee was almost unknown in the poorer groups
in the old country. One explanation that was given by a foreign-born
woman was that these families were used to a diet of soup at home, and
that as they gave this up in this country they felt the need of some
liquid to replace it. One Polish woman who was asked if she had
changed her diet in this country, replied, "Naturally, at home
everyone had soup for breakfast, and here everyone has coffee and
bread."
Another change that was reported over and over again was the use of
more cakes and sweet rolls. This seemed to be considered a peculiarly
American change, as was evidenced by the families who reported that
they had not changed their diet, as they didn't like the American
diet of cakes. Some of them, indeed, were very scornful of what they
considered the American diet, saying among other things that they
could not afford to eat steak and chops every day, that they did not
like sweets, that their "men" would not eat "out of a can," that they
did not like fried things. Their ideas of American diet were gained in
part from the food in restaurants, in part from what the children
learned in cooking lessons in school, and in part from general
suggestions that they have picked up.
Undoubtedly misguided social workers who have tried to give advice on
diet without themselves knowing much about it, are responsible for
some of these ideas. In a certain mill town in Massachusetts, for
example, a social worker employed by the mill discovered what she
thought was the cause of the paper falling off the walls in the fact
that the people boiled their food. She therefore went in and taught
them to fry meat and other foodstuffs.
The problem of how far the immigrant groups should be encouraged to
modify their diet can be determined only after a careful study of
their dietary practices. The price and quality of food available to
immigrants must be ascertained. Their habits, customs, and preferences
must be thoroughly understood. There can be no question, however, that
help should be given them in making the modifications required by the
changed environment.
There have been a number of suggestions of the best way to accomplish
this. Visiting housekeepers or visiting dietitians have been suggested
and will be discussed later. It is highly probable that help must
first be given to immigrant women in their homes before they can be
persuaded to attend any classes or demonstrations outside of their
homes. They must gradually be persuaded to take advantage of the help
obtainable in this way.
That the whole problem of diets suited to special needs of people is
being considered is evidenced by the fact that it has been suggested
that food be sold by units of energy value. Dr. Graham Lusk, for
example, proposed at a time of great distress in New York that the
Health Commissioner attempt to persuade grocers to prepare "Board of
Health baskets" which would provide 10,000 calories daily for a family
of five at a minimum cost.[37] The United States Commissioner of Labor
indorses the idea in the following words, "There are no insuperable
obstacles in the way of selling bread, beef, pork, eggs, milk,
cabbage, onions, corn, sugar--by the 100 or 1,000 calories."[38]
Professor Murlin has advocated that manufacturers be compelled to
place on food containers the calorie content of the package.
If such a plan could be worked out, the dietetic virtues and
weaknesses of the different groups could serve as a basis for the
special form in which foodstuffs were marketed in different areas. Any
such project as applied to the foreign born is far from
accomplishment. It is suggestive of a new attitude which does not
continue to leave the matter of diet to chance.
FURNITURE ON THE INSTALLMENT PLAN
In the purchase of furniture and of clothing there is the temptation
to buy on the installment plan. This plan is open to all the
objections ordinarily brought against buying on credit. The buyer is
tempted to overestimate his ability to pay in the future, and he may
not take the same trouble to calculate the actual value of his
purchase as when he pays money down. In the past the form of sale has
often been such as to place him peculiarly at the mercy of the seller,
who might find it more profitable to reclaim the possession of goods
on which a considerable share of the price has been paid than to
extend the time of payment and allow the payment to be completed.
The superintendent of the Bohemian Charitable Association says, for
example, that it is very common for newly married people to load
themselves with debt for household furniture, and that at least two
thirds of the stoves which are commonly bought on the installment plan
are taken back by the dealers before payments are finished. The
immigrant from the rural community may be quite unused to purchasing
furniture of any sort, and may be easily persuaded to buy what he
thinks is "American style."
The Lithuanian peasant, for example, had little furniture at home. In
the cottage of two rooms, one was used on the occasion of the visit of
the priest or at the time of a wedding or funeral, and contained
nothing but the shrine and the dowry chest of the daughters. The walls
were decorated with paper flowers and cheap lithographs. In Lithuanian
homes here one is struck by the fact that among the more prosperous
the same sort of furniture is seen in all the houses. This consists of
the heavy oak and leather sets of three or four large pieces usually
sold on the installment plan by stores in the immigrant districts. It
is not beautiful, and there is no reason to think that it is
distinctly American, but the immigrant is not in a position to know
that.
NEW FASHIONS AND OLD CLOTHES
Then there is the unsolved problem of clothing. As in the case of
food, so with dress; the general effect of the organization of the
department stores in the different neighborhoods can be only
misleading and confusing. Many misleading devices that would no longer
deceive the older residents are tried again on the newcomer.
The women at first find it difficult to judge of values and prices.
The local stores are there with the bargain counter and the special
sale and all the other devices. The Poles and the Lithuanians with
whom we have talked have dwelt especially on the helplessness of their
countrywomen in the hands of the unscrupulous merchant or the shrewd
clerk.
Clothing presents to even the enlightened and the sophisticated a most
difficult problem in domestic management. "Fashion wears out more
garments than the man." The anthropologist, the physiologist, and the
sociologist are all concerned to explain why the clothing worn to-day
is often so unsuited to bodily needs as well as to the demands of
beauty and fitness.[39] To a very real extent practices of waste
prevail in the selection of clothing, and to that extent neither
reason nor art finds a place in the scheme. Where an attempt at
economy is made, the influence of the new science of hygiene is
impeded by old ideas of durability. So that from the well-to-do of the
community comes little suggestion that can be of service in
directing the expenditures for clothing of any other group.
[Illustration: IT'S A LONG WAY FROM THIS ELABORATE CZECHO-SLOVAK
COSTUME TO THE MODERN AMERICAN STYLES]
The foreign born are faced with a particularly difficult problem. They
often come from places where dress served to show where one came from,
and who one was. In the United States, dress serves to conceal one's
origin and relationships, and there results an almost inexorable
dilemma. Follow the Old-World practice, and show who you are and where
you come from, and the result is that you remain alien and different
and that your children will not stay with you "outside the gates." Or
follow the fashion and be like others, and the meager income is
dissipated before your eyes, with meager results. The Croatians have
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