Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 64, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 November 1911 — Why Girls Prefer to Work In Factories [ARTICLE]

Why Girls Prefer to Work In Factories

By KATHRYN SCHWARZ

Perhaps one reason why American bora girls prefer to work in factories at starvation wages rather than work in kitchens and be comfortable is that while in school they studied the same declaration of independence as their brothers did. Whether that old document tells the truth or not, it has made of our boys and girls something that does not willingly have inferiority robbed into them. One never stops to wonder that our young men will dig ditches rather than become valets or butlers or footmen, even

though they might have more comfortable homes and better wages in the latter positions. Some foreigners are bora with or have been trained to a mental attitude of servility, but few raised in this country can acquire it A girl working for wages in a city kitchen has her menial position impressed on her in a thousand ways that perhaps even her mistress does not realize. ► When she works in a factory she associates all day with people doing the same work as she does, and whether she figures it out consciously to that point or not she would rather live with that sense of equality and starvation wages than with comfort and the supercilious condescension she meets in another person’s kitchen. , You who wonder why the average girl shuns housework, did you ever stop to consider that the life of the kitchen maid is as nearly a blank as it can be and escape total annihilation? With whom shall she associate? With whom shall she talk? Her mistress’ family will talk to her—yes, talk down to her. The help in the families around her perhaps cannot carry on a conversation with her in her own language. Every woman who will own to the truth knows that housework grows irksome even when done for tha sake of one s own family. Think then of its deadly monotony to one who does it day after day under conditions that of themselves kill all interest in life. Until we can have co-operative housekeeping so that the workers can associate with each other their work or until we can learn and act on the truth that those who do the most necessary and most disagreeable work are entitled to the highest honor, we shall not have girls doing housework if there is anything else at all they can get to do.