Chapter II: Part 2

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.

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.

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.

(Reprinted by permission from the Journal of the American Institute of Architects, June, 1919)]