CHAPTER VII

THE ITALIAN GIRL

BY JOSEPHINE ROCHE

From out the big candy factories of the Middle West Side throngs of workers, one Saturday night, came hurrying into the December darkness. Eagerly they turned their steps toward their tenement homes. Many of them were Italian girls, and very young.

Across the street from Kohlberger’s candy factory a child waited, peering anxiously at every group of girls that left the building. “Lucy!” she called out suddenly. Three girls stopped and the child ran up to them crying, “Oh, Lucy, your sister Mary’s got twins!” Lucy’s shriek of delight was echoed rapturously by her companions; they caught hold of the child and besieged her with questions. Several friends stopped to hear the glad tidings. Then the little group set out up Ninth Avenue for Lucy Colletti’s home to see Mary and the new arrivals.

The noise of the elevated trains drowned their voices and the crowds held them back, but they talked happily on. After the first excitement of the news had abated a little, they turned to other matters. “Perhaps your friend will be at your house, Lucy,” said one of the girls.

Lucy’s happy look faded.

“No, he won’t.”

“But he’s there at the door every night, and he goes up the stairs with you.”

“My father’s got no use for him, so I told him .... Well, what’s the use, we ain’t allowed to do anything,” she ended sullenly.

“Why don’t you do like Jennie does, and not let them know?” asked the other.

“They’d know. They don’t ever let me out at night, not even to go to the club. It’s just sit around the house all evening. If you’ve got a husband, he’ll take you out somewhere. Mary got married when she was fifteen and after that she went out all the time. I wisht I was married!”

As they turned from Ninth Avenue west into one of the Forties a girl and a young man approached them. “There’s Angelina!” exclaimed Jennie, calling to the girl. Angelina greeted them warmly. She was thin and looked delicate, as though she had just recovered from a severe illness. In answer to the girls’ eager questions she said that she was better; that she and Nick were to be married at Christmas and go to live in the Bronx; that she’d get well fast then. She asked in turn about the girls at the factory and said that she missed them.

Angelina was sixteen. Two years before, she had gone into the candy factory. She started at $3.50 a week and after a year got $4.00, packing chocolates in the basement. It was cold there and damp, and in spite of her heavy sweater and two pairs of stockings she had contracted a severe cold which lingered on her lungs. She failed steadily until one day after a bad fit of “coughing blood” she fainted and had to be taken home. She could not go back, although her mother missed the $4.00 sadly, as her father too was out of work. But when she was able to be up and care for the baby and do her mother’s work as janitress, the latter managed to get cleaning jobs and things were easier. This last week her father had got employment. He was washing dishes in a saloon for $9.00 a week. Now it would be possible for Angelina to marry. Her friends shared in her happiness with quick responsiveness, and continued to talk of her marriage to Nick until the nearness of Lucy’s house brought them back to the first interesting topic of the evening.

“My, I’m glad I don’t have to work tonight!” Lucy exclaimed.

“Yes, but we must work tomorrow!” exclaimed Jennie. “I just hate going on Sunday. Gee! I don’t want no candy for a Christmas present!”

Through cold, ill-smelling hallways, the girls trooped up the four flights of narrow stairs to Lucy’s home. The gas flame which flickered feebly on each landing revealed the dirty, crumbling walls. It was the social hour of the tenements. Fathers were returning from the day’s toil and the children were welcoming them. Mothers were cooking the evening meal, whose various odors mingled in the passage-way with those of bad plumbing, the common toilets, escaping gas, wet plaster, and garbage. Half-dressed babies crept out to the open doors or rolled on the bare, grimy hall floors, peering with curious eyes through the banisters at the new arrivals. The little knots of neighbors gathered about the doorways hailed Lucy with words of rejoicing. A continuous sound of voices arose, sometimes low and laughing, again, high and excited, but tinged with the varying cadences and the finely shaded meanings with which the Italian language abounds. Accustomed to a life of the greatest intimacy with relatives and neighbors, the Italians will sacrifice any comfort to preserve this condition.

In the Collettis’ flat a stream of smiling friends passed in and out congratulating Mary and touching with warm brown fingers the babies’ cheeks. Each drank two tiny glasses of crème de menthe to the health of mother and children. Four generations lived in that flat--a family of eleven. Mrs. Colletti was seated near her daughter’s bed, nursing her own year-old baby. Mrs. Colletti’s mother, who had been a midwife in Italy, tended her daughter and the newborn babies after the manner in which she had cared years ago for the peasant women of Calabria. The Collettis were prosperous; their fruit stand did a good business. All the family helped. Mrs. Colletti spent every morning at the stand, and the children were there after school and at night. They were able to afford a five-room flat and some pretentious furniture. The front room was particularly splendid with its brilliant green-flowered rug, stiff Nottingham curtains, and equally stiff “parlor set.” Mary’s wedding presents, bright painted vases, imitation cut glass, enormous feather roses, and pink celluloid album, were arranged around the room. Staring likenesses in heavy oil paint of the bride and groom were the crowning glory of the parlor.

Lucy dropped her pay envelope into her mother’s lap. Then she and her friends surrounded the sixteen-year-old mother and told her of the day’s happenings, of meeting Angelina, and how she was soon to be married. Mary was as eager as the others over the idea of a wedding and a dance. Indeed she would be able to go! And she would wear her blue dress, the one she bought when she “stood up” with Flora at her wedding.

Lucy’s friends promised as they said goodnight, to explain to the “boss” why she could not come on Sunday morning for extra work. They ran downstairs out into the street, and as they passed the steam laundry on the block, from which came the dull thump of subsiding machinery, a girl came through the iron gateway. She was a short, stocky peasant type, but her shoulders were stooped, her flesh flabby, and she looked far from strong. She shivered as she came out of the hot, steaming workroom into the chill December air. The girls greeted her.

“You wasn’t at the club last night, Rose, so we came up to see you,” said Jennie.

“No, I never get home till most 9 o’clock on Fridays and on Mondays. It’s awful busy at the laundry these days,” Rose explained. “I wisht I was back at the factory packing peanut brittle. It’s no joke standin’ foldin’ all day long. My side hurts something fierce; it wakes me up at night.” The group walked along arm in arm toward the tenement in which Rose Morelli lived.

“Have you heard from Tony?” Jennie asked as they entered the Morelli flat.

Rose shook her head and glanced at her mother who sat monotonously jigging a dull-looking baby on her lap. At the mention of her son’s name she raised her great, heavy eyes and spoke to Rose in Italian. Then she dropped them again and the tears ran quietly down her face. Tony was the oldest of the family, the only boy, and he had run away to Florida six weeks before. He had been led to do so by another boy--a bad boy. The Morellis always explained that it was not Tony’s fault; he was a good boy but he had got tired of working for the butcher. He had written them a postal from Jacksonville saying that he was having a grand time and was stable boy on the race track. But no further word had come. They did not know where he was. But the mother had not given up hope that he would come back, though each day she grew thinner and the heavy marks under her eyes grew darker. She watched on the fire escape each night, peering down the street for Tony’s familiar figure. Now, as she wept for him, she drew the baby to her and kissed it passionately.

The baby was not her own. It was a little Jewish foundling she had taken from the “Home” to nurse when her last baby died seven months ago. Four children had died before that when “so leetle.” Over the mantelpiece hung a large, shiny photograph of the last baby lying in its casket. The, casket had been very expensive, but it had been a great comfort to the mother to put so much money into it, quite unconscious that the living children were paying its heavy price in lowered health and vitality.

The Morellis’ three rooms had none of the air of prosperity that characterized the Colletti home. They were bare, and would have been dingy except for the bright bedspread, the gayly colored wall decorations, and advertising calendars, pictures of the royal family, the pope, the saints, and the Holy Virgin. Under this last a candle burned, an offering for Tony’s return. In the tiny dark box of a room back of the kitchen a cot and two chairs served Rose and the two younger girls as sleeping accommodations. A shakedown in the kitchen had been Tony’s bed. It was still there, unused. No one else would have thought of sleeping in it. It would have been an acknowledgment that he might not need it again.

As Rose went on talking of their “trouble” to her friends, they responded with quick sympathy. They lamented with the Morellis as sincerely as they had rejoiced with the Colletti family. They felt with Rose as keenly and genuinely as with Mary and Lucy. Sympathy is the keynote of the Italian community. It binds together not only members of the same family but relatives of all degrees, friends, fellow-tenants, speakers of the same dialect, those from the same Latin town. It extends to the little foundling, the tiny boarder, whose frequent presence in the home is such sad evidence of the high infant mortality in the Italian families. The $10 which the foster mother receives from the institution as board money does not prevent her from loving her little nursling with the same passionate abandon with which she loves her own.

Whether a girl comes from the higher income group like the Collettis, whose home runs the whole depth of the house and has circulation of fresh air, or from the group that feels the pressure of bare living in three choking, dark rooms as do the Morellis, she is touched by the same deep influence of family bonds and customs. A tying-up of the individual with the group, an identity of interests with those of one’s kin--these are the factors which dominate the lives of the family into which the Italian girl is born and which present a valiant front to the forces of personal independence that meet her in her American life, at school, in industry, and in recreation.

The claims of the school weigh little against the claims of the family. While she is a little girl in the grades, having difficulty perhaps with her lessons, the disadvantage to her of being “kept out” a few days does not weigh an instant against some temporary family need in which she may be of help. Illness, financial loss, trouble of any kind, not merely in her own home but in that of an aunt or uncle, keep many a young girl out of school if only to lament with the afflicted.

Let us glance into the Belsito kitchen on a winter evening after Adelina Belsito has been absent from school for a week. Over at the school the teacher’s register shows that this last week’s defection is only the latest of a long series of absences on the part of “Belsito, Adelina.” On this particular evening a number of friends are collected in the kitchen; their sympathetic and concerned expressions show that they are discussing some grave and anxious matter. Presently there enters upon the scene the school visitor. Will she not be seated and have a glass of wine and Adelina will tell the long story of the family’s misfortunes.

Illness, accident, death, and loss of savings have followed each other in rapid succession, topped now by the burning of a stable and the loss of Mr. Belsito’s two draft horses, the sole capital of the family. Angelina tells the story eagerly in great detail, Mrs. Belsito nodding mournfully at times and adding to her daughter’s account. The father is absent because he is out looking for more horses. He has borrowed money from a friend who is “rich” and the family is anxiously waiting to know his luck. Presently he comes, the children running to him and clinging to his legs. No, he has not been able to find horses; all cost too much; there is nothing, nothing to be had. He clasps his head with his hands and sits with it tragically bowed. Fresh commiseration arises from the gathering, and animated suggestions are offered.

Adelina must go to work. That is the consensus of opinion. But upon inquiry, the school visitor learns that Adelina is not yet entitled to working papers, being only in the fourth grade, although nearly fifteen. No, she does not like to go to school; she did like it until a year ago, but lately there has been “so much trouble” that she has been often absent. Of course she has not gone this week! After her father’s horses had burned! Adelina lifts surprised, hurt eyes at the question, though she is not able to explain just what aid she has been able to give by staying at home. And they have been sending her cards from the school, the last one demanding that her father come before the principal and explain her absence. Adelina and her family find this very hard and unjust “when there is so much trouble.” Besides, the father could not go; he had to look for horses. The father lifts his head and speaks to the girl in Italian. Presently she explains, “My father say he have it in his head what he do for you if you speak to the principal for me.”

And through the slight service which the “school lady” later rendered, the Belsitos became her fast friends.

In the Ruletti home down the block there is trouble of another kind. This time it is the mother’s grief which the daughter shares. Mrs. Ruletti is a slender, bent little woman in black. She is not over thirty-three but her deeply lined face looks all of fifty. Just home from work, she snatches up the baby and kisses it passionately, murmuring to it in Italian. She weeps as she talks. Lucrezia Ruletti explains, “They’re going to take it back; they wouldn’t let her keep it any longer and she feels just like she did when our baby died.”

“Take it back?”

“Oh, yes, to the ‘Home.’ Bennie isn’t our real brother; he’s a foundling. You see, when the last baby died in the winter my mother took Bennie from the Home and now we all love him and they want to take him back.”

Mrs. Ruletti breaks in. “They say to me, ‘You have no milk now, bring Bennie back.’ But I feed him bread, meat, oh! he can eat soon. I no want him to go; like loosa my own baby.”

In the Italian household the daughter of fourteen is expected to bear a full share of the mother’s responsibilities. She keeps the house, cooks, washes, dresses and disciplines the children. Laura Tuzzoli, with her old little face and her maternal air, is a not unusual type. Going to call for the first time I paused before the tenement, uncertain as to their floor. A group of dark-eyed children around an ash can nearby watched me curiously. One tiny four-year-old flashed a quick smile of friendliness and a brilliant glance from her black eyes, then edged a little away from her companions. Asked where Laura Tuzzoli lived, she straightened her slight, ragged shoulders and informed me that she was also a “Tuzzoli.” She slipped her mite of a hand into mine and led me up the dirty, unsteady stairs to “our house.”

There the fourteen-year-old sister was presiding in the mother’s absence. She had just begun to bathe the one-year-old baby, having finished cleaning their three rooms. The windows had been washed as had the gilt-framed, cracked mirror which hung proudly in the space between them. On a shelf beneath a picture of the Virgin stood a clean jelly-glass filled with water on which floated a cork bearing a freshly lighted candle.

Presently little Lizzie Tuzzoli came in from school carrying her books and papers for “home work.” Fourteen-year-old Laura put her through a rapid fire of questions about her behavior and whether she had “made up” with a certain Mamie. Lizzie suddenly dived into her bag and produced from it a wonderful pink pencil of the screw variety. Pride of possession shone in her eyes as she displayed it.

“I got it off Lena Perella,” she announced. Laura seized the pencil, touched it carefully, then gave Lizzie a sharp look. “Did she _give_ it to you?” she demanded.

Lizzie squirmed a little. “Yes. She--I found it and didn’t know it belonged to her, and Carrie Bussi said Lena didn’t want it anyway, so----”

Laura handed the pencil back with a scorching glance and a dictum whose tone permitted no rejoinder, “You take that back to school tomorrow and give it to Lena, _d’ye hear_?” Then she became the gracious hostess again.

The bond between Zappira Blondi and her mother was of another sort. When Zappira was twelve years old her father had sailed away to America leaving his family in the little village near Naples to wait until he could earn a home for them in the new country. But work was harder to find than he expected. After a year’s absence he wrote a letter home filled with discouragement and reporting dreary failure. Zappira, who was the oldest of the children, shared in her mother’s keen disappointment. The two put their heads together and laid a plan whereby they could earn their passage. The mother borrowed a sum of money sufficient to stock a small store in their village. This she and Zappira proceeded to conduct so successfully that at the end of the year the small debt had been repaid and the passage money laid aside. Their venture had been kept a secret from the father, and when they were all ready to make the journey they wrote him the good news and named the date when he should meet them at Ellis Island. Great was the joy of the family at being together, but hard work still lay ahead of these brave women. They took two small rooms in Mott Street, and for a year mother and daughter worked in a factory, eking out a bare living. The girl was now sixteen, old enough to be married, and though the family could ill afford to lose her wages her father did not fail in what he considered his duty. He soon found a husband for her. Although so young, Zappira had, through years of close partnership with her mother, already acquired many of the sober qualities of middle age.

The unity of the Italian family has an economic as well as an emotional basis. Father, mother, and children often form a single industrial unit. “I works for me fader,” says the urchin whom you meet on the stairs carrying a pail of coal to a customer. Visit the Sabbio family and you find Mrs. Sabbio presiding at the bar in a small saloon. In response to your question whether her husband owns the saloon, she answers, “Both of us, we work together.”

In the dark, damp little coal and ice cellars, the cluttered tailor and cobbler shops, the grocery and candy stores, at the fruit stands, and in the saloons, all members of the family take a hand and help to bring in the common income. Stroll along Ninth Avenue and you may see sometimes one member of the family “on the job,” sometimes another; at busy times, all are there. The mother is almost always on duty, delegating the housekeeping and tending of babies to the daughter at home. But very often the baby is also in evidence, and is unceremoniously dumped from his mother’s or sister’s arms into a perambulator when attention must be given to a customer.

Similarly, the Italian of this West Side community makes common financial cause with his relatives and friends in business enterprises. He is likely to be in partnership with his father-in-law or one of his numerous brothers or cousins in the ownership of dray-horses, of a candy or notion store, or a stand. Whenever an Italian begins to thrive in any kind of joint business one may at once be assured that his relatives are “in on it.” And one may be equally sure that in times of hard luck or slack work the temporary deficit of the family will be met by relatives and friends. This is taken as a matter of course. “In Italy everybody helps everybody else” is the answer you receive if you express surprise. If the head of the household falls ill, the neighbors drop in daily to see how he is, and rarely does one leave without first slipping into the sick man’s hand a nickel, a dime, or perhaps a quarter. Not the slightest thought of charity is entailed by the act, either in the giver’s mind or the receiver’s. It is understood, however, that the act of kindness will be reciprocated when occasion arises.

When the social worker visits such a home and notes that the signs of real want are lacking, in spite of the fact that the sole income is the $4.00 or $5.00 a week which the daughter earns, the suspicion arises that these people must have profited in business before the father’s illness and put by more than they will admit. Then the next-door neighbor enters, a coin is dropped quite openly on the bedcover, and the social worker departs with a deeper insight into the ways and character of the Italian. Small wonder that charitable societies of this district have comparatively few Italian families in their charge.[84] So common is the feeling of loyalty and responsibility among them that it is like the old tribal sense of oneness, an entire merging of the personal in the group interest, and the group’s bearing as its own the burden of the individual.

The protection and watchfulness of the family are constantly about the girl. And the family circle from which surveillance proceeds is usually intact unless death has entered it. Only in rare cases is a “broken home” the result of desertion. The Italian does not abandon his wife and family, nor is his relation to his children that of breadwinner only. He shares with the mother the intimate care and close watchfulness over them. It is always “I ask my father” with these young Italian girls, and in spite of the over-strictness which so many of them resent and from which they take refuge in deception, there is between the Italian father and his daughter a close degree of companionship seldom found in Americans of their position. Perhaps this is due to the fact that he is more in touch with American life than the shut-in Italian mother, whose life is almost wholly occupied with child-bearing and child-burying.

The eagerness of most Italian parents for the arrival of a daughter’s fourteenth birthday strikes one with no little pathos when one bears in mind how pitifully small is the equipment of the child at that age grown up in so restricted an environment. The girl herself is as eager to go to work as her parents are to have her. She takes it for granted that she should help in the family income. Carlotta gets a job not because she feels the need of self-support as an expression of individuality, of self-dependence, but because she feels so strongly the sense of family obligation. Lucy Colletti turned her weekly wages into the more generous family income as readily and unquestioningly as Rose Morelli gave hers to meet the needs of bare subsistence.

The West Side Carlotta is not a recent immigrant. Her family came through Ellis Island probably as much as ten years ago,[85] settling first in one of the lower and more congested districts of New York. Later they moved up to this district, attracted by reports of cheaper rents or simply following, as is the Italian way, relatives already there. Her father is probably a naturalized citizen.

Notwithstanding the exotic community in which the Italian lives and his loyalty to Latin traditions, ten years of New York are bound to leave their mark. This is particularly true of the West Side Italians, so many of whom carry on a petty but independent business. Owning a fruit stand, a coal cellar, or a trucking business is in itself evidence of long residence and some Americanization.[86] “The Italian with the stand--eh, he is well off--long time here,” is a common remark among his compatriots.

Other signs of long residence on the West Side are the changes in names. Not only does “Lucrezia” become “Lucy”; “Dominica,” “Minnie”; “Giovannina,” “Jennie”; “Fortunata,” “Nettie”; “Francesca,” “Fannie” and so on, but even the family names sometimes suffer a change. The “Aquinas” become the “Quinns,” the “D’Adamos” become the “Adamses.” The old names to which still cling some of the grandeur that was Rome are often gladly exchanged for a genuine West Side cognomen.

Perhaps the chief evidence of Americanization, however, appears when the daughter of the family begins wage-earning. For this she goes directly to the factory. She does not join the ranks of the Italian women who form so large a proportion of the out-workers or home workers of New York City. Only those who are familiar with the submissive way in which the Old World Italian women endure industrial exploitation can understand what a stride toward independence the Italian girl has made by simply working in a factory instead of at home.

A trade-union organizer and a home-work investigator were recently discussing the Italian girl of sixteen. The former had found Italian girls slow to respond to trade organization and was pessimistic about their economic future. “They will not progress, nor can you blame them when you think of the history of their women in Italy.” “You forget how far these Italian girls in the factory have already progressed,” said the home-work investigator. “The Italian women I know best are doing tenement house work and earning pitifully low wages because they will not leave their homes to work in a factory.”

The Italian girl works in the factories nearest home. These on the West Side happen to be principally candy factories and laundries--such as Kohlberger’s, where Lucy Colletti worked, and the laundry where Rose Morelli was employed as a folder. Should the factory move she looks for another nearby. Evil lies in strange parts. If the neighboring candy factory overworks its employes, as it usually does during the weeks before Christmas, requiring night work[87] and Sunday work, the girls and their families regretfully submit to these weeks of exploitation.

But although economic necessity may force Carlotta into the factory, it does not make her otherwise more independent of her family. Her father and mother cling persistently to the old-country custom of close watchfulness over her. Parental surveillance may be relaxed during her hours of work, but it is promptly revived when the day’s work is over. The streets, the dance hall, even the well chaperoned amusement club are prohibited; nor may she spend her money on dress or choose a “fellow” for herself. Italian girls have acquired to a less degree than American girls the habit of spending.

But of course this system breeds an occasional rebel. There was Filamina Moresco, for instance, whose calm investment of $25 in a pink party dress, a beaver hat, and a willow plume, was reported as little less than the act of a brigand. If she had withheld 20 cents out of her pay envelope from her mother she would probably have been beaten. As it was, she appropriated $25 and her high-handedness was her protection. Jennie Polini’s form of rebellion--choosing a “fellow” for herself and “seeing him on the sly”--was not as successful. The other girls regarded her conduct with doubt and disapproval, though they shared all of Jennie’s bitter resentment against the stern discipline of her parents from whom she was separated by the old abyss between the generations, widened and deepened by the disparities of the old world and the new. The pleasures which the Italian parents permit their daughter are those which she may enjoy in their company. She shares in the celebration of family events which the church recognizes and dignifies with a ritual; such as a birth, a death, or a wedding, the seasons of Christmas and Easter, the saints’ days, and the American holidays. These latter she interprets in her own way. Angelina Costa informed her parents on Lincoln’s birthday that the schools were closed because it was an “American saint’s day.”

The patriarchal festivals of the Italian _contadini_ are reproduced, however sordidly, in the christening parties, the wedding dances, and the burial ceremonies of the West Side. To the daughter of fourteen a wedding party is the summit of bliss. She lives from wedding to wedding, treasuring memories of the last one or preparing for the next, until her own turn comes to be the central figure. One cannot fancy her stealing away to a secret marriage as so many of the West Side daughters are inclined to do. That would be to miss the most glorious day of her life.

The “school lady’s” invitation to Angelina Marro’s marriage announced that the wedding dance would begin at 5 in the afternoon, immediately after the marriage ceremony. The “West Side Café” had been engaged for the night’s celebration. Surely a place with so high-sounding a name must lay claim to considerable pretension! It was with some disillusionment that the “school lady” entered a small doorway and groped her way through a narrow, dingy, and perfectly dark passage toward a tiny slit of light which promised another door in the far distance. Repeated knocks on the panels below this ray finally caused a slipping of bolts. A huge black Italian appeared at the opening. Near him stood a countryman. They were both engaged in getting ready the refreshments, but they welcomed the intruder. On a big, round table stood a large tin washtub filled with water for rewashing the beer mugs after use. Large wooden trays were piled high with a quantity of sandwiches that one could not believe any crowd, however large, could consume. An enormous Italian cheese, plates of Italian cakes, and a number of crates of beer completed the preparation for the feast.

The room may have been 30 by 50 feet; the ceiling was low and the only means of ventilation were two small windows at one end which opened on a court. These were tightly closed, with shades and curtains drawn. Around the walls were benches and chairs. At the end opposite the windows were the piano and chairs for the musicians. The walls were decorated with cheap prints, a large color print of George and Martha Washington being most conspicuous among them. Stretching from the four corners of the ceiling to the gas chandelier in the middle of the room were strings of flags, representing all nations, but most of them were American and Italian.

The bride and groom had not yet arrived, but one of the bridesmaids, Lucy Colletti, came forward and greeted the visitor cordially. The bride was having her picture taken, she explained, but would arrive very soon. The room began to fill up with relatives and friends of the married pair. There was no dressing room. All the wraps were piled together on the top of a high narrow wardrobe. One of the men stood on a chair and threw on top of the fast growing pile the additional coats, hats, and furs.

Guests of all ages, from grandparents to toddling children, continued to arrive in parties. Suddenly the outer door opened and the young bride and groom entered. There were cries of welcome, a burst of hand-clapping, and a general rush for the pair. The dark, frail little bride in her elaborate costume looked like a child playing at “dressing up.” The fine net gown and veil, the white slippers and gloves, must have meant months of saving and stern denials of necessities. She was only sixteen, and Nick, who walked beside her bearing his head like a young prince instead of the young butcher’s helper that he was, had barely turned nineteen. One could not but reflect that if he had been living in Gramercy Park instead of on the West Side he might now be receiving his high school diploma instead of assuming the burden and responsibility of a family. And the little bride might be heading the freshman basketball team with years of care-free development ahead of her, instead of facing the imminent trials of child-bearing with the probable addition of factory labor.

The wedded pair made their way down the hall to the chairs placed for them at the end. The fact most striking to the outsider was the total lack of self-consciousness or awkward embarrassment on the part of either, young as they were, at being the center of attention, the object of laughing comments and affectionate raillery from all present.

The bride took her seat behind a table at the end of the room, removed her flowers and put them in a pitcher of water, and having carefully arranged her veil was ready to receive her friends. “Come,” said Lucy Colletti, “we must go up to the bride.” This ceremony over, we stood back and watched the children scramble wildly for the pennies the men tossed up. Although the musicians were nearly an hour late, no one seemed to mind. The children raced and played and rolled on the freshly waxed floor with fearful results to their clothes.

By the time the music began, the room had grown so crowded that the dancers were confined to a small circle in the center. As the evening passed the air became blue with dust and tobacco smoke, and the physical discomforts of the place increased to the point of general exhaustion. Yet one could not but take delight in a scene where enjoyment was so evident and so thoroughly sincere. Every guest participated; no one was neglected. Grandmothers were led out for a gay turn by grandsons who cavaliered their little sisters in the next dance. Fathers and daughters, sons and mothers, made light-hearted couples. It was a sight never to be seen at an American gathering, but common enough wherever Italians are assembled for any kind of celebration or enjoyment. In pleasure, as in work, the family rules.

But weddings and family dances do not come very often, and other evenings must be spent in the tenement home under strict guardianship and oversight. Against this strictness of another land are constantly beating all the new, free customs of America. The conflict begins as soon as Carlotta gets her working papers and takes her place in the factory. Inevitably the influences of the new life in which she spends nine hours of the day begin to tell on her. Each morning and each evening, as she covers her head with an old crocheted shawl and walks to and from her factory, she passes the daughters of her Irish and American neighbors in their smart hats, their cheap waists in the latest and smartest style, their tinsel ornaments, and their gay hair-bows. A part of the contents of their pay envelopes goes into the personal expenses of those girls. Nor do they hurry through the streets to their homes after working hours, but linger with a boy companion making “dates” for a “movie” or an “affair.”

Slowly but surely their example is beginning to have its effect on the docile little Italian whose life has hitherto swung like a pendulum back and forth between her labors at the factory and the duties and restraints of home. She begins to long for the same freedom that the other girls enjoy. But freedom does not mean for her what it means for the American girl, trained in a different school from the beginning. She has not the same hard little powers of resistance, nor can she make the same truculent boast of being able to “take care of herself.” She is not able to present the same rough and ready front to rowdy good times.

Free and easy as are the manners of her American sisters, they usually draw a line, distinct enough from their own point of view, at “tough” and “fresh.” The Italian girl has no idea of where the line is, or whether these bold-appearing girls really have any standards of conduct. _Her_ line, the line her people have drawn for her, is placed well in front of the commonest enjoyments of the West Side girl. Once it is broken over by a “lark” with a crowd of boys and girls, then she is, by her own and her people’s standards, condemned. Very often, however, she fails to feel the weight of her old friends’ disapprobation as heavily as might be expected because she is still accepted by the standards of the new country, _her_ country. As long as she does not overstep its particular line, she is safe. But to her the American line of conduct is blurred and indistinct. It is determined by conditions which she does not recognize or understand. The little tragedies and conflicts of this semi-Americanization are familiar enough to those who know the Italian girl of some years’ residence.

It is useless to expect that her young, wholesome craving for amusement will continue to be satisfied in the ways approved by her people. The irresistible lure of America which has already drawn her parents from the ancestral plains of Italy continues still to draw her. She must enter upon her kingdom. But unaccustomed as she is to the newer ways, the Italian daughter must be taught intelligently to meet American conditions and trained in the forms of self-protection which they necessitate. Her parents cannot do this. They have themselves still too much to learn. But the community to which she has come, bringing her all--her health, her strength, her industry, and her children--owes it at least to her to safeguard the innocent joys of her youth.

APPENDIX

APPENDIX A

ECONOMIC CONDITION OF THE FAMILIES

Our 65 girls came from 55 different families. Forty-one of these families had at some period in their lives been aided, or investigated, or disciplined by some sort of private philanthropic or protective agency. Of these, all but one had records with some relief agency. In a very few cases the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor and the Charity Organization Society records show that the family received no relief, but only visitation and advice. Usually, however, actual relief was given. Thirty-nine had records in the registration bureau of the Charity Organization Society. Eleven had Charity Organization Society records only; 15 had records with the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor only; one had been helped only by the church. Thirteen had records of relief from or intervention by more than one society; as, the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor and the St. Vincent de Paul Society, or the Charity Organization Society and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, or again and again both the Charity Organization Society and the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor. One had been under the care of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the Board of Health.

Often, of course, families such as these must turn to an agency for help only in time of crisis; and when the crisis is past and the aid they have received has put them on their feet again, they no longer need support. Such, at least, is the ideal of “family rehabilitation.” Of a different sort are the cases of chronic, wasting poverty and misfortune, which no charitable aid can ever render self-supporting. These are the poor who are always with us; and it was to this group, we found, that most of our families belonged. In analyzing the relief cases, it seemed to us that where a family had been under the care of an agency for less than two years it could be put in the former group, where relief was given because of emergencies. Of the 40 cases, 10 were in this class. The other 30 had records for two years or more; and of these 30 cases, 17 had records for two years and less than six years, and 13 for six years or more. The average period of intermittent care for the 30 families whose relief records extended over more than two years was nine and a half years. The average is startling enough, but a few cases stand out as more startling than the rest. One family had applied for aid in 1899 and the case had been “closed” and re-opened[88] at intervals ever since. One record extended from 1892 to 1908, one from 1895 to 1911. One case had been opened and closed eight separate times since 1899.

It must be borne in mind that no figures can be given to show the help these families had received from private sources; clothing from women for whom the mothers had done day’s work or washing, money for rent or doctor’s bills from relatives, food from neighbors,--all these things help stave off the dreaded appeal to “charity.”

We have tried to analyze the immediate causes of need at the time the family was first referred to the relief society. The first application is the most significant, for after help has been obtained once, it is likely to be sought again. Of our 40 relief cases, one family had been deserted by the chief wage-earner, in five he was dead, and in 34 the wage-earner was living. Very few of the first applications, therefore, were due to the death of the father.

The number of children born to the family, whether living or dead, often determines the extent of its poverty,[89] and contributes to the necessity for relief. We have estimated, roughly, that three or four living children was the average for these 40 families at the time of the first application. In some cases there was only one child, but in many cases there were six or seven. The records do not tell us how many had been born, nor how many had died, thus adding their quota to the family’s share of illness, expense, and sorrow.[90] In the cases that were opened and closed again and again we find that child after child was born after the family was far below the line of self-support,--six or eight or 10 children born into homes that could support in decency only one or two at most. But “too many children” never appears as the cause of an application for relief in the records of a charitable society.

It is true that need is rarely due to any one circumstance. Usually where one kind of misery exists, other kinds are found also.[91] The most common causes that the records for this group of 40 show were lack of work, casual work, illness, or drink; and these were combined and coupled together in story after story. Taking in each case what seems to have been the chief immediate cause, though we cannot claim that our division is strictly accurate, we found that in five cases the need was due primarily to illness; in three primarily to drink; in 10 the causes were scattering or could not be ascertained; in 22 the distress was due most of all to lack of work. Time and again the entry appears: “The father has been out of work for ten weeks”; or “It is the slack season in the man’s trade and he has been unable to get a steady job for three months”; or “The mother has recently been confined and the father has been out of a job for several weeks and there is no food in the house.” It is repeated over and over--out of work, out of work, out of work--till we can only wonder that drink and despair do not more inevitably accompany the loss of a job. These were the conditions that brought 40 of our families to the point of seeking relief at various times in their lives.

It would not be fair to judge the usual standing of our group entirely by these records of the families which had sought relief. We have therefore taken a kind of cross section of all the families of our 65 girls to show their earning capacity and general economic status at the date when our acquaintance with them began. Of these 55 families, only 21 were normal groups. By this we mean that the father and mother were both living, that they were together, and that the father was physically able to be the wage-earner and the mother the housewife. The other 34 were “broken” families. In 15 the father was dead, in six the mother was dead, and in three both father and mother were dead. In one the father had deserted, and in one the mother was in prison. In four of them there was a stepmother or stepfather. In eight families the father was incapacitated, either by old age or illness, so that he was not able to be the chief wage-earner.

In 29 of our 55 families, the mothers were wage-earners.[92] In nine of these, the father was dead; in six, he was incapacitated; in 14, the mother worked because the father’s income was not enough to support the family without her aid. Where the father was dead or disabled the mother’s work was more constant and regular than where she worked to supplement the husband’s earnings. Of these 29 mothers, 10 went out for “day’s work” sometimes only one or two days a week. Ten worked more regularly, washing or scrubbing several days a week, sewing at home, and so on. Thirteen were janitresses of the tenements in which they lived. Payment for this service varies from $3.00 off on a month’s rent to the whole rent and $1.00 besides, depending on the size of the house or houses cared for. Four of the janitresses also took in washing or did other work.

It must be remembered that the very presence of these women on our list means that they were mothers of adolescent girls and of families of children averaging about five in number. Considering this we realize more clearly the truth of their saying, “It’s hard bringin’ children up in New York.” More than half the mothers of our girls were forced to do other work than that of caring for a good-sized family.

The explanation of this situation is found in the low-paid unskilled work done by the girls’ fathers. Of the 40 living fathers and stepfathers, we can give the occupations of 34.

Teamster 14 Machinist 4 Laborer 3 Dock worker 2 Hotel worker 2 Slaughter-house man 2 Railroad flagman 2 Laundry worker 1 Proprietor of trucking business 1 Street cleaner 1 Peddler 1 Janitor 1 -- Total 34

Very few of these occupations are what can properly be called skilled work, many of them are extremely irregular and casual, and many of them pay less than a living wage.

The housing of these families is such as would be anticipated by those who know them and the facilities the district offers. There are very few new-law tenements in this part of New York, and little good can be said of the best of the old-law houses. Really good housing is practically unknown. For example, but two of our 55 families had bathrooms in their apartments. Many apartments contained small toilet rooms, and other families used toilets in the hall on the same floor. Some still had only an old-fashioned yard toilet. One house furnished for its tenants a cellar toilet used also by the men who patronized the ground floor saloon adjoining it, and this horrible situation made the children of the house afraid to go to the cellar alone or after dark.

We have housing records for 53 of our 55 families. Thirty of these lived in apartments containing one or more dark rooms, with no windows to the outer air, or to anything more than a tiny air-shaft. Of these 30 families, 10 had one dark room, 18 had two dark rooms, one had three dark rooms, and one had four dark rooms. The number of persons in household and the number of rooms occupied were as shown in the following table:

FIFTY-THREE FAMILIES CLASSIFIED ACCORDING TO NUMBER OF PERSONS IN HOUSEHOLD AND NUMBER OF ROOMS OCCUPIED[a]

=====================+=======================================+========= | FAMILIES OCCUPYING | Persons in household +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ All | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | families | rooms | rooms | rooms | rooms | rooms | ---------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+--------- Two | 1 | 1 | | | | 2 Three | 1 | | 3 | | | 4 Four | | 2 | 2 | | | 4 Five | 1 | 2 | 4 | 1 | | 8 Six | | 2 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 11 Seven | | 5 | 4 | 2 | | 11 Eight or nine | | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 9 Ten or eleven | | | 1 | 1 | | 2 Twelve and less than | | | | | | seventeen | | | | 1 | 1 | 2 ---------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+--------- Total | 3 | 15 | 21 | 9 | 5 | 53 ---------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+---------

[a] Information is not available as to the number of persons in or number of rooms occupied by two of the 55 households.

In spite of the lack of space, light, and air, and the poor sanitary conveniences, six of the families in apartments, as shown in the following table, paid rentals of $20 or over per month, four paid from $16 to $20, 20 paid from $12 to $16, 17 paid from $8.00 to $12, and only three paid less than $8.00. One family lived in furnished rooms for which they paid $3.50 a week; one family owned the house they lived in; for three we had no records of the amount of rent paid. The distribution of rentals according to number is shown by the following table:

FIFTY FAMILIES CLASSIFIED ACCORDING TO NUMBER OF ROOMS OCCUPIED AND MONTHLY RENTAL PAID[a]

===============+==================================+========== | FAMILIES PAYING MONTHLY | | RENTAL OF | +------+------+------+------+------+ All Rooms occupied | | $8 | $12 | $16 | | families | Less | and | and | and | $20 | | than | less | less | less | and | | $8 | than | than | than | over | | | $12 | $16 | $20 | | ---------------+------+------+------+------+------+--------- Two | | 2 | | | | 2 Three | 2 | 8 | 4 | | | 14 Four | 1 | 7 | 10 | 3 | 1 | 22 Five | | | 5 | 1 | 2 | 8 Six | | | 1 | | 2 | 3 Six and bath | | | | | 1 | 1 ---------------+------+------+------+------+------+--------- Total | 3 | 17 | 20 | 4 | 6 | 50 ---------------+------+------+------+------+------+---------

[a] This item was not secured for three of the 55 families; one family owned the house in which they lived, and one lived in furnished rooms, paying ..50 a week.

Life insurance is almost universal in our district except for families in the most abject poverty. Often every member is insured, the rate varying from 5 cents a week for children to 25 cents or more for adults. One family spent $52 a year for insurance out of a possible maximum income of $806 for seven persons. Another family of seven spent $2.40 a week out of an income which probably did not average more than $20 a week at the most. The benefit seldom does more than cover the cost of the funeral, and often barely that. The baby may have been insured for $30 and the undertaker’s bill is likely to be $40 or $50. One wife received $141 at her husband’s death, and the funeral expenses were $155, leaving a debt of $14, the cost of an illness, and a family of children to support. Such a funeral, of course, indicates lack of judgment on the part of the family, but it must be remembered that from time out of mind and in all ranks of society, a fine funeral has meant respect for the dead; and burial in the Potter’s Field is still a sign of the lowest economic stage to which a man can fall.

Twenty-five of the 55 families, or nearly half, had been in the past, or were at the time of our investigation, affected by excessive drinking on the part of one or both parents. Of this we were sure, either from records of philanthropic agencies or from our own knowledge. Some of the remaining 30 families had no cases of alcoholism, but concerning others we were unable to get any definite information. To summarize: In 25 families either the father or mother, or both, were subject to excessive drinking; in 13 of these the fathers drank to excess; in four the mothers drank; in eight of the 25 families both the father and the mother drank. “Excessive drinking” does not necessarily mean habitual drunkenness. Such cases are not frequent. On the other hand, it never means merely taking either an occasional or a regular drink, unless this is done to excess. It means at the least drinking of the sort which makes the mother unable to keep her home together without interference from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children or makes it impossible for the father to “hold down” a job. In all 25 of these cases, the families had relief records.

To sum up, we have divided our families on a basis of prosperity and poverty as Miss Breckinridge and Miss Abbott have done in their book on The Delinquent Child and the Home.[93]

Class I represents the very poor, the “submerged tenth,”--the broken family, ill fed, ill clad, ill supported, aided by charity month after month and year after year, sick, wretched, truly poverty stricken. To this class we have judged that 20 of our 55 families, containing 25 of our 65 girls, belonged.

Class II are the poor, those with whom it is a constant struggle to make ends meet, who seldom have comfort but who seldom are on the verge of starvation. In this class we have placed 23 of our families, containing 28 of our girls.

Class III represents the fairly comfortable, those whose chief wage-earner has steady work or in which the children are contributing a fair share of the income; where food is sufficient and overcrowding is not very great. In this class were 11 of our families, with 11 of our girls.

Class IV is the very comfortable group, those who can afford a little more than the minimum of education and of care for their children, and who are never likely to know pressing want. In this class there was one family, containing one of our girls. This child’s grandfather was an early district settler, an Irish builder and contractor. When he died he left to the mother three or four tenement houses, in one of which the family were living, while the rents from the others rendered them, according to local standards, positively affluent.

Thus, to separate poverty from prosperity, roughly though it must be, only 12 of the 55 families could be called comfortable. The remaining 43 families were poor, some of them wretchedly poor. This condition, whatever may have been its cause, was the dominating factor in the lives of all but 12 of our 65 girls.

APPENDIX B

SCHOOL ATTENDANCE DATA

To obtain facts regarding school attendance in the West Side district studied, a special tabulation for four public schools was made in the Bureau of Social Research from schedules obtained for the Committee on School Inquiry of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment of New York City. Public Schools Nos. 17, 32, 51, and 127 were the schools included in the study. The records covered a period of five months, from February 1, 1911, to June 30, 1911, or practically 100 school days. In the following table is shown the relation between the absences of boys and the absences of girls in the four schools mentioned, and the relation between absences in these schools and absences in the entire city.

It will be noted that attendance is poorer for the girls than for the boys. The difference in the average number of days of absence is about 2.6 days, or approximately 2.6 per cent of the term in question.

Attendance is better in the city as a whole than in the four schools in the district. But 63.5 per cent of the children in the schools in the district were absent less than eleven days, as compared with 67.3 per cent of those in the city as a whole. The proportion of children in each of the successive groups representing longer periods of absence is smaller for the city as a whole than for the four schools. A comparison of the

ABSENCES OF PUPILS IN REGULAR CLASSES, IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS NOS. 17, 32, 51 AND 127, AND IN ALL PUBLIC SCHOOLS. NEW YORK CITY, FEBRUARY 1, 1911, TO JUNE 30, 1911

=======================+===========================================================+==================== | PUPILS IN SCHOOLS NOS. 17, 32, 51 | PUPILS IN ALL | AND 127[a] | PUBLIC SCHOOLS[b] +-------------------+-------------------+-------------------+---------+---------- Days of absence | Boys | Girls | Total | | +--------+----------+--------+----------+--------+----------+ Number | Per cent | Number | Per cent | Number | Per cent | Number | Per cent | | -----------------------+--------+----------+--------+----------+--------+----------+---------+---------- | | | | | | | | Less than 11 | 1,829 | 67.4 | 1,173 | 58.3 | 3,002 | 63.5 | 382,406 | 67.3 11 and less than 21 | 447 | 16.4 | 408 | 20.3 | 855 | 18.1 | 97,512 | 17.1 21 and less than 31 | 182 | 6.7 | 182 | 9.0 | 364 | 7.7 | 39,391 | 6.9 31 and less than 41 | 92 | 3.4 | 99 | 4.9 | 191 | 4.0 | 19,297 | 3.4 41 and over | 166 | 6.1 | 151 | 7.5 | 317 | 6.7 | 30,006 | 5.3 -----------------------+--------+----------+--------+----------+--------+----------+---------+---------- Total | 2,716 | 100.0 | 2,013 | 100.0 | 4,729 | 100.0 | 568,612 | 100.0 =======================+========+==========+========+==========+========+==========+=========+========== Average number of days | | | | | absence | 11.4 | 14.0 | 12.5 | | -----------------------+-------------------+-------------------+-------------------+---------+----------

[a] Tabulated from schedules obtained for the Committee on School Inquiry of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment of New York City.

[b] From a report to the Committee on School Inquiry of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment of New York City, on Promotions and Non-promotions, and Part Time, by Frank P. Bachman, Ph.D., p. 64.

column for boys with that for girls shows that the low attendance in the schools studied is due to the relatively low attendance among the girls. While the percentages relating to the boys correspond almost exactly to those relating to all the children of the city, the percentages for the girls indicate a materially lower proportion of attendance.

INDEX

INDEX

ABBOTT, EDITH: The Delinquent Child and the Home, cited, 130

ADENOIDS: found on examination of girls, 83

ADOLESCENCE: and poverty, 32; and self-assertion, 48

AGNES: the friend of Annie Brink, 31

ALCOHOLISM: in families of girls, 129. See also _Drinking_

AMELIA: the case of, 52

AMERICAN FEMALE GUARDIAN SOCIETY SCHOOL ON WEST SIDE, 33

AMERICANIZATION AMONG ITALIANS: signs of, 110, 117

ANGELINA AND NICK, 96, 97, 113-115

ANTHONY, KATHARINE: Mothers Who Must Earn, cited, 23

ASSOCIATION FOR IMPROVING THE CONDITION OF THE POOR: families of girls having records with, 121

ATTINGER, MRS.: on her Lizzie’s marriage, 73, 74

AYRES, LEONARD P.: Laggards in Our Schools, cited, 37

“BABY’S” HOUSEKEEPING, 35, 36

BACHMAN, FRANK P.: Report on Promotions and Non-Promotions, etc., cited, 133

BASKET-WEAVING: as a club occupation, 4

BEDFORD REFORMATORY: superintendent of, quoted, 15; treatment of girls at, 18

BELSITO, ADELINA: and her absence from school, 102, 103

BIRTH RATE AND DEATH RATE OF WEST SIDE, 23

BLONDI, ZAPPIRA: and her mother, 105, 106

BOYS: and the girls’ club, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9; idleness among, more common than among girls, 51; school attendance of, compared with that of girls, 132-134

BRASS WORK: as a club occupation, 4

BRECKINRIDGE, S. P.: The Delinquent Child and the Home, cited, 130

BRINK, ANNIE: story of, 30, 31

BUREAU OF SOCIAL RESEARCH: study of school attendance by, 132

BURIAL EXPENSES, 23, 129

BUSINESS ENTERPRISES: conducted by Italian families, 106, 107

CARNEY, MAY: case of, 85, 86, 87

CARNEY, MRS.: on May’s marriage, 86

CARTWRIGHT, O. G.: Historical Survey of the West Side, cited, 76

CHARITABLE AID: received by families of girls, 122, 123, 124. See also _Relief Records_

CHARITABLE SOCIETIES: Italians and the, 108

CHARITY AMONG ITALIANS, 107, 108

CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY: families of girls having records with, 121

CHILDHOOD: influence of tenement life on, 81, 82

CHILDREN: school attendance of, 132-134

CHILDREN’S AID SOCIETY SCHOOL on West Side, 33

CHRIST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH: supervisor from, in charge of playground at club, 3

CHURCH: aid to family given by, 121

CLEARY AND MAGGIE: affair between, 79, 80

CLEAVER AND DORAN, 9, 10

CLINIC, PSYCHOLOGICAL: examination of girls in a, 85

CLINIC, WEEKLY: at club, 84

CLIQUES AMONG GIRLS, 60, 61

CLOTHES, PRETTY: the girls’ longing for, 59, 60

CLOTHING, PROTECTIVE: the girls’ lack of, 60

CLUB HOUSE AT 471 TENTH AVENUE: aim and origin of, 1, 2; equipment and activities of, 3, 4; only outbreak against a leader at, 10, 11; razed to give place to a factory, 14; relations with fellow tenants at, 5, 6; relations with neighborhood boys at, 6, 7, 8, 9; total number of girls studied at, 14; West Side girls, how far represented at, 15, 16

CLUBS AND SETTLEMENTS: use of, by West Side girls, 67

COLLETTI FAMILY: and their home, 98

COLLETTI, LUCY: references to, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 109, 111, 114

COLLETTI, MARY: references to, 95, 96, 98, 99

CONJUNCTIVITIS: case of, discovered in physical examination of girls, 83

COOKING: as a club occupation, 4

COOK STOVE: essential to equipment of girls’ club, 4

COSTA, ANGELINA: and her interpretation of Lincoln’s birthday, 112

CRAVEN, MAMIE: case of, 60

CULL, CHRISTINA: truancy of, 38, 39, 40

DALEY’S MARRIAGE TO MAY CARNEY, 86, 87

DANCE HALLS: and the occasional ball, 69; campaign for control of, 16, 17; etiquette of, 69, 70; grades of, 70

DANCES, PUBLIC: conduct of, 71

DANCING: enthusiasm of girls for, 4, 67

DARK ROOMS IN HOMES OF GIRLS, 24, 127

DAVIS, DR. KATHERINE B.: quoted, 15

DEATH RATES. See _Mortality_

DEFECTS, PHYSICAL: found in club girls, 83

DENLEY, CLARA: and her faction, 12

DEPARTMENT STORES: preference of some girls for, 43. See also _Stores_

DERKS, EMMA: and her raffle, 32

DEVINE, EDWARD T.: Misery and Its Causes, cited, 124

DISTEL, MR.: as a neighbor, 6

DONOVAN, SISSY: first job of, 41, 42

DORAN’S TALE OF A GANG, 9

DRAKE, CARRIE: case of, 88-90

DRINK: girl does not take to, 32; mothers who take to, 27, 29

DRINKING: excessive, on the part of parents of girls, 29, 129, 130

DRUNKENNESS: habitual, distinguished from “excessive drinking,” 129

EARNINGS OF GIRLS, 47

EAST SIDE: West Side compared with, as to stability of population, 75

ECONOMIC CONDITION: of the families of girls, 121-131

EDUCATION, COMPULSORY: period of, 33

EGAN, BARBARA, AND LOUISA STORM: quarrel between, 12

EIGHTH AVENUE: as a promenade, 66

ELEVENTH AVENUE: case of one family on, 24-26

EMPLOYMENT CERTIFICATE. See _Working Papers_

ESTIMATE AND APPORTIONMENT BOARD’S Committee of School Inquiry, 132, 133

EXAMINATION, PHYSICAL: of club girls, 82, 83, 84

EYES OF GIRLS: not cared for, 83

FACTORIES: and the West Side girl, 43, 44; wages of the girl in, 47; work of Italian girls in, 110, 111

FAMILIES: large, on West Side, 22

FAMILIES OF GIRLS: classified on basis of prosperity or poverty, 130, 131; economic conditions of, 121-131; housing of, 126, 127, 128; how constituted, 125; which received charitable aid, study of, 122, 123, 124

FAMILY, LIMITATION OF SIZE OF: almost unknown on West Side, 23

FAMILY PROTECTION: general breakdown of, on West Side, 75-94; maintained in the case of the Italian girl, 108, 111, 112

FATHERS: occupations of, 126

FESTIVALS, ITALIAN, 112

FLEMING, SADIE, AND MAGGIE TRACY, 12, 13

FULLER, CARRIE: case of, 84, 85

FUNERAL EXPENSES: in families of girls, 129

GALAXY MOVING PICTURE SHOW, 67

GANG SPIRIT OF TENTH AVENUE, 13

GANGS. See _Boys_; _Gopher Gang_; _“Hell’s Kitchen” Gang_

GAS PLANTS: odors of, on West Side, 75

GATE: as a bone of contention, 3, 4

“GENTLEMAN FRIENDS” AND “LADY FRIENDS,” 61

GIBSON, ANNIE: truancy of, 37, 38

GIRLS, WEST SIDE: aim and methods of study, 1; attitude of, toward assumption of family burdens, 49, 50, 51; demand for “good times” by, 51; difficulty of knowing, in their own homes, 2; education, in neighborhood immorality, 75-81, 87-93; familiarity with poverty and its effect, 21, 29, 32; fondness for dancing and music, 4, 67, 68, 69; homes and street corners as places of meeting with boy friends, 61-63; how far represented in clubs, 15, 16; idealism of, 68; immoderate pace of living among, 83; marriage, how regarded by, 73, 74; occupations of, 43, 44, 45, 46; physical inheritance and health of, 82, 83, 84, 85; relations with their families compared with those of boys, 19; relations with their mothers often strained, 53, 54, 55; school attendance of, compared with that of boys, 132-134; schooling of, 33-42; social relations among, contrasted with those among boys, 60, 61; surest way to help, 94; wages earned by, amount and disposition of, 47, 48. See also _Italian Girl_

GOPHER GANG: gossip about, 6, 9, 10, 13, 76

“GOPHERETTES”: proposed as name of club, 10

HANNICK AND MAGGIE, 62

HEALTH, BOARD OF: family under care of, 121

HEALTH OF CLUB GIRLS, 82, 83, 84, 85

“HELL’S KITCHEN” GANG: and its influence, 76

HICKMAN’S MOVING PICTURE SHOW, 67

HOLIDAYS, AMERICAN: among the Italians, 112

HOME: men friends of girls not welcomed in the, 61, 62; need of strengthening of best elements in the, 94; wage-earning and new relations at, 43-56

HOME WORK: Italian girls not engaged in, 110

HOME-WORK INVESTIGATOR: quoted, on Italian girls, 111

HOUSING OF FAMILIES OF GIRLS, 24, 126, 127, 128

HYLAND, WINNIE, AND CARRIE DRAKE, 88

IDEALISM AMONG GIRLS, 67

ILLEGITIMATE BIRTHS: common on West Side, 79

IMMORALITY AMONG GIRLS, 79, 80, 85-93

INDUSTRIAL HISTORIES OF GIRLS, 45, 46, 47

INSURANCE, LIFE: in families of girls, 23, 128, 129

ITALIAN GIRL: claims of school upon, 102, 103; eagerness of, to go to work, 109; family’s protection of, 108; kinds of work done by, 110, 111; pleasures prohibited and permitted to, 111, 112; semi-Americanization of, 116, 117; separate study made of, 1, 95

ITALIANS OF WEST SIDE: Americanization of names among, 110; characteristics of family life among, 106, 107, 108, 111, 112; eagerness of parents for arrival of fourteenth birthday of daughter, 109; festivals among, 112; length of residence in United States, 109; mutual helpfulness and charity among, 107, 108; occupations of, 106, 107, 110; sympathy the keynote of the community, 101; wedding parties among, 113-116

JENNIE. See _Polini, Jennie_

JOSIE: and the dance halls, 72

KERSEY, MRS., AND “BABY,” 35

KNEELAND, GEORGE J.: Commercialized Prostitution in New York City, quoted, 71

KOHLBERGER’S CANDY FACTORY, 95

“LADY FRIEND”: significance of title, 61

“LAGGARDS” AMONG GIRLS, 37

LANGAN, FATHER: aid of, enlisted by Mrs. Mullarkey, 91; and the “Gophers,” 12, 13

LARKEY, EMMA: schooling of, 36

LAWLESSNESS OF WEST SIDE, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 75, 76

LINCOLN’S BIRTHDAY: as interpreted by Angelina Costa, 112

LONDON SLUMS: compared with Middle West Side District, 82

LOUISA: the case of, 54, 55

MCCLUSKY FAMILY: as co-tenants of the club, 4, 5, 6

MCKEEVERS: Thanksgiving party at home of, 64-66

MAGGIE: the case of, 62

MARTHA AND SARAH: trachoma cases, 83, 84

MATTIE AND CLEARY: affair between, 79, 80

MARRIAGE: as an adventure, 73; following irregular relationship, how regarded, 79; found to be a sobering event, 74; of May Carney, 85-87. See also _Weddings_

MARRO, ANGELINA: her wedding party, 113-116. See also _Angelina and Nick_

MAYHEW, FANNY: and the “Gopherettes,” 10

MEEHAN, JENNIE: marriage of, 80

MEEHAN, MRS.: on the size of her family, 22

MENTAL ABILITY: of girls tested in a psychological clinic, 85

MERCER, ADDIE: and her father, 80, 81

MIDDLE WEST SIDE. See _West Side_

MISERY AND ITS CAUSES: in families of girls, 124

MONEY: importance of control of, to working girls, 59

MORAL CONDITIONS ON MIDDLE WEST SIDE, 77-81

MORESCO, FILAMINA: an Italian rebel, 112

MORELLI, ROSE: and her family, 99, 100, 101, 111

MORTALITY AMONG CHILDREN ON MIDDLE WEST SIDE, 23

MOTHER: and daughter, strained relations between, 53; as the mainstay of the family, 26

MOTHERS OF GIRLS: wage-earning, 125; who take to drink, 27, 29

MOVING PICTURE SHOWS, 66, 67

MULLARKEY, MRS.: and her search for Fannie, 90-92

MULLENS, FANNY: and her reason for leaving the Excelsior Laundry, 46

MURPHY, MRS.: and her daughter Katie, 2

MUSIC: appeal of, to girl, 67. See also _Songs, Popular_

NAMES: changes in, among Italians of West Side, 110

NEW MACHIAVELLI, THE: quotation from, 66

NICK AND ANGELINA, 96, 97, 114

“NICKEL DUMP,” 72. See also _Moving Picture Shows_

O’BRIEN, JULIA: and the young woman from the ranks, 11

O’BRIEN, “TOOTSIE”: and her first job, 44

O’CALLAHAN, MRS.: her tale of the Gophers, 13

OCCUPATIONS: of girls studied, 44, 45; of fathers of girls, 126; of mothers of girls, 125; Of West Side Italians, 106, 107, 110

PARENTAL SURVEILLANCE OVER ITALIAN GIRLS, 111. See also _Italian Girl_

PARENTS: hostility of, toward men friends of girls, 62; excessive drinking on the part of, 29, 129, 130

PATSY: the case of, 92

PAY ENVELOPE: family customs regarding, 47, 48, 49

PETIE’S MOTHER DISPOSSESSED, 27, 28

PHILANTHROPIC AGENCY: families of girls having records with some, 121. See also _Relief Records; Charitable Aid_

PHYSICAL INHERITANCE: and condition of girls, 82, 83, 84, 85

PIANO: essential to equipment of girls’ club, 4

PLAY: the will to, 57-74

PLAYGROUND IN BACK YARD OF CLUB HOUSE, 3

POLINI, JENNIE: and her choice of a fellow, 96, 97, 99, 112

POPULATION OF MIDDLE WEST SIDE: more stable than that of East Side, 75

POTTER’S FIELD: burial in, how regarded, 129

POVERTY: in families of girls, 20-32, 130, 131

PRECOCIOUS DEVELOPMENT OF GIRLS, 93

PROSPERITY: families of girls classified by degree of, 130, 131

PROSTITUTION: case of, among girls known at club, 88

PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC: examination of girls in, 85

PUPILS. See _Children_

QUARRELS BETWEEN CLUB MEMBERS, 12

REFORMATORY: as a cure for truancy, 38, 39

REILLY, MAMIE: and her responsibilities, 50, 51

REILLY, MRS.: on births and deaths, 23

RELIEF RECORDS: of families of girls, 20, 121, 122, 123, 124

RENTALS PAID BY FAMILIES OF GIRLS, 24, 128

RETARDATION AMONG GIRLS STUDIED, 36, 37

REYNOLDS, STEPHEN: quoted, 15

ROCHE, JOSEPHINE: author of chapter on the Italian girl, 95

RULETTI, MRS.: and her foster-child, 103, 104

RYAN, MRS.: quoted, 77

SABBIO, MRS.: and the family saloon, 106

SADIE AND PETIE’S MOTHER DISPOSSESSED, 27, 28

ST. VINCENT DE PAUL SOCIETY: families of girls having records with, 121

SALOON, CORNER: and its influence, 81, 82

SARAH AND MAGGIE: trachoma cases, 83, 84

SCHOOL ATTENDANCE ON THE MIDDLE WEST SIDE, 132-134

SCHOOL ENQUIRY, COMMITTEE ON: of Board of Estimate and Apportionment, 132, 133

SCHOOLING, COMPULSORY: period of, 33

SCHOOLS: absence from, among Italians, 102, 103; choice of, open to West Side girl, 33; evasions of law by early leaving of, 40, 41, 42; retardation of girls in, 36, 37; truancy of girls in, 38, 39, 40; use of transfers in the, 34, 35, 36

SETTLEMENTS AND CLUBS: use of, by girls, 67

SEWING: as a club occupation, 4

SEXUAL ABUSE: among girls, 84, 85

SHERIDAN, MARTIE: and her machine, 45

SHERIN, NELLIE: and her work, 46

SIPP, MAY: desire for home visit expressed by, 3

SLAUGHTER PENS: odors from, on West Side, 75

SOCIAL RELATIONS: among girls contrasted with those among boys, 60, 61

SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO CHILDREN: families of girls having records with, 121; interference of, where mother drinks, 130

SONGS, POPULAR: fondness of girls for, 4. See also _Music_

SPINAL CURVATURE: cases of, discovered on examination of girls, 83

STARK, PAULINE: a “rover,” 45

STERTLE, MAMIE: on going home at night, 77

STEVENS, KITTY: on Jennie Meehan’s marriage, 80

STORES: wages of girls starting in, 47. See also _Department Stores_

STORM, LOUISA, AND BARBARA EGAN: quarrel between, 12

STREET CORNERS: as places of rendezvous, 62, 63

STRUMPF, ANNA, AND MAMIE TAGGART: quarrel between, 12

TAGGART, MAMIE, AND ANNA STRUMPF: quarrel between, 12

TEETH OF GIRLS: neglect of, 83

TENTH AVENUE: gang spirit of, 13

THANKSGIVING PARTY AT THE MCKEEVERS’, 64-66

THROATS OF GIRLS: not cared for, 83

TOILET, OPEN: dangers of, 81

TONSILS, ENLARGED: found on examination of girls, 83

TOOHEY, SADIE: on the restaurant keeper’s past, 78

TRACHOMA: cases of, among the girls, 83, 84

TRACY, MAGGIE: faction headed by, called “tough,” 12, 13

TRADE-UNION ORGANIZER: quoted, on Italian girls, 111

TRANSFER PRIVILEGES IN THE SCHOOLS: use of, 34

TRUANCY AMONG GIRLS, 37, 38, 39

TRUANT OFFICER: and the transfer privilege, 35

TRUANT SCHOOL NEEDED FOR GIRLS, 40

TUBERCULOSIS: cases of, among girls, 84

TUZOLLI, LAURA: as a mother’s helper, 104, 105

UNDERTAKERS’ BILLS, 129

UNITED STATES: length of residence of Italian families in, 109

VAUDEVILLE: popularity of, 67

VENEREAL DISEASE: cases of, among girls, 84; in Europe, 82

VIOLENCE: tales of, 76. See also _Lawlessness_

VISION, DEFECTIVE: cases of, found on examination of girls, 83

WADE, LIZZIE: on factory work, 43

WAGE-EARNING AND NEW RELATIONS AT HOME, 43-56

WAGES: small on Middle West Side, 22

WAGES OF GIRLS: in Italian families, customs regarding, 109; who attended club, 47. See also _Pay Envelopes_

WAYWARDNESS: among West Side girls, problem of, 17. See also _Immorality_

WEDDINGS: among Italians, 113-116

WELLS, H. G.: The New Machiavelli, quoted, 66, 67

WEST SIDE, MIDDLE: compared with East Side as to stability of population, 75; influences upon the girl, 16, 17, 75, 77; population compared with that of London slums, 82

WORK: girls’ ways of finding, 43; lack of, as a cause of dependence in families of girls, 124. See also _Occupations_

WORKING PAPERS: requirements for, 40, 41

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] Mention should also be made of other fellows of the Bureau whose work in connection with the West Side Survey is not included in these publications. They were Elizabeth B. Butler, senior fellow; Lawrence K. Frank, Robert C. Sanger, Garret P. Wyckoff, Howard Nudd, Marie S. Orenstein, and Frances Perkins, all junior fellows. The last three published the results of their investigations in magazine articles.

[2] The names of the 294 boys studied were obtained from the following sources: 1909 court list, 202; Big Brother Movement, 43; special club studied, 10; Charity Organization Society, 8; additional children in families studied, 20; known through investigators on other topics, 6; known through other children, 2; through church, school, settlement, 1 each.

[3] See Chapter VI, The Boy and the Court, pp. 79 ff.

[4] Thirteen families had lived in the district less than five years, and the length of residence of 58 families was not ascertained. See Appendix, Table 3, p. 168.

[5] Pushcart vendors gather here and line the sidewalks, and the neighborhood shops and markets display their wares on outdoor stands to attract the Saturday night trade.

[6] See Cartwright, O. G.: The Middle West Side: A Historical Sketch. (West Side Studies.) Russell Sage Foundation Publication. In Press.

[7] The People’s Institute has undertaken, January, 1914, a neighborhood work, which will correlate and broaden the various recreation activities now going on in the Middle West Side. A social center has been opened in Public School 17, on West Forty-seventh Street, on the initiative of the local school board. The People’s Institute has taken executive charge of the work. About this center there will be focused a neighborhood movement, which will work in De Witt Clinton playground, on West Fiftieth Street pier, in the public libraries, and on the streets.

[8] See Cartwright, op. cit. In Press.

[9] See Anthony, Katharine: Mothers Who Must Earn, p. 7. (West Side Studies.) Russell Sage Foundation Publication. New York, Survey Associates, 1914.

[10] Of 222 fathers whose country of birth was known, 81 were born in the United States, 64 in Ireland, 27 in Germany, and 17 in Italy. Other countries were represented by numbers ranging from seven to one. Among 227 mothers, the United States was given as the place of birth of 92; Ireland, of 72; Germany, of 18; Italy, of 15. The numbers from other countries ranged from eight to one. The country of birth of 19 fathers and of 14 mothers in the 241 families could not be ascertained.

[11] See Appendix, Tables 4 and 5, pp. 168 and 169.

[12] See Chapter VI, pp. 95 ff.

[13] For account of one of these raids see Chapter IV, pp. 48-49.

[14] This term is commonly applied to all the thugs and loafers of the Middle West Side.

[15] New York _Tribune_, December 18, 1911.

[16] New York _Times_, June 26, 1911.

[17] New York _World_, February 24, 1910.

[18] See Appendix, Table 6, p. 169.

[19] For further data regarding size of families, see Appendix, Table 7, p. 170.

[20] For economic status of the mothers in 222 of the 241 families of delinquent boys, see Appendix, Table 8, p. 170. See also Anthony, op. cit., p. 59.

[21] The conjugal condition of the parents in 233 families is shown in the Appendix, Table 9, p. 171. For eight of the group of 241 families this information was not available.

[22] The relief records of 86 families who were known to have received aid, and the duration of the relief records in 73 of these cases, are given in the Appendix, Tables 10 and 11, pp. 171 and 172.

[23] For the full text of the law referred to, see Consolidated Laws of New York; the Penal Law; Laws of 1909, section 2186, chapter 88.

[24] Compare with classification of arrests according to analysis of offenses made in the Bureau of Social Research, as given in Chapter II, pp. 16-17.

[25] There were two cases in which an arrest was made on more than one charge.

[26] Separate courts were established in Brooklyn in September, 1903; in the boroughs of Queens and Richmond in September, 1910; and in the county of the Bronx in January, 1914.

[27] Until recently the judges of Special Sessions sat in rotation in the children’s court. The disadvantages of this system, under which it was seldom possible for the judge who had first passed upon a case to follow it to its conclusion, led in 1912 to some modifications in the direction of more permanent assignments of children’s court judges. Further improvements were made in 1913. Four judges of the Court of Special Sessions were designated as children’s court judges, and they constitute a committee on children’s courts. For the greater part of the year one judge sits in the children’s court in Manhattan, another in the court of Brooklyn, and since January, 1914, a third sits on different days of the week in the courts in Queens, Richmond, and the Bronx. The fourth is chairman of the committee and sits about three months in the year in each court. This new arrangement minimizes rotation in office and permits specialization.

[28] This has been completely changed since a special judge was assigned to the court. When he is sitting, frequently one and a half hours will be given to one case alone and there is rarely a day when there are not two sessions, morning and afternoon. Sometimes the Manhattan court does not adjourn until 7 p. m.

[29] A modern court building is now in process of erection in East Twenty-second Street, between Lexington and Third Avenues.

[30] The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (Incorporated). Thirty-fifth Annual Report, Dec. 31, 1909, p. 17.

[31] “As prepared by the New York Prison Association, the bill was applicable to both children and adults, but owing to the active opposition of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, it was amended in the legislature so as to apply only to persons over sixteen years of age. It was claimed by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children that existing laws made adequate provision for the treatment of delinquent children.” Report of the Probation Commission of the State of New York, 1906, pp. 8 and 9.

[32] Commission to Inquire into the Courts of Inferior Criminal Jurisdiction in Cities of the First Class. Final Reports. New York Assembly Documents, 133rd Session, 1910, Vol. 26, No. 54.

[33] Changes made in 1913 have been discussed on p. 87.

[34] Folks, Homer: Juvenile Probation in New York. _The Survey_, xxiii: pp. 671-672. (Feb. 5, 1910).

[35] The public is indebted to these volunteers for providing some probationary care for charges of the court before official probation was established. As soon as this was done, they were relieved of the undue pressure under which they had worked without proper equipment and aid. With the direction and supervision of the trained official representatives of the court, volunteer co-operation may now be developed and made highly useful.

[36] In March, 1912, as the result of an active campaign, 12 probation officers who had passed the civil service examination were assigned to the Manhattan children’s court and made officers of the court, drawing their salary from the city. In 1913, the number of probation officers was raised to 20. The effectiveness with which the new probation work operates is, of course, a subject on which we have no data. The court still faces the difficulty of having too small a staff for the number of cases. The Manhattan court has over 10,000 cases under treatment in the course of a year. In Chicago, the average number of cases is only about 5,000 and there are 30 regular probation officers and 30 police probation officers, making a total of 60 persons to handle this smaller number of cases.

[37] Jack Spinner’s mother was required to secure $1,000 bail--and fortunately she was able to secure it from the members of her church--for a “$500 burglary,” the articles in question being two small bundles of kindling wood which, as it was afterward proved, the boy had not taken.

[38] “Everybody in the district knows him. Everybody knows where to find him, and nearly everybody goes to him for assistance of one sort or another, especially the poor of the tenements. He is always obliging. He will go to the police courts to put in a good word for the ‘drunks and disorderlies,’ or pay their fines if a good word is not effective. He will attend christenings, weddings, and funerals. He will feed the hungry and help bury the dead.

“A philanthropist? Not at all. He is playing politics all the time. Brought up in Tammany Hall, he has learned how to read the hearts of the great mass of voters. He does not bother about reaching their heads. It is his belief that arguments and campaign literature have never gained votes. He seeks direct contact with the people, does them good turns when he can, and relies on their not forgetting him on election day.” Riordan, W. L.: Plunkett of Tammany Hall. A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics, pp. 168-169. New York, McClure, 1905.

[39] The installation of official probation officers and the adoption of the new system of records have removed this obstacle to the judge’s obtaining a comprehensive view of cases and reaching wise decisions. At the present time a careful preliminary investigation is made by the probation officer and presented in written form to the judge, prior to disposition of the case.

[40] For statistical data see Appendix, Table 12, p. 172.

[41] Two-thirds of all the cases handled in 1909 involved minor or trivial offenses, according to the Handbook of the New York Child Welfare Exhibit, 1911. Section on Laws and Administration, p. 162.

[42] As already indicated official probation has taken the place of the “parole” system since this chapter was written.

[43] This use of the term “parole” is not strictly correct. “Parole” more properly applies to the supervision of delinquents after release from institutions.

[44] Since the above was written, a new system of records recommended by the state probation commission has been adopted by the court for the use of probation officers. They cover all cases investigated or on probation since March, 1912.

[45] For three of the 95 paroled cases this information was not available. Data concerning the remaining 92 cases and the 1,492 paroled cases disposed of by the Manhattan court in 1909 may be found in the Appendix, Table 13, p. 173.

[46] This condition was changed with the installation of the official probation staff in March, 1912.

[47] In 1913 a law was enacted for the appointment of three physicians to examine children for mental defectiveness. As the Civil Service Commission refused to declare the positions exempt, however, no appointments were made; but an examination will undoubtedly be held to make up a list of physicians from which these offices may be filled. In the meantime the children’s court judge sends many children to the clinic conducted by Dr. Max Schlapp in connection with the Post-Graduate Hospital.

[48] See also Anthony, Katharine: Mothers Who Must Earn, p. 9.

[49] New York _Evening Mail_, April 28, 1911.

[50] For truancy records see Appendix, Table 14, p. 173. In classifying the boys studied according to the extent of their truancy, a distinction was made between those who were, according to our standards, really delinquent, and those who were included in the inquiry for some other reason. Data are available for 215 of the 294 boys included in our study.

[51] For occupations and wages of the boys who were at work see Appendix, Table 15, p. 174.

[52] Counted by children.

[53] Counted by cases, and classified by terms in popular use, because statutory classifications which are clear to the lawyer are likely to confuse the layman.

[54] Counted by cases.

[55] Counted by cases.

[56] Counted by cases.

[57] Counted by cases.

[58] Counted by children.

[59] Counted by cases.

[60] Counted by children.

[61] Counted by cases.

[62] Counted by cases.

[63] The names of girls given in this book are fictitious.

[64] This name is commonly applied to all the loafers and thugs from Thirtieth to Sixtieth Street.

[65] See Chapter II, p. 19, and Appendix A, p. 121.

[66] Reynolds, Stephen, and Wooley, Bob and Tom: Seems So, A Workingman’s View of Politics, p. xv. London, Macmillan, 1912.

[67] Now commissioner of corrections, New York City.

[68] Annual Report of the New York State Reformatory for Women at Bedford, 1907, p. 25.

[69] For more detailed data with regard to conditions in the 55 families to which the 65 girls dealt with in this study belonged, see Appendix A, Economic Condition of the Families, p. 121.

[70] See Appendix A, p. 121.

[71] Ibid., p. 121.

[72] For the relation which the number of children had to applications for relief among these families, see Appendix A, p. 123.

[73] For further data concerning the broken families in the group, and the extent of wage-earning among the mothers, see Appendix A, p. 124 ff.

[74] See Anthony, Katharine: Mothers Who Must Earn, p. 166 ff. (West Side Studies.) Russell Sage Foundation Publication. New York, Survey Associates, 1914.

[75] See Appendix A, pp. 128-129.

[76] For discussion of housing and rent in the 55 families, see Appendix A, pp. 126-128.

[77] Of the 55 families, 25 were affected by excessive drinking on the part of one or both parents. Twelve of the mothers were known to drink to excess. For further discussion, see Appendix A, p. 129.

[78] For data concerning attendance in four schools in the West Side district, and a comparison with attendance in all the public schools, see Appendix B, p. 132.

[79] Ayres, Leonard P.: Laggards in Our Schools, p. 38. Russell Sage Foundation Publication. New York, Charities Publication Committee, 1909.

[80] In 1913 the requirements were raised so that a child under sixteen must reach a 7A grade before she can take the school examinations. The board of health requirements also have been strengthened.

[81] Wells, Herbert G.: The New Machiavelli. New York, Duffield, 1910.

[82] These statements of the girls are corroborated by the following paragraphs from a recent study:

“During the past few years aggressive measures have been taken by different reform organizations aiming to bring about a more wholesome atmosphere in connection with public dances, especially those attended by the poorer boys and girls. Proprietors have been induced to employ special officers to attend the dances and keep order, prevent ‘tough’ and ‘half-time’ dancing, and protect innocent girls from the advances of undesirable persons. The duties of the special officer are difficult to perform. If he interferes too much, the dancers go to some other place where they enjoy more freedom. As a result, the honest proprietor who endeavors to conduct a respectable hall loses patronage, while the disreputable owner makes all the profit. Again, the young people who attend these balls know immediately when a person different from themselves appears in the hall. At once the dance becomes modest and sedate, and the visitor goes away to report that ‘while conditions are not what they should be, yet on the whole there is great improvement.’

“A social club gave a ball on the evening of March 23, 1912, at a hall in East 2nd Street. The dancing was very suggestive. The special officer was entertaining a police sergeant, but neither made any effort to regulate the actions of the dancers. The next afternoon another club occupied the hall at the same address, with the same special officer in attendance. Suddenly, when the dancing was in full swing, the officer hurriedly rushed among the dancers and told them to ‘cut it out’ as three detectives had just come in and he did not want to see the place closed up. A girl, apparently thirteen years of age, was dancing at the time and the officer put her off the floor, loudly declaring that the proprietor did not allow young girls to dance in the hall. Things resumed their former aspect, however, as soon as the detectives retired.”--Kneeland, George J.: Commercialized Prostitution in New York City, pp. 68-70. Bureau of Social Hygiene. New York, Century Co., 1913.

[83] See Cartwright, O. G.: The Middle West Side: Historical Notes. (West Side Studies.) Russell Sage Foundation Publication. In preparation.

[84] The solidarity of this colony of Italians is not necessarily typical of other colonies in the city, some of which are known to be well represented in the charity organization records of their district. One charitable agency reports, for instance, that in a certain upper East Side district, nearly 90 per cent of the families applying for relief in 1912-13 were Italian; but Italians undoubtedly formed a large percentage of the population.

[85] Among a group of 86 families visited, the length of residence in the district was obtained for 79. Of these, 51 families had lived in the district more than ten years. Eighteen of the 51 had come direct from Italy and 33 had moved here from other parts of the city.

[86] While the men in the group visited were found to be engaged in an unusual variety of occupations--laborer, barber, waiter, and 40 others were recorded during a general investigation among Italians in the district--most noticeable was the group of well represented occupations in which the whole family can share.

[87] A law prohibiting employment of women in factories after 10 p. m. became effective July 1, 1913.

[88] When a family is found to be no longer in need of relief, the case is technically referred to in the offices of the relief society as “closed.” If further relief is needed at a later date, it is “re-opened.”

[89] See Chapter II, In the Grip of Poverty, p. 19.

[90] For statement regarding births and deaths of children in 31 families, not all of whom had relief records, see Chapter II, p. 23.

[91] See Devine, Edward T.: Misery and Its Causes. New York, The Macmillan Co., 1909.

[92] See Chapter II, p. 22.

[93] Breckinridge, Sophonisba P., and Abbott, Edith: The Delinquent Child and the Home. Russell Sage Foundation Publication. New York, Charities Publication Committee, 1912.

[Transcriber’s Note:

Obvious printer errors corrected silently.

Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.]