COLLEGE TO FACTORY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 766, 12 September 1929, Page 15

COLLEGE TO FACTORY

GIRLS TRY EXPERIMENT J LIFE OF US. POOR The summer vacation is often tha time when real hard work begins for the American “co-ed. ’ or college girl* It, is then that she lays down her books and deserts the comparative ease of the library f ir the strenuous life of a wage-earner its waitress* domestic help, or even as a factory* hand, says an English exchange. A party of enterprising ; oung col» lege women recently decided to spend part of their vacation in what they described as laboratory work in sociology. They wanted to find out hqw far the much-vaunted American prosperity really -extended to tho factory-class in the big cities. So they set out, each one separately and concealing her identity, for Chicago, determined to get and hold jobs for six weeks, and see for themselves what the life of an unskilled worker had to offer In the capital of the Middle West. They found that the sparkling stream of American prosperity some* times runs into stagnant and forgotten backwaters. In Chicago they were absorbed in queer and assorted occupations. Wiring radio coils, carding pigs’ hair, icing cakes, feeding envelope machines, gumming paper boxes* sorting laundry, spraying paint on aslx trays, sewing lampshades. inking shoes, candling eggs—these are some of the jobs they found, and for which they earned an average of 12 dollars* a week. • Three pounds a week sounds a good sum for casual labour, and women’q labour at that: but living in Chicago is a costly affair. Eigh dollars week for a bare “cracker-box” tene» ment room and a scanty dinner leaver only four dollars —16s —for luncheon, car fare, clothing, and everything else. No silk stocking here! \ “dime” a day—that is, about 5d —foi* lunch w’as the usual allowance. Linm beans and the übiquitous ice-cream for lunch every* day was the custom; a saucer of beaus for the girls and a bowl for the men, eaten at tho workmen’s counter, where there wero few chairs and the mid-day rest had to be taken standing up. The experiences of Josephine may be taken as typical. “I told them I was a German and had done housework,” she said. “You can't land c* job unless you’re a foreigner with experience.” Her first job was bleaching shoes in a factory. From 7 a.in. to 5 p.m. she pulled a rack of shoes backwards and forwards, extract ng shoes*and coating them with a bleaching mixture, standing at the bench, with a “gunny” sack serving for arr. apron. Joe, the foreman, bullied r he girls when they slowed down on production, and Josephine lost her job over an argument with him. Union rules provided that the girls should have seat at the bench, but tho company provided standing room only. Josephine looked up the rules and told Joe about it, and that evening she was “fired."

Her second job was candling eggs. “When I rode home after w*ork people wrould take a seat beside me. say ‘Whew!* and hastily move to a strap.'* she said. “Rots” went into a pail, and eggs of the different grades Into their respective crates.

The wages'of the party varied from 30 dollars —£6 a w*eek. for casual labour is certainly not inconsistent with America’s boast of high labour costs —down to 6 dollars, far short o< a living wage. On return from fheir six-weeks’ ex* periments the girls were plied withi the inevitable American question* “What .did you get out of it'”’ The answer was equally typical: “A real admiration and sympathy for the workers.** «