A FARM GIRL IN THE CITY

A Farm Girl in the City LET US take up the case of the average girl who comes to the city. She comes usually not because she wants to make something of herself, but to see more life, to have a...

...10 cents every day for lunch down town...
...If they are forced to work hard for a salary only to hand over their pay envelopes unopened to their mothers, the injustice of the thing makes them rebellious...
...Moreover, the chairman introduced several speakers whose names were not on the programme and the audience was tired out when he eventually introduced the last speaker: "Mr...
...A large percentage of girls who work away from home send part of their wages to their families each week...
...One On the Chairman A certain man who had been invited to speak at a political meeting was placed last on the list of speakers, says Lippincott's...
...So long as a girl of this kind can keep her job and not run into debt to satisfy her love of finery, she can exist month after month in this way, cutting down her food expense to the minimum and thus saving a little extra for clothes...
...of girls who work and live at home contribute all their earnings to the family Support...
...And since it is no fun to entertain a young man in the family sitting room where other people are listening to her conversation, she faces the alternative of taking him into her own room or going out with him to walk the streets...
...She may find a girl friend who is anxious to room with her, and in this way they cut down expenses still more...
...Eighty-six per cent...
...To give it all up to the prosaic business of buying bread and butter for the family is a little too disheartening...
...She will probably have found a $6 job in some office or department store or factory and she spends her days in a monotonous routine of filing, selling or working at a machine...
...if she is not in by 11:30 at night she is forced to give an account of herself...
...Usually one of three things happens: She gives up and goes home...
...She comes usually not because she wants to make something of herself, but to see more life, to have a better time than she can at home...
...Suppose any number of possible calamities—what then...
...Suppose her love for clothes and her desire to be attractive lead her into the clutches of a loan shark from whom she borrows money that she cannot repay...
...and so they often succumb...
...or she marries the first man whose salary justifies him in asking her...
...She manages her expenses something like this: $2.50 a week for her room...
...There is no room left now to contrast with this picture of city life a sketch of what country life in its fullness might mean to her...
...This means that she will have to spend at least 60 cents a week for car fare, get up much earlier in the morning to allow for her 30 or 40 minute ride downtown and undergo the extra strain of hanging on a strap during that ride, when she is so tired she can scarcely stand...
...They want some money of their own for their little personal pleasures, and feel that they have earned it...
...Now these girls are often among those who come to grief in the city...
...or, desperate, she is lost...
...My address," said Mr...
...60 cents for car fare...
...At night she demands pleasure...
...But the rules and regulations become very irksome to her...
...Home Life...
...There are a thousand things that the city girl would gladly exchange with the farm girl...
...Bones will now give us his address...
...1.30 for her breakfasts and dinners at home, which she cooks herself and $1 left for clothes and all sundry expenses...
...She may be fortunate enough to secure a cheap room at the Young Woman's Christian Association, in which case she stays as long as she can stand it...
...So she moves into one of the residence sections—into a very poor part, of course—where she can get a tiny room, with kitchen privileges, for $2.50 a week...
...This means that she usually gets to bed late, and by the time Sunday comes she feels that she has to sleep almost all day if she is to be able to work the next week...
...It is almost ridiculous to think of a girl trying to live on such a scale, but thousands of them do it until they get too tired to keep up the struggle or until circumstances force them to give it up...
...There are a thousand things to be said about it...
...and since she is very fond of going to the theater and having a little supper afterward with some young man friend she decides that she would much rather live by herself in a hall room, where she could come in at 1 o'clock, if necessary, without explaining her lateness to "an old fussy Superintendent...
...this is the only time she has for it...
...Sometimes her landlady objects to her taking the young man into her room and so she solves the problem by going with him to a picture show and spending the rest of the evening gazing into the shop windows or sitting on a bench in the park...
...But suppose she is laid off during a dull season and is unable to find anything else to do...
...but the country girl will never believe it until it is shown to her plainly.—Margaret C. Anderson, in the Breeders' Gazette...
...Bones, rising, "is 551 Park Villa, and I wish you all good night...

Vol. 5 • May 1913 • No. 19


 
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