Our Working Girls and Boys, typescript.
Olcott, Jane. [Our Working Girls & Boys]. [n.d. but ca. 1910?]
Six 8-1/2 x 11” leaves, typed; bottom half of p. 9 is written in pencil on the verso; p. 10 consists of handwritten notes on the verso of New York State Woman Suffrage Association stationery; heavily annotated in pencil and pen throughout; rust marks on the first leaf; two tears at top edge of last leaf; last two leaves creased from folding.
A draft of a speech Olcott delivered in Patchogue, N.Y. on the lifestyles of working class young men and women. She cites examples of girls who became corrupted by their exposure to saloons and dance halls in the after-work hours and eventually left their jobs to become streetwalkers. The problem is more complex than many realize and Olcott explains,
What shall we do with our working girls and boys after hours? The boys are living on the streets, learning all the vices of the streets; the boys and girls we find at moving picture places where all too often the pictures are brutal and vulgar, always sensational and sentimental; in the dance halls where dancing and drinking are combined, and where there seems no restraint on the part of any. We see sweet, lovely girls become degraded low women, then disappear into the ugly life of a streetwalker…The young people at work in the factory, the shop, and office have a very different day from that of the boys and girls who are at school or college…Monotonous work all day long, 9, 10, sometimes 11 hours a day…such work is life-destroying in every sense of the word, and the natural reaction—natural for any of us—but especially for the growing girl, is activity, motion, excitement. The more dull the day’s work the more eager the worker for thrills!
Olcott describes some specific scenarios: Margaret, whose strict father forbade her from going out at night, was driven to rebel and disappear into the “under-world,” and Rose, who started working at the age of 14: After a slew of 10-hour workdays, “with no opportunity for her youth to express itself,” Rose went insane and was committed to the state asylum. Olcott proposes several solutions to keep working girls and boys on the right track, such as the creation of a Board of Censorship to ensure that only high-quality “educational films, travel films and good stories” are screened at movie theatres. Sports should also be encouraged as a post-work activity and Olcott names baseball as “one of the healthiest, most wholesome games we have.” Finally, school facilities and church parish halls should be used as communal gathering places, as an alternative to saloons.
Olcott quotes Swedish feminist Ellen Key twice in the speech and towards the end, references Jane Addams’s book The Spirit of Youth (New York: Macmillan Co., 1909) as evidence of “the need of the city for preserving the youthful enthusiasm of the boys and girls.” Olcott’s handwritten notes at the end include a list of states that have passed legislation limiting the work day for women to eight or nine hours and the minimum wage for women in various states including Utah, California, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado.
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