University Young Women Aided

Unique Plan to Aid in Their Support

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DOMESTIC INDUSTRIES

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Are Taught and Girls Get Employment at a Fair Renumeration 

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The following interesting article on University life and domestic industries appears in The Churchman of August 23. It is written by Florence E. Winslow.

"The marked success which has attended an experiment recently inaugurated in connection with a Western University, with the purpose of enabling young women to aid in their own support during their undergraduate years, commends it to the consideration of the advocates of women's colleges and annexes everywhere. In the University of California are many young girls, of good family, whose means are inadequate to their support. During their freshman year, these vigorous young women, full of force and energy and hampered by few of the restrictions known as "social" in the East, find in the homes of Berkeley employment in light housework, in reading to invalids, or in companionship to elderly women. But in the beautiful little college town there were not enough positions for those who needed them.

"A woman, whose heart beats for and with every girl who is seeking an education, has built near the university a fully equipped border cottage with provision for instruction in those branches of domestic industry which appeal most to women. Here, by a complete and thorough system girls are taught sewing, and are gradually introduced to the mysteries involved in fine needlework and embroidery, for which, as all women know, there is an increasingly steady demand.

"As only fifty girls can be taken, a young woman is not allowed to enter the industries cottage during her freshman year. Her standing as a scholar must first be assured; there must be character testing, the applicant must give evidence that she is entirely capable of maintaining a fair standard in her classes, in order that her university course may be aided and not marred by the industry system. These points being assured, a girl is received as a pupil in the Hearst Domestic Industries Cottage on generous terms. From the moment of her entrance as a pupil, she will be paid for her time at the rate of twenty cents an hour. While a student her time is worth less, when she becomes an expert, it will be worth more to her employers. If she proves notably incompetent, her name will be dropped from the rolls; if she succeeds, she engages in the regular work of the cottage, and assists in filling the orders for fine handiwork which are constantly received by its manager. Whether more or less expert, she will receive to the end of her service only the pro rata amount paid her at the beginning. 

"Each girl is allowed to work only so many hours as her health will allow. Under the care of a competent house mother of long experience in service of girls, health is carefully safeguarded, and each of the fifty students provided with work in the cottage comes under the supervision of a good physician. The physical standard of the girls thus cared for, who are also given special gymnastic work, is excellent. The workers do not reside in the cottage but find it in many social pleasures. The equipment is of the best, and all material of whatever sort, used in the workrooms, is supplied to the scholars. 

"The promoter of this new form of beneficence believes that by providing these girls with true womanly employment undergraduates can be aided in working their own way through college, and be at the same time prepared more completely for homemakers in later years. 

"The Hearst Domestic Industries Cottage, after some two years of service, has already attained no mean success."