Behind the Scenes in a
Restaurant

A Study of 1017 Women Restaurant
Employees

By
The Consumers’ League of New York City
1916

[1]

Wanted—A Rest

“I keep hearing about laws for women. Where are they?” This was the question asked by a woman working twelve hours a day in a restaurant. What must we tell her? What excuse have we to offer for excluding her from the protection the law gives to women working in factories and mercantile establishments? That we have safeguarded women in these fields of employment from overwork proves that we know the dangers of overwork, that long hours interpreted in terms of human life mean exhaustion, disease, immorality, pauperism and a weaker generation to follow our own. This is an old story, it has been told again and again. Yet with our over-sensitiveness to an encroachment upon the rights and liberties of American citizens, we have failed to extend the protection of our laws to all who need their protection.

The New York State Labor Law as it stands makes it illegal to employ women in factories and mercantile establishments more than fifty-four hours or six days in any one week, or between ten o’clock at night and six o’clock in the morning. So far, so good. If these laws are enforced, we may feel fairly confident that women in these branches of industry at least have some measure of protection. But what of the women not safeguarded by the law? Who are they, and why should they be neglected?

Between fifteen and twenty thousand of these women are workers in restaurants—waitresses, cooks, kitchen girls, pantry hands—upon whose services all of us depend at one time or another for our comfort and pleasure. The Consumers’ League of New York City has long felt the need of including restaurant workers under the provisions of the Labor Law. The State Department of Labor lays special stress upon this need.[1] Believing, therefore, both from casual observation and from the statement of the Labor Department that women in restaurants are not properly guarded from industrial strain, the League planned to explore the field further, to discover just what actually are the hours, wages and general conditions[2] of work in this branch of industry and to learn their effect upon the life and health of the worker.

A valuable study of this subject was made in 1910 by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics for New York and several of the larger cities of the country.[2] Though the Consumers’ League has not entered upon wholly new ground, yet with adequate time for detailed study it has been possible for it to make a more exhaustive inquiry than any made heretofore, and to bring to light new phases of the question. The story of its discoveries is told in the pages that follow, to this end, that with wider knowledge of facts, public interest may be reawakened and stimulated to demand adequate legal protection for women employed in restaurants.

Believing that one of the most satisfactory sources of information in regard to labor conditions is the word of the workers themselves, the Consumers’ League decided to base its study mainly upon interviews with restaurant employees. One thousand and seventeen (1,017) women were interviewed in New York City and in six of the larger cities of the State. They were seen in their homes, at their places of employment and through employment agencies.

In New York City all the interviews were held at the Occupational Clinic of the Board of Health, where, through the courtesy of Dr. Harris, Chief of the Bureau of Industrial Hygiene, a room was set aside for the use of the League investigator. In response to a requirement of the Health Department, all food-handlers in the city come to the Clinic for a physical examination and certificate testifying that they are free from communicable disease. The investigator could in this way meet the women on neutral ground when there was no temptation to conceal or distort facts, and talk confidentially with them. The interviews taken at the Clinic in five months would have required at least a year to get in any other way.

The New York State Consumers’ League and the branch leagues in Buffalo, Syracuse and Mr. Vernon co-operated in interviewing women in localities outside of New York City, and the same undesirable conditions were found to prevail throughout the State.

Supplementary information was also obtained from all other available sources, such as employers, employment agencies, girls’ clubs and published reports. The workers came from every kind of restaurant, including hotels, tea-rooms, buffet and dairy lunches, cafeterias and clubs. In this way it was possible to get in touch with a thoroughly representative group of workers, including the best paid as well as the most underpaid.

In undertaking the investigation, the League sought to answer three questions: first, what are the actual conditions of labor prevailing in the restaurants of New York State; second, are these conditions such that the[4] worker may lead a wholesome, normal life; and third, how do these conditions react through the individual worker upon society as a whole.

The Consumers’ League acknowledges its deep indebtedness to Dr. Harris for the helpful interest that he has taken in its work, and for his courtesy in allowing the League investigator to take interviews at the Occupational Clinic.

[5]

The Normal Working Day—Eight Hours.

A Common Occurrence—Fifteen Hours.

There is no class of employees who serve the public so directly as do restaurant workers. Also, it is obviously of vital interest to the public that those who serve them in this way be strong and healthy since they are in a position peculiarly adapted to spread disease. The study just terminated has brought to light certain facts which point to a grave danger to the individual worker, to those whom she serves and to the community. Hard work kept up for incredibly long hours, low pay, health impaired and resistance to disease lowered through fatigue—these are some of the facts which make action on our part necessary, that restaurant work may be a safe and wholesome occupation.

Age.

An outstanding feature of restaurant work is the presence in this occupation of a very large proportion of girls and young women. One-fourth of all the workers are under 21, and two-thirds under 30 years of age. (See Diagram 1). There are several reasons to account for this fact.

A certain amount of excitement attaches to the work of a restaurant waitress which appeals to young girls. She sees and talks to a great many people; she likes the noise and bustle and cheerful atmosphere of the dining room. Also, the employer prefers young and pretty girls as waitresses, especially where the customers are mostly men. They help to make his place attractive and popular. One waitress remarked, “When the girls get to looking bad, they are laid off and someone else is put in their place.”

As might be expected, restaurant cooks are a somewhat older set of women than the waitresses, not quite one-half being under 30 years. Their work requires experience and the ability to think and plan. Considering the nature and demands of the work, it is startling to find that twenty per cent. of their number are girls not yet 21 years old.

Over seventy-five per cent. of the kitchen girls and other helpers[3] are under 30, and nearly half under 21. This is the youngest group. Their work needs no skill or previous training, the chief requirement being physical strength.

The youth of these restaurant workers gives rise to two distinct dangers, a physical danger and a moral one. Restaurant work necessarily involves many hours of standing and walking, lifting and carrying heavy weights. This is an unavoidable feature, but it is of the utmost importance that it be not ignored. Medical authorities have pointed out the serious results that follow the strain of continued standing and over-work of young girls. Dr. Harris states that in occupations which require such[7] lifting and carrying and such long hours of standing “there is a definite hazard to the child-bearing capacity of women. This is of vital consequence to society as a whole.”

Diagram 1.—Ages of Women Employed in Restaurants by Occupation.

The moral danger of the work is largely confined to waitresses. Because of their position, they are peculiarly exposed to the attentions of men customers. For this very reason, the Baltimore Vice Commission recommends that only older and more experienced women be employed in this capacity, while in Norway the law sets a minimum age limit for waitresses in public places.

If the restaurant worker is to resist the strain of the work and the temptations to which she is exposed, hours and conditions must be so adjusted as to prevent all overtaxing of her strength and elasticity.

[8]

Diagram 2.—Nationality of Women Restaurant Workers.

Nationality.

The majority of restaurant workers are foreigners. Less than one-third are American-born, and of these a great many have foreign-born parents and live among members of their own race, so that they can hardly be classed as Americans. The largest single group is made up of Austro-Hungarians. (See Diagram 2). The demand for cheap, unskilled labor in this occupation calls for the kind of service which these girls and others of the European peasant class can give. The outdoor life in the fields of their native land fits them for the hard labor required in a restaurant kitchen. They do not remain fit long, however. After a year or two of this work, much of their sturdiness is lost, color and brightness are gone from their faces, and they have become pale and listless. A curiously dull, passive look is characteristic of many of them.

Living as they do among their own people these young peasants have no opportunity to absorb American standards and customs. Their ignorance makes it easy for employers to exploit them, demanding hours of labor and paying wages to which no American girl would submit. An employment agent said: “My ’phone rings day and night—all want peasant girls for kitchen helpers because they are the only kind that will stand such long hours.” Attempts to organize restaurant workers in New York State have never succeeded. The Secretary of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees’ International Alliance, speaking of their unsuccessful efforts along[9] this line in New York City in 1915, says, “This is not the first attempt to organize the girls. We have had a similar experience before,—in fact have had three experiences in that city and none of them a bit more encouraging than the present one.” This is largely due to the presence of so great a number of young foreign girls in this occupation. They are not in a position to unite and work for their own protection. The only channel through which that protection can come is the law.

[10]

Diagram 3.—Living Condition of Women Employed in Restaurants.

Diagram 4.—Marital Condition of Women Employed in Restaurants.

Family and Home.

While the greater number of restaurant workers are unmarried, it is rather surprising to find so large a proportion of married women in the work. (See Diagram 4.) This is easily explained, however, by the fact that many of them are “one-meal” girls, that is, they are employed only for the rush hour at noon. In this way they can earn a little extra money while their husbands are at work, either as “pin-money” for themselves, or to help toward the support of the children.

The majority of restaurant employees live with their family or relatives (See Diagram 3), but this does not mean that they are not entirely self-dependent. As large a proportion of a girl’s wage goes into the family exchequer as she would have to pay for board and lodging elsewhere. The financial advantage of living at home appears chiefly in giving her a place of refuge when she is out of a job.

Restaurant workers are a tenement house population. A few, to be sure, can afford comfortable little apartments of their own, but as a whole their lot falls within the congested tenement districts of the city. Confusion, over-crowding, dirt, lack of sunlight, air and privacy, and unwholesome surroundings are only too common in their homes. The janitor of an East Side tenement house said: “A little while ago down in Third Street there were twenty-three girls sleeping in two rooms. They’d put their mattresses down on the floor at night and pile[11] them on top of each other in the day time. Most of them were kitchen hands at ⸺’s,” naming a well-known chain of restaurants.

The low standards of the European peasant class from which restaurant workers are largely recruited, drag down all standards. No other result is possible under present conditions. They live—but how? Low wages, miserably long hours, no opportunity to fit themselves for their new surroundings—this is what we offer these young peasant girls who come to America confidently expecting better things than they have left behind.

Weekly Hours of Labor.

The salient characteristic of restaurant work is the length of the working day. Fifty-eight per cent. of the women employees work each week beyond the fifty-four-hour limit set by law for women in stores and factories. A twelve-hour day and a seven-day week is the lot of one-fifth of these workers. (See Diagram 5.) A fifteen-hour day is not uncommon. Not quite one-half of the waitresses work over 54 hours a week or 9 hours a day. The reason for this is that a large number of them, 31 per cent., are “one-meal girls.” Seventy-eight per cent. of all other restaurant workers, however, exceed the fifty-four hour week.

Comparing the hours of labor of these women with the hours of labor of all employees, both male and female, in the factories of New York State, four per cent. of the factory employees and thirty-five per cent. of the women restaurant employees work over sixty hours a week. Two per cent. of the factory employees and twenty per cent. of the women in restaurants work seventy-two hours or over.[4]

Diagram 6.—Comparison of Weekly Hours of Labor for Women in Restaurants and all Factory Employees in New York State.

Shorter hours have been brought about in factories by the voluntary action of manufacturers, who recognize the inefficiency of over-worked men and women; by concerted action of the workers, who have united to fight for their own protection; and by legal enactment, proving that the people of New York State are alive to the dangers of overwork. Some restaurant managers realize the waste and harm of too long hours and arrange their[13] employees’ time accordingly; most of them do not. Women restaurant workers in New York State have never been successfully organized; they cannot protect themselves. They have no legal redress for overwork; the law has neglected them. In the course of this investigation, a girl of twenty was found working one hundred and twenty-two hours a week—longer than the law allows factory employees to work in two weeks. Yet this is within the law. Although restaurants differ from stores and factories in keeping open more hours a day, and sometimes for the whole twenty-four, a system of shifts would do away with the scandalously long hours to which thousands of girls and women are bound.

Diagram 5.—Weekly Hours of Labor of Women Employed in Restaurants.

That restaurant work is at best a great drain upon the physical strength and nervous force of the worker is evident. Standing, walking, lifting and carrying heavy weights is unavoidable. The report on restaurants made by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics says: “There was much complaint among the waitresses that the work was very hard and they could stand it but a few years. A number of the girls interviewed had worked as three meal girls until their health was broken; then they took positions as one meal girls and barely made a living. Carrying the heavy trays and the constant standing and walking cause ill health. Usually a man is employed to carry away the empty dishes, but the waitresses must bring the trays loaded with food.”[5]

Besides the cost to endurance, nerves are at constant tension for hurry is the remorseless rule. A waitress must not only remember a multitude of orders and fill them quickly, but she must keep her temper under the exactions of the most trying customer. The cook must keep her head amid the confusion and noise of a hot, crowded kitchen. The kitchen girl must be everywhere at once with a helping hand and the dish-washer’s very job depends upon her quickness. One of this latter group said that she washes seven thousand articles in an hour and a half. A waitress, when asked the effect of the work upon her, answered, “Sore feet and a devilish mean disposition.” A man restaurant worker speaking of kitchen girls remarked, “It’s no work for a woman. They have to lift heavy pots full of vegetables and fill[14] in all the gaps. A man has some endurance, but a woman can’t stand it more than nine hours a day.”

Many kinds of work are difficult and taxing in their performance, but if the working day is not prolonged beyond a certain point, and there is a sufficient period of rest, such work is not necessarily injurious to the health of the worker. If this point is passed, health is impaired.

[15]

The Day of a Restaurant Worker.

The day of a restaurant worker does not begin with her arrival at the restaurant nor end when she leaves. Half of these women live at a distance, taking thirty minutes or more to reach their place of employment. When this extra hour spent in going to and from work is added to a twelve hour day, it is a factor to be reckoned with. It means cutting off an already insufficient night’s rest, and, when a girl cannot afford carfare, a weary walk home after being on her feet all day. Nor is this all. Only a few of the best-paid waitresses can afford to pay for the laundering of their aprons and uniforms. Consequently this must be done by the girl herself, adding another burden to a load already too heavy.

The law requires that girls in factories and stores have at least one-half hour off for luncheon. This does not apply to restaurant workers. The “one-meal” girls eat before and after serving, but the majority of the “two-meal” and full-time girls have no time at all for meals. They must eat when they can snatch a moment from their work. There were many complaints of indigestion and loss of appetite from the workers as a result of haste and irregularity in taking their meals. One girl remarked, “You’re glad to grab ’em any way you can round here,” and another said, “It’s a wonder more girls aren’t dead, the way they eat all of a rush. Often the smell of food all the time takes away my appetite so I can’t eat any way.”

A regular time off for meals would be of great benefit to the worker not only in allowing her to eat quietly and comfortably, but in giving her a little rest. In some restaurants after the noon rush is over the girls can sit down and do “side-work,” folding napkins, polishing silver, filling salt-cellars, etc. The greater number of girls, however, have no so-called “idle time.” They must be on their job continuously. In other restaurants the girls work on a “split trick,” that is, they have one or two hours off in the afternoon. This is a very unpopular arrangement. Not only does it keep them out late in the evening, but they cannot use their free time to good advantage. There is little opportunity for recreation or social intercourse during these hours because they come in the morning or afternoon when the girls’ friends are[16] all at work. Nor is there ordinarily time for fresh air and exercise, especially in the case of the kitchen workers. A waitress usually has only to take off her apron to be ready for the street, but the other women have not time to change to street clothes and back again in their free period. They stay in the hot kitchen because no other place is provided.

Up at six, away at 6:30, home at 8 o’clock at night worn out by the wear and tear of twelve hours’ toil, a dress and an apron to be washed and ironed for tomorrow—after a day like this, what spirit or strength is left to a girl for play and the friendly relations that safeguard her from moral danger? It is a significant fact that with few exceptions the restaurant worker is not known to settlements and girls’ clubs. She does not share the group interests and social life open to other working girls. Neither does she make friends with her fellow-workers—the spring and vitality needed to win and establish friendships has been lost under the deadening effect of overwork.

According to Miss Mary Van Kleeck’s estimate in her study of “Working Girls in Evening Schools,” less than one per cent. of those attending were restaurant workers. They simply have not the physical strength for outside activities and interests. Time after time in answer to the question “What do you do in the evening?” came the reply, “Oh, I go right to bed.” One girl, who left the work because of broken health, said, “If I went out in the evening I’d be sick the next day, and the boss would say I couldn’t expect to do good work if I stayed out late at night.”

The report on restaurants of the Chicago Juvenile Protective Association, emphasizes a truth too much ignored when it says: “The entire investigation revealed once more the hideous risks of the excessively fatigued and overworked girl, who is able to obtain the rest and comfort she craves only through illicit channels.”[6]

Restaurant Kitchen Opening on Row of Toilets.

Loaned by the Tenement House Department of the City of New York.

[17]

Night Work and One Day’s Rest in Seven.

Although the number of women employed in restaurants at night is not great, night work in this occupation is a factor to be seriously considered. The restaurants which employ women at night are the small establishments in the tenement districts of the city where hours are longest and surroundings most trying; the cheaper restaurants in the theatre districts where the employment of women is an added attraction to after-the-theatre supper parties; and restaurants in railway stations which are necessarily open all night.

The law makes it illegal to employ women in factories and mercantile establishments between 10 p. m. and 6 a. m. The reasons which caused the state to exercise its police power to safeguard the health and morals of these classes of workers apply equally to the employment of women in restaurants. The very fact that only four per cent. of the workers interviewed were employed at night proves that night work for women in restaurants is not a necessary evil. That it is an evil is beyond question.

The dangers of night work are two-fold. First, it is a distinct menace to the health of the worker. The Factory Investigating Commission in its Report to the Legislature for 1913, states: “The chief danger to health from night work is ... due to the inevitable lack of sleep and sunlight. Recuperation from fatigue takes place fully only in sleep, and best in sleep at night. Hence night work is, in a word, against nature. This injury to health is all the greater because sleep lost at night by working women is never fully made up by day. For, in the first place, sleep in the day time is not equal in recuperative power to sleep at night.... Moreover, quiet and privacy for sleep by day is almost impossible to secure. Upon returning home in the middle of the night or at dawn the workers can snatch at most only a few hours’ rest.”

Often a woman will have one week of night work alternating with a week of work in the day time. She hardly gets accustomed to sleeping by day when she is taken off the night shift, to change back again at the end of the week. Thus it is impossible for her to form regular habits in sleeping and eating.

Secondly, there is a grave moral danger involved in[18] night work, especially for restaurant workers since at this time they are open to the attentions of an undesirable class of men. “I don’t like to work at night,” one young waitress said. “The men are always fresher to girls at night than in the day time. Perhaps it’s because so many of those gamblers come in drunk.” Nor is it safe for a woman to go home alone after twelve o’clock at night. Instances of hideous occurrences are familiar to everyone. A little widow, the mother of seven children, told the investigator that she had given up her work as a dishwasher for this very reason. A friend of hers working in a nearby restaurant, was set upon, robbed and killed on her way home from work late one night. “I changed my work then,” said the woman, “for what would the children do if anything happened to me?”

The majority of restaurants employ men for night duty. It is evident, therefore, that the employment of women is not essential to the convenience and comfort of either restaurant owners or customers.

In nearly every branch of industry the working week is six days long. It is universally conceded that there must be one day in the seven for rest and relaxation if men and women are to give their best service. With restaurant workers, thirty-three per cent. of whom have no day of rest in seven, the need for such a time is particularly great because of the long working day. Otherwise they have no opportunity for a thorough rest and the poisons of fatigue are not thrown off. If these poisons are not eliminated, they accumulate in the system and finally result in physical breakdown.

And not only is this free day important on the score of health, but it is also the time for recreation and the strengthening of family ties. For the girl who has no leisure, no time for real relaxation and play, there is only a starved and empty existence. A woman who has no opportunity to be with and to know her children, who must leave them to the care of friends or a day nursery or the street, who has no day in the week to be at home with them, can hardly be a potent factor in shaping their lives. She suffers and so do the children, and the stability of such a family life is at best uncertain. One woman said, “If I get a half day off on Sunday to be with my children, it makes me happy all the week.”

[19]

Diagram 7.—Ages of Women Restaurant Workers Employed Over 54 Hours Weekly.

Diagram 8.—Nationality of Women Restaurant Workers Employed Over 54 Hours Weekly.

The Long-Day Workers.

Who are the workers that bear the brunt of the long hours in restaurants? They are for the most part the younger women and girls—those who are most likely to be injured by overstrain. They are the very ones whom it is to society’s interest to protect most carefully since by their strength is measured the strength of the next generation. Less than thirty per cent. of all workers exceeding fifty-four hours a week are over thirty years of age. (See Diagram 7.)

Foreign-born women also make up the greater part of this group. (See Diagram 8.) They do not know how to protect themselves from employers’ unreasonable demands, they must have work and they are not trained for anything except unskilled labor. They will work any number of hours exacted by the employer whatever the cost, until exhaustion renders them unfit for labor of any kind.

Weekly Wages.

The wage of restaurant workers is of immediate interest to everyone who enters a restaurant. You not only pay for your food, but your tip helps to pay the waitress’s salary. It is upon this source of income that she depends for the greater part of her earnings. Any study of wages in this branch of industry must take into consideration not only that tips form a large part of the income of waitresses but that the majority of women get all their meals at the restaurant, or the equivalent of $3.00 a week in addition to actual wages.[7] Professor Streightoff has fixed upon $9.00 a week as the minimum amount upon which a girl can live independently in New York City.[8] Eighty-seven per cent of all women restaurant workers are being paid less than $9.00, but when food and tips are estimated and added, the proportion receiving less than a living wage is thirty-one per cent. While it is true therefore that the majority of workers in restaurants are earning enough to support themselves, it is a matter for grave concern that so large a number of women are being forced below the lowest point at which they can maintain health and decency.

Moreover this $9.00 a week minimum does not allow for saving against illness, dentist’s bills, unemployment or any other emergency. Taking $10.00 a week as the least upon which a girl can live and save, we find that forty-nine per cent. of these women are receiving in actual wages or their equivalent less than this amount. A few restaurant workers live at their place of employment, thus receiving lodging as well as board, but as this is true of only four per cent., the proportion is too small to affect appreciably the wage scale as a whole.

It is upon the kitchen and pantry hands who make up twenty-eight per cent. of all the workers that the burden of low wages falls most heavily. Waitresses have the opportunity to make tips, cooks receive comparatively fair wages because their work requires a certain amount[21] of skill, but the other women cannot make tips and their unskilled labor is very poorly paid. One-third are receiving less than $6.00 a week, and three-fourths less than $7.00. (See Diagram 9.)

Diagram 9.—Weekly Wages of Women Employed in Restaurants.

The income of a restaurant worker is not clear gain. Certain expenses are involved in the work which she must meet herself. In restaurants where a special dress is required the waitress must provide her own uniforms, and she must also either wash them herself, or pay for having them laundered. Two clean uniforms a week is the usual requirement and in some cases three. The report of the United States Labor Department estimates that it costs a girl about $0.63 a week for the laundering of her aprons alone.[9] It costs $0.25 to have a uniform laundered, which means $1.13 must be deducted from the $3.50 a week usually paid to waitresses in tea-rooms, where special dresses are always required. In one New York tea-room the girls must have two sets of uniforms, a white dress with white shoes, and a blue dress with black shoes. Each uniform costs $2.50.

Fines also eat into the restaurant worker’s earnings. Girls are commonly fined for lateness, one particular restaurant exacting $0.25 if a girl is ten minutes late. Her pay is always cut for breakage, and in some places a certain amount is deducted weekly whether she breaks any dishes or not. Also, mistakes in adding up checks, either over or under the correct amount, and mistakes in orders, must be paid for by the waitress. “Those are the things that make the girls mad,” said one. In one New York tea-room this summer, a customer was served with hot coffee, when she had asked for iced tea, the waitress misunderstanding the order. The mistake was corrected and the iced tea substituted. When the waitress brought the customer her check, however, both tea and coffee were charged, and the girl laid down twenty cents upon the table. “You know, we have to pay for our mistakes,” she said.

What low wages mean in actual living cannot be expressed by figures. Poor quarters in questionable parts of the city, clothing of the most utilitarian kind, no money for the pretty things that every well-constituted girl wants, nothing for recreation, and worst of all, debts[22] after illness or unemployment which take the very heart out of a girl in the bitter struggle to pay them off. The proprietor of a Buffalo employment agency remarked, “Look at the Wants Ads; with the many factories in Buffalo you will find the list “Help Wanted for Restaurants” equals that of “Help Wanted for Factory Work,” and what does that mean?—Simply that the restaurant workers are a discontented lot and all because of the excessively long hours and low wages.”

[23]

Diagram 10.-Comparison of Weekly Wages (black line) and Weekly Income (dotted line) of Waitresses in Restaurants.

The Tipping System.

Tipping is a direct drag upon wages. When the public is perfectly willing to contribute part of a waitress’s wage, why should not the employer take advantage of this fact and pay her less? That is surely to be expected and is almost universally the case. Many girls, accustomed to making a good deal in tips or “scale,” as they call it, would not be willing to work for $9.00 a week and no tips, for they can often make more than this amount. But the better class of girl would prefer a living wage and no tips. As matters stand now, however, they are a very necessary part of a girl’s income.

Comparing the weekly wage and the weekly income of waitresses as shown in Diagram 10, we find that without tips only 8 per cent. make as much as $9.00 a week, while with tips 50 per cent. receive $9.00 or more. The custom of tipping has two distinct disadvantages. First, it is an unreliable source of income. A girl may reasonably expect to make a certain amount in tips, but she cannot count upon doing so. The danger here is not only that she will receive less than it is possible for her to live on, but that she will get into debt, trusting to luck that her tips will be large enough to get her out. It is very easy to be over-confident. A tea-room waitress said: “Sometimes I make $12.00 a week in tips, sometimes almost nothing. You can’t depend on people.” Tea-rooms are the greatest sinners in respect to making their waitresses depend upon tips. The usual wage in several of the well-known New York tea-rooms is $3.50 a week for full time, which is ten or twelve hours a day.

[24]

The other aspect of tipping presents a more subtle danger. The girls need the money and they deliberately work for it, partly by good service, and partly by adopting an intimate personal tone toward their men customers. This leads naturally to familiarity on the man’s part and establishes a personal relation between them. Most of the girls quite frankly admit making “dates” with strange men. In one restaurant a woman was pointed out in incredulous admiration by the other waitresses. “Her husband has been dead four years, and she hasn’t gone out with a man yet,” they said. These “dates” are made with no thought on the part of the girl beyond getting the good time which she cannot afford herself, but the outcome is often a tragedy. The restaurants in one city of the state forbid unnecessary conversation between waitress and customer because conditions resulting from the practice became so flagrant. The result of this custom is that girls are approached to whom any attention from their men customers is most distasteful. The report of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics says: “Many of the waitresses complain of the annoying attention of male customers. Many girls said, however, that if they speak sharply to a customer or offend him, they are likely to be reprimanded by the head waitress and may even lose their position.”[10]

The Juvenile Protective Association of Chicago considers tipping a vicious system. “The giving of tips should be abolished because of their pernicious effect. A young girl who under any other circumstances would not dream of accepting money from a man will accept it in the guise of a tip. In the hands of a vicious man this tip establishes between him and the girl a relation of subserviency and patronage which may easily be made the beginning of improper attentions. The most conscientious girl, dependent upon tips to eke out her slender wage, finds it difficult to determine just where the line of propriety is crossed. Thus, in addition to the other dangers surrounding the girls employed in hotels and restaurants, they encounter the lack of respect which curiously attaches itself to one who accepts a gratuity.”[11]

[25]

Diagram 11.—Length of Time Unemployed in Past Year.[12]

Irregularity of Employment.

Closely connected with the question of wages is the possibility of being out of a job. If a girl is earning $10.00 a week she may be able, with the most careful saving, to lay aside enough to tide her over two or three weeks of unemployment. But the savings from a $10.00 weekly wage do not last long. Twenty-eight per cent. of these women were out of work one month or longer in the past year because of the slack season, illness, change of their place of employment or for some other reason. The girl who cannot save is in a desperate condition indeed. For her, prolonged unemployment means debt, heart breaking anxiety and dependence.

Girls in restaurant work do not get vacations with pay except in very rare instances. One well-known New York firm having tea-rooms in various parts of the city, is to be congratulated on the fact that it does give its waitresses a vacation with pay. A few of the married women, or those who have families to care for them, can afford to take time out of the year’s work for a rest. But when a girl is not working, it is for the most part a matter of stern necessity and inevitably means a time of struggle and suffering.

Restaurants do not labor under the difficulties of seasonal employment. We should expect to find a steadiness in this occupation which the facts do not bear out. It is therefore evident that the instability of the work and constant shifting is due to the unsatisfactory nature of the employment itself. The large proportion of workers out of employment for one month or more a year (20%) is striking evidence of this fact.

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Diagram 12.—Weekly Wages of Women Employed in Restaurants according to Length of Time in this Occupation.

Lack of Opportunity in Restaurant Work.

Restaurant work is a “blind alley” trade. There is little opportunity for development or advancement. What training is necessary can be acquired in a few weeks, and the only position to which a girl can look forward is that of head waitress. There are no recognized degrees of skill in any part of the work connected with a restaurant. On the contrary, the tendency is in the direction of wearing girls out by overstrain rather than of giving them a chance. The girls who have been in the work the shortest time get higher pay than those who have been in it longest. Sixty-five per cent. of those who had been working less than a year were getting $6.00 or more a week, while only fifty-five per cent. of those who had been working over ten years were receiving as much. (See Diagram 12.) The woman who remains in restaurant work for more than a few years gradually loses her strength and ability, and can get a position only with an inferior type of restaurant, where the necessity for having a job forces her to accept whatever wage is offered her.

The law has declared illegal the employment of women in mercantile establishments longer than fifty-four hours or six days in any one week, on the ground that a working day of more than nine hours, or a working week of more than six days, is prejudicial to the health of the worker and therefore to the welfare of society. It has also declared illegal the employment of these women at night and it safeguards their interests further by insisting upon a definite period for the mid-day meal. Fifty-eight per cent. (58%) of the women employed in restaurants exceed the fifty-four hour limit, twenty per cent. (20%) work twelve hours a day and four per cent. (4%) are employed at night. One-third do not have one day of rest in seven, and the majority are not allowed time off for their meals. Do not these women also need the protection of the law?

Restaurant work has much in common with work in mercantile establishments. Continuous standing and walking and the nervous strain entailed in serving many customers are features of both occupations. Besides this, restaurant work necessitates the lifting and carrying of heavy weights which may easily be disastrous not only to the worker herself, but to her children. Dr. Harris has expressly stated his belief that such work will injure the reproductive organs of a women unless she is guarded from overstrain. The larger proportion of restaurant workers are girls and young women, who are peculiarly susceptible to overstrain because of their youth.

There is abundant evidence from the testimony of the girls themselves that restaurant work is a severe tax and that the need for limiting hours of labor is strongly felt among them. Here are quoted a few of the remarks made by them, which could be duplicated many times:

“I think it’s a shame to let a woman work twelve hours a day. I’m so tired at night I can’t do anything but go to bed.”

“I can’t keep a job longer than four months because I get so nervous.”

“This is my second week and I’m nearly dead, the hours are so long.”

“It would be the grandest thing in the world if they could do away with the twelve-hour day.”

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To resist the unavoidable strain of the work, the restaurant worker must be in a normal, healthy state of mind and body. Our responsibility lies in seeing to it that conditions are such as to make this possible.

The results of fatigue do not end with the individual. It is common knowledge that health depends upon the power to resist disease. The person who has overworked is not only subject to the devastating action of fatigue poisons, but is a prey to any infections to which he may be exposed because he cannot throw them off. Working conditions which render large numbers of men and women susceptible to disease, and hence capable of spreading it, are a public menace. To allow such conditions to continue unchecked is inexcusable negligence.

These facts point directly to the crying need for the limitation of hours for women in restaurants, that the individual worker may be protected from overstrain, that the community may be guarded from the spread of contagious disease by people predisposed to infection through fatigue, and that the children of these women may be strong and capable of becoming useful citizens.

It must be conceded that the difficulty of regulating hours in restaurants is much greater than in mercantile establishments. Restaurants must be open for a longer period each day than any store needs to be or is likely to be. But the difficulties are not insuperable. By working the employees in shifts of nine consecutive hours a day and six days a week, and by replacing women by men for night duty, the most undesirable features of restaurant work would be abolished. Such a plan has already been tried successfully in a number of New York restaurants, proving that it is possible and feasible to regulate hours.

To limit by law the hours of labor for women employed in restaurants cannot be considered a new or revolutionary step. New York is already far behind the majority of other states in this respect. At the present time, twenty-seven states regulate the number of hours that women may work in restaurants, five having the eight-hour day.[13] Clearly, therefore, the establishment of a normal working day for this class of workers is not only reasonable, but, in the opinion of the greater number of states, it is essential to the best welfare of their people as a whole.

In view of the evidence brought to bear upon the subject, The Consumers’ League wishes to urge the inclusion of women restaurant workers under the Mercantile Law, the general provisions of which are:

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At present restaurant employees do not come within the provisions of the law relative to hours of labor of females, or the day of rest law. To the casual observer it is very evident that there is no other employment in which males and females are employed, where the hours of labor are so long, and where the employees are compelled to be constantly on their feet. It is admitted that there is no class of work in which so large a percentage of females is employed. The Legislature has recognized that the females working in restaurants should be protected to some extent, by providing in section 17 of the Labor Law that “Every person employing females—as waitresses in a hotel or restaurant shall provide and maintain suitable seats” but by the very nature of their work the employees have no opportunity to use these seats. There seems to be no good reason why the hours of employment of females in restaurants should not be subject to law as in mercantile establishments, and that all those employed in the same should enjoy the benefits of the day of rest law, as they do in other employments. The evil resulting from restaurants being exempt from the provisions of the Labor Law relating to hours and day of rest, is shown in the fact that bakeries and confectionery establishments have added to their business the serving of sandwiches and lunches, and endeavor to escape the provisions of the law by claiming that they are exempt because they are operating a restaurant. This illustrates the subterfuge to which many employers will resort rather than comply with the law.

James L. Gernon,
Chief Mercantile Inspector.

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From such opportunities for observation as our clinic study afforded us, it is safe to say that this occupation is one which may affect the health of women and in connection with long hours and small wages may combine to cause an increased existence of sickness among them. The effect of work that requires standing and running about while carrying loads for many hours during the day will be particularly marked upon the generative organs of the woman. The influence of the work in this particular, which we are unfortunately unable to study, because of the opposition it would inevitably arouse, leads me to believe that from this standpoint alone, there is a definite hazard to the child-bearing capacity of the woman. This is of vital consequence to society as a whole, as well as to the individual workers, and therefore well justifies every effort to correct the undesirable conditions that attend this occupation.

Louis I. Harris,
Chief, Division of Industrial Hygiene.

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“A nine hour law would be a very good thing. I think long hours are very bad for women in restaurants. Most of them have varicose veins and flat feet, and a large number suffer from stomach trouble. Look at me, I am strong and healthy, but when I’m through at night, I am just all in. It’s a dreadful nervous strain.

“Girls have to live on tips. If you tell the boss you can’t make any, he says you are no good and discharges you. You have to put up with it or starve. The majority of girls—the better class of waitresses—if they could get a good living would be glad to do without tips. Of course it would be a revolution and would require a lot of agitation.

“Girls in restaurant work have greater temptations than most girls. Advances are always made, especially in certain districts. A great number go wrong because of so many advances.

“Nothing has ever been done for restaurant workers. The bosses all seem to think we are a lot of crooks. Waitresses think the same of them. Girls don’t change their jobs so often because they like to. They get fired, mostly because the manager just wants to, or the work is too hard and the place miserable.

“There should be a nine-hour day, and two meals with half an hour allowed for each. Hours should be arranged consecutively. The best regulation would be to have girls work in shifts, going on at eight and coming off at five, or going on at eleven and working until eight. The same arrangement could be made for the kitchen help.”

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Table 1.
Age of Women Employed in Restaurants, by Occupation.

Table 2.
Age of Women Employed in Restaurants, by Nationality.

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Table 3.
Age of Women Employed in Restaurants, by Conjugal Condition.

Table 4.
Age of Women Employed in Restaurants, by Living Condition.

Table 5.
Age of Women Employed in Restaurants, by Weekly Hours of Labor.

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Table 6.
Weekly Hours of Labor of Women Employed in Restaurants by Occupation.

Table 7.
Weekly Hours of Labor of Women Employed in Restaurants by Nationality.

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Table 8.
Weekly Wages of Women Employed in Restaurants by Occupation.

Table 9.
Weekly Income of Women Employed in Restaurants by Occupation.

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Table 10.
Wages of Women employed in Restaurants Showing Length of Time Idle during Preceding Year by Reason of Slack Season, Change of Work, Vacation with or Without Pay, Illness or Other Causes.

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Table 11.
Weekly Wage of Women Employed in Restaurants by Nationality.

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