Viewing page 31 of 44

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

[[preprinted]]
TELEPHONE, MONROE 825
[[image – elliptical logo of the Chicago Allied Printing Trades Council]] 236

1437 WEST OHIO STREET
CHICAGO
[[/preprinted]]

^[[Gretchen]]

January 26, 1914.

Dearest Dad:-

Saturday last was a very eventful day. In the first place Anne Morgan was here in Chicago trying to get the Chicago women interested in [[strikethru]]my[[/strikethru]] ^[[a]] vacation fund proposition. They have such a fund started in New York and it works something like this. They get the girls in shops, factories and stores to save something each week towards a two weeks yearly vacation. Then they try to get the employer to give the girl that time off and pay her salary (if possible) Well, our trade union girls were so indignant at Miss Morgan's coming to Chicago with this proposition that they nearly stood on their heads. The girls do not even learn co-operative action through this plan as these "kind ladies" manage the thing for them nor are they allowed to have any say in the management of the enterprise. Well, we met for luncheon at the home of Mrs. Cyrus McCormick. A very beautiful home and a very elaborate luncheon with spring flowers as decorations and then we proceeded to discuss the wisdom of a savings plan for vacation fund for working girls. Miss Morgan and I had a very good natured battle royal all during the luncheon. But the climax came when one of the women present told the story in a very pathetic manner of a young girl who was getting $4.50 a week and who was asked if there was not something she could save for this vacation fund! – (Imagine on $4.50 a week!) Well, the child did not think so but she would think about it. Then suddenly it came to her that she might give up a cherished chocolate sundae and at the suggestion of the lady interviewing her substitute an apple!  ! !  And at the end of a few weeks this child brought in 65¢ thus saved. – – You can imagine how difficult it was for me to sit still when people were talking like that. I then said that I did not believe that any girl getting such an inadequate wage as $4.50 a week ought to have a penny left to save that she needed every bit of that sum and a great deal more to even live. Altogether it was a most astonishing gathering. I told them of the great co-operative work being done by Italian day laborers, their workingmen's banks, their right to borrow and their undertaking of the building of great railroads themselves they taking the contracts and engaging their own expert engineers. I told them of these things to show them the smallness of their proposition, but I have my "doots" as to how far it went through.