Even if they should have attained
the eighth grade with its dizzy heights of learning, the little
teaching they have received in civics has not touched upon either of
the most vital problems of our day, the labor movement or the woman
movement.
The mere youth, however, of the girl workers is not in itself the
chief or the most, insuperable difficulty. If these girls were boys
we might look forward to their growing up in the trade, gaining
experience and becoming ever more valuable elements in the union
membership. But after a few years the larger percentage of the girls
marry and are lost to the union and to unionism for good. Nay, a girl
is often such a temporary hand that she does not even remain out
her term of working years in one trade, but drifts into and out of
half-a-dozen unskilled or semi-skilled occupations, and works for
twenty different employers in the course of a few years. The head of a
public-school social center made it her business to inquire of fifty
girls, all over sixteen, and probably none over eighteen how long each
had held her present job.
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