Working Girls' Club.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 5098, 7 October 1891, Page 1

Working Girls' Club.

"Working-girls' clubs" are a recent but a very potent influence for good in this great city. They owe their origin to the unselfish efforts of a few rich ladies, headed by Miss Grace Dodge, who, for several years, served as a lady commissioner of the Board of Education. Like the trades unions, they have succeeded in many callings in raising the price of labor to an equality with the normal standard of comfort, but they have never invoked the aid of violent methods, and have relied entirely upon the cultivation of an esprit cle corps and a mild threat of boycotting on the part of the patrician patrons of the Clubs. Among the girl workers there is less distrust of the rich and a less keen sense of individuality than among men of their own class, and this is undoubtedly the secret of the success that has been achieved. In several quarters of the city the girls have now self-supporting lodging-houses and clubs, and some of their receptions "go off" with a spirit that much more pretentious gatherings might envy. Thanks to such agencies, a young girl, by Miss Dodge in a recent address cited before the Chatangua Assembly, out of a salary of five dollars a week, which is one dollar or two dollars less than the average income of the New York working women, lived 'well, dressed well, and in five years was able to save 350 dollars. Among these young club-women, toe, it may be also said that the Chatangua Association finds some of its brightest and most successful students.