CAMP FOR WOMEN

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18182, 1 September 1933, Page 10

CAMP FOR WOMEN

U.S. EXPERIMENT NEW YORK’S UNEMPLOYED NEW YORK, Aug. 5. Federal and State authorities are already expressing deep satisfaction at the success of tiie first known unemployed women’s relief camp, which was established a. month ago in barracks at Bear Mountain Park, about a hundred miles up the Hudson River from Manhattan. The experiment is being extended. There are 200 women in camp, mostly over 30 years of age. They receive £1 5s a week, from which they are required to pay their -board. Selection is made from those who have no one to care for them. They are living under strict discipline, prescribed by an “Amazon” who was selected for her knowledge of how to control women. Only six have been expelled during the month, which is regarded as successful assimilation of a new life. The. occupants of the camp wear

"shorts” during tlu day. They do thj regular chores of camp, and attenjjg. courses of lectures and practical assigned by members chosen from among them who have had previous experience. High heels are taboo. “I order them two sizes larger than the size They say thev wear,” says .the director, discussing their footwear At 10 o’clock each morning the whole camp assembles tor tapdancing, taught by a negro girl, as that form of exercise is considered good for foot joints that- have become enlaigeu through wearing cheap or worn shoes. Strange as it may seem, jainost fill the negro gills in camp, butwrix v-nan half a doftn of the whites# ■ ve been to college. There was somefToubt as to reception of the negroes vtheif they arrived, but the director’s appeal to the white women to be as democratic as men are nowadays won a warm welcome tor the colored'contingent. -