Five Cases of Vocational Guidance
- Author:
Rebecca E. Leaming, B.S.,’
University of Pennsylvania. Josephine.
She was tall and very dark, with that wild sort of beauty so frequently seen in the daughters of sunny Italy who help to make our city’s slums. A fire, unusual in its intensity, lit her brown eyes? unusual, even for one of her race. Her face was a narrow oval, her features classically perfect, her skin a fine transparent brown through which burned an enchanting glow; her hair, coal black and shining with a luster that 110 hair oil could impart, was drawn back from a low, smooth forehead. Her slender figure had a willowy grace destined to break the heart of any woman not so blessed. Her speech was marked by the characteristic touch of the musical Italian, but in its quality lay a vindictive tone which contrasted violently with her whole appearance.
She wanted a job. She was fifteen and in the fourth grade class at the McCall School. She could not get out of school until she was sixteen because she was “under grade.” The teacher had talked of sending her to the Trade School, but she wanted to work. Her family needed the money. A discussion brought out the fact that the family did not need the money “very much” but that she must have some new clothes for Easter and her father would not give her the money and as she could not steal it she guessed she would have to get work. She wanted work right away. She would not work in a cigar factory because she knew a girl who got the “con” working in one of those places, but she would go anywhere else that she could get a job.
A suspicion crept into the Counselor’s mind that it might be well to try Josephine on the Witmer cylinders and a few other tests. When the subject was approached, however, an explosion followed. She would not play games for anybody. She was tired of talking to people, always women and more women, always asking her questions and questions and questions and making her do things. She was tired of going around from one place to the other, always talking to people and talking to people. She would not answer any questions that anyone might ask her. Never, never again. At this point her emotions overcame her and she arose and began pacing the floor like a caged animal, throwing her head from side to side and almost
These studies in Vocational Guidance were prepared by Miss Learning while acting as Junior
Counselor in the Junior Employment Service, White Williams Foundation, Philadelphia.
shrieking an incessant stream of vehement Italian. After a few minutes she came over arid glaring close into the face of the Counselor said, “I am going right down to the river and throw myself in and drown myself. I am tired of all this questioning and talking and talking.” This assertion was repeated several times until she saw that the Counselor had no intention of throwing herself at Josephine’s feet and begging her not to do anything rash. Her passions finally seemed to burn themselves out and she came over and sat down again apparently ready to talk business.
How much of the scene was caused by an unstable, nervous equilibrium and possibly an unsettled mind and how much was the result of a temperamental, passionate, excitable nature, a birthright from her people? This question hovered in the mind of the Counselor for many days. Josephine now meant business and apparently the river was forgotten along with her resentment at always talking to women and women and women. A consultation with the attendance supervisor in her district, with her teacher, the principal of the school and with the head of the Girls’ Trade School and a plan was evolved. A week later found Josephine at an establishment where they made children’s clothes and where, when she had learned some machine operating, she would be allowed to supplement her lessons at the school by practical work in the shop.
Things seemed to be going very well. A report came from the Trade School that Josephine was learning operating better than any girl they had ever had there. Word came from the shop that she was the quickest girl at sewing on buttons that they had ever employed. The work was piece work and where most of the girls made from $7 to $10 a week on half time, Josephine was carrying away $15, $16 or $17 every week for her half-days of work.
The first blow fell when the Trade School telephoned to let us know that Josephine had been expelled. Reason? She had worked herself into a rage at a correction given by one of the teachers and had “smashed” two of their best machines in her fury. No, she would not be given another trial. A story had been around the school for several weeks that she was stealing small things from the other girls and that she was rifling the pockets of their coats in the cloak-room. Nothing had been proven but suspicion was pretty well-grounded and this item, along with her last performance, made it necessary to bar her entirely and forever from the school. An interview with Josephine produced nothing. She remained sullenly silent at the mere mention of the Trade School and no explanation or clue could be obtained.
Arrangements were made for Josephine to accept another position at machine operating on full time. The story was repeated? for a time she did very well and then one day her employer came into my office to tell me that Josephine was in the House of Detention. The story ran thus: For some time supplies had been disappearing from the store room and they had been unable to trace them. Then the pockets of the girls’ wraps in the cloak room had been cleaned out. Every little article had been removed?powder boxes, handkerchiefs, pocketbooks, everything. Several girls had fallen under suspicion but they had been carefully watched and the stealing had gone on. Then suspicion had fallen on Josephine and another girl, younger and smaller. A trap was laid for them and they were caught red handed. Confronted with the charge, Josephine brazenly denied any implication in the stealing. A prolonged interview got 011 the nerves of the younger girl and she broke down and begged Josephine to admit that they had stolen and to return the things that they had taken. Josephine, with her eyes flashing, flew at the informer and tore her hair, scratched and pinched her, finally succeeding in throwing her on the floor before any of the amazed bystanders could interfere. So Josephine was taken to the House of Detention, where it was learned that her name had been written on their records once before. A couple of years back she had spent some time there on the complaint of her parents that she was beyond their control. The chief grievance was that she would arise in the wee small hours of the morning, drape herself in a kimona and a red shawl, slip quietly out of the house and parade up and down the middle of the street, chanting some sort of wild song which no one recognized. No persuasion nor threats could keep her from her nocturanl excursions. This, coupled with the fact that no discipline on the part of her family could reach her, had led them to try a session at the House of Detention as a possible remedy. Her nightly wanderings ceased after her stay in the House of Detention, but her conduct had not improved. Her family reported that she was becoming very immoral; that she went around with some of the worst men in the neighborhood and that she was teaching immoral ideas to her smaller brothers and sisters, and any younger children that she could get to listen to her. The people in the neighborhood all said that she was crazy and a menace to their children.
The last news of Josephine which the bureau received was that she was at the House of Detention awaiting a thorough medical, psychological and psychiatric examination and the completion of all the necessary formalities incumbent upon putting her in an institution.
Frank.
What an attractive little chap he was! Fair-haired, blue-eyed, pink-and-white skinned, with an expression like a cherub! Surely an employer would welcome an addition like that to his office if for no other reason than that he would add materially to the artistic effect. Conversation with him brought out the fact that the cherubic expression really hid some very clever thoughts?he had his own ideas about things and he had a convincing way of making his listener believe in him. He had what has been designated by some clever souls as “personality plus.”
He was fifteen, and he wanted a job as an office boy, so he was sent to one of the best firms in the citj7-, at that time in need of a “nice, clean-cut American boy.” It was an engineering concern where they took a great interest in their boys; urged them to go to night school; gave them special training in the office and shop, and altogether tried to develop any boy who had anything in him at all, encouraging him to make something of himself in every possible way. What rosy pictures the Counselors drew of the possibilities lying before Frank!
At the end of two weeks the report of Frank was that he was inclined to be lazy and that when sent out on errands he usually remained out the rest of the day. They hoped, however, to break him of these bad habits because he was such an attractive little fellow. At the end of a month, Frank came back to the office. He had been fired. Why? Oh, because they wanted him to go to night school when he was sixteen and he had said that he did not want to go. That seemed rather thin, and a telephone call revealed some startling items of news. Frank had been fired not because of his unwillingness to go to night school the following month, when he would be sixteen, but because he had demoralized the whole officeboy force. He had worked out a regular system by which he managed to get every boy to shoot craps with him at least once during the day down in the sub-basement and some times he managed to get three or four into the game at once. He had been discovered several times and a severe, though evidently ineffectual, reprimand had been administered by the head of his department. It had been further discovered that when he did not return from errands he was out in search of a crap game, which he usually managed to locate. The Counselor talked earnestly and at length with Frank about his future, purposely omitting any reference to the evils of crap, as such, because he would then have discounted the whole interview as the ravings of an old maid “who didn’t know nothin’ nohow.” For the first time the Counselor thought that there was a shiftiness in Frank’s eyes which she had not observed before. Was it really there, or had the recent impression of him made it seem to be there? Was it true that he did not really look one squarely in the eyes? It seemed that this was certainly the case this morning. But was it that he never did, or was it that he was embarrassed by the knowledge which the Counselor possessed of his misdemeanors? The interview seemed to indicate, however, that Frank deserved another trial and accordingly he was sent out to another good firm where he had excellent chances if he would show a disposition to avail himself of them. The report a couple of weeks later was that Frank’s appearance was indeed deceiving; he was just no good at all. Some of the men in the office who were particularly interested in boys had taken a fancy to Frank, due in a large part to his attractive personality, and had tried to do something with him, but had failed to get any response from the boy whatever. He spent most of his time shooting crap with the boys in the office in out-of-the-way places, and when he could not find anybody in the office to shoot with him he would go out in search of a game. He was lazy and it seemed impossible to make any appeal which would strike home. The firm would have to discharge him at the end of the week, not only because he was no good, but also because he was having a very bad effect on the other boys.
Eleven times the bureau placed Frank (he never had any trouble in securing a position for which he was sent out) and eleven times he came back with virtually the same report. He was just no good. There was nothing in him to appeal to. Nothing seemed to have the power of arousing him. Crap seemed to be his only idea in life. He was not vicious?he never, to the knowledge of anyone in the bureau, was accused of stealing or lying or of anything really malicious, but he was just no good. Eventually, the Counselor had to tell Frank that it would really be impossible to send him out again. His whole record was produced and laid before him. Every job that he had had and every reason why he had been discharged was carefully gone over. He did not seem to be greatly moved by the display of evidence against him. He accepted the ultimatum of the Counselor smilingly and without a word of complaint and with his usual cherubic expression and a polite “thank you” left the office, and thus passed out of the knowledge of the bureau. Mary Pearl.
She said that her name was Mary Pearl. Pressed for a family name, she clung tenaciously to “Pearl.” Truly, here was a time when one might fairly question, “What is in a name?” Her squat figure, muddy yellow skin and coarse, black hair! Her deep guttural speech! Her hands with their short, stumpy fingers! Her small mis-mated, closely-set, Oriental eyes, her flat nose and full looselipped mouth! All of these made a prophecy for her future which would have shamed the best medium or fortune-teller in the business. She was fourteen and she had come to the Employment Bureau for a job. She had been excused from school because “she didn’t get along and then, too, she was too large for the other girls in the third grade elass.” She did not want a job in a factory or mill, because that wasn’t refined. She wanted a nice, easy job in an office where there was mahogany furniture and a nice, soft green rug on the floor. The work must be easy, for she was very much afraid of her health and she could not do anything that was “hard on her.” She cherished an overwhelming concern for her health as one of the dearest possessions in her life. When urged to expand in greater detail on the subject of her illness she remarked that she was “just delicate” and had to be “careful” of herself. In spite of this fact, a subsequent physical examination revealed an unusually strong constitution. One good look at “Mary Pearl” showed only too plainly that fate had not cast her for a role played on velvet carpet in a mahogany furnished office. After arguing for the best part of the morning with the Counselor she was finally inveigled into consenting to try some “nice, easy work” which consisted of pasting labels on pill bottles in a wholesale drug house. This coup was accomplished by pointing out to her the great difficulty of office work and the tremendous strain which it imposed upon the health. Apparently much impressed by this last fact, she consented to report for work the next day.
At the end of two’ weeks the establishment where she was employed reported that she was still with them?that she was very slow in her work and inclined to be very messy and dirty, but that she would be kept because they were extremely hard-up for workers at that particular time.
Not many days after this Mary came back to the bureau for another job. She said that she was tired of her work, that she was tired of the place, and that it was “hard on her health.” She said that she had learned the labelling business very well. She felt that now she had passed from the class of unskilled labor to that of skilled labor. She had no objection to trying another job of the same sort?this time labelling candy boxes. So off she set again to try a new place.
Ten times in the following three months Mary wearied of her job and returned to the bureau for another, and ten times she was sent out! Three times a discriminating employment manager considered her too great a risk even in a time of labor shortage, but seven times she landed a job. And seven times she came back to the bureau. Each time she reported that she was tired of the place and that it was “too hard on her health.”
Then, for a period of several months, Mary dropped out of sight and some of the more sanguine-minded individuals in the bureau gave her credit for getting a job and, greater honor still, for holding it. But one fine day Mary turned up again with the customary request for “some nice, easy work which would not be hard on her.” Labelling, if possible, because she was a “grand worker” at that trade. Careful questioning brought out the fact that she had been at home through the period of her disappearance. She had decided to stay home and keep house for the family while her health recuperated from the effects of her period of working. This bit of information gave the Counselor an inspiration. An appeal was made to a social organization and some careful and patient work brought interesting facts to view. The father and mother were “queer” and none of the children even got along in school. Their real name was “Porib” but Mary thought that was ugly and had chosen for her industrial name “Pearl,” a name which she thought was “just beautiful.” The family were in a fair way financially and Mary’s small earnings did not make a great amount of difference one way or the other. Finally, Mary was persuaded to stay at home and help an older sister care for the home and family.
A poor solution? Possibly, but it kept her out of industry; it kept her from adding to the labor turnover of an indefinite number of establishments and kept her from causing unnecessary trouble in a field where she could never, to the end of time, hold her own. Jake.
Poor Jake was certainly disgusting! No other term can express his appearance. His hands were grimy, stubby-fingered and puffy. His face was greasy-looking, dirty and covered with ugly red pimples. His clothes were filthy, not with mud-stains or dusty dirt, but with the filth which accumulated over a long period of utter neglect. One could smell Jake when he was not even visible. In the waiting-room outside he created such an aroma that the stenographer was driven to seek refuge from it in the inner office.
Jake was nearly sixteen, but his nearness did not alter the fact that he had to have a working certificate. He said that he had worked at several jobs already. To confirm this statement, his certificate card was produced and it was discovered that he had, indeed, many jobs. The record showed that he had had nine certificates, but that he had never stayed in any one job more than a week. Most of the positions consisted of doing odd jobs around shoe factories, and Jake felt a great desire to try work in a shoe factory once more. As an employment prospect, Jake was a great risk, but he was sent to one of the shoe factories listed as needing boys. Two days later, the employment department called up to ask if we knew what had become of Jake. The story ran that he had called and asked for employment. They were in need of a boy to push a truck around in the factory and they hired him. He had said that he lived in the extreme southern part of the city (true enough) and that he would have to borxow ten cents to get home but that he would report for work in the morning. The ten cents had been given him and he had departed and never returned.
Several letters to Jake, asking him to report at the bureau were unavailing, but he turned up one day a couple of months later and asked for another job in a shoe factory. When questioned as to why he had not returned to the former place he said that his father knew that place and when he had told his father that he had a job there, his father had said that he could not work there. The place was not “union.”
With great misgivings the Counselor sent Jake out again to another factory where they needed a boy to pile up shoe boxes. Jake had them make out the necessary “promise of employment,” returned to the bureau and took out his papers, then went back to the establishment and told them that he lived way down town and that he could not get home if they did not give him ten cents. He said that he would report for work early in the morning. That was the last they saw of Jake. In a few days, Jake returned to the bureau to ask us to find another job for him. He wvis informed that as he had promised to work for both the firms to which he had been sent and then had not kept his promise the bureau oould not send him out again. By not living up to his promises, he injured the chances of the next boy from the bureau who might seek employment with either of these firms.
Several months later, while going through one of the large shoe factories in the city with its employment manager, the Counselor heard of Jake once more. The manager was telling of some of the tricks which prospective employees put over on him and ..among other things, he mentioned a fellow who had been in recently and who had asked for a job, accepted what was offered, said that he lived in the southern part of the city and did not have carfare to get home. He had taken ten cents which was offered him and that was the last of him as far as they knew. He had never come back. The Counselor recognized certain earmarks and asked if the manager remembered the name of the boy. The man replied that he thought his first name was Jake, yes, now he remembered, his name was Jacob Kriegel. So Jake was still looking for a job in a shoe factory where he could borrow ten cents and never return.
Katherine.
She was pathetically unattractive. Her face was narrow and pinched and of an unwholesome sallow color. Her whole body looked pinched and unhealthy. Her strabismic eyes, not effectually hidden behind steel-rimmed spectacles, had that quality (or location) which disturbs the beholder’s semicircular canals about to the point of nausea. She had an evil look?not that of a criminal plotting some bold and shocking crime, but rather that of the fox, sly, crafty, spiteful, suspicious and revengeful. She was the sort whom society brands as queer and then dooms to a cruel isolation.
She was just out of school, having sat through 6B grade, and now she was seeking a job. Where in the busy, efficient world of industry was there a place for her? The only work which she could possibly do would have to be of the most elementary and mechanical kind. How could one tell the poor thing that she would be very lucky indeed to find work of any sort. She would have a bad time getting by the watchful eye of her prospective employer, Or his employment manager, but once employed her troubles had only begun. How was she to hold her own against girls of normal mentality and much better physical equipment?
Irony of fate! Seldom had the office had a more particular and discriminating applicant. She did not think that she would like this sort of work and she was afraid that sort of work was not lady-like and another sort was mill-work and she wouldn’t go in a mill for anything! She really wanted a job in an office. She thought that she would like to be a private secretary.
By dint of a great deal of skilful and strategic maneuvering, the Counselor injected the idea that private secretaries were highly trained people, that, in fact, all office workers had to be trained? one did not just walk in and start performing duties. From this a transition was made to places which the Counselor labelled “manufacturing establishments.” A little discussion on the importance of industry, in words of one syllable, and the prospective “private secretary” was willing to try a position in a “manufacturing establishment.” She was sent to an establishment where small candy boxes were made. Her particular job was to gather up the lids as they were shot down a chute from the machines which made them, and fit lids on the tops of the boxes which were arranged in rows by other girls on a table at her hand. Surely a simple enough process for anyone to learn, but Katherine did not flourish at her new trade. To be brief, she was fired at the end of three weeks. Her employer reported that she did not seem able to keep her hands clean, and consequently she was always soiling and spoiling the boxes on which she worked. Furthermore, she was careless in putting on the lids and would often crush one of the tiny boxes in a clumsy attempt to get a lid on. Back she came to the office for another job. Did she like her last place! Yes, indeed, everything was so clean and neat and the girls were all very nice. Did she get to know any of them very well? No, she didn’t mix with them and they left her pretty much alone, but she liked to watch them and to hear them talk. She would like to go to another place just like the first. She would try to keep her hands clean and she would try to be more careful and not crush the boxes, but she really didn’t know how that happened. Her hand just seemed to slip and she really couldn’t tell when it was going to happen. She did try to be careful.
No opening at the same kind of work was available and the Counselor furthermore questioned her ability to really do better at this work. Consequently a new place was secured. This time Katherine’s job was to fold tissue paper into packages. At this work she did well enough to keep herself from getting fired for quite a while and the office was resting easy about her when one day she favored us with another visit. She was looking for work again. How had it happened? Well, she had met a friend of hers on the street one day and the friend had told her that she could make twenty dollars a week at a large wholesale drug house putting stoppers in bottles and she had left her other job and had then applied for a position at the drug house. At first they had said that they had no openings, but told her to report back there the next week. She had done this and was employed. She never asked about wages, for she supposed that, her friend knew. When she got her pay envelope the first week she got $7.50 and she never went back. Now she wanted another job and she wanted more money than $7.50, she did. Wasn’t she a trained worker now? She had been working on and off for nearly four months.
Another position was secured for her which was left because she didn’t “like the way the forelady looked at her.” Still another was tried and while she was working at this job she met her forelady in establishment number two who had asked Katherine to come back. So Katherine had left her position without ceremony and returned to number two. Only to find, however, that “that forelady really wasn’t as nice as she seemed because she ‘got a pick’ on Katherine” and Katherine said she just couldn’t stay there any longer. And so it went, one position after another, and Katherine never settled in any for longer than a few weeks.
One day she came in and said that her mother’s sister lived on a farm up state and she wanted Katherine to come and make her home with her and help her look after the house. As the children at home were already numerous (and growing more so all the time), the family had decided that it would be a good thing for her to go. She was leaving the following Monday and was very much pleased about it. The last news which the bureau had of Katherine she was happily headed for “down on the farm.”
Poor Katherine! She was a most friendly and affectionate soul. Every time that she came to the office the Counselor had hard work avoiding her embraces and kisses at the beginning and at the close of each interview. And voluble! She could talk for hours, the most inane, incoherent and rambling bunch of nothingness that ever a human mortal uttered. Her funny fox-like face was not a true indication to the nature within except the suspicion which it showed. She was very suspicious of anything proposed and she was fond of excusing her own inability by saying that it was because someone had “a pick” on her. But she was not revengeful, crafty or sly. Perhaps these attributes require an intelligence more complicated and of a higher level than Katherine had at her command.
How she came out on the farm we never heard, but it was indeed a good thing for her when she gave up trying to hold her own in the busy, survival-of-the-fittest battle of the modern industrial world.
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