Behind the scenes in a restaurant… (1916).ĭid restaurant workers in New York State get the protections they so desperately needed after this report was published? Not immediately.

One of the participants, a 20-year old woman, worked 122 hours a week (Consumers’ League of New York City, 1916, p. 2), which was prohibited for women who worked in stores and factories. Seventy-eight percent of workers exceeded a 54-hour week (Fig. 8).ĭespite this language, the League was extremely concerned over the exploitation of these workers, noting that many worked 15-hour days (Fig. The outdoor life in the fields of their native land fits them for the hard labor required in a restaurant kitchen (Consumers’ League of New York City, 1916, p. The demand for cheap, unskilled labor in this occupation calls for the kind of service which these girls and others of the European peasant class can give. The largest single group is made up of Austro-Hungarians.

While there is clearly an effort to be inclusive, there is still racist/ethnicist ideology that creeps in: The largest group interviewed here was “Austro-Hungarian” (39%), followed by “American” (presumably meaning non-immigrants) (33%), German (8%), Irish (7%), Russian (4%), “Other”, (4%), English & Canadian (3%), and Polish (3%). Women of all ages were asked, as well as women of different nationalities (though women of color were noticeably absent). The workers came from all types of restaurants, allowing the League to get a representative sample of participants. In New York City, all the interviews were given at the Occupational Clinic of the Board of Health (Consumers’ League of New York City, 1916, p. One thousand seventeen women were surveyed for this over the course of five months, in different locations such as their homes, their workplaces, and employment agencies. The Consumers’ League of New York City was alarmed by this, and decided to conduct a study, which turned into the pamphlet “ Behind the Scenes in a Restaurant: A Study of 1017 Women Restaurant Employees.” The study had three aims: to find out the actual labor conditions in New York State restaurants to determine whether these labor conditions led to a “wholesome, normal life” for the workers in these restaurants and to see how these conditions impacted society as a whole (1916, pp. Behind the scenes in a restaurant: A study of 1017 women restaurant employees. Consumers’ League of New York City (1916). Diagrams showing the normal working day versus a restaurant worker’s day.

Emblematic Monsters by A.W. Bates