While this family is fairly typical of those in which over-restraint is
due to the lack of understanding, it is true that in most cases the
family tyranny is exercised by an old-country father in an honest
attempt to guard his daughter against the dangers of a new world. The
worst instances, however, are those in which the father has fallen into
the evil ways of drink, and not only demands all of his daughter's
wages, but treats her with great brutality when those wages fall below
his expectations. Many such daughters have come to grief because they
have been afraid to go home at night when their wage envelopes contained
less than usual, either because a new system of piece work had reduced
the amount or because, in a moment of weakness, they had taken out five
cents with which to attend a show, or ten cents for the much-desired
pleasure of riding back and forth the full length of an elevated
railroad, or because they had in a thirsty moment taken out a nickel for
a drink of soda water, or worst of all, had fallen a victim to the
installment plan of buying a new hat or a pair of shoes. These girls, in
their fear of beatings and scoldings, although they are sure of shelter
and food and often have a mother who is trying to protect them from
domestic storms, have almost no money for clothing, and are inevitably
subject to moments of sheer revolt, their rebellion intensified by the
fact that after a girl earns her own money and is accustomed to come and
go upon the streets as an independent wage earner, she finds
unsympathetic control much harder to bear than do schoolgirls of the
same age who have never broken the habits of their childhood and are
still economically dependent upon their parents.

In spite of the fact that domestic service is always suggested by the
average woman as an alternative for the working girl whose life is beset
with danger, the federal report on "Women and Child Wage Earners in the
United States" gives the occupation of the majority of girls who go