The Vice Commission and Chicago in 1911

In 1911, the Vice Commission of Chicago published a report on the working conditions in department stores that lead female employees into prostitution. The source was created in order to evaluate the strain on the nervous system of girls working in department stores and how it pushes them into prostitution. From the modern perspective, it does seem a strange connection to make—but Chicago more than one hundred years ago was a much different place from what it is today, and people in society were much less used to the urban stressors and conditions at that time. The study identified it as “the whole tendency of modern life” (Vice Commission of Chicago, 1911, p. 271) and argued that this tendency was leading to the development of “considerable eroticism” among men and women (Vice Commission of Chicago, 1911, p. 271). To make matters worse, department store female workers were not getting paid a fair wage: the average for them was between six and seven dollars per week, and the study showed that one could not live in the city for less than eight dollars per week. The conclusion was that girls are tempted to enter into prostitution just to survive.

Thus, the study shows that there are social and economic pressures pushing young women in prostitution in Chicago in 1911. The study also describes the various ways that women are pushed by others into the “sporting life” as it calls it. There is the procuress, who comes on to the young ladies as a sympathetic friend and invites them over to her “disorderly house” where the young girl then becomes an “inmate,” and there is the cadet, who stalks the department stores looking for a young girl to take out and make his side girl; there is the married man who will harass the girls while his wife is shopping; there is the male employer who refuses to provide the girls with a decent wage and who will sometimes even take advantage of the girls’ dire situation and take them home for himself while his wife is away; there is the girl who voluntarily enters into the life of crime; and there are many typical cases where the girls simply realize that the “sporting life” pays much better than being a department store clerk.
What the source reveals about the past is that it was very different from today, where the “sporting life” is not really viewed as so immoral today by mainstream society. However, there is certainly not much to be earned from the “sporting life” today as it has largely disappeared as most girls appear to be up for a little sport regardless of whether there is money in it for them or not. This indicates that even though women could not obtain a decent wage in the city in 1911, there were at least some standards with regard to sexual morality at the time that were held by mainstream society—though there is also a whiff of hypocrisy running like an undercurrent through it all.

A question that this source raises in my mind is why were employers so unwilling to pay these girls a decent wage, and why were these women unable to find better work somewhere else? Why were they pressed into this kind of work in the first place? What were the conditions like at the time that women could not find a better job elsewhere? Had they left home at a young age and tried to make it on their own in Chicago? Did they not have the support of a family to which they could go?
The conditions in the city in the early 20th century indicate that there was a great deal of oppression going on but that there was also a serious problem with regard to how the culture was developing a crass attitude about family, life, sex, work, money and decency. The thought of so many women suffering from because of economic and social pressures is truly troubling.

References

Vice Commission of Chicago. (1911). The Vice Commission of Chicago reports on the working conditions in department stores that lead female employees into prostitution, 1911. Major Problems in American Women’s History, 270-273.