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Lancaster Mass.

The Working Girls Vacation Society: Keeping the ‘Sin’ Out of ‘Single’

During the Gilded Age, hundreds of thousands of young women worked long hours for low pay in sweat shops and factories. Some couldn’t get enough to eat, and some contracted tuberculosis in the crowded, dirty workplaces. Upper-class women came up with a way to help them: The Working Girls Vacation Society. It gave certain girls a two-week, supervised vacation in the country.

Unchaperoned co-ed bathing at Coney Island, 1897. Not the kind of vacation sanctioned by the Working Girls Vacation Society.

The rich ladies were as concerned about the morality of the working girls as much as their health. They worried the girls, once outside the home, would succumb to the blandishments of men or, worse, turn to prostitution. Getting them away from the temptations of the city and into the wholesome countryside seemed like a good way to prevent that.

And so in Boston and New York they started working girls vacation societies or clubs. They then sent the girls for two weeks to one of more than a dozen country homes — in rural Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and New Jersey. There they got three square meals a day, fresh air and in some cases medical attention.

They could read and knit and learn how to make paper flowers. On Sunday they went to church. They helped with the housework, a nod to the rich ladies’ preference that they find a morally safer line of work as domestic servants.

Doubtful Attractions

Led by copper heiress Grace Dodge, wealthy women philanthropists after the Civil War started the YWCA and a network of working girls clubs. The reformers then saw a need to to keep the girls from going unchaperoned to vaudeville shows, amusement parks, dance halls and sporting events. In 1894, Edith A. Sawyer described in The Churchman the horrors of a such a places, “where crowds congregate, and where there are electric lights, cheap music, pink lemonade and ‘merry-go-rounds’.”

The horror!

In such public places, they believed, the working girls could succumb to sinful temptations presented by men.

“There being so few week-end resources, the public amusement places with their doubtful attractions are all that is left,” reported Far and Near, the journal of the national coalition of working girls’ clubs, in 1890.

The Working Girls Vacation Society

Katharine W.D. Herbert, wife of a wealthy stockbroker, founded the Working Girls Vacation Society in 1883 as an offshoot of the New York Working Girls Club. She was a philanthropist known for donating thousands of pieces of carved jade to the Museum of Natural History in New York.

Herbert was “struck with the monotony of their ceaseless toil year in and out.”

To start the vacation club, she and her wealthy friends held a bazaar and raised nearly $1,000. She set up an advisory board that consisted of prominent men and half a dozen ministers.

The Society then found homes. In East Haddam, Conn., three houses and three barns once owned by the Working Girls Vacation Society is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1890, the Society’s social worker, Annie White Strathern, furnished one of the farmhouses as a vacation home for young working women.

Phebe Howell House 1834 aka Rose Cottage of the Working Girls’ Vacation Society

The Getaway Spots

Other vacation clubs and houses formed in Boston and New York during the Gilded Age, offshoots of the YWCA, the Working Girls Club in New York and the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union in Boston.

The New York Working Girls Vacation Society eventually had 10 houses. Uplands and Hillcrest in the Adirondacks, for example, were gifts of George Dodge, Grace Dodge’s uncle.

Girls could go to Connecticut, to Farmington Lodge in Farmington, Breezy Cottage at Penfield Beach in Fairfield, and to two in Westport, including Green Cottage in Green’s Farms. Or they could stay at lodgings in New York: at Elmcote in Chester or Neversink Manse in Huguenot.

New York’s Jewish Working Girls Vacation Society had two vacation houses, one in Bellport, Long Island, and one at Big Indian in the Catskills.

Boston’s working girls went to Fernside in Princeton, Mass., Good Rest in Lancaster, Mass., The Homestead Inn in the Temple Hills of New Hampshire and one in Methuen, Mass., called The Girls Boarding House.

Churches and settlement houses also maintained vacation homes for working girls; so did Bloomingdale’s, which had a vacation house in Long Branch, N.J., for its employees.

The Working Girls Vacation Society Vacation

The wealthy ladies realized some working girls didn’t like to accept charity, so they charged a nominal fee – about $3 – for a two weeks’ vacation. They’d lend money to those who couldn’t afford it. Some got a free ride.

But you couldn’t go if you had a reputation as a floozy. Harriet Comstock in the Christian Observer in 1907 made it clear that girls with loose morals weren’t welcome. The society sent “the better class of working girls to beautiful country homes for pure fun,” she wrote. [Emphasis added.]

How much fun? Certainly not too much.

In East Haddam, the girls’ supervisor carefully noted their weight gains and the amount of milk they drank as measures of their health improvement. The responsibilities of the trained resident social worker included “instruction in crafts such as making paper flowers and tooled leather purses, and leading hikes and motoring excursions to local sites.”

Every Friday evening the girls came up with their own entertainment, and they went to dances held in the recreation center.

At Fernside in western Massachusetts they could read, sew, walk, take a drive in a wagon or do nothing. At least the old mansion had a theater where they could put on amateur theatricals.

In 1890, Far and Near described a typical vacation, perhaps overselling the “fun” part.

How the girls enjoy the complete change from work and worry to good country air, the tramping to the mountains and the places of interest, or, if at the seaside, the bathing; the dances in the barn, the games and the music. On rainy days fancywork, crocheting, knitting, and reading make the time fly as if on wings.

Prayers Twice a Day

In 1913, Hugh Thompson reported the working girls chafed at the restrictions during their getaways. Thompson wrote in “The Vacation Savings Movement,” in Munsey’s Magazine:

[T]hey were unpopular because of the restrictions imposed on the inmates. In most of them the girls had to live by rigid rule; there was no freedom of action. The situation was summed up by a saleswoman who told an investigator: “Why, you can’t even look at a man if you go there! I do not want to be bound to go to prayers twice a day.

The general feeling, Thompson wrote, was that the self-supporting women who worked so hard wanted absolute freedom to rest or seek innocent amusement.

A U.S. sweatshop, around 1890.

They also may have resented their benefactress’ condescension. Harriet Comstock, who promoted the Working Girls Vacation Society in her writing for church magazines, described a missive from the society’s secretary. The secretary had written to a vacation home supervisor about a working woman:

“I am sending you a little forlornity; try to make her think she is in heaven.”

2-1/2 Percent

The 1900 census reported 261,081 unmarried working women between the ages of 10 and 35 living in the state of New York. By 1909, the New York vacation societies hosted about 1400 working girls a year, according to Amy E. Spingarn. “A trifle over 2-1/2 percent are provided for,” she wrote.

Springarn had conducted a survey on vacation resources for working girls and reported her findings in “Summer Vacations for Working Girls” in the The Survey.

A 15-year-old girl punching sheets at the Boston Index Card Co. in 1917. Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine.

Their income, she wrote, ranged from $1 a week to $16 a week, and their average age about 20. The vacation societies charged a few dollars, but most come free. The girls are factory workers, sales clerks, teachers, dressmakers and stenographers. Sometimes the girls didn’t have clothes, and sometimes the Society repaid the family for lost wages.

Tuberculosis

“Do the people of New York City realize how many working girls have tubercular and cardiac trouble?” the New York Vacation Club Society asked the editor of the New York Times in 1923.

Some of the girls with symptoms of tuberculosis went to the Adirondacks for treatment. They could stay at Hillcrest year-round for treatment.

Article from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 21, 1907

Anna Buchanan, the assistant treasurer of the Working Girls’ Vacation Society, in 1891 gave an example of a working girl helped by a visit to Santa Clara in a letter to The Christian Union.

One of these was a young dressmaker, who was very feeble and had a bad cough. She was sent to the mountains, where she not only gained strength, but her cough disappeared, and she came home comparatively well, and ready for her winter’s work.

Dining room at “Uplands,” Santa Clara. The caption read, “The good fellowship among the girls here makes it seem more like a school than a sanitarium.”
The Circle, volume VIII, No. 1, July-August, 1910, p. 9

In 1945, the Working Girls Vacation Society of New York shut down. Katharine Herbert died that same year.

The New York Working Girls’ Vacation Society mission continues as a successor organization, the Stony Wold-Herbert Fund, which provides grants for study and research in pulmonary diseases.

In East Haddam, the owner of the Phebe Howell House is undertaking a historically accurate restoration of the Phebe Howell House, aka Rose Cottage. You can see pictures at Facebook.com/WorkingGirlsVacationSociety.

Images: Coney Island bathers Campbell, Alfred S. On the beach, Coney Island. New York, ca. 1897. Elizabeth, N.J.: Alfred S. Campbell, Publisher, April 20. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2005677854/. Fernside By Izzysanime – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21538381. Merry go round Highsmith, Carol M, photographer. The carousel, or merry-go-round, at Richland Carrousel Park opened inin downtown Mansfield, Ohio. United States Ohio Richland County Mansfield, 2016. -10-07. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2016632407/. Sweatshop By Unknown – http://americansformorality.com/civilrights/civilrights.html, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27485325.

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The Outrageous Comical Brown Comes to Town

If you live in a New England town with town hall, a school, a church or an opera house, chances are good it was visited at least once by the outrageous showman William B. Brown, better known as Comical Brown.

Comical Brown

Born in 1833 in Lancaster, Mass., into a Quaker family, as a child he prepared to become a shoemaker. But at 16 his musical talent took him in a different direction. He began performing small concerts on the violin to help support his blind father. It set the direction for the next 45 years of his life.

At first he took small parts in minstrel shows and regularly performed in the stage play Uncle Tom’s Cabin, based on the book of the same name. By the mid-1860s, however, he hit the road as a headliner. An advance man would work the towns on Brown’s calendar, appearing a few days in advance to plaster the town with fliers and newspaper notices for “That Comical Brown!” show.

His act consisted of a number of humorous monologues in which he took the role of cranky, old Yankee or warm-hearted Irishman. He joked with the crowd while spinning yarns and songs designed to draw laughs or groans. Mixed in, he played the violin and turned the stage over to other members of his small troop.

His other acts included Frank Hayden, boy soprano; E.A. Marsh, contralto, singing the Star Spangled Banner; or a trained dog act featuring Scottie and Prince Charlie doing tricks.

As Brown traveled from town to town, he updated his material each year or two so it was fresh whenever he rolled into town. He brought the fun of the vaudeville stage to the small towns of New England and beyond for a remarkable 45 years.

Comical Brown Makes ‘Em Laugh

In 1885 Brown compiled some of his best material and published it as Comical Brown’s Songster – equal parts cornball observations and slyly racy songs. Male/female relationships, man’s personal foibles, the temperance society and other timely topics were staples of his comedy. This number, Of Course It’s No Business of Mine, surely raised the rafters when he belted it out:

Now, for instance, at Mrs. Montgomery’s,
Every afternoon, just about three,
When her husband is out at his business,
A gent with moustache comes to tea.

He stays till half-past eight o’clock,
For the husband don’t get home till nine;
Now I’d like to know what he does there!
But then it’s no business of mine.

Across the way lives dear Miss Baxter,
A nice, dashing, handsome young girl;
Who, for the last twelve months or so,
Has been flirting with Mr. Fitz-Furl;

They say she is going to be married,
Well, I must say I think it is time;
For, if she’s not married, she’d ought to be,
But then it’s no business of mine.

I met Lucy Bell t’other evening,
With her nephew going out for a walk,
And, of course, as soon as she saw me,
She stopped and began a long talk

All about her dear little nephew,
Who she said was between eight and nine,
But some say it isn’t her nephew,
But then it’s no business of mine.

At Mrs. Fitz-Snooks’, round the corner,
Last evening I heard such a din,
And found that she’d not paid her rent,
So the Sheriff they quickly brought in.

I don’t know what she does with her money,
Though her nose always redly does shine,
I think that she spends it for brandy,
But of course it’s no business of mine.

Comical Brown Hits a Sour Note

Contralto E.A. Marsh costumed for The Daughter of the Regiment. (Library of Congress)

The indignities of the comedy circuit were many. The show had to go on each night in a new town, regardless of weather. Comical Brown’s critics suggested there was good reason he never played the same venue two nights in a row: because once the audience heard his act they would warn their neighbors not to bother.

One particularly joyless stop came in Charlton, Mass. where Brown was forced to play in a church rather than the town hall, which had burned. He churned out his music and jokes to a stone-faced audience, whose members were too intimidated by the church sexton glaring from the rear of the church to even crack a smile.

Over the years, Comical Brown moved around New England, living in Somerville, Mass. and Rutland and Barre in Vermont. As he grew older there were hints that he was slipping, though he was still much loved. The Saint Johnsbury Caledonian reported in 1891, “Comical Brown played to a large audience at the Opera House Thanksgiving night. Everybody was kept in good humor and though Brown is not as good as he used to be, he still makes folks laugh.”

Comical Brown’s career finally ended in 1893. At the age of 60 he was found unconscious at a Boston train station, possibly headed for his next concert. He died at the nearby hospital leaving behind a widow and two daughters. His death was reported as far away as California.

The Afterlife

The Comical Brown act lived on for more than a decade after Brown’s death in the form of the “Comical Brown Concert and Comedy Company.” It was also “billed as Comical Brown’s Old Show with a replacement cast.” Finally, his act became synonymous with outdated, stale jokes. Into the 1920s, if someone told a particularly unfunny, old joke, the proper response was, “That’s a great one. I think I remember Comical Brown using it.”

In 1909 Brown’s career was eulogized by Broadway playwright Stanley Rosenfeld in the comedy-drama The Barnstormer, about the star of one-man show traveling to backwoods towns in the waning days of his career. It was not a hit.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Luther Burbank and the Birth of the Russet Burbank

If you’ve ever enjoyed a McDonald’s French fry, you have Luther Burbank to thank.

In the 1800s, potato growers were desperately seeking a potato that would resist blight. Luther Burbank, a simple farm boy, had a knack for cross-cultivating plants.

Luther Burbank

Burbank was born on March 7, 1849, in Lancaster, Mass. He only had a high school education. But he bought a 17-acre plot of land in Lunenberg, Mass., where he carried out his experiments.

Burbank birthplace

Working with a potato imported from Chile, the Early Rose, he was struggling to find a potato that would both produce a seed ball and was hearty and blight resistant.

In 1872, he planted his latest mix and waited. He almost lost the plant in the field, he would later say, finding the above-ground stalk some 20 feet from where he planted the potato. But when he dug, he was rewarded with a winner. ”As quick as I dug I knew I had a prize,” he would recall.

He made an effort to sell his creation to B.K. Bliss & Co. in 1873, but they were suspicious of the potato. It was too sweet and nutty. They suspected it had been doctored, and they turned him down.

The Burbank Russet

Burbank’s next step was to send some of his potatoes to the James. H. Gregory Seed Company of Marblehead, Mass. Gregory asked how much he wanted. He said $500. They offered $125 (later supplemented with another $25), and the Burbank Russet was born into the world.

By age 25, Burbank launched himself westward to take advantage of the California climate. His new Russet potato was not an immediate success. Despite its heartiness and size, the preferred potato of California farmers was the Bodega Red. But Burbank had built a better potato and soon farmers took notice.

Burbank Russet

Luther Burbank soon began building out his gardens in his adopted home of Santa Rosa, Calif. He created a persona that was part showman, part mad scientist. He was a pioneer in the field of agricultural science.

Burbank had tens of thousands of plants under cultivation at any one time, and he had endless interests.

Seedless watermelons, pit-less plums, thornless roses and spineless cactus were his colorful pursuits, and wags joked that if he was so smart why couldn’t he breed a watermelon with a handle on it so it would be easier to carry?

One Tree, 73 Kinds of Apples

But Burbank’s own P.T. Barnum style helped fuel his image. He once showed off a single apple tree that, through countless grafts, grew 73 varieties of apples.

Showmanship aside, over the decades Burbank contributed to improvements in wheats, berries and flowers and he changed the American diet in countless ways with the hundreds of plant varieties he created. His supporters long claimed that Burbank was a rival of Edison in terms of his creations, and in 1905 his genius was officially recognized.

Burbank with a spineless cactus, 1908

The Carnegie Foundation awarded him a $100,000 grant – to be paid over ten years – to fund his research. The pressure, meanwhile, grew on Burbank. Visitors now sought out his remote gardens. Other scientists pestered him for information. While Burbank was not secretive, the constant attention began to wear on him. He was kind-hearted, but a limited record-keeper, which frustrated his fellow scientists.

In 1910, the grant blew up on him. Either he refused future payments or it was rescinded. (Perhaps both.) Newspapers reported that Burbank claimed to invent the spineless cactus. He never did. But he was working to develop a spineless cactus that would grow faster, so it could be used as cattle feed in desert areas. In addition, he had signed an agreement with a new company, the Burbank Seed Co., to sell his seeds and inventions.

Luther Burbank Leaves a Legacy

Either way, Burbank said he was glad to be rid of the Carnegie funding in 1910. “The grant brought with it cares, responsibilities, correspondence and visitors and a full crop of envy and jealousy . . . Personally, I have no desire for wealth or fame. A thirst for these is the root of many evils. My ambition has been to leave the world the better for having passed this way. To be misjudged is a passing trifle, to have lost a life of honest labor is a tragedy.”

With his fame at its apex, everything Burbank did drew attention. When he bought an automobile, it was news. When he ordered a specific type of pear tree, the public wondered what he was creating next.

His business took a turn for the worse in 1916. He sued the Burbank Seed Co. for unpaid bills and the company declared bankruptcy later in the year.

With his business winding down, Burbank died in 1926. His plants and seeds were sold to the Stark Seed Company, which later sold them to seed giant Burpee. But his memory is alive and well in Santa Rosa. His home is open to the public as a museum and every year the city celebrates his contribution to horticulture with the Luther Burbank Rose Parade and Festival.

And his Burbank Russet remains one of the most popular potatoes consumed today.

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