Job Hunting Series - Catharine Brody
Pittsburgh - "What Happens When a Girl Goes Job Hunting in a Strange City?: Pittsburgh" - Catharine Brody - Buffalo Morning Express
1924-01-06
"The first day I became a bean packer in the Heinz works, spent a maddening nine hours with Emma and the twins, 'Dawrathe-e-e" and Katherine, simply pasting stickers on boxes to contain tomato soup. We worked under Katie, the forelady, in a huge room filled with piles of boxes that reached nearly to the low ceiling and stacks of cans that reached half-way up. We sat on a truck and became covered and choked by the dust from the boxes. I did not mind that so much as the monotony of the work. But it suited the girls exactly."
Detroit - "What Happens When a Girl Goes Job Hunting in a Strange City?: Detroit" - Catharine Brody - Buffalo Morning Express
1924-01-13
"That the manufacture of spring cushions for automobile seats--soft, comfortable automobile seats which hold silk and satiny ladies on the way downtown to do their shopping--should be made an affair of such primitive violence amid such raucous shrieks of men and girls and machinery, such clash and clamor and clang of steel! Never, nevermore, will I feel the same about a seat in even the cheapest kind of a green flag taxi."
Chicago - "What Happens When a Girl Goes Job Hunting in a Strange City?: Chicago" - Catharine Brody - Buffalo Morning Express
1924-01-20
"It was going to be a sob story. It was going to be a sob story the moment I stepped into the rancid entrance to the Auditorium just three days before Christmas."
Saint Louis - "What Happens When a Girl Goes Job Hunting in a Strange City?: Saint Louis" - Catharine Brody - Buffalo Morning Express
1924-01-27
"After the factory distances of Detroit and chicago, I sure did love Saint Louis. "I'll say" -- as they say. The factoires, hats and shoes and pants and princess slips stand all in a row. They make the best apple pie--apple pie is filling for the working girl's breakfast, lunch and dinner, and cheap at only five cents the generous slice. And about 25 minutes after I got to Saint Louis I found myself placidly cementing strips of duck on the quarters of men's shoes in one of the seven factories of the International Shoe Company."
Kansas City - "What Happens When a Girl Goes Job Hunting in a Strange City?: Kansas City" - Catharine Brody - Buffalo Morning Express
1924-02-03
"All rings are not telephone rings." -- from the Pilot Light, published by the Kansas City Association of Telephone Employees. There, gentle subscriber, you have is the pilot girl's motto, what, is wrong with the telephone service. That is, why the telephone companies keep alluring advertisements always to type and employment managers always busy. That is really why you get wrong numbers and disconnects and why you have to fuss and fume at operators who seem to be attending their grandmothers' funerals at the other end. All rings particularly to a telephone girl, are not telephone rings. Statistics show, I have been told, that more telephone girls get married every year than any other class of working girls.
Troy - "What Happens To A Girl Seeking Employment In A Strange City: Troy" - Catharine Brody - Buffalo Morning Express
1923-12-30
"Troy is the home of the biggest collar factory in the world. That seems to be Troy's one reason and excuse for being. It's history is immeidately apparent. Once, long agi, the biggest collar factory in the world made its home in a small village called Troy; other collar and shirt factoires colelcted, tinier surrounding villages contributed labor, and thus Troy did not so much grow as was pulled into its present timid, half-awake existence as a city of 70,000 people, a city where even the drug stores close on Sunday."
Denver - "What Happens To A Girl Seeking Employment In A Strange City?: Denver" - Catharine Brody - Buffalo Morning Express
1924-02-10
"Go West, young woman-- if you must-- but stay away from Denver! If you scorn this earnest advice I warn you that pork trimming will get you if you don't watch out. They call it pork trimming at Armour's. As a matter of fact, you trim many things, fat and pork and kidney skins, meat, and ham and your fingers. One girl even stuck a knife into her stomach by accident--it's very simple. One thing and one thing only, you get no chance to trim--Armour's.
Portland - "What Happens To A Girl Seeking Employment In A Strange City: Portland" - Catharine Brody - Buffalo Morning Express
1924-02-24
"'A tree for you Portland grows,' Personally, I wish it had been a job. I left Portland after six days of extensive job hunting in an intensive rain which left me looking and feeling like Noah's ark.
Salt Lake City - "What Happens To A Girl Seeking Employment In A Strange City: Salt Lake City" - Catharine Brody - Buffalo Morning Express
1924-02-17
"Once upon a time, I, in common with a good many other people used to say when I read these stories of starving girls "But why can't they go into domestic service?" I used to say it triumphantly, even querulously, why not? Look at the seductive advertisements with offers of 'good homes.' Good homes. Good home-cooked food. Wages clear at the end of the month. No slack times, no holiday cutting into the pay envelopes. Very little danger o f'firing.' and such a swell chance of marrying the iceman of the grocery man, even the policeman on the beat and, as plaintive housewives have wept, 'when she got married, she got married from their house, and they gave her her outfit. She was a good worker. They don't make such no adays."
San Francisco - "What Happens When A Girl Goes Job Hunting in a Strange City?: San Francisco" - Catharine Brody - Buffalo Morning Express
1924-03-02
"What is the chief industry of California in winter--fruit picking? Wrong. Canning? The canning season doesn't begin until April. The movies? Nay. It's boosting! Rah! Rah! at 49 cents a boost, this is as good a way as any for the poor working girl to pass part of those six months from November to April which no good coast-booster ever mentions."
Los Angeles - "What Happens When A Girl Goes Job Hunting in a Strange City?: Los Angeles" - Catharine Brody - Buffalo Morning Express
1924-03-09
"Contrary to popular idea, not all girls come to Los Angeles to go into the movies. I found several hundred in the Salvation Army home, the Evangeline, who had come to go into stenography or manicuring or millinery trimming. Some even come, like my roommate, to go to jail."
Los Angeles (concluded) - "What Happens When A Girl Goes Job Hunting in a Strange City?: Los Angeles (concluded)" - Catharine Brody - Buffalo Morning Express
1924-03-16
"There was a long interval between the appearance of the extras on the lot at Culver city that day and I went into the highways and byways routing out girls who could tell me about an extra's life. Curled up on a bench beside the high wooden platform built for the director to shoot a scene from later on was a girl with long hair and a small wast. She sat up and showed enormous Spanish eyes and the long hair parted in the middle and arranged loosely at the sides. She was seventeen and had studied to be a pianist. Later she did play vivacious Spanish music with the Mexican musicians. She had stumbled into the movies two weeks previously by sheer luck and had no particular interest in them."
New Orleans - "What Happens When A Girl Goes Job Hunting in a Strange City?: New Orleans" - Catharine Brody - Buffalo Morning Express
1924-03-23
"'Shuffle ALong' made its debut in New Orleans on a Sunday night and I made my debut as an usher. It wasn't as easy as it had sounded. We came early--at 7 o'clock-- and studied the house, which was as quaint as New Orleans. Sometimes the rows were lettered and sometimes they weren't. As for teh numbers, they were on the back of the seats, so that in order not to disturb every one in the row behind you had to count from the aisle every time--unless you knew the house."
Baltimore - "What Happens When A Girl Goes Job Hunting in a Strange City?: Baltimore" - Catharine Brody - Buffalo Morning Express
1924-03-30
"I had crossed Mason and Dixon's line. Heads of bobbed hair were few and a policeman studied me intently when I ignored his suggestion to wait ten minutes for a street car to take me to an address eight blocks away. But let no one think I underrate the Baltimore police force, for I was a night worker in Baltimore and the two people I looked forward most to meeting as I walked down the long and deserted stretch of Charles street each night were policemen. "
New York - "What Happens When a Girl Goes Job Hunting in a Strange City?: New York" - Catharine Brody - Buffalo Morning Express
1924-04-06
"The most difficult thing about looking for a job in New York is that from the papers, there seem to be so many jobs to choose from. Where I had been used to half a column of ads yielding perhaps one or two possibilities, I found myself confronted by whole pages. By the time I got through reading, I was in such a daze of indecision that job hunting invariably was put off till another day."