Underwood & Underwood, Henrietta School, 224 West 63rd Street.
Underwood & Underwood, Henrietta School, 224 West 63rd Street, 1908-1913. Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, The New York Historical.
Background
In the early 1900s many middle-class social reformers were concerned about the rapid growth of immigrant and migrant communities in United States cities. Newly arrived families often struggled to find employment and secure housing. To help, reformers set up job training programs, health clinics, and other services to support immigrant and migrant communities. Many of these programs focused on women and children, who were thought to be the most vulnerable. But the reformers’ concerns and solutions were often grounded in racist and sexist stereotypes. Their primary fear was that the rising number of unemployed and unhoused immigrants and migrants would lead to a rise in crime, sex trafficking, and alcoholism. In the early 1900s, Americans were also beginning to accept the germ theory for the transmission of disease and therefore saw overcrowded neighborhoods with unsanitary conditions as a threat to public safety. Helping families find jobs and safe and hygienic housing was seen as a public safety initiative.
The Children’s Aid Society was founded specifically to support poor children. It created residential schools where girls could receive job training, but the training was focused on domestic work like laundering, sewing, and house cleaning. It only prepared girls to work as domestic servants or to be wives and mothers.
About the Resources
This image depicts young girls learning about domestic work at the Henrietta Industrial School. The Children’s Aid Society opened the Henrietta Industrial School for Black children in 1869. Henrietta students learned trades like hat-making, sewing, and domestic labor.
Vocabulary
- Children’s Aid Society: A charitable organization founded in 1853 to offer orphaned children housing and educational opportunities.
Discussion Questions
- Why were institutions like the Henrietta Industrial School founded? What were they trying to accomplish?
- What sort of work did children learn in these institutions? Why would they have been trained in this sort of labor and not others?
- What does this image tell us about the intersection between race, class, and gender in the labor market of this period?
Suggested Activities
- Use this resource along with Social Housekeeping and Public Evils, Waged Work and Protective Laws, and The Politics of Respectability to think about how women’s work intersects with their social position at this time in history.
- Consider this resource along with Life Story: Clara Lemlich Shavelson and Kosher Meat Strike to think about how women influenced the workforce and economy at this time.
- Pair this resource with Girls’ Education at Carlisle Indian School to compare educational institutions for Black and Indigenous girls.
- For a larger discussion of women’s labor, pair this resource with any or all of the following resources:
Themes
WORK, LABOR, AND ECONOMY
