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Resources & Further Research

The following materials were used to create this toolkit, outside of the archival records:

Nancy Robertson’s book Christian Sisterhood, Race Relations and the YWCA 1906-1946 as well as Nina Mjagkij and Margaret Spratt’s book Men and Women Adrift: The YMCA and the YWCA in the City, both serve as good books to learn about the history of the YWCA and its relationship to race.
Vanessa May’s Unprotected Labor: Household Workers, Politics, and Middle-Class Reform in New York 1870-1940 focuses on the YWCA’s work with domestic workers in several sections of the book. This is a good resource to learn the history of the organization and see the beginning stages of their engagement in domestic work. See pages 10, 76-80, 124-171.
Phyllis Palmer’s Domesticity and Dirt: Housewives and Domestic Servants in the United States, 1920-1945 also serves as a good reference. It is more focused on the NCHE and its creation. It gives lots of details on the formation of the first conference in 1928 and provides context for looking at box 494 in the SSC. See pages 112-125.
Premilla Nadasen’s Household Workers Unite: The Untold Story of African American Who Built a Movement has historical information about the NCHE. It is mostly focused on the second leg of the organization in the 1960s when the organization shifted to support domestic workers more fully. It focuses on a different time period than the SSC collection, but serves as a good resource for further research into the NCHE. See pages 58-81.
This is a helpful, short article that has a timeline of the YWCA history: https://www.thebalance.com/the-history-and-impact-of-the-ywca-on-women-s-rights-3515999
This is a resources put out by the YWCA website that also has a timeline of their work: http://www.ywca.org/site/c.cuIRJ7NTKrLaG/b.7515891/k.C524/History.htm

Document Analysis

For this section I have selected documents found in the SSC that can help to show us what the SSC collection holds. The first document is a mock contract, written by the Indiana Subcommittee. The document is titled “Suggested Standards for Household Employment”. The second document is a publication from the Subcommittee on Household Employment of Pennsylvania, that addresses employers, asking them questions about how they are treating their employees. The final two images are selected from the book in the fourth photo, a publication from the Chicago Subcommittee. While the YWCA records hold a vast variety of different documents, these documents show the connection to employers that the YWCA worked to foster. While all of these documents help employers to treat their employees better, they put the focus on the employers.

Indiana Subcommittee “Suggested Standards for Household Employment”:

Below this text you can view the two pages of the model contract written up by the Hammond, Indiana Subcommittee, providing a starting point for employers to base their employee contracts off of. This document gives the employer something to work off of. It gives them a good idea about how to set up their schedule and what wages are reasonable to certain skill sets. It works to really regulate these jobs so that domestic workers are not over worked, but these regulations are what employers were pushing back against as they felt they did not get enough room to set their own standards for employees.

Model Contract created by Hammond, Indiana Subcommittee (1)

Model Contract created by Hammond, Indiana Subcommittee (2)

Pennsylvania Subcommittee “Madame Employer”:

Below this text you can see a pamphlet for employers. It gives similar information as the model contact above, but in a more accessible, visually appealing way. It is a way in which the Subcommittee worked to reach out to employers, making the information easily readable, asking thought-provoking question and giving statistics aimed to make employers reconsider how they treat their employees.

Publication created by the Subcommittee on Household Employment of the P.A. Committee, for employers from a symposium in 1939

Illinois Subcommittee: “The Women in the House”:

Below this text is a book published by the Chicago Subcommittee followed by two images of the text inside the book. This publication was another way of reaching out to employers in a more accessible way. The book runs through scenarios where situations went wrong, followed by questions asking the reader to think critically about the situation. This was beneficial to both domestic workers and employers as it worked to find ways to negotiate.

Cover of Book for Employers Published by Chicago Subcommittee

Pages from “The Women in the House” Chicago Publication

All documents courtesy of the YWCA of the USA, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.

YWCA Records — Boxes on Domestic Workers

Sophia Smith Archive Collection Sign

Box 493: This box has a lot of different resources, more so than the other three boxes in the collection. All of the documents in this box are from the national chapter, not states. The first few folders give information about the Subcommittees and YWCA meetings that discussed rights of employers and employees. These documents have input from both of these groups. The folder titled “Bibliographies” has citations of essays and written works about household work, household employment, household management, etc. Several other folders include legislation, placement and unionization which include bills and acts as well as correspondence between the YWCA and Washington offices. There is a small folder titled “Negro” in this box that gives information about black women working as domestic workers, the unemployment crisis of black domestic workers as well as the difficulties in placing black women. The last few folders deal with the Subcommittee on Household Employment from the National Board. These folders include correspondence between chapters as well as publications regulating employee/employer relations.

Box 494 and 495: These two boxes contain documents from different state Subcommittees. Box 494 holds information about each state’s chapter from California to New Jersey and 495 holds New York to Wisconsin. These folders contain correspondence between state chapters with the national YWCA chapter as well as contracts put forth by the states to mediate employee/employer relations. Some of these states, see the Chicago folder, have publications and books with information on how to negotiate with employers for things like time off, reducing hours, responsibilities, etc.

Box 496: This box contains documents discussing employer-employee relations in the home. There are documents from the 1928 conference discussing relations in the home (See section 2 of this toolkit). The two first folders state “National Committee on Employer-Employee Relations in the Home” which was the original name of the NCHE. The documents are write-ups from the conference discussing ways to improve relations on the part of the employers as well as the employees. The folders in this box span from 1928-1936, tracing the trajectory of the organization and the conferences it had each year. There are also resources produced by the NCHE in this box. There are several booklets for employees and employers on how to navigate their relations and in the final folder, there is one booklet publicizing demands of domestic workers.

The Household Employment Subcommittee of the YWCA

The Household Employment Subcommittee of the National Industrial Committee of the YWCA (The Subcommittee) was in existence from 1929-1940. The Subcommittee, like the NCHE, created contracts specifying minimum standards in order to mediate the employer-employee relationship. They envisioned harmony between workers and employers by “educating employers about how management responsibilities would balance training programs for workers and make the home a model workplace” (Palmer, 116).

Each state’s committee operated differently, offering model contracts based on state minimum wages, and different types of classes for domestic workers seeking work. They also did a lot of work collecting data to gauge what the average workday and salaries were. The contracts that the Subcommittee put forth were met with a lot of push back from housewives who did not want interference from a third party in their home, similar to the experience of the NCHE.

This organization is extremely similar to the NCHE, with goals of using contracts to mediate the employee-employer relationship. The Subcommittee fell short because in an effort to find domestic workers jobs they tried to make them appealing to employers instead of advocating for domestic worker’s rights. The documents from the state Subcommittees can be found in boxes 493, 494 and 495 in the SSC.

Source:

Palmer, Phyllis. Domesticity and Dirt: Housewives and Domestic Servants in the United States, 1920-1945. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989.

The National Committee on Household Employment

The National Committee on Household Employment (NCHE) was founded in October of 1928 during a conference organized by Lucy Carner, executive director of the YWCA’s industrial division and former teacher at the Bryn Mawr summer school for women workers. The NCHE is not a part of the YWCA but an organization made up of several groups, including the YWCA.

While the conference in 1928 consisted of mainly housewives’ organizations, Carner made a point to invite one worker representative from the YWCA to their first conference and then more to their other conferences. The NCHE held several conferences throughout the years to advocate for domestic workers and as a result, they experienced resistance from employers a lot of the time. When trying to establish contracts with minimum wages and work hours, employers stated that they wanted the NCHE to understand that the relationship between the employer and employee was a personal one and therefore did not want the NCHE to get “too scientific” when setting standards (Palmer, 117). The NCHE was successful in bringing employers to its meetings and conferences, and in making efforts to listen to and educate them.

The documents from this conference can be found in Box 493 in the SSC. This conference really shows the ways in which the YWCA and NCHE fell short in incorporating the voices of domestic workers in the conference. The conference was intended to discuss domestic workers’ rights, but only one domestic worker was invited to the first conference. The organization ran from 1928 to 1942 and then was recreated later, working to shift its focus from employers to the rights of domestic workers. The goals of the organization were to mediate the relationships with employers and employees through creating contracts. While this was successful, they fell short because they prioritized the voices of the employers.

Sources:

Palmer, Phyllis. Domesticity and Dirt:Housewives and Domestic Servants in the United States, 1920-1945. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989.

Nadasen, Premilla. Household Workers Unite The Untold Story of African American Women Who Built a Movement. Boston: Beacon Press, 2015.

Brief History of the YWCA

The YWCA started in London, England in 1855, coming to the New York in 1858
The organization was created and supported by white middle-class women, most of whom were financially supported by their husbands.
The YWCA services were targeted working class women.
The YWCA provided services such as job trainings and employment services as well as resources like gyms, libraries and inexpensive restaurants.
The YWCA started engaging in advocating for protective labor legislation and other reforms in 1904. They never took a stance on protective labor legislation for domestic work, but worked to understand the pros and cons of both sides for workers and employers alike.
The YWCA focused much activism on relations between workers and employers, serving as a bridge between domestic workers and their employers by advocating for both groups.
The YWCA helped to find employment for domestic workers, which they interpreted as meaning that they should help make workers more appealing to employers.
The YWCA only served white women until 1889 when the first African American branch was open in, Dayton, Ohio,
In 1890 a branch for Native American Women was opened in Oklahoma.
Because women of color were marginalized in mainstream political arenas, white women engaged in the political work while women of color focused more on programming in their organizations.
The Harlem and Brooklyn Branches (both segregated for African American women) began to hold training programs for domestic workers in the early 1930s, being the first branches to develop such services.
While the African American branches of the YWCA were the first to support and provide for domestic workers, other chapters soon caught on and began to work with other organizations that were working with domestic workers such as the Domestic Workers Union (DWU) and the Urban League.

Sources:

“History,” Young Women’s Christian Association.

Wolfe, Lahle. “The History and Impact of the YWCA on Women’s Rights,” The Balance. Sept. 14 2016.

May, Vanessa H. Unprotected Labor Household Workers, Politics, and Middle-Class Reform in New York, 1870-1940. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.