28. attend a Chautauqua

For the second day in a row, we had lunch with a program about Fred Harvey, presented by Bill Worley. Today, the food was worthy of the Harvey House, provided by a caterer. This Chautauqua program was held in conjunction with the Red Hat Pikers meeting and was the largest crowd for a daytime session we have seen yet--many of the attendees were women wearing red hats and purple shirts.

The title of the program was "The Harvey Girls--More than Judy Garland."

We learned that, originally, Harvey House lunch rooms and restaurants, like most at the time, were staffed by men. But they had trouble with men in the small railroad towns in the west--they would go out with the cowboys on Saturday nights and be unfit to work on Sunday mornings. One of the managers had the idea to hire young ladies and train them well. Fred Harvey liked that so much that a few days later he was running an ad for attractive, intelligent, educated women between the ages of 18 and 30.

The classic uniform of the Harvey Girl was a black blouse, black skirt, black shoes and stockings, and a full white apron. The skirt was loose and the hem was 8" from the floor--long enough to be decent at the time and short enough that the women could move quickly as they served passengers during the 30-minute meal stop. Except for the shoes and stockings, the attire was provided and cleaned by the Harvey company.

Harvey Girls signed a 12-month contract. The penalty for breaking it was half pay, but some women broke the contract in order to marry men that they met in their travels. A Harvey Girl who stayed for the entire year was given a bonus, a week's paid vacation and free transportation to anywhere on the railroad line.

The Harvey Girls slept dormitory style in either an adjacent rooming house, in rooms above the train depot, or in back rooms of a Harvey Hotel. Their comings and goings were tightly controlled and curfew was imposed by a matron. This was not only to protect the reputation of the Harvey Girls but also to convince their parents that their daughters would be safe in this career.

The pay for being a Harvey Girl was $17.50 per month plus room and board. They also got to keep tips so the best jobs were on the main lines where the women might serve as many as six meals a day to train passengers. In the busiest locations, the Harvey Girl could double her salary with tips.