The matter was finally settled by the mayor
himself, who permitted me to drive him to the entrance of the
street in what the children called my "garbage phaeton" and who
took my side of the controversy.
A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, who had done some
excellent volunteer inspection in both Chicago and Pittsburg,
became my deputy and performed the work in a most thoroughgoing
manner for three years. During the last two she was under the
regime of civil service for in 1895, to the great joy of many
citizens, the Illinois legislature made that possible.
Many of the foreign-born women of the ward were much shocked by
this abrupt departure into the ways of men, and it took a great
deal of explanation to convey the idea even remotely that if it
were a womanly task to go about in tenement houses in order to
nurse the sick, it might be quite as womanly to go through the
same district in order to prevent the breeding of so-called
"filth diseases." While some of the women enthusiastically
approved the slowly changing conditions and saw that their
housewifely duties logically extended to the adjacent alleys and
streets, they yet were quite certain that "it was not a lady's
job." A revelation of this attitude was made one day in a
conversation which the inspector heard vigorously carried on in a
laundry.
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