Word: trafton
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Trinity Community Methodist Episcopal Church in the slum district of East Cambridge. His church is, in effect, a settlement house to which he brings all races and religious. He wrote a personal letter to President Lowell expressing his astonishment that Harvard, with its traditions, should have treated Mrs. Emma Trafton (who lives in a dark, dreary tenement directly in the rear of Mr. Duvall's church) as it did. On December 30, 1929, President Lowell replied as follows...
...Dear Sir: I have inquired into the discharge of Mrs. Emma Trafton from the Widener Library and I find that the Minimum Wage Board has been complaining of our employing women for these purposes at less than thirty-seven cents an hour, and hence the university has felt constrained to replace them with men. Some of them, I hope many of them, will be able to be employed at some other work in the university. (Signed) A. Lawrence Lowell...
...cause for the women's dismissal. He was complaining only about the heartless manner of it. But here was a brusque note from President Lowell announcing that Harvard University would not raise the wages of the cleaning women, from thirty-five cents an hour (which Mr. Duvall knew Mrs. Trafton was receiving at the time of her sudden discharge) to thirty-seven cents to conform to the findings of a State board. Mr. Duvall, when he showed me the letter, asked if I did not agree that the circumstances warranted making it public. Fully appreciative of the ethical problem involved...
...women I interviewed told essentially the same story of their discharge as was told by Mrs. Trafton, who had been an employee of the university for thirteen years. About half of them were peremptorily discharged on November 1 last. The others were discharged without notice on the Saturday before Christmas--"a fine Christmas present", as Mrs. Katharine Donahue ruefully described it. Mrs. Donahue has been in the employ of Harvard for thirty-three years. She said that so far as she has been able to find out the university has neither pension nor compensation protection for its old employees...
...Dear Sir:---I have inquired into the discharge of Mrs. Emma Trafton from the Widener library and I find that the minimum wage board has been complaining of our employing women for these purposes at less than 37 cents an hour and hence the university has felt constrained to replace them with men. Some of them, I hope many of them, will be able to be employed at some other work in the university...