Explain why immigrant girls could not get jobs as
teachers when American girls could. Then, explain
what the immigrant girls did instead.
The Bohemian and Scandinavian girls could not get
positions as teachers, because they had had no
opportunity to learn the language. Determined to help in
the struggle to clear the homestead from debt, they had
no alternative but to go into service. Some of them, after
they came to town, remained as serious and as discreet in
behaviour as they had been when they ploughed and
herded on their father's farm. Others, like the three
Bohemian Marys, tried to make up for the years of youth
they had lost. But every one of them did what she had set
out to do, and sent home those hard-earned dollars. The
girls I knew were always helping to pay for ploughs and
reapers, brood-sows, or steers to fatten.
One result of this family solidarity was that the foreign
farmers in our county were the first to become
prosperous.
--My Antonia,
Willa Cnther