Expectations, Great & Small

Marine Lewis, a Choctaw girl from Mississippi, quit school four years ago at the age of 15 and then just stayed home. "Mostly," she says, "I slept."

Now Marine is part of a Federal Government effort to awaken her -- and girls like her. She is a volunteer at the new Women's Job Corps Center in Cleveland that was getting organized last week with a 46-girl vanguard from ten states--20 Negroes, 15 whites, nine American Indians and two Puerto Ricans. Soon the Cleveland installation will number 325, all between 16 and 21, out of school and out of work and, until the Federal anti-poverty program came along, out of prospects.

For the Women's Job Corps, along with the already established male Job Corps, Congress has appropriated $190 million (the girls in Cleveland will cost the Government an estimated $6,200 apiece for the first year). By the end of June, five girls' centers, all in cities, will be operating. They will accommodate about 1,100 girls, compared with the 47 male Job Corps facilities presently housing some 8,900 young men. Congress willing, Job Corps expenditures will go up to $280 million in the new fiscal year, and enrollment by the end of 1966 will be about 100,000. At the beginning of May, there were already 175,000 applicants waiting to be screened.

Girls need the Job Corps more than boys, judging by the latest Labor Department unemployment figures: 13.6% for girls in the 16-to-21 group. 11.9% for boys (the figure for the entire population is 4.9%). Yet four boys apply for every one girl, probably because their family attachments are less strong. The maximum stay for an individual will be two years; the average is expected to be one year.

Simple Pleasures. To a girl who never had anything, least of all expectations, the beginning of life can be new underwear, decent meals and the hope of one day being able to get and hold a job. Many of the girls who came to Cleveland had been frightened by the prospect of their first plane ride (three others going to another center turned back rather than fly). Most feared that they were getting into a kind of reform school. Actually, they will get the regimentation of an old-fashioned girls' boarding school, with supervised general and vocational education, plus training in housekeeping and child rearing.

All liked what they found, if not exactly for all the right reasons. One girl, who explains that she had owned only one tattered pair of panties before, became ecstatic over being able to buy five pairs out of the $75 charge account given each volunteer to supplement her Government-issue wardrobe. The girls will receive an additional $65 allowance for winter clothing later in the year. Recruits also get $30 a month pocket money and $50 a month put aside for when they leave the Job Corps. Out of this $50, the trainees may send up to $25 home, and in that event, the Government matches it.

Of the 46 girls in Cleveland, all but nine arrived with serious dental troubles. Milk was so strange to some that they could not get used to it, insisted on drinking soda pop with their meals, even breakfast. One girl, though, drank three glasses of milk at every meal. Another, who had never tasted broccoli, liked it so much when she tried it that she returned for second and third helpings every time it was on the menu. To still another, mashed potatoes was such a delightful new experience that now she could not get enough of it. Some had never had a bed to call their own, others had never slept on sheets, and some wept with pleasure on seeing their bedrooms. Each girl has two roommates and a bed, closet and dresser to herself.

"Pretty Nice." They were happy talking about their futures. Some, like Marine, know the jobs they want to train for. "I like to take care of little kids," she said. She will probably be trained to work in a nursery. Carmen Velezi, 16, a tiny girl with long black hair, comes from Newark, N.J., and can talk quite intelligently--but only in Spanish. She hopes to learn English well enough to get a job as a secretary or a beautician. Paulette Prentice of Pittsburgh managed to finish high school but couldn't hold even menial jobs. "I'm not too smart," the 19-year-old Negro girl is smart enough to realize. "I want to learn data processing and accounting machines. This is pretty nice. I thought it would be like a correction camp. The people here are nice. The food is wonderful."

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