But, the article continued, the coming of the modern commercial age into the lives of working families had produced great change, and the working man's home had been disrupted. Women and children who normally stayed at home had been cast into factories and mills; the home was no longer the continual primary source for meals and food, as both men and women were remaining absent from the family hearth for greater periods of time. As a result of this basic change in the make-up of the family and of the home, Nitti contended, more people had begun to rely on the restaurant, and its close relative the tavern, as a steady supplier of nutrition and diet. In addition, living conditions in cities of the time were so reprehensible that many quarters for the working classes were scarcely fit enough to sleep in, let alone able to provide a suitable environment for healthy meals. "Thus we see in this class the habit of eating in restaurants is continually on the increase. In large towns, these restaurants, the cost of production of the food they sell, and the price at which they sell it, would form the subject of an interesting study."(3)

   It is not known whether a comprehensive study on this matter was done at Nitti's suggestion or even during his life; certainly the subject of the restaurant as a working class social concern was one which was frequently under discussion at the time and which many of his contemporaries commented on. But what is known is the validity of Nitti's observation: the late 19th century saw, most especially in the United States, the development of a class of restaurants, taverns, lunch counters, and saloons which grew directly from the social needs and demands of the quickly expanding industrial working class, and whose kitchens served a significant function not provided by restaurants before or since, as essential suppliers of daily nutrition, as centers of community and personal identity, and as a focus of relief from the drudgery of life in the new machine age. In addition, these establishments frequently acted as shelters and soup kitchens for the homeless and hungry, and often provided more welfare assistance than most social organizations at the time were capable of. The working class eatery of Victorian America was not the stylized and European based restaurant of the upper classes of that period, nor was it a secondary source of nutrition, a "dining out" luxury that existed primarily as a break from home cooking or self-prepared foods as the modern restaurant of the 21st century does. The "worker's café" instead served as a substitute for the family kitchen, was a main provider of affordable nutrition for thousands of people, and strengthened family and community social bonds which were being shattered by the rapid growth of industrialism.

   What was happening in America to produce the changes that necessitated the rise of this new restaurant that Nitti spoke of? The impact of the industrial revolution, of course, was dramatic but there was a subtly more unique phenomenon happening in conjunction with the onslaught of the factories and sweatshops. In the 1880's and 1890's the flow of immigrants to this country was on the increase;(4) the pre-Civil War record in the year 1854 of 427,833 new entries into America was easily surpassed in 1882 with 788,992 immigrants, and in 1907 the annual count had exceeded the million point at 1,285,349.(5) This new wave of migrants was markedly different from the earlier influx of mostly Northern Europeans, German, & Irish; during the last 40 years of the 1800's immigration to America increased 400%, but the exodus from Great Britain to the States during that time decreased by half. Southern Europeans now made up the bulk of immigrants, their numbers to the New World increasing a hundred times over its earlier rate.(6) Many who arrived after 1880 were labeled "new immigrants" and consisted of many different nationalities, including Poles, Swedes, Italians, Russians, Austrian-Hungarians, various peoples of the Orient, and Greeks.(7) The Greeks, for example, regarded the United States as a reasonable place to settle, and census records show that while in 1900 there were only approximately 8,655 Greeks in the country, in 1907 46,283 Greeks were admitted in that year alone.(8)

   When an immigrant came to America, either one of two consequences occurred: the immigrant adapted to life in a new land and became a naturalized American, or he became disillusioned or homesick and eventually decided to return to his native country. Those who chose to leave would be "reduced to painful saving"(9) of all extra funds in order to pay for the voyage home, and nutrition and food beyond a subsistence level would be severely curtailed to lessen financial expenditures. The malnourished Italian peasant or underweight Polish farmer who arrived in America and did not acclimate himself to his new country would often stay underdeveloped and underfed, his consumption habits never progressing beyond what they were at home; however, the immigrant who easily customized himself to his new community usually gave up all dreams of returning to the Old World and was prone to spending more of his wages on food and nutrition.(10) Thus food became one of the few expenses many new immigrants were willing to commit to, and the consequence of a better diet was a perpetuation of this cycle; a healthier diet meant more energy for labor, more labor meant more wages, and additional wages equaled additional money spent on food and drink. And when the immigrant population, growing quickly stronger and capable, combined with the burgeoning numbers of middle class American workers, an urgent need and desire to feed an increasingly productive and labor oriented society of people was instantly created.

   This vital and important need for the "worker's café" was more than likely being fulfilled in some way by the immigrants themselves. Those who were successful in their pilgrimage to America in the late 19th century usually found initial work through an employment agency and with the help of such organizations as the League for the Protection of Immigrants.(11) Driven by poverty to accept the first possible job, most men started out in "gang work,"(12) with employment in foundries, stock yards, mines, railroads, construction, harvest fields, ice and lumber camps, and other similar physically taxing jobs. The work was considered "undesirable" and the pay was not good.(13) However, from "gang work" and "city jobs" (such as tearing down buildings and janitorial work)(14) the immigrant male would traditionally "graduate" to the proprietorship of a fruit stand or restaurant(15) or a similar food related activity (in most cases displacing "Negro" workers who had traditionally held the monopoly in food-service employment).(16) In 1909, a study of Greek nationals living in Chicago clearly showed the immigrant's influence in this field: of the 956 Greek men who were a part of this study, 105 were waiters or cooks, 83 were owners of ice cream parlors, 55 were restaurant keepers, 24 owned or worked in fruit stores, and 15 were salon keepers and bartenders. Thus out of 956 men, 282, or 29.5% were employed in a restaurant or a food related occupation. The only other fields that employed equivalent numbers of men were "gang work" laborers (195 men) and non-food peddlers (178), two of the positions deemed "undesirable."(17) In Chicago, the Greek presence was strongly felt:

In the bootblack shelter, the restaurant, or the fruit stand the Greek is found waiting upon his American customers. Large numbers of them are serving as peddlers of fruit and vegetables on our streets, and small groups are located in many different parts of the city near their places of business. But the largest central Greek colony is in the neighborhood of Hull House.... Greek newspapers, a Greek church, Greek bakeries, Greek coffee-houses, all varieties of stores, are found in the immediate neighborhood.(18)

   Among other immigrants, such as Serbs, the story was similar. Serb "colonies" in large cities contained Serb restaurants, stores, saloons, and lodge halls(20) and these establishments helped to create and sustain the spirit and dynamics of that immigrant neighborhood.

   If men "graduated" to the food business from less auspicious endeavors, immigrant women usually started out immediately in either domestic service positions or in hotels or restaurants. Using Chicago again as an example, out of 54 employment agencies supplying service to immigrants there in 1909, 35 offered restaurant or hotel positions and 18 of those 35 agencies helped supply jobs to women only.(21)

   Restaurant work in general was on the rise at this time as well. In 1870, the number of people in America who worked as waiters and waitresses was 23,438; by 1900 that number stood at 107,044, an increase over thirty years of 356%. In comparison, the number of men and women employed as domestic servants during that same thirty-year period increased by only 49%.(22)

   While restaurants and the kitchens of hotels supplied work to many people, the living conditions of the working class stimulated the need for eating and dining environments removed from the filth and squalor of overcrowded cities and ghettos. Housing among the poor at this time was described as "unsanitary,"(23) and tenement houses were "divided into monotonous apartments" and were "dark and dirty within."(24) Lodging houses for single men and women were cheap, miserable affairs, where "the bedding is dirty, and the air is indescribably foul."(25) Disease frequently raged through the cramped, overcrowded sections of cities inhabited by the poor: in 1902 bubonic plague, the killer of the European Middle Ages, broke out among the Chinese population of San Francisco, and other Chinese-American communities as far away as Chinatown in New York City expressed concern that the same could happen elsewhere.(26) Under such daily conditions, the need for a healthy source of food in sanitary surroundings was crucial and desperate:

When the poor, underpaid, and unskilled laborer returns from his day's work, go with him, if you will, into the room or rooms he calls home. Eat with him there, in the midst of those squalid surroundings and to the music of crying children, a scanty, poorly cooked meal served by an unkempt wife. Ask yourself if this is just the place where he would want to spend his evenings, night after night; if here he will find the mental stimulus as necessary to his life as to your life.... Are there not places in the neighborhood where the surroundings will be more congenial; where his mental, yes, his moral, nature will have a better chance for development?(27)

   The "worker's café," therefore, sprang from the intercourse of several social events of the time: the industrial revolution created city-based employment, which led to a high population growth in urban areas, with more city-dwellers looking to be fed on a regular basis during their working day and in their evening hours; the rise in immigration after the Civil War also dramatically increased the number or urban residents and workers, and these immigrants frequently found restaurants to be suitable avenues for business ventures and employment; and the poor living conditions for the working class in the cities further punctuated the need for establishments whose objectives were the preparation and selling at reasonable prices fresh and wholesome food and which would also serve as community social clubs. As one commentator of 1896 exclaimed in an impassioned plea:

We are well aware that good, cheap restaurants are among the crying needs of our great towns, and that for want of them thousands of men and women-workers are forced daily to choose between the miserable (and, to so many, indigestible) cold lunch which they may be able to carry from their homes, and the fourth-rate eating house with its ill-cooked, monotonous food, and its incessant temptations to intemperance and demoralization of every kind.(30)

   While taverns and restaurants developed out of an immediate need, Delmonico's was the first restaurant that was "conceived," but although enormously successful (the last of the succeeding eleven Delmonico restaurants closed its doors in 1923)(35) Delmonico's was certainly no "worker's café." Delmonico's served the needs of upper class New Yorkers, but that particular segment of society was vastly outnumbered by the middle and lower working classes. Their cheap restaurants and simple eateries may not have served style and elegance on the menu, but the impact they had on their patrons and on history was more important and vital than any modern, Delmonico-influenced restaurant could ever hope to achieve. Working class restaurants were the lifeblood of the people they served; other, more expensive restaurants were simply a part of the gaudy trappings of the Gilded Age.

   Those working class establishments, whether saloon, tavern, or restaurant, which succeeded in providing wholesome food at reasonable expense did so by simply serving meals which were well cooked and in clean dishes, often garnished with lettuce or parsley.(36) The surroundings were "cheery"(37) and prices were usually established within a specific range. Working class restaurants were often classified by the cost of their meals; for the poorer laborers there were 5-cent restaurants, 10-cent restaurants, and 15-cent restaurants; 20-cent, 25-cent, and 35-cent restaurants served the needs of the middle classes, clerks, and office-men.(38) In Chicago in 1901, on Madison Street alone there were 115 saloons that served food and 53 restaurants. Of the restaurants there were three 5-cent, five 10-cent, and twenty 15-cent restaurants, and seven 20-cent, sixteen 25-cent, and two 35-cent restaurants.(39)

   The United States was not alone in the creation of cheap restaurants designed to fill the basic nutritional needs of the average working person. Cooperative restaurants, or "people's kitchen's"(40) were the European equivalent of the American "worker's café." But while these eating establishments in America developed from an actual need created by the acceleration of the working classes, the reason for their creation in such places as Germany, Austria, France and Switzerland was a bit different. In Europe the motivations were more socialistic in nature, and stemmed from a desire of local officials to see that the working classes were fed nutritional meals at low price. Switzerland had perhaps the finest example of a "people's kitchen" - the Kitchen of Grenoble was established in 1852 and served as a model for similar institutions throughout Europe. In Grenoble, meals were sold cheaply and were considered excellent; local bakers and butchers were selected by the institution and carefully supervised, fresh vegetables were brought in daily, and local, pure wine was served in a limited amount. The work was managed by a committee whose members also took turns performing the kitchen's daily duties; everything was kept scrupulously clean and tidy(41) and the dining rooms were a "school of decency, order, and consideration for others."(42)

   In France the need for a source of adequate and inexpensive food for the students of the University of Paris led to the establishment of a "people's kitchen" called the "Restaurant Cooperatif du Quarter Latin." The restaurant had 50 tables and fed up to 700 meals a day at reduced fees to student members only.(43) (In France today the practice of an affordable restaurant established specifically for the use of students is still prevalent; les restaurants universitaires are subsidized by the French government and provide students with inexpensive meals.)(44)

   Also in Paris was another cooperative restaurant founded by Russian students of both sexes, who took turns waiting on tables and washing dishes,(45) and in Montpelier a restaurant was run by a group of socialist students; in the United States, Harvard University had two such "dining associations."(46) Following the Grenoble example was the "people's kitchen" of Lyons, which served about 1,300 meals a day, while in Geneva, "Cuisines Populaires" served the same sort of foods as in Grenoble and Lyons, but with a greater variety.(47)

   However, like their American counterparts, cheap European restaurants quite often failed pathetically. Restaurants in Naples, Italy, were perceived as being particularly wretched to their customers: "These bettole-taverns are anything but people's kitchens in the modern sense of the expression, that is to say, they do not provide the best nourishment at the lowest possible price; on the contrary, their endeavor is to provide the worst food at the highest possible price." It was from these ill-mannered kitchens that the local workmen and mothers relied on their rations of food.(48)

   The same was true in the States. When working class restaurants and eating establishments were good, they were very, very good, but when they were bad they were absolutely horrid. Not under the same socialistic control as the "people's kitchens" of Europe, the "worker's café" of America was free to be either responsible to the community and its patrons or completely derelict in its function. Unfortunately, all too many times the latter was the case.

   A diner in Chicago reported this on the condition of some restaurants there: "I found four 5-cent restaurants - the meat, bruised beef from a meat market (the owner excused it by saying it was cheaper), was unhealthful. The place in which it was served was too indescribably dirty for mortal man to endure. The others were cleaner, but bare and unattractive." He continued by noting that the "air of poverty about these places is intolerable."(49) Restaurants were found in areas occupied by "miserable, unemployed men" and the "shiftless casual" and were seen as accompaniments to "cheap lodging houses," "cheap theaters,"(50) "low hotels" and "vicious forms of entertainment."(51) Cooking smells from restaurants were considered public nuisances.(52) Saloons and restaurants were also seen as breeding grounds of vice and corruption; in addition to gambling, billiards, and card-playing, many saloons had what was called a "wine-room;" this was a large portion of the back of the building which was used by prostitutes, and "the girls" would also frequent the bar in order to encourage drinking among the men.(53) But not all saloons were sources of sin, and many "wine-rooms" were also used by families for a variety of other reasons, including as a substitute parlor for meeting friends.(54)

   Temperance was a major concern of the day, and restaurants, taverns, and saloons were naturally accused of contributing to the debilitating effects alcohol had on Victorian society. In New York, a tax measure known as the Raines Law went into effect in 1897, designed to curb the consumption of spirits. One stipulation of the law was that restaurants could not serve alcohol with meals on Sundays; however, the prohibition did not apply to hotels, and further state statutes allowed that any business was considered a hotel if it had 10 rooms for lodging and served sandwiches with liquor.(55) Instantly, restaurants "masquerading" as "Raines hotels"(56) sprang up across New York; by December of that same year there had been over 1,700 arrests in New York City for violations of the Raines Law, but only 17 convictions.(57) While the Raines Law had the result of closing a few smaller drinking places, as a measure of temperance reform it was an unsatisfied failure.(58) (In Europe, the "people's kitchens" handled the problem of temperance by limiting the amount of wine served to an individual to one half of a liter.)(59)

   When restaurants themselves failed to supply the needs of their customers adequately, the saloon and tavern quickly moved in to take their place. In Chicago, this was particularly the case, and by 1900 the saloon had virtually superseded the restaurant there in serving food to the working populace. In the Chicago saloon "that air of poverty which unfailingly attends the cheap restaurant and finds its adequate expression in ragged and dirty table linen is here wanting. Instead polished oak tables are used and upon them reposes free an abundance such as to constantly surprise a deleted purse. That the saloon feeds thousands and feeds them well no one will deny who has passed the middle of the day there."(60)

   This situation in Chicago reportedly began in 1871 when saloonkeeper Joseph C. Mackin began serving a free hot oyster with every drink as a means of enticing new customers to his business. Soon the idea spread as quickly as the great fire of Chicago itself had done earlier that year and within a decade the practice was found in saloons and bars across the country.(61) For many people, the free lunch at saloons was practically the entire basis of their food supply.(62) Available for the purchase price of a nickel beer,(63) the lunch could be a veritable feast:

On the free lunch counters are dishes containing bread, several kinds of meats, vegetables, cheeses, etc., to which the men freely help themselves. Red-hots (Frankfurters), clams, and egg sandwiches are dispensed with equal freedom to those who drink and to those who do not. For those desiring a hot lunch, clam chowder, hot potatoes, several kinds of meat, and vegetables are served at tables, nearly always with a glass of beer.(64)

   Not everyone accepted this new function of the saloon without question, however; many temperance advocates saw the free saloon dinner as another way of inducing men to drink, and in New York the Raines Law outlawed all free lunches in licensed places.(67) But the power of the saloon was stronger than law: "In the winter the temptation to eat in the saloon, and take advantage of the hot lunch served free, is beyond the power of common clay to resist."(68) Above all, the saloon offered the average-man what the church and club in his community often could not provide, and what no law could circumvent: a sense of satisfied social need.(69)

   But saloons were not the only way in which eating establishments in Victorian America served as welfare institutions, aiding in the feeding and sheltering of the needy. Many food businesses were actively involved in charity work, and restaurants were created with the specific purpose of providing relief to the unemployed and destitute. In Duleth, which reported 2,000 unemployed in 1894, a cheap restaurant was established, where meals where available from three to five cents.(70) Wheeling, West Virginia, could claim 3,000 out of work in 1894, and was considering soup kitchens as a means of relief.(71) In Chicago during times of crisis, restaurants joined with private individuals in giving away food.(72) In Boston three 5-cent restaurants were established to provide inexpensive meals to the poor; in some cases families were supplied without charge. A "supply kitchen" was formed in Providence, Rhode Island, where food was sold at low rates, such as a plate of beef for three cents, and in Manchester, New Hampshire, a rescue mission furnished meals for five cents and permitted "no one to go away hungry."(73)

   In Denver, a remarkable achievement was the establishment of what was called the Maverick Restaurant, an establishment that answered the "demand for a place, where a good meal of substantial, well-cooked food could be obtained at the minimum price" for "people of scanty means:"

How the Maverick provides the meals, which it furnishes for five cents, is the wonder of all who test the food placed on its tables. 150 guests can be accommodated at a time. The restaurant has been in operation about three months, and has fed an average of 550 people per day. The restaurant pays all its bills from the receipts from the sale of tickets. The employees are each paid $1.25 per week, and given their board and lodging. As fast as they find more remunerative employment, their places are filled from the many applications always waiting for employment.(74)

   In addition to the normally established restaurants were those eating places provided in places of employment for the benefit of their workers. The need to supply adequate food during the work day was met to some degree by most large businesses in the cites, by the use of in-store restaurants or cafés, or by allowing employees to leave the work place to frequent neighborhood eating establishments. (In some cases, serving workers in local restaurants became not necessary but compulsory - in Pennsylvania the Brooks law forced hotel and restaurant keepers to feed the replacement "scab" workers brought in during the infamous Homestead Strike of 1892.)(76) One Chicago department store in 1899 supplied what was called a "free supper," worth about 15 cents.(77) However, in many circumstances both the dining conditions at the place of employment and in the nearby eateries left much to be desired. An employee of the same Chicago department store complained that both the "free supper" and lunch that was offered to her had to "be eaten in great haste. The maximum time allowed, in either case, was thirty minutes, but our instructions were to hurry back." The allowed half-hour for one's meal was "wholly inadequate" and in addition, the dining conditions were deplorable: "The air inside was always foul, and the continual noise was fairly maddening."(78) She also remarked that the "cobwebs and dirt-besmeared floors looked spooky under the flickering glare of insufficient gaslight. The only ventilation came through a foul basement.... A few rough board tables and chairs in a more or less advanced state of ruin were provided, and scores of hungry girls sat around and ate lunches from newspaper parcels and drank coffee from tin cans. It was not a healthful atmosphere..." Reflecting the dingy surroundings of this dining area was the proficient use of "slang of the streets, interspersed with oaths" which "formed the staple medium of communication. A young and innocent newcomer could not fail to feel shocked at what she heard."(79)

   Mealtime in the store was described by this employee as a rushed affair, as she and fellow workers were hustled back to work even before their food was finished. One particular sad meal "consisted of a meat dinner and an oyster stew, the latter of which I always elected with the lingering hope that it had not been made of scraps left from the regular café dinner earlier in the day. The said stew consisted of a bowl of hot milk, in the bottom of which lurked three oysters, except on that memorable day when I found four." Lunch outside the store meant a chance for a breath of fresh air, but it also cost dearly in time and wages: the 10 or 15 cents required for an outside meal and the nearly 15 minute wait to have an order filled were both expenditures the average worker felt personally.(80)

   The department store clerk had a right to complain about the time given to her for meals; a half-hour was "wholly inadequate" even by most standards of the day. In Indiana, state law decreed that no less than 60 minutes would be allowed for noonday meals in factories and workshops; the stipulation applied to both men and women.(81) But half an hour was also the time granted to employees in other Chicago department stores. In one particular business, there was "a good cheap restaurant in the store" where suppers were available "from twenty to thirty cents. Many of the clerks ate two cold lunches a day in order to save the money, while others were quite reckless and bought what they considered dainties." One girl who favored such "dainties" ordered the following lunch one-day:

Plum Pudding with wine sauce - $0.10
Swiss cheese sandwiches - $0.05
Chocolate ice cream - $0.05
Strong coffee - $0.05

   City businesses were not the only places of employment that featured restaurants for its employees; a Portland, Oregon, newspaper from 1909 featured this want ad for harvest workers:

Wanted - 1,000 hop pickers to pick 624 acres of hops; big crop; largest and best-equipped hop yard in Oregon; all on trellis wire; perfect accommodations; grocery store, bakery, butcher shop, barber shop, dancing pavilion 50x150 feet, telephone, physician, beautiful camping ground; 3-acre bathing pool, restaurant, provisions sold at Portland prices.

   Kitchen and restaurant employment was certainly difficult, especially for women. For them, "restaurant work, with its long and irregular hours" was of "a peculiarly tiring order, involving hours of standing, the lifting of heavy weights, and the breathing of overheated or overhumid air."(84) So concerned were some states over the restaurant work women were engaged in that laws were passed regulating their hours of employment in such places; in a 1901 statute in Nebraska, women were not to be employed "before 6 A.M. or after 10 P.M. in any manufacturing, mechanical, mercantile establishment, hotel, or restaurant."(85) Such laws were not entirely effective nor did they exist everywhere; in 1894 a girl of seventeen working in a Glasgow, Scotland, restaurant reportedly had to work 110 hours in her seven-day workweek.(86)

   Waitresses in American restaurants worked long shifts, some as long as 13 hours a day.(87) One woman who worked as a waitress in 1907 complained of being "lame and bruised from head to foot." The bruises came about from endless hours of pushing heavy trays through swinging doors and continually banging against tables and corners.(88) "All day long," she said, "the background of living was an ache.... Our arms ached from finger-tips to shoulders, and our backs and necks were lame from the strain of lifting our trays. Our feet were sore, swollen, and in some cases blistered, from being on them so many hours a day."(89) The job supplied room and board, but the benefits were negligible; her food was usually limited to scarce kitchen leftovers, but for the most part she had little appetite left after "the sight and smell of so much food had destroyed our appetites. We really did not get enough to eat for the work we were doing."(90) Her rare free hours away from work were spent in her lodgings shared with the other waitresses, always too exhausted to care for anything beyond rest. Her dreams were filled with images of "endless processions of knives and forks" and "the reek of hot dishwater," and the completely exhausting and mindless schedule soon had her losing interest in friends, family, and contacts outside the restaurant. Her physical state was such that even proper grooming was considered strenuous: "When one's senses are somewhat dulled, it does not take long to become accustomed to the results of infrequent bathing."(91) The only solution this waitress saw for any woman of her position was to seek an avenue of escape through a "gentleman friend." And as she wryly observed in an afterthought, "It is surprising that so few girls of this class use liquor."(92)

   Conceptions and fancies involving restaurants and the feeding of the working classes reached new heights at this time; after all, if an intellectually conceived restaurant such as Delmonico's could be a critical and financial success, could not the same technique be applied to the development of cheap yet nourishing restaurants, free from sin and vice, and consistent to the temperance ideals of the day? The answer in most cases was a resounding "no." Cooperative kitchens may have worked in Europe, but in America the sense of freedom was too unique for them to have taken hold there in any other situation outside of a university sponsored dining association. But the dreamers did try.

   In Chicago, the Bishop Samuel R. Fallows devised a plan "to adopt the best features of the saloon with the best features of the restaurant, and so blend them that they would have the excellence of both." These inventive conglomerations were to be called "Home Salôns."(93) The Bishop's remarkable plan also included the creation of a non-alcoholic beverage to replace the beer of the saloon; dubbed "Bishop's Beer," it, like the "Home Salôn," was an utter failure. The main complaint against the Bishop's good intentions was that the building chosen to host the salon was "a dingy old hole."(94)

   Also from Chicago came another extraordinary proposal, this one involving the need for adequate housing for immigrant faculty members of the University of Chicago and their families. When sufficient living quarters could not be obtained, an architect and his wife came up with detailed plans on converting an available block near the university into lots for 45 model houses, "with a club house in the center, to contain heating plant, laundry, servant's quarters, and restaurant, which the families could use at their pleasure, or the meals could be delivered by a miniature elevated electric railroad to each family which so preferred." Unbelievably, while the men approved of these plans, their wives did not, for the women declared that "they would remain homeless all their days sooner than consign their children to the unknown evils of a common community back yard." And that apparently settled the matter: "Many of those families have remained wanderers on the face of the earth til the present hour, simply because in the American family man proposes but woman still disposes."(95)

   The working class Victorian American restaurant can perhaps represent in both symbolic and literal terms the condition of the United States during that period. At its best, the "worker's café" was a social phenomenon, springing directly from the need of the people, and fulfilled by them despite government, religious, and upper class misgivings. It was a melting pot of all the cultures, traditions, and faiths which were pouring into America, and it stood for, above all, the average working man and woman. Extraordinarily charitable, its vitality was a reflection of a hard-working, industrious nation. And at its worst, the "worker's café" reflected what was wrong with American society then; an obsession with greed and profits, a neglect of cleanliness and family ideals, and a lack of concern for everyday values, considerations, and niceties. Never again in American history will the restaurant serve the function it did then. The advent of the modern, mechanized home kitchen with stove and refrigerator, and the emergence of commercialized and pre-packaged foods have guaranteed Americans freedom from the complete dependency on sources outside the home for the preparation and consumption of daily nutritious meals and wholesome dinners. The "worker's café," like Victorian America, is gone forever.

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