The Harvey Girls were an important part of opening the American West in the late nineteenth century. Fred Harvey, a British entrepreneur, started a chain of restaurants along the railroad, and he hired educated young women to serve the restaurant patrons, thereby establishing the Harvey Girls.
The young women were vital to the Harvey House Company, and the benefits were mutual. At a time when women had few opportunities to work or to leave the family before they were married, the Harvey Company offered new opportunities: job training, good pay, and more adventurous lives for women who would never have dreamed they could go off on their own.
Fred Harvey established Harvey Houses in partnership with the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad. By the turn of the twentieth century, his restaurants and hotels stretched all the way to California.
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Good Service
Fred Harvey worked in the restaurant business briefly before the start of the Civil War. The military conflict brought his St. Louis-based restaurant career to a quick end, and he took a job as a railroad freight agent, which required a great amount of train travel. As he dined at the less-than-stellar eating establishments near rail stations, he saw the need for decent places for passengers to eat. (Only luxury trains would have had dining cars.)
The places he ate were often unclean, the food was bad, and the waiters were surly. He also noted that some of the restaurants ran a scam. The food was ordered as the customers came in, and they had to pay for the food at the same time. The restaurant staff then slow-marched the meal so that it wasn’t ready before the passenger’s train departed. People had to run for the trains without having eaten their meals.
Harvey felt there was money to be made in running exemplary establishments. He proposed his idea to the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad. They agreed to a partnership arrangement for restaurants, hotels, and tourist shops.
Harvey’s goal was excellent food prepared promptly, delivered by a polite and caring wait staff.
Harvey Girls
At the time Fred Harvey started his business, men were customarily hired as waiters. However, Harvey quickly tired of the waiters he hired in the beginning. They took little pride in their work, and it was difficult to train them. He told the staff at his headquarters in Kansas City to start interviewing young women.
His plan was to hire single, educated young women of “good character,” to serve as waitresses. He hoped for girls who finished 8th grade and were neat and well-spoken. He placed ads in publications in the midwest and along the east coast. The ads encouraged women between the ages of 18 and 30 to apply to work for the Harvey Company.
Harvey created a rigorous training program. The women spent approximately two weeks learning the “Harvey Way” before being sent out on the job.
Harvey Girls Contracts
The contract the women signed with the company had two requirements. The first had to do with the length of their service. If the company was to train them, Harvey wanted a guarantee that they would stay on the job for a certain period of time. He offered six-month, nine-month, and a few one-year contracts.
The other requirement was that they would not marry during their first year on the job. (They also weren’t supposed to fraternize with co-workers, though there were some secret romances.)
As part of their compensation package, they were given room and board as well as a paycheck. They were expected to follow Harvey House rules which included a curfew for each location.
Contracts Often Renewed
At the end of that term, Fred Harvey provided each employee with an all-expenses train ticket home. The women could take as long a leave as they wanted. Some planned their breaks so they could be home to help with a harvest. Others were just glad to have a vacation from what was very hard work.
While there were no requirements to return, many Harvey girls did so. They were often permitted to pick their own location. Many went back to the same place they worked; others looked for adventure and wanted to see more of the world. Some of the locations became quite enticing. Many employees were intrigued by Santa Fe, parts of California, and the tourist locations near the Grand Canyon.
Difficult Work
The work was hard. The customers arrived and departed en masse. The atmosphere was busy, trays were heavy, and inevitably there were some spills and/or breakage.
At most train depots, the women served at least two and sometimes three meals a day. Because all the diners arrived and left at the same time, the Harvey House employees were under great stress to get the food prepared and set up correctly.
At most stations, thirty minutes after arrival, “all aboard” was called. The passengers were off to the next stop.
Excellent Opportunities
For the girls/women, the Fred Harvey Company offered an unparalleled opportunity. Many of the girls were from farms where they were expected to work with the family until marrying and having a home of their own.
One young woman is quoted on the National Park Service website as saying: I was 17 years old, and I had never been over 50 miles away from home…there were no jobs where I lived…[Taking a job with the Harvey House] was the smartest thing that I could have done at that time.”
Some 100,000 Harvey Girls came west between 1883 and the late 1950s, according to The Harvey Girls: Women who Opened the West, by Leslie Poling-Kempes. By the 1950s, train travel had fallen off and people were driving and a few flying. This led to closures of many restaurants.
Uniforms
The prototype for the first uniform consisted of a long black dress (no more than 8 inches above the floor), worn with a starched white bib apron, opaque black stockings, and black shoes. The women’s hair was in an up-do covered with a hairnet and finished off with a white ribbon.
Each woman was provided with several uniforms, for which they were responsible. If a waitress got a food stain in her dress or apron, she was to change to one of her back-up uniforms and return to the dining room.
Financial Independence
From the beginning, most women arranged to send most of their pay checks home. This became even more important during the Great Depression. Many families faced hard times, and the extra money that could be made by a Harvey Girl really helped.
Tipping was very much in practice at that time, but the amount the girls could earn through gratuities depended on the town as well as the times.
A few took advantage of other opportunities for investment. By 1850, women could become homesteaders. As women spread throughout the West, the land ownership numbers began to change.
Harvey House also offered job security. If a location closed for some reason, the employees at that Harvey House would be moved elsewhere.
Excitement Came With the Job
As the AT & SF became one of the main lines carrying people to Los Angeles and the West Coast, this created excitement for the Harvey House girls. There were many days when Hollywood stars traveled by train, and it was not unusual for famous people to disembark to send a telegram or get a meal.
Charles Lindbergh was a regular as he was hired to help a company that was putting together an air-rail transportation system. Albert Einstein, Will Rogers, Shirley Temple, Jackie Coogan, Mary Pickford, Frank Sinatra, Gene Autry, Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, Alan Ladd, Bob Hope, Ed McMahon, and Delores del Rio were some of the big names that came through.
Of course, the staff found this exciting, but so too, did the townspeople who often came down to the station when a train was coming in. The Harvey Girls themselves became famous when MGM made a musical movie, The Harvey Girls, starring Judy Garland. Of course, the Hollywood vision of the lives of the Harvey staff was much more glamorous than the reality, but it still brought welcome attention to the company.
Cultural Tourism
As the railroads took passengers into new parts of the West, Fred Harvey saw that passengers were curious. Where were they? What was the surrounding area like, and were there really Indians? He soon had HarveyCars taking people on tours of the area.
In his restaurants in the Southwest, he loosened the uniform requirements. Some women working in Santa Fe, Arizona, and California, were given colorful Mexican skirts to wear with white tops. It added a festive air in those dining rooms.
Initially the Harvey Company hired only white women, but over time, their policy changed. Part of it was the expansion into the southwest. Some Native Americans and Latinos were hired. The pace of this hiring changed when World War II began. There were more jobs than available people at that time.
Decline of Harvey Girls
By the 1930s, the Depression slowed the number of passengers taking trains. The trains that existed were faster and more luxurious. Trains like the Chief and Super Chief did not need to stop as frequently, and most now had dining car service. Harvey House supervised many of the dining cars. However, they could do so with a fraction of the staff that was required to operate a full restaurant..
With the changes in train travel and the increase in automobile sales, dozens of Harvey House locations along the railroad closed. The Fred Harvey Company looked for other sources of income.
The loss of a Harvey House restaurant was a factor mourned in most communities. It meant that the trains would not be stopping as frequently. The change took work away from locals, and generally left a commercial hole in the center of the community.
World War II: Small Revival
During World War II there was an uptick in jobs around some of the closed restaurants. As the military began to move soldiers via train, some of the Harvey Houe restaurants re-opened. This time the service was not on fine china and linen tablecloths. Long tables were set up to feed the men quickly, and service was cafeteria-style. While many of the Harvey Girls were hired back for these jobs, the company also hired “troop-train girls” to help out.
In communities where Harvey House restaurants were still operating, this was a big blow to their local customers. The military took precedent, and Harvey House had to comply. At several locations, the management sent out heart-felt letters to customers. The letters explained why they wouldn’t be able to serve locals during this time.
Harvey Girls Changed the West
Fred Harvey’s creation of the Harvey Girls was an important step forward for women. Because Harvey was a stickler for good service, his efforts changed the nature of roadside hospitality as well. The Harvey Girls were all a part of what was an exciting time of growth and change in our country.