Railway Paradise: How a Fine-Dining Empire Made the Southwest Palatable
&gt; &quot;...Then, of course, the restaurants had the tremendous service of the Harvey Girls, who were the face of the operation.” In 1883, Harvey had decided to fire the rowdy male waiters at his restaurant in Raton, New Mexico, and hire respectable young women in their place. Customers responded so positively to the female staff that Harvey began replacing all of his company’s male servers, advertising for women employees in newspapers throughout the Midwestern and Eastern states. Unlike much of the Eastern United States, in small Western outposts, it was acceptable for single young women to work and live away from their parents—though they were often stigmatized as being prostitutes or sexually promiscuous. Harvey had no trouble finding suitable young women, despite the perception that the Wild West would scare them off. In fact, many women jumped at the opportunity for economic independence, adventure, and travel in an era when their prospects were greatly limited. “A lot of them came for the chance to see a different part of the country,” Melzer says. “After six months at a Harvey House, you could be transferred, so even if you started in a small place like Belen, New Mexico, you might eventually get to Santa Fe or to the Grand Canyon. Others came for the money, hoping to send it home to their families, save for their education, or maybe open a business themselves someday.”...Despite the often-patronizing rules, women working for Fred Harvey developed a kind of collegiate sisterhood, a community that maintained its bonds long after members had quit working as Harvey Girls. “I read the obituaries every day, and when a former Harvey Girl dies, they always mention it,” Melzer says. “It’s like being in the Green Berets—it was something they were really proud of because it was respected and admired.”<p>This is an interesting example of taste-based discrimination vs statistical discrimination. To see whether instances of discrimination represent mere prejudice or rational decision-making, one can simply ask: could you make money by not engaging in that discrimination? As Alan Greenspan discovered in hiring women in the &#x27;60s, and Harvey in the 1880s, the answer in their eras was: yes. So it was taste-based discrimination &#x2F; sexism.