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MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET
The Income and Outlay of New York Working Girls
by
SUE AINSLIE CLARK and EDITH WYATT
New York
The Macmillan Company
1911
[Illustration: Photograph by Lewis Hine]
TO
FLORENCE KELLEY
THIS BOOK
IS DEDICATED
PREFACE
This book is composed of the economic records of self-supporting women
living away from home in New York. Their chronicles were given to the
National Consumers' League simply as a testimony to truth; and it is
simply as a testimony to truth that these narratives are reprinted here.
The League's inquiry was initiated because, three years ago in the study
of the establishment of a minimum wage, only very little information was
obtainable as to the relation between the income and the outlay of
self-supporting women workers. The inquiry was conducted for a year and a
half by Mrs. Sue Ainslie Clark, who obtained the workers' budgets as they
were available from young women interviewed in their rooms, boarding
places, and hotels, and at night schools and clubs. After Mrs. Clark had
collected and written these accounts, I supplemented them further in the
same manner; and rearranged them in a series of articles for Mr. S.S.
McClure. The budgets fell naturally into certain industrial divisions;
but, as will be seen from the nature of the inquiry, the records were not
exhaustive trade-studies of the several trades in which the workers were
engaged. They constituted rather an accurate kinetoscope view of the
yearly lives of chance passing workers in those trades. Wherever the
facts ascertained seemed to warrant it, however, they were so focussed as
to express definitely and clearly the wisdom of some industrial change.
In two instances in the course of the serial publication of the budgets
such industrial changes were undertaken and are now in progress. The firm
of Macy & Co. in New York has inaugurated a monthly day of rest, with
pay, for all permanent women-employees who wish this privilege. The
change was made first in one department and then extended through a plan
supplied by the National Civic Federation to all the departments of the
store.
The Manhattan Laundrymen's Association, the Brooklyn Laundrymen's
Association, and the Laundrymen's Association of New York State held a
conference with the Consumers' League after the publication of the
Laundry report, and asked to cooperate with the League in obtaining the
establishment of a ten-hour day in the trade, additional factory
inspection, and the placing of hotels and hospital laundries under the
jurisdiction of the Department of Labor. Largely through the efforts of
the Laundrymen's Association of New York State, a bill defining as a
factory any place where laundry work is done by mechanical power passed
both houses of the last legislature at Albany. A standard for a fair
house was discussed and agreed upon at the conference. It is the
intention of the League to publish within the year a white list of the
New York steam laundries conforming to this standard in wages, hours, and
sanitation.
The New York of the workers is not the New York best known to the country
at large. The New York of Broadway, the New York of Fifth Avenue, of
Central Park, of Wall Street, of Tammany Hall,--these are by-words of
common reference; and when two years ago the daily press printed the news
of the strike of thirty thousand shirt-waist makers in the metropolis,
many persons realized, perhaps for the first time, the presence of a new
and different New York--the New York of the city's great working
population. The scene of these budgets is a corner of this New York.
The authors of the book are many more than its writers whose names appear
upon the title-page. The second chapter is chiefly the word-of-mouth tale
of Natalya Perovskaya, one of the shirt-waist workers, a household tale
of adventure repeated just as it was told to the present writer and to
her hostess' family and other visitors during a call on the East Side on
a warm summer evening. The sixth chapter is almost entirely the
contribution of Miss Carola Woerishofer, Miss Elizabeth Howard Westwood,
and Miss Mary Alden Hopkins, three young college-bred women from Bryn
Mawr, Smith, and Wellesley, respectively, who made an inquiry for the
National Consumers' League in the hospital, hotel, and commercial steam
laundries of New York. The fifth chapter is composed largely from a
chronicle of the New York cloak makers' strike written by Dr. Henry
Moskowitz, one of the most efficient leaders in attaining the final
settlement last fall between the employers and the seventy thousand
members of the Cloak Makers' Union. Mr. Frederick Winston Taylor gave the
definition of "Scientific Management" which prefaces the last chapter. It
is a pleasure to acknowledge help of several kinds received from Mrs.
Florence Kelley, Miss Perkins, and Miss Johnson of the Consumers' League;
from Miss Neumann, of the Woman's Trade-Union League; from Miss Pauline
and Josephine Goldmark, and Mr. Louis p. Brandeis; from Miss Willa
Siebert Cather of _McClure's Magazine_; and from Mr. S.S. McClure.
To record rightly any little corner of contemporary history is a communal
rather than an individual piece of work. While no title so pompous as
that of a cathedral could possibly be applied except with great absurdity
to any magazine article, least of all to these quiet, journalistic
records, yet the writing of any sincere journalistic article is more
comparable, perhaps, to cathedral work than to any sort of craft in
expression. If the account is to have any genuine social value as a
narrative of contemporary truth, it will be evolved as the product of
numerous human intelligences and responsibilities. Especially is this
true of any synthesis of facts which must be derived, so to speak, from
many authors, from many authentic sources.
Unstandardized conditions in women's work are so frequently mentioned in
the first six chapters that their connection with the last chapter will
be sufficiently clear. What is the way out of the unstandardized and
unsatisfactory conditions obtaining for multitudes of women workers?
Legislation is undoubtedly one way out. Trade organization is undoubtedly
one way out. But legislation is ineffectual unless it is strongly backed
by conscientious inspection and powerful enforcement. In the great
garment-trade strikes in New York, in spite of their victories, the trade
orders have gone in such numbers to other cities that neither the spirit
of the shirt-waist makers' strike nor the wisdom of the Cloak Makers'
Preferential Union Agreement have since availed to provide sufficient
employment for the workers. Further, neither legislation nor trade
organization are permanently valuable unless they are informed by justice
and understanding. In the same manner, unless it is informed by these
qualities, the new plan of management outlined in the last chapter is
incapable of any lasting and far-reaching industrial deliverance. But it
provides a way out, hitherto untried. With an account of this way as it
appears to-day our book ends, as a testimony to living facts can only
end, not with the hard-and-fast wall of dogma, but with an open door.
EDITH WYATT.
CHICAGO, March 19, 1911.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK SALESWOMEN
CHAPTER II
THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS' STRIKE
CHAPTER III
THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK FACTORY WORKERS.
(UNSKILLED AND SEASONAL WORK)
CHAPTER IV
THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK FACTORY WORKERS.
(MONOTONY AND FATIGUE IN SPEEDING)
CHAPTER V
THE CLOAK MAKERS' STRIKE AND THE PREFERENTIAL UNION SHOP
CHAPTER VI
WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK
CHAPTER VII
SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT AS APPLIED TO WOMEN'S WORK
CHAPTER I
THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK SALESWOMEN
I
One of the most significant features of the common history of this
generation is the fact that nearly six million women are now gainfully
employed in this country. From time immemorial, women have, indeed,
worked, so that it is not quite as if an entire sex, living at ease at
home heretofore, had suddenly been thrown into an unwonted activity, as
many quoters of the census seem to believe. For the domestic labor in
which women have always engaged may be as severe and prolonged as
commercial labor. But not until recently have women been employed in
multitudes for wages, under many of the same conditions as men,
irrespective of the fact that their powers are different by nature from
those of men, and should, in reason, for themselves, for their children,
and for every one, indeed, be conserved by different industrial
regulations.
What, then, are the fortunes of some of these multitudes of women
gainfully employed? What do they give in their work? What do they get
from it? Clearly ascertained information on those points has been meagre.
About two years ago the National Consumers' League, through the
initiative of its Secretary, Mrs. Florence Kelley, started an inquiry on
the subject of the standard of living among self-supporting women workers
in many fields, away from home in New York. Among these workers were
saleswomen, waist-makers, hat makers, cloak finishers, textile workers in
silk, hosiery, and carpets, tobacco workers, machine tenders, packers of
candy, drugs, biscuits, and olives, laundry workers, hand embroiderers,
milliners, and dressmakers.
The Consumers' League had printed for this purpose a series of questions
arranged in two parts. The first part covered the character of each
girl's work--the nature of her occupation, wages, hours, overtime work,
overtime compensation, fines, and idleness. The second part of the
questions dealt with the worker's expenses--her outlay for shelter, food,
clothing, rest and recreation, and her effort to maintain her strength
and energy. In this way the League's inquiry on income and outlay was so
arranged as to ascertain, not only the worker's gain and expense in
money, but, as far as possible, her gain and expense in health and
vitality. The inquiry was conducted for a year and a half by Mrs. Sue
Ainslie Clark.[1]
The account of the income and outlay of self-supporting women away from
home in New York may be divided, for purposes of record, into the
chronicles of saleswomen, shirt-waist makers, women workers whose
industry involves tension, such as machine operatives, and women workers
whose industry involves a considerable outlay of muscular strength, such
as laundry workers.
Among these the narrative of the trade fortunes of some New York
saleswomen is placed first. Mrs. Clark's inquiry concerning the income
and outlay of saleswomen has been supplemented by portions of the
records of another investigator for the League, Miss Marjorie Johnson,
who worked in one of the department stores during the Christmas rush of
1909-1910.
Further informal reports made by the shop-girls in the early summer of
1910 proved that the income and expenditures of women workers in the
stores had remained practically unchanged since the winter of Mrs.
Clark's report.
So that it would seem that the budgets, records of the investigator, and
statements given by the young women interviewed last June may be
reasonably regarded as the most truthful composite photograph obtainable
of the trade fortunes of the army of the New York department-store girls
to-day.[2]
The limitations of such an inquiry are clear. The thousands of women
employed in the New York department stores are of many kinds. From the
point of view of describing personality and character, one might as
intelligently make an inquiry among wives, with the intent of
ascertaining typical wives. The trade and living conditions accurately
stated in the industrial records obtained have undoubtedly, however,
certain common features.
Among the fifty saleswomen's histories collected at random in stores of
various grades, those that follow, with the statements modifying them,
seem to express most clearly and fairly, in the order followed, these
common features--low wages, casual employment, heavy required expense in
laundry and dress, semidependence, uneven promotion, lack of training,
absence of normal pleasure, long hours of standing, and an excess of
seasonal work.
One of the first saleswomen who told the League her experience in her
work was Lucy Cleaver, a young American woman of twenty-five, who had
entered one of the New York department stores at the age of twenty, at a
salary of $4.50 a week.
II
In the course of the five years of her employment her salary had been
raised one dollar. She stood for nine hours every day. If, in dull
moments of trade, when no customers were near, she made use of the seats
lawfully provided for employees, she was at once ordered by a
floor-walker to do something that required standing.
During the week before Christmas, she worked standing over fourteen hours
every day, from eight to twelve-fifteen in the morning, one to six in
the afternoon, and half past six in the evening till half past eleven at
night. So painful to the feet becomes the act of standing for these long
periods that some of the girls forego eating at noon in order to give
themselves the temporary relief of a foot-bath. For this overtime the
store gave her $20, presented to her, not as payment, but as a Christmas
gift.
The management also allowed a week's vacation with pay in the summer-time
and presented a gift of $10.
After five years in this position she had a disagreement with the
floor-walker and was summarily dismissed.
She then spent over a month in futile searching for employment, and
finally obtained a position as a stock girl in a Sixth Avenue suit store
at $4 a week, a sum less than the wage for which she had begun work five
years before. Within a few weeks, dullness of trade had caused her
dismissal. She was again facing indefinite unemployment.
Her income for the year had been $281. She lived in a large, pleasant
home for girls, where she paid only $2.50 a week for board and a room
shared with her sister. Without the philanthropy of the home, she could
not have made both ends meet. It was fifteen minutes' walk from the
store, and by taking this walk twice a day she saved carfare and the
price of luncheon. She did her own washing, and as she could not spend
any further energy in sewing, she bought cheap ready-made clothes. This
she found a great expense. Cheap waists wear out very rapidly. In the
year she had bought 24 at 98 cents each. Here is her account, as nearly
as she had kept it and recalled it for a year: a coat, $10; 4 hats, $17;
2 pairs of shoes, $5; 24 waists at 98 cents, $23.52; 2 skirts, $4.98;
underwear, $2; board, $130; doctor, $2; total, $194.50. This leaves a
balance of $86.50. This money had paid for necessaries not
itemized,--stockings, heavy winter underwear, petticoats, carfare,
vacation expenses, every little gift she had made, and all recreation.
She belonged to no benefit societies, and she had not been able to save
money in any way, even with the assistance given by the home. So much for
her financial income and outlay.
After giving practically all her time and force to her work, she had not
received a return sufficient to conserve her health in the future, or
even to support her in the present without the help of philanthropy. She
was ill, anæmic, nervous, and broken in health.
Before adding the next budget, two points in Lucy Cleaver's outlay
should, perhaps, be emphasized in the interest of common sense. The first
is the remarkable folly of purchasing 24 waists at 98 cents each. In an
estimate of the cost of clothing, made by one of the working girls' clubs
of St. George's last year,[3] the girls agreed that comfort and a
presentable appearance could be maintained, so far as expenditure for
waists was concerned, on $8.50 a year. This amount allowed for five
shirt-waists at $1.20 apiece, and one net waist at $2.50.
In extenuation of Lucy Cleaver's weak judgment as a waist purchaser, and
the poor child's one absurd excess, it must, however, be said that the
habit of buying many articles of poor quality, instead of fewer articles
of better quality, is frequently a matter, not of choice, but of
necessity. The cheap, hand-to-mouth buying which proves paradoxically so
expensive in the end is no doubt often caused by the simple fact that
the purchaser has not, at the time the purchase is made, any more money
to offer. Whatever your wisdom, you cannot buy a waist for $1.20 if you
possess at the moment only 98 cents. The St. George's girls made their
accounts on a basis of an income of $8 a week. Lucy Cleaver never had an
income of more than $5.50 a week, and sometimes had less. The fact that
she spent nearly three times as much as they did on this one item of
expenditure, and yet never could have "one net waist at $2.50" for festal
occasions, is worthy of notice.
The other point that should be emphasized is the fact that she did her
own washing. The more accurate statement would be that she did her own
laundry, including the processes, not only of rubbing the clothes clean,
but of boiling, starching, bluing, and ironing. This, after a day of
standing in other employment, is a vital strain more severe than may
perhaps be readily realized. Saleswomen and shop-girls have not the
powerful wrists and muscular waists of accustomed washerwomen, and are in
most instances no better fitted to perform laundry work than washerwomen
would be to make sales and invoice stock. But custom requires exactly the
same freshness in a saleswoman's shirt-waist, ties, and collars as in
those of women of the largest income. The amount the girls of the St.
George's Working Club found it absolutely necessary to spend in a year
for laundering clothes was almost half as much as the amount spent for
lodging and nearly two-thirds as much as the amount originally spent for
clothing.
Where this large expense of laundry cannot be met financially by
saleswomen, it has to be met by sheer personal strength. One
department-store girl, who needed to be especially neat because her
position was in the shirt-waist department, told us that sometimes, after
a day's standing in the store, she worked over tubs and ironing-boards at
home till twelve at night.
It is worth noting, as one cause of the numerous helpless shifts of the
younger salesgirls, that, living, as most of them do, in a
semidependence, on either relatives or charitable homes, it is almost
impossible for them to learn any domestic economy, or the value of money
for living purposes. It seems significant that quite the most practical
spender encountered among the saleswomen was a widow, Mrs. Green, whose
accounts will be given below, who was for years the manager of her own
household and resources, and not a wage-earner until fairly late in life.
This helplessness of a semidependent and uneducated girl may be further
illustrated by the chronicle of Alice Anderson, a girl of seventeen, who
had been working in the department stores for three years and a half.
She was at first employed as a check girl in a Fourteenth Street store,
at a wage of $2.62-1/2 a week; that is to say, she was paid $5.25 twice a
month. Her working day was nine and a half hours long through most of the
year. But during two weeks before Christmas it was lengthened to from
twelve to thirteen and a half hours, without any extra payment in any
form. She was promoted to the position of saleswoman, but her wages still
remained $2.62-1/2 a week. She lived with her grandmother of eighty,
working occasionally as a seamstress, and to her Alice gave all her
earnings for three years.
It was then considered better that she should go to live with an aunt, to
whom she paid the nominal board of $1.15 a week. As her home was in West
Hoboken, she spent two and a half hours every day on the journey in the
cars and on the ferry. During the weeks of overtime Alice could not reach
home until nearly half past eleven o'clock; and she would be obliged to
rise while it was still dark, at six o'clock, after five hours and a half
of sleep, in order to be at her counter punctually at eight. By walking
from the store to the ferry she saved 30 cents a week. Still, fares cost
her $1.26 a week. This $1.26 a week carfare (which was still not enough
to convey her the whole distance from her aunt's to the store) and the
$1.15 a week for board (which still did not really pay the aunt for her
niece's food and lodging) consumed all her earnings except 20 cents a
week.
Alice was eager to become more genuinely self-dependent. She left the
establishment of her first employment and entered another store on
Fourteenth Street, as cash girl, at $4 a week. The hours in the second
store were very long, from eight to twelve in the morning and from a
quarter to one till a quarter past six in the afternoon on all days
except Saturday, when the closing hour was half past nine.
After she had $4 a week instead of $2.62-1/2, Alice abandoned her daily
trip to West Hoboken and came to live in New York.
Here she paid 6 cents a night in a dormitory of a charitably supported
home for girls. She ate no breakfast. Her luncheon consisted of coffee
and rolls for 10 cents. Her dinner at night was a repetition of coffee
and rolls for 10 cents. As she had no convenient place for doing her own
laundry, she paid 21 cents a week to have it done. Her regular weekly
expenditure was as follows: lodging, 42 cents; board, $1.40; washing, 21
cents; clothing and all other expenses, $1.97; total, $4.
Of course, living in this manner was quite beyond her strength. She was
pale, ill, and making the severest inroads upon her present and future
health. Her experience illustrates the narrow prospect of promotion in
some of the department stores.
III
It is significant in this point to compare the annals of this growing
girl with those of a saleswoman of thirty-five, Grace Carr, who had been
at work for twelve years. In her first employment in a knitting mill she
had remained for five years, and had been promoted rapidly to a weekly
wage of $12. The hours, however, were very long, from ten to thirteen
hours a day. The lint in the air she breathed so filled her lungs that
she was unable, in her short daily leisure, to counteract its effect. At
the end of five years, as she was coughing and raising particles of lint,
she was obliged to rest for a year.
Not strong enough to undertake factory work again, she obtained a
position in the shoe department in one of the large stores, where she was
not "speeded up," and her daily working time of nine hours was less
severe than that of the knitting mill. In summer she had a Saturday
half-holiday. There was a system of fines for lateness; but on the rare
occasions of her own tardiness it had not been enforced. The company was
also generous in grafting five-o'clock passes, which permitted a girl to
leave at five in the afternoon, with no deduction from her wage for the
free hour. She had been with this establishment for six years, earning $6
a week; and she had given up hope of advancing.
Miss Carr said that her work in the shoe department was exhausting,
because of the stooping, the frequent sitting down and rising, and the
effort of pulling shoes on and off. In the summer preceding the fall when
she told of her experience in the store, she had, in reaching for a box
of shoes, strained her heart in some way, so that she lost consciousness
immediately, and was ill for seven weeks. She failed to recuperate as
rapidly as she should have done, because she was so completely
devitalized by overwork.
The firm was very good to her at this time, sending a doctor daily until
she was in condition to go to the country. It then paid her expenses for
two weeks in a country home of the Young Women's Christian Association,
and during the three remaining weeks of her stay paid her full wage. Miss
Carr praised this company's general care of the employees. A doctor and
nurse were available without charge if a girl were ill in the store. A
social secretary was employed.
Miss Carr lived in a furnished room with two other women, each paying a
dollar a week rent. She cared nothing for her fellow-lodgers; her only
reason for spending her time with them in such close quarters was her
need of living cheaply. She cooked her breakfast and supper in the
crowded room, at an expense of $1.95 a week. She said that her "hearty"
meal was a noon dinner, for which she paid in a restaurant 15 cents a
day.
After her experience in the summer, she realized that she should assure
herself of income in case of illness. She joined a benefit society, to
which she paid 50 cents a month. This promised a weekly benefit of $4 a
week for thirteen weeks, and $200 at death. She paid also 10 cents a week
for insurance in another company.
The room was within walking distance of the store, so that she spent
nothing for carfare. The services and social life of a church were her
chief happiness. Besides her contributions to its support, she had spent
only $1 a year on "good times." She did her own washing.
Her outlay in health in these years had been extreme. She was very worn,
thin, and wrinkled with hard work, severe economies, and anxiety,
although she was still in what should have been the prime of life.
Her weekly budget was: lodging, $1; board, $1.95; luncheons, $1.05;
insurance, 21 cents; clothing, contributions to church, occasional
carfare, and other expenses, $1.79; total, $6.
Miss Carr said that her firm was generous in many of its policies, but
she felt it profoundly discouraging not to advance to a wage that would
permit decent living.
In connection with Miss Carr's budget the benefit system of New York
stores should be mentioned. In many of the large department stores,
monthly dues, varying with the wage of the employee, are deducted from
the pay of each, although in many cases she does not know what the return
for the dues is to be. These dues assure to her, while she remains in the
store's employ, a weekly benefit in case of illness, and a death benefit.
But if she leaves the store, or is discharged, the management retains the
amount she has been forced to pay to it, and gives no return whatever in
case of her subsequent sickness or death. While she is in the store's
employ, the sick benefit varies from one-half the girl's wage to a
regular payment of $5 a week for from five to thirteen weeks, according
to the particular rules in each store. The employee must be ill five days
or a week in order to draw it. Otherwise she is docked for absence.
The Mutual Benefit Fund of the New York Association of Working Girls'
Societies has in this respect a better policy than the stores. Members of
the clubs pay 55 cents a month for a benefit of $5 for six weeks in any
one year, and 20 cents a month for a benefit of $3. Cessation of
membership in a club does not terminate connection with the benefit fund,
unless the reason for leaving is unsatisfactory to the board. Women not
members of clubs may, under certain conditions, join the benefit fund as
associate members, and pay 50 cents a month for a benefit of $5 a week,
30 cents for a benefit of $3 a week, or 80 cents for a benefit of $8 a
week. These amounts are severally payable for six weeks in any one year.
A number of the stores have trained nurses and doctors in their employ,
to whom the girls may go if they are ill. Several of the stores have
recreation rooms; several have summer homes; several have employees'
restaurants, where a really nourishing meal can be obtained for 15 cents.
Miss Carr, struggling against overwhelming odds, lived within $6 without
charitable aid. With her experience may be compared those of two other
older saleswomen, who were wholly self-supporting.
Mrs. Green, a shrewd-appearing woman of thirty-five, had been
wage-earning only two years. She began work in Philadelphia in a
commission house as a saleswoman and corset fitter. Here she was able to
save from her salary. She also saved very carefully the wardrobe she had
before she entered business. With these reserves, she came to New York to
work in department stores for the purpose of gaining experience in
salesmanship and a more thorough knowledge of corsets. She expected to be
able to command a high salary as soon as she had thus increased her
competence. She went at first to a new and attractive Sixth Avenue
store, where, working eight hours and a quarter a day, she earned $10 a
week. Laid off at the end of five months, she was idle a month before
finding employment at another Sixth Avenue store.
In applying here she told the employer that she would not work for less
than $12 a week. He offered her $9, and a commission on all sales beyond
$400 a week. She refused, and the firm finally gave her what she asked.
It proved that her choice was wise, for she found that in her very
busiest week, when she was exhausted from the day's rush, her sales never
reached $400 a week, so that she would have received no income at all
from the proffered commission.
She had a small room alone in an attractive hotel for working girls. For
this and breakfasts and dinners she paid $5.10 a week. Luncheons cost, in
addition, about $1.50 a week. She paid 50 cents a week for washing,
besides doing some herself. Riding to and from work nearly every day
increased her weekly expense 50 cents. This left her $4.40 a week for
clothing and sundries.
Mrs. Green seemed extravagantly dressed; she said, however, that she
contrived to have effective waists and hats by making and trimming them
herself, and by purchasing materials with care at sales. In dressing
economically without sacrificing effect she was aided palpably by skill
and deftness.
She was in good health; and, though she did not save, she had not spent,
even in her idle month, any of the reserve fund she had accumulated
before she began to work.
Another self-supporting saleswoman aided by her experience in domestic
economy was Zetta Weyman, a young woman of twenty-eight, who had begun to
work for wages at the age of eleven; at this time she still attended
school, but did housework out of school hours. When she was older, she
was employed as a maid in the house of a very kind and responsive couple,
who gave her free access to their interesting library, where she read
eagerly. A trip to Europe had been especially stimulating. Her employer
was considerate, and tried to make it possible for her to benefit by the
experience.
Throughout this period she had been observant of dress and manner among
the cultured people she saw, and had applied what she learned to her own
dress and conduct. At twenty-six, wishing for larger opportunities than
those she could have in personal service, she obtained work in a
department store at $7 a week. Here she soon advanced to $10 in a
department requiring more than average intelligence. At the end of two
years she was very much interested in her work. It made demands upon her
judgment, and offered opportunity for increasing knowledge and
heightening her value to the company. She expected soon to receive a
larger wage, as she considered her work worth at least $15 a week. Aside
from underpay, she thought she was fairly treated. She greatly
appreciated two weeks' vacation with full wages.
Zetta gave $2.50 a week for a furnished hall bedroom and the use of a
bath-room. The warmth from the single gas-jet was the sole heat. She made
coffee in her room for breakfast; a light luncheon sufficed; and dinner
in a restaurant cost 25 to 35 cents a day. She was often entertained at
dinner, by friends.
She usually rode to work, and walked home, eight blocks, spending thus 30
cents a week carfare. All living expenses for the week came to about $6.
She paid for six years $24 a year on an insurance policy which promised
her $15 a week in case of illness, and was cumulative, making a return
during the life of the holder; $290 would be due from it in about a year.
Zetta said that she was extravagant in her expense for clothing, but she
considered that her social position depended upon her appearance. She was
very attractive looking. Her manner had quiet and grace, and there was
something touching, even moving, in the dignity of her pure, clear
English, acquired in the teeth of a fortune that forced her to be a
little scullion and cook at the age of eleven. She was dressed with taste
and care at the time of the interview. Through watching sales and through
information obtained from heads of departments, she contrived to buy
clothing of excellent quality, silk stockings, and well-cut suits
comparatively cheaply. By waiting until the end of the season, she had
paid $35, the winter before, for a suit originally costing $70; $35 was
more than she had intended to spend, but the suit was becoming and she
could not resist the purchase. She managed to have pretty and
well-designed hats for from $2 to $5, because a friend trimmed them.
She spent her vacation with relatives on a farm in the country. Railroad
fares and the occasional purchase of a magazine were her only
expenditures for pleasure. But she had many "good times" going to the
beaches in the summer with friends who paid her way.
She considered that with careful planning a girl could live in fair
comfort for $10 a week. But she saved nothing.
The drawback she mentioned in her own arrangements--the best she could
obtain for her present wage--was not the cold of her hall bedroom, warmed
only by the gas-jet, but that she had no suitable place for receiving men
friends. She was obliged to turn to trolley rides and walks and various
kinds of excursions,--literally to the streets,--for hospitality, when
she received a man's visit. She spoke frequently of one man with whom she
had many "good times." She could not take him to her room. Trolley
rides, and walks in winter, would pall. She hated park benches as a
resort for quiet conversation. Where, then, was she to see him? Although
she disapproved of it, she and another girl who had a larger and more
attractive room than her own had received men there.
Zetta's income for the year had been $520. She had spent $130 for rent;
$105 for dinners; $55 for breakfasts, luncheons, and washing; $195 for
clothing, summer railway fares, and incidentals; $15 for carfare; and $20
for insurance.
IV
Zetta's interest in her daily occupation is somewhat unusual in the trade
chronicles of the shop-girls. One frequently hears complaint of the
inefficiency and inattention of New York saleswomen and their rudeness to
plainly dressed customers. While this criticism contains a certain truth,
it is, of course, unreasonable to expect excellence from service
frequently ill paid, often unevenly and unfairly promoted, and, except
with respect to dress, quite unstandardized.
Further, it must be remembered that the world in which the shop-girl
follows her occupation is a world of externals. The fortunes, talents,
tastes, eager human effort spent in shop-window displays on Fifth Avenue,
the shimmer and sparkle of beautiful silks and jewels, the prestige of
"carriage trade," the distinction of presence of some of the customers
and their wealth and their freedom in buying--all the worldliness of the
most moneyed city of the United States here perpetually passes before the
eyes of Zettas in their $1.20 muslin waists so carefully scrubbed the
midnight before, and of Alices who have had breakfasts for 10 cents. Is
it surprising that they should adopt the New York shop-window-display
ideal of life manifested everywhere around them?
The saleswomen themselves are the worst victims of their unstandardized
employment; and the fact that they spend long years of youth in work
involving a serious outlay of their strength, without training them in
concentration or individual responsibility or resourcefulness, but
apparently dissipating these powers, seems one of the gravest aspects of
their occupation.
A proud and very pretty pink-cheeked little English shop-girl, with clear
hazel eyes, laid special stress upon unevenness of promotion, in telling
of her fortunes in this country.
She was sitting, as she spoke, in the parlor of a Christian "home,"
which, like that of many others where shop-girls live, was light and
clean, but had that unmistakably excellent and chilling air so subtly
imparted by the altruistic act of furnishing for others--the air that
characterizes spare rooms, hotel parlors, and great numbers of
settlement receiving rooms.
"I had always wanted to come to America," she said in her quick English
enunciation. "And I saved something and borrowed ten pounds of my
brother, and came. Oh, it was hard the first part of the time I was here.
I remember, when I first came in at the door of this house, and
registered, one of the other shop-girls here was standing at the desk. I
had on a heavy winter coat, just a plain, rough-looking coat, but it's
warm. That girl gave me such a look, a sort of sneering look--oh, it made
me hot! But that's the way American shop-girls are. I never have spoken
to that girl.
"I got down to 50 cents before I had a job. There was one store I didn't
want to go to. It was cheap, and had a mean name. One afternoon, when it
was cold and dark, I walked up to it at last; and it looked so horrid I
couldn't go in. There was another cheap store just beyond it, and
another. All the shoppers were hurrying along. Oh, it was a terrible time
that afternoon, terrible, standing there, looking at those big, cheap New
York stores all around me.
"But at last I went in, and they took me on. It wasn't so bad, after all.
In about two months I had a chance to go to a better store. I like it
pretty well. But I can't save anything. I had $8 a week. Now I have $9.
I pay $4.50 a week here for board and lodging, but I always live up to my
salary, spending it for clothes and washing. Oh, I worry and worry about
money. But I've paid back my $50. I have a nice silk dress now, and a new
hat. And now I've got them," she added, with a laugh, "I haven't got
anywhere to wear them to. I look forward to Sunday through the week days;
but when Sunday comes, I like Monday best.
"Though I think it doesn't make much difference how you do in the store
about being promoted. A girl next me who doesn't sell half as much as I
do gets $12 where I have $9; and the commission we have on sales in
Christmas week wasn't given to me fairly. The store is kind in many ways,
and lets the girls sit down every minute when customers aren't there, and
has evening classes and club-rooms. But yet the girls are discouraged
about not having promotions fairly and not having commissions straight.
Right is right."[4]
The charmlessness of existence noticeable in most of the working girls'
homes was emphasized by a saleswoman in the china department of a
Broadway department store, Kate McCray, a pretty young Irishwoman of
about twenty-three, who was visited in a hotel she said she didn't like
to mention to people, for fear they would think it was queer. "You see,
it's a boat, a liner that a gentleman that has a large plantation gave
for a hotel for working girls. It seems peculiar to some people for a
girl to be living on the river."
Miss McCray paid $3.50 a week board at the Maverick Deep-Sea Hotel. Her
salary was $8 a week. She had been in the same department for four years,
and considered it wrong that she received no promotion. She could save
nothing, as she did none of her own washing on account of its inroads of
fatigue, and she was obliged to dress well. She was, however, in
excellent health and especially praised the store's policy of advising
the girls to sit down and to rest whenever no customers were present.
It was misty and raining on the occasion of my visit to the Maverick
Deep-Sea Hotel, a liner anchored in the East River; and Miss McCray
conducted me into the cabin to a large party of boys, elderly women, and
children, most of them visitors like myself, and all listening to a
powerful-wristed youth happily playing, "You'll Come Back and Hang
Around," with heavily accented rag-time, on an upright piano.
"About seventy girls board on this boat. That young lady going into the
pantry now is a stenographer--such a bright girl."
Absorbed in the spectacle of a hotel freedom which permitted a guest to
go to a pantry at will, whatever the force of her brightness, I followed
Miss McCray about the boat. It was as if the hotel belonged to the girls,
while in the Christian homes it had been as if everything belonged, not
to the girls, but to benevolent though carefully possessive Christians.
Miss McCray praised highly the manager and his wife.
"About twenty men and boys stay on a yacht anchored right out here. They
board on this boat, and go to their own boat when the whistle blows at
ten o'clock," she continued, leading me to the smoking-room, where she
introduced a number of very young gentlemen reading magazines and
knocking about gutturally together. They, too, seemed proud of their
position as boarders, proud of the Maverick Deep-Sea Hotel. They were
nice, boyish young fellows, who might have been young mechanicians.
She showed me the top deck with especial satisfaction as we came out into
the fresh, rainy air. The East River shipping and an empty recreation
pier rose black on one side, with the water sparkling in jetted
reflection between; and on the other quivered all the violet and silver
lights of the city. There were perhaps half a dozen tents pitched on
deck.
"Some of the girls sleep outdoors up here," said Miss McCray in her
gentle voice. "They like it so, they do it all winter long. Have plenty
of cover, and just sleep here in the tents. Oh, we all like it! Some of
the men that were here first have married; and they like it so well, they
keep coming back here with their wives to see us. It's so friendly," said
the girl, quietly; "and no matter how tired I am when I come here in the
evening, I sit out on the deck, and I look at the water and the lights,
and it seems as if all my cares float away."
The good humor of the Maverick Deep-Sea Hotel, its rag-time, its boarders
from the yacht, the charm of the row of tents with the girls in them
sleeping their healthful sleep out in the midst of the river wind, the
masts, the chimneys, stars, and city lights, all served to deepen the
impression of the lack of normal pleasure in most of the shop-girls'
lives.
This starvation in pleasure, as well as low wages and overwork, subjects
the women in the stores to a temptation readily conceivable.
The girls in the stores are importuned, not only by men from without
these establishments, but also, to the shame of the managements, by men
employed within the stores.
The constant close presence of this gulf has more than one painful
aspect. On account of it, not only the poor girls who fall suffer, but
also the girls who have the constant sense of being "on guard," and find
it wise, for fear of the worst suspicion, to forego all sorts of normal
delights and gayeties and youthful pleasures. Many girls said, "I keep
myself to myself"; "I don't make friends in the stores very fast, because
you can't be sure what any one is like." This fear of friendship among
contemporaries sharing the same fortune, fear, indeed, of the whole
world, seemed the most cruel comment possible on the atmosphere of the
girls' lives in their occupation.
Another kind of meanness in human relations was abundantly witnessed by
Miss Johnson, the League's inquirer, who worked in one of the stores
during the week of Christmas good-will.
The "rush" had begun when Miss Johnson was transferred in this Christmas
week from the neckwear to the muffler department on the first floor of
one of the cheaper stores. All the girls stood all day long--from eight
to twelve and from one to eight at night on the first days; from one at
noon to ten and eleven at night, as the season progressed; and, on the
last dreadful nights, from noon to the following midnight. The girls had
35 cents supper money. Except for that, all this extra labor was unpaid
for.
The work was incessant. The girls were nervous, hateful, spiteful with
one another. The manager, a beautiful and extremely rough girl of
nineteen, swore constantly at all of them. The customers were grabbing,
insistent, unreasonable from morning to evening, from evening to
midnight. Behind the counter, with the advance of the day, the place
became an inferno of nervous exhaustion and exasperation. In the two
weeks of Miss Johnson's service one customer once thanked her; and one
tipped her 5 cents for the rapid return of a parcel. Both these acts of
consideration took place in the morning. Miss Johnson said that this was
fortunate for her, as, at one word of ordinary consideration toward the
end of her long day's work, she thought she must have burst into tears.
There was a little bundler in the department, Catriona Malatesta, a
white, hungry-looking little North Italian of fourteen with a thin chin
and a dark-shadowed, worried face. She had an adored sick sister of four,
besides six other younger brothers and sisters, and a worshipped mother,
to whom she gave every cent of her wages of three dollars and a half a
week. An older brother, a day laborer, paid the rent and provided food
for all of them. Every other family expense was met by Catriona's three
dollars and a half, so that she was in the habit of spending only five
cents for her own lunch, and, on the nights of overtime, five cents for
her own dinner, in order to take home the extra thirty cents; and every
day she looked whiter and older.
At the beginning of the week before Christmas, the store raised
Catriona's wage to four dollars. Her mother told her she might have the
extra half dollar for herself for Christmas. Though Catriona had worked
for some months, this was the first money of her own she had ever had.
With pride she told the department how it was to be spent. She was going
to surprise her mother with a new waist for Christmas, a waist Catriona
had seen in the store marked down to forty-nine cents. A ten per cent
discount was allowed to employees, so that the waist would cost
forty-five cents. With the remaining five cents Catriona would buy her
sick Rosa a doll. All her life Rosa had wanted a doll. Now, at last, she
could have one.
On the day when she received the money, Catriona kept it close at hand,
in a little worn black leather purse, in a shabby bag hanging from her
arm, and not out of sight for an instant.
Her purchases were to be made in the three-quarters of an hour allowed
for supper. The time Catriona consumed in eating her five-cent meal was
never long, so that, even allowing for prolonged purchasing, her absence
of an hour was strange.
"D---- your soul, where in hell have you been all this time, Catie?" the
manager screamed at her, angrily, without glancing at her, when she came
back at last.
Catriona looked more anxious and white than ever before. Her face was
stained with weeping. "I lost my purse," she said in a dazed, unsteady
voice. "It was gone when I opened my bag in the lunch-room. I've looked
for it everywhere."
There was a sudden breathless change in the air of the department. You
could have heard a pin drop.
"Better go down to the basement and wash your face," said the manager,
awkwardly, with unbelievable gentleness.
"Well," she continued suddenly, the minute Catriona was out of ear-shot,
"I'm not so poor but I can help to make _that_ up." She took a dollar
bill from her pocket-book. Every one contributed something, though
several girls went without their supper for this purpose, and one girl
walked home four miles after midnight. Altogether they could give nearly
ten dollars.
The manager sidled awkwardly toward Catriona, when she came back from
washing her face. "Here, kid," she muttered sheepishly, pushing the money
into the little girl's hand. Catriona, pale and dazed, looked up at
her--looked at the money, with a shy excitement and happiness dawning in
her eyes. Then she cried again with excitement and joy, and every one
laughed, and sent her off again to wash her face.
That night everything was different in the department. There had been a
real miracle of transfiguration. The whole air of intercourse was
changed. All the girls were gentle and dignified with each other.
Catriona's eyes sparkled with pleasure. Her careworn air was gone. She
was a child again. She had never had any physical loveliness before; but
on that night hundreds of passing shoppers looked with attention at the
delight and beauty of her face.
On the next day everything went on as before. The girls snapped at each
other and jostled each other. The beautiful manager swore. One girl came,
looking so ill that Miss Johnson was terrified.
"Can't you stop, Kitty? You look so sick. For heaven's sake, go home and
rest."
"I can't afford to go home."
Cross and snappish as the girls were, they managed to spare Kitty, and to
stand in front of her to conceal her idleness from the floor-walker, and
give her a few minutes' occasional rest sitting down. She went through
the first hours of the morning as best she might, though clearly under
pressure of sharp suffering. But at about ten the floor-walker, for whom
it must be said that he was responsible for the sales and general
presentability of the department, saw her sitting down. "Why aren't you
busy?" he called. "Get up."
At midnight on Christmas eve, as the still crowd of girls walked wanly
out of the great store into the brilliant New York street, some one said,
"How are you, Kitty?"
She made no reply for a minute. Then she said wretchedly, "Oh--I hope
I'll be dead before the next Christmas."
V
The sheer and causeless misery this girl endured was, of course,
attributable, not only to the long hours and to the standing demanded by
her occupation, but to the fact that this occupation was continued at a
period when the normal health of great numbers of women demands
reasonable quiet and rest.
With a few honorable exceptions[5] it may be said to be the immemorial
custom of department stores in this country to treat women employees, in
so far as ability to stand and to stand at all seasons goes, exactly as
if they were men.
The expert testimony collected by the publication secretary of the
National Consumers' League, Miss Josephine Goldmark, for the brief which
obtained the Illinois Ten-Hour Law, gives the clearest possible record of
the outlay of communal strength involved in these long hours of standing
for women.
_Report of "Lancet" Sanitary Commission on Sanitation in the
Shop_. 1892
Without entering upon the vexed question of women's rights, we
may nevertheless urge it as an indisputable physiological fact
that, when compelled to stand for long hours, women, especially
young women, are exposed to greater injury and greater
suffering than men.
_British Sessional Papers_. Vol. XII. 1886. Report from Select
Committee on Shop Hours Regulation Bill
Witness, W. Abbott, M.D.
"Does their employment injuriously affect them, as
child-bearing women in after years?"
"According to all scientific facts, it would do so."
"And you, as a medical man of a considerable number of years'
experience, would not look to girls who have been worked so
many hours in one position as the bearers of healthy, strong
children?"
"I should not."
"Then it naturally follows, does it not, that this is a very
serious matter in the interest of the nation as a whole, apart
from the immediate injury to the person concerned?"
"Yes. As regards the physical condition of the future race."
_British Sessional Papers_. Vol. XII, 1895. Report from the
Select Committee on Shops. Early Closing Bill
Witness, Dr. Percy Kidd, M.D., of the University of Oxford,
Fellow of the College of Physicians and Member of the College
of Surgeons, attached to London Hospital and Brompton,
Hospital.
"Would this be a fair way of putting it: It is not the actual
work of people in shops, but having to be there and standing
about in bad air; it is the long hours which is the injurious
part of it?"
"Quite so; the prolonged tension."
_Official Information from the Reports of the [German] Factory
Inspectors_. Berlin, Bruer, 1898
The inspector in Hesse regards a reduction of working hours to
ten for women in textile mills as "absolutely imperative," as
the continuous standing is very injurious to the female
organism.
_Fourteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography_.
Berlin, September, 1907. Vol. II, Sec. IV. Fatigue Resulting
from Occupation. Berlin, Hirschwald, 1908
Doctor Emil Roth:
"My experience and observations do not permit me to feel any
uncertainty in believing that the injury to health inflicted
upon even fully capable workers by the special demands of a
periodically heightened rush of work is never compensated for.
Under this head we may consider the demands of all seasonal
work, ... as also the special rush season in shops before
Christmas."
_Night Work of Women in Industry. Reports on its Importance and
Legal Regulation_. Preface by Etienne Bauer. Night Work of Women
in Industry in Austria. Ilse Von Arlt. Jena, Fischer, 1903
The suitable limits of working time vary with individuals, but
it is acknowledged that not only is a regularly long day of
work injurious, but also that a single isolated instance of
overstrain may be harmful to a woman all the rest of her life.
_Proceedings of the French Senate_, July 7, 1891. Report on the
Industrial Employment of Children, Young Girls, and Women.
When I ask, when we ask, for a lessening of the daily toil of
women, it is not only of the women that we think, it is not
principally of the women, it is of the whole human race. It is
of the father, it is of the child, it is of society, which we
wish to reëstablish on its foundation, from which we believe it
has perhaps swerved a little.
In New York State, the hours of labor of adult women (women over
twenty-one) in mercantile establishments are not limited in any way by
law.
The law concerning seats in stores is as follows:--
Seats for Women in Mercantile Establishments
Chairs, stools, or other suitable seats shall be maintained in
mercantile establishments for the use of female employees
therein, to the number of at least one seat for every three
females employed, and the use thereof by such employees shall
be allowed at such times and to such extent as may be necessary
for the preservation of their health.
The enforcement of this law is very difficult. The mercantile inspectors
can compel the requisite number of seats. They have successfully issued
one hundred and fourteen orders on this point[6] to the stores within the
year 1909. But the use of these seats to such extent as may be necessary
for the preservation of the health of the women employees is another
matter. For fear of being blacklisted by the merchants, the saleswomen
will not testify in court in those cases where employers practically
forbid the use of seats, by requesting the employees to do something
requiring a standing position whenever they sit down. So that in these
cases the inspectors cannot bring prosecution successfully, on account of
lack of sufficient evidence.
Further, in one store the management especially advises the saleswomen to
be seated at every moment when the presence of a customer does not
require her to stand. But the saleswoman's inability to attract possible
customers while she is seated still keeps her standing, in order not to
diminish her sales.
Curiously enough, it would seem that the shopping public of a nation
professedly democratic will not buy so much as a spool of thread from a
seated woman. There is, of course, much work for women[7]--such as
ironing for instance--in which standing is generally considered
absolutely necessary. Salesmanship is not work of this character. It is
primarily custom that demands the constant standing seen in the stores;
and, until shoppers establish a habit of buying of shop-girls who are
seated, and the stores provide enough seats for all saleswomen and permit
them to sell when seated, the present system of undermining the normal
health of women clerks will continue unchecked.
The New York State law in regard to the work of the younger women
(minors)--in mercantile establishments is as follows:--
Hours of Labor of Minors[8]
No female employee between sixteen and twenty-one years of age
shall be required, permitted, or suffered to work in or in
connection with any mercantile establishment more than sixty
hours in any one week; or more than ten hours in any one day,
unless for the purpose of making a shorter work day of some one
day of the week; or before seven o'clock in the morning or
after ten o'clock in the evening of any day. _This section does
not apply to the employment of persons sixteen years of age or
upward, between the eighteenth day of December and the
following twenty-fourth day of December, both inclusive_.[9]
That is to say, that, for the holiday season, the time of all others when
it might seem wise and natural to protect the health of the younger women
working in the great metropolitan markets, for that season, of all
others, the State specifically provides that the strength of its youth is
to have no legal safeguard and may be subjected to labor without limit.
Substantially, all the present legal protection for workers in the
stores was obtained in 1896, after the investigation of mercantile
establishments conducted in 1895 by the Rinehart Commission.[10] Ever
since, an annual attempt has been made to perfect the present law and to
secure its enforcement, which had been left in the hands of the local
Boards of Health, and was practically inoperative until 1908. Enforcement
was then transferred to the Labor Commissioner, and has since that time
been actively maintained.
The hearings on the law relative to mercantile establishments are held in
Albany in a small room in the Capitol before the Judiciary Committee of
the Senate and the Assembly Commission on Labor. These hearings are very
fiery. The Support is represented by Attorney Mornay Williams, and Mrs.
Nathan, Mrs. Kelley, Miss Stokes, Miss Sanford, and Miss Goldmark of the
New York and National Consumers' Leagues, and delegates from the Child
Labor Committee, the Working-Girls' Clubs, and the Woman's Trade-Union
League. Both men and women speak fox the amendment.[11] The Support's
effort for legislation limiting hours has regularly been opposed by the
Retail Dry-Goods Merchants' Association, which yearly sends an
influential delegation to Albany.
"These ladies have been coming here for sixteen years," said one of the
merchants, resentfully, last spring. Looking around, and observing
changes in the faces watching him among adherents of the Support, he
added: "Well, perhaps not the _same_ ladies. But they have come."
"These ladies are professional agitators," said another merchant at
another hearing. "Why, they even misled Mr. Roosevelt, when he was
Governor, into recommending the passage of their bill."
Such are some of the reasons offered by the opposition for not limiting
women's hours of labor in mercantile establishments.
Among the several common features of the experiences of these New York
saleswomen, low wages, casual employment, heavy required expense in
laundry and dress, semidependence, uneven promotion, lack of training,
absence of normal pleasure, long hours of standing, and an excess of
seasonal work, the consideration of this last common condition is placed
last because its consequences seem the most far-reaching.
Looking back at these common features in the lives of these average
American working girls, one has a sudden sense that the phenomenon of the
New York department stores represents a painful failure in democracy.
What will the aspect of the New York department stores be in the future?
For New York doubtless will long remain a port of merchandise, one of the
most picturesque and most frequented harbors of the Seven Seas. Doubtless
many women still will work in its markets. What will their chances in
life be?
First, it may be trusted that the State law will not forever refuse to
protect these women and their future, which is also the future of the
community, from the danger of unlimited hours of labor. Then, the fact
that in a store in Cincinnati the efficiency of the saleswomen has been
standardized and their wages raised, the fact that in a store in Boston
the employees have become responsible factors in the business, and the
fact that a school of salesmanship has been opened in New York seem to
indicate the possibility of a day when salesmanship will become
standardized and professional, as nursing has within the last century.
Further, it may be believed that saleswomen will not forever acquiesce in
pursuing their trade in utterly machinal activity, without any common
expression of their common position.
Very arresting is the fact that, year after year, the Union women go to
Albany to struggle for better chances in life for the shop-women who
cannot at present wisely make this struggle for themselves. The fact
that the Union women fail is of less moment than that they continue to
go.
But what have the organized women workers, the factory girls who so
steadfastly make this stand for justice for the shop-girls, attained for
themselves in their fortunes by their Union? It was for an answer to this
question that we turned to the New York shirt-waist makers, whose income
and outlay will be next considered in this little chronicle of women's
wages.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: In the last six months further accounts from working women
in the trades mentioned in New York have been received by Miss Edith
Wyatt, Vice-President of the Consumers' League of Illinois. Aside from
the facts ascertained through the schedules filled by the workers, and
through Mrs. Clark's and Miss Wyatt's visits to them, information has
been obtained through Miss Helen Marot, Secretary of the New York Woman's
Trade-Union League, Miss Marion MacLean, Director of the Sociological
Investigation Committee of the Young Women's Christian Association of the
United States, Miss May Matthews, Head Worker of Hartley House, Miss
Hall, Head Worker of the Riverside Association, Miss Rosenfeld, Head
Worker of the Clara de Hirsch Home, the Clinton Street Headquarters of
the Union, the St. George Working Girls' Clubs, the Consumers' League of
the City of New York, and the offices or files of the _Survey_, the
_Independent_, the _Call_, and the _International Socialist Review_.]
[Footnote 2: It remains to be said that there are both among saleswomen
and among women in business for the department stores, buyers, assistant
buyers, receivers of special orders, advertisers, and heads of
departments, earning salaries of from twenty dollars to two hundred
dollars a week. But this experience does not represent the average
fortune the League was interested in learning.]
[Footnote 3: Here are the estimates made by the St. George's Working
Girls' Club of the smallest practicable expenditure for self-supporting
girls in New York: General expense per week: room, $2; meals, $3;
clothes, $1.25; washing, 75 cents; carfare, 60 cents; pleasures, 25
cents; church, 10 cents; club, 5 cents: total $8. Itemized account of
clothing for the year at $1.25 a week, or $65 a year: 2 pair of shoes at
$2, and mending at $1.50, $5.50; 2 hats at $2.50, $5; 8 pair of stockings
at 12-1/2 cents, $1; 2 combination suits at 50 cents, $1; 4 shirts at
12-1/2 cents, 50 cents; 4 pairs of drawers at 25 cents, $1; 4 corset
covers at 25 cents, $1; 1 flannel petticoat, 25 cents; 2 white petticoats
at 75 cents, $1.50; 5 shirt-waists at $1.20, $6; 1 net waist, $2.50; 2
corsets at $1, $2; gloves, $2; 2 pairs rubbers at 65 cents, $1.30; 1
dozen handkerchiefs at 5 cents, 60 cents; 3 nightgowns at 50 cents,
$1.50; 1 sweater, $2; 2 suits at $15, $30: total, $65.65.]
[Footnote 4: This worker later, however, in the winter of 1911,
considered she had been paid and promoted fairly.]
[Footnote 5: Macy and Company of New York give to those of their
permanent women employees who desire it a monthly day of rest with pay.
The Daniels and Fisher Company of Denver refund to any woman employee who
requests it the amount deducted for a monthly day of absence for illness.
This excellent rule is, however, said to represent here rather a
privilege than a practice, and not to be generally taken advantage of,
because not generally understood. The present writer has not been able to
learn of other exceptions.]
[Footnote 6: Ninth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, p. 127.]
[Footnote 7: See page 16 (foot-note), "Scientific Management as applied
to Women's Work."]
[Footnote 8: This statement does not include the excellent New York Child
Labor Law for children under sixteen, which allows of no exception at
Christmas time.]
[Footnote 9: Italics ours.]
[Footnote 10: A New York State Commission, appointed for this purpose in
the year 1895, through the efforts of the Consumers' League of the city
of New York.]
[Footnote 11: For fear of a permanent loss of position the saleswomen
themselves have never been urged to appear in support of this
legislation, nor, except in a few instances where this difficulty has
been nullified, have they been present at these hearings.]