as the situation with regard to children. They should stay out wholly
because it is disastrous to the family for them to go in wholly and
unreservedly, because their subsidized competition is likely to be
injurious, and finally because the conditions of work are apt to be
ruinous to their health. And yet for women after marriage to abstain
from all employment outside the household is often wasteful and
altogether undesirable. If married women could work some hours a day,
or some days a week, or some months a year, or some years and not
others, as circumstances indicated (as they conceivably might do under
a more elastic and adaptable organization of employment), and if they
could do so without damage to wage standards or workshop discipline,
it would seem advantageous, in more ways than one, for them not to
drop out of industry at marriage. Both marriage and employment might
become sufficiently universal to make it usual to train every girl
for both, at least in a general way. If marriage did not appear to
girls (quite fallaciously in most cases) as a way of getting supported
without working, their interest in increasing their earning power
would be greater; if wives were normally and properly contributors in
some degree to the money income of the family, marriage would be more
general and, above all, earlier, especially if the giving of allowances
to mothers, of which Mr. Wells dreams, ever came into practice.
All this troubling of the waters of life is so familiar that it is
perhaps not possible for us fully to appreciate or understand it.
The conditions can doubtless be much ameliorated, but no reforms can
make right a system that sins in its foundations. As has been said,
the system sins because it puts production before people, with the
results, so far as women are concerned, that we have seen. Two of the
fundamental parts of their activity are made almost incompatible, so
that we have unmarried workers and unworking wives, and workers and
wives alike untrained because of the paralyzing uncertainty of the
future. Moreover, men and women alike suffer from the separation of
education and work, which makes work dull and education unreal and
gives to the boy and girl more lessons than they can digest and to the
man and woman too few; they both suffer also, if not equally, from the
industrial system which shapes all the conditions of industrial life to
ends extraneous to the welfare of the workpeople.
That our lives are made thus to fit the convenience of industry, not
industry to fit the convenience of human lives, is historically
explicable and even justifiable. So long as there is difficulty in
getting the bare necessities of living every other consideration
must give way. The overriding object must be the amount of product,
not comfort or development by the way. Health and happiness are
then a necessary sacrifice to mammon. They are luxuries which the
poverty-stricken do not afford themselves. Moreover, to do things
pleasantly, or even to do them in the way that is most economical
and effective in the long run requires not only capital but a social
direction of capital that can be the fruit only of a long and painful
evolution. Because our industry is conducted piecemeal by dividend
hunters it is carried on, if we regard it as a whole, in a near-sighted
and extravagant way. Above all, it wastes talent and physical stamina,
beside devastating the private happiness of employes, and nowhere is it
more uneconomical than in its use of women’s strength and capacity and,
above all, in its wastage of her health.
We are just on the eve of being socially conscious enough to perceive
these things and prosperous enough to afford a different policy. Is it
insane to hope that in the fulness of time industry will be so arranged
as to advance human life by its process as well as by its produce; to
hope that we shall have, as one might say, a maternal government acting
on the principles of the mother of a great and busy household who makes
education and work coöperate throughout, who cares for her family
and economizes and develops their powers and makes their complete
welfare her controlling object? My contention is that while we cannot
make women efficient in any complete sense under conditions which so
militate against their efficiency, we can make them less and less
inefficient as we shape education to that end, and as we get increasing
control of industrial conditions in the interests of human life in its
wholeness.
FOOTNOTES:
[36] A paper presented at the meeting of the Academy of Political
Science, December 3, 1909.
STANDARDS OF LIVING AND THE SELF-DEPENDENT WOMAN
SUSAN M. KINGSBURY
Simmons College, and Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, Boston
An investigation of the cost of living may look ultimately toward
minimum wage laws, or it may aim at the creation of opportunities
for industrial education which shall result in ability to earn a
certain desired wage; but the immediate object of all such study is to
determine a desirable standard, and every consideration of the cost of
living is prefaced by a discussion of the importance and difficulty of
fixing standards. The method must be to discover what expenditure the
average family or individual under normal conditions finds actually
necessary; but heretofore essential study of the habits and needs of
self-supporting women has been lacking.
The following significant differences between wage-earning women and
men have become apparent from an examination of census returns and a
study of more than a thousand working women in and around Boston, in
connection with the promotion of savings-bank insurance:
1. A large majority of wage-earning women are under thirty years of
age. In our cities the average age is below twenty-five.
2. The larger part are living at home, or in the families of relatives,
friends or acquaintances.
3. A very large proportion of those living at home turn in all their
earnings to the family purse and receive back only so much as is
necessary, without knowing whether their contribution is above or below
the expenditure on their account. The young men of the family, on the
other hand, are not expected to contribute to the family income, unless
it be to pay board.
4. A woman is not usually responsible for the support of a family, nor
is she looking forward to the carrying of such a burden.
5. She often has obligations for the full or partial support of
members of the family, but these obligations decrease or cease as she
grows older.
6. She enters a gainful occupation with a different point of view from
that of a man. It may be that she has obligations to meet, or it may be
that she is a “pin-money girl”; but in most cases she is not looking
forward to continuous self-support.
How, then, is the standard for women to be set? To attain a certain
standard they may spend much less money, or with a given expenditure
they may reach a much higher standard than would be the case if their
conditions and outlook were the same as men’s. On the other hand, the
obligations resting on women may be, and often are, much greater than
the demands on men of similar age. The income necessary to maintain
a given standard of living may therefore be much less than we should
anticipate, or it may be much greater. One thing seems evident--that
the burdens will probably decrease rather than increase. Therefore
the necessity for advancement and the responsibility for saving is
recognized neither by the worker nor by the public.
These difficulties make intensive investigation the more essential, in
order to discover the actual present cost of living of self-dependent
women and to find out the significance of variations in this cost.
Modern tendencies to reduce wages to the minimum cost of living or to
force them up to meet the demands of increasing luxury may mean too
serious results to permit of continued ignorance. The danger of setting
the standard according to the needs of one group, thus working injury
to another, must be averted.
The studies upon which this paper is based fall into two groups. One,
of college graduates, members of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae,
mostly teachers (317 in number), is easiest to interpret, because it
is the result of study by persons of the same class or thoroughly
conversant with the needs of that class.[37] The material for this
study was secured from schedules filled out by 413 women, who are
graduates of about forty colleges, and who are at present residing
in almost every state in the union. It is furthermore representative
in that it includes women whose homes are in large, medium and small
towns, and whose experience ranges from one to forty-one years of
service.
The other two studies are of women engaged in industrial and commercial
pursuits. One of these is the result of a year’s experience in
preaching the gospel of saving to thirteen hundred women through
savings bank insurance.[38] The women are engaged in unskilled
industries such as laundering, in the semi-skilled industry of
making knitted underwear, and in the skilled industry of straw-hat
manufacture. Naturally in this study the cost of living is approached
through a consideration of ability or inability to save. Savings should
of course be included as a necessary part of living expenses, and where
pay is insufficient to make saving possible, the wage received is
certainly not a living wage. The general responsibility for the support
of the family, whether the girl is living at home or boarding, the
tendency to give all earnings to the mother, the effort to save and its
success or failure--all these conditions are portrayed in this study.
The most important contribution, however, is that which comes from the
research department of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union,
through its fellow, Miss Louise Marion Bosworth,--a study commenced
under Miss Mabel Parton, director.[39] This study by Miss Bosworth
contains a discussion of the general economic history, the income, and
the expenditures for rent, food, clothing, health, savings, and other
purposes, of four hundred fifty working women, thirty of whom kept
account books for Miss Bosworth for a year or more, and two hundred
twenty of whom Miss Bosworth interviewed personally. One hundred fifty
were interviewed by Miss Jane Barclay, a fellow of the department, and
fifty by other research fellows. Miss Bosworth’s study deals with
three hundred fifty women living independently, and presents also the
standards of one hundred living at home. The Women’s Educational and
Industrial Union, working for the betterment of industrial conditions
among self-supporting women by both direct and indirect educational
methods, has unusual opportunities for continuous study of the actual
expenses and the standards of living of such women, together with the
effect of those standards on their efficiency.
A study of the budgets of self-dependent women has a twofold
object: first, to enable the public to know in how far women are
self-supporting; and second, to discover what income is required to
make a woman self-supporting. In other words, such study should show
what income is necessary for each group in order to maintain and
increase its efficiency. Merely to state that a certain number actually
live on a certain income is to neglect the essential question of how
they live. The less educated woman cannot be expected to use the same
ability in spending as her more highly trained sister; nor can the
latter be satisfied with the taste of the less educated woman. The
average demands of the average woman in each group must always be kept
in mind.
It may be well first to present briefly the more pertinent conclusions
of the study of professional women, since the general standards are
more familiar to us. The expenditures reported by college women are
arranged in three groups, minimum, medium and maximum. The total
expenditures of the first group range from $550 to $725, in which an
allowance of $200 to $350 is made for “living expenses,” and $150 to
$175 for clothing. A woman whose income is at this minimum cannot
save; it represents the cost of living of an apprentice. The medium
expenditures are from $785 to $1,075 exclusive of savings, and the
maximum $1,225 to $1,750 exclusive of savings. The medium figures
include $300 to $450 for living, and $200 to $250 for clothing; the
maximum, $500 to $700 for living, and $275 to $350 for clothing.
A woman of experience voices the general opinion that the medium
range of expenditure in the teaching profession today is too low for
thorough efficiency; for in such a budget no account can be made of
many of the essentials of life. Thus it omits:
1. Any peculiar demands upon one’s purse through obligations to one’s
family.
2. Expenses of the vacation season like extra board, extra laundry
bills, railroad fares and extra sundries.
3. Expenses which come from social convention and social relations,
such as Christmas, birthday and wedding gifts, even small ones,
occasional lunching with friends, possible college class reunions, and
the like.
4. Expression of one’s esthetic tastes in concerts and pictures.
5. Recreation of any sort during the working year.
6. Miscellaneous trifling but accumulating expenses which are sure to
occur.
At the present time 72% of the women prepared for teaching by college
training are earning the medium salary or less. Grouping this class
by years of experience, salaries do not reach the medium figure until
a woman has been at work ten to fifteen years. If we accept these
expenditures as a standard, then we find only a small proportion of
college women able to attain it. The unfortunate method of determining
necessary expenditure by estimate is well illustrated by the returns
from these college women. The cost of actual living and clothing is
often accepted as covering the essentials; but in fact the items for
incidentals, carfares, professional expenses and sundries sum up
to almost the same amount as the cost of sustenance, especially in
the smaller budgets. Such an allowance would usually be considered
excessive, but a careful review of the items indicates that this
proportion of expenditure for sundries is legitimate.
In addition to this general but important conclusion that the standard
of living based on the returns quoted above is too low in most cases to
secure efficiency, and hence promotion and advancement, the following
significant conditions must be faced by those concerned with the
problem of salaries:
1. To maintain and increase efficiency and earning capacity in the
teaching profession, women must be prepared to give from two to five
years to graduate study.
2. Independent income ought not to be counted on to supplement earned
income.
3. The relation of cost of living to efficiency should be better
understood in order to lead teachers to insist upon advancement, even
at sacrifice of personal preference for locality and conditions of
living.
4. Although there is no prevailing standard of living, and the relation
between expenditure and income or between the various phases of
expenditure does not seem to be set, college women should try to set a
standard as quickly as possible.
In the study of wage-earning girls made by the research department
of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, the cost of living
of girls who reside with their families is considered separately.
Since the aim is primarily to discover the cost of living of the
self-dependent girl, the number of the other class studied is small,
consisting chiefly of immigrant girls and girls in the suburbs earning
a good salary and living at home or with relatives.
On the other hand, the study of the savings bank insurance committee
deals very largely with girls living at home, so that the two studies
supplement each other. The low contributions to the family reported
by Miss Bosworth show that the girl earning three to five dollars
is barely able to live, but her evidence that the higher-paid girl
contributes a larger sum (about four dollars and a half a week) to the
family, and supplements her payments by labor in the home indicates
that she is really self-supporting, because she is living practically
under a coöperative system. What she thus saves over the girl who
spends five or six dollars a week for sustenance results in a higher
standard of living or an opportunity to save. It is doubtless due to
this lower cost of board and room while living at home that the girl
who in Miss Bosworth’s study does not receive a living wage is in
Miss French’s experience able to begin to save. Here, furthermore, is
doubtless the explanation of the fact that while a girl living alone is
generally not able to live on a satisfactory standard under a wage of
nine dollars a week, the girl living at home, or coöperatively, begins
to save on a six to nine-dollar wage.
Taking up simply the woman living alone, we find ourselves confronted
with a study of factory workers, waitresses, clerks, saleswomen and
kitchen workers. A standard of housing is far easier to determine than
one of food. Size of room and location naturally affect rents; but it
is hard to reach satisfactory conclusions concerning number of windows,
sunlight, heat, bathroom accommodations, and number of roommates.
Provision for food is made in the following ways:
1. Cooking in one’s own room.
2. Basement dining rooms.
3. Working girls’ homes.
4. Meals included for service in restaurants and hotels.
They are presented in order of excellence. “Home cooking” means serious
danger to health; over-fatigue results in cold meals or no meals rather
than expenditure of the energy necessary for preparation. The basement
dining room serving twenty-one meals for $3 is “invariably poor,”
says Miss Bosworth. Strictly speaking, the subsidized working girls’
home should not be considered in a discussion of the standards of
independent working girls. To calculate a “living wage” on such a basis
does injustice to thousands of girls who could not if they would find
accommodation in working girls’ homes.
What standard, then, are these girls able to attain? Miss Bosworth
says: “Between the three, four and five-dollar woman and the next
higher division there is a big increase in food expenditures,
corresponding to the jump in rent found at this same point. Also
corresponding to the rent, the difference between the six, seven and
eight-dollar group and the next higher is less marked. Either, then,
the increase in wage up to eight dollars goes at once into food and
rent, or as is probable, this marks the point of departure from the
intolerably crowded share in a tenement dweller’s home to the perhaps
equally comfortless but more independent room in a lodging house. In
paying the increased amount of room rent the three advantages the girl
on higher wages gains are a room to herself, heat of some sort, and
sunshine. These advantages come to the majority only when the wage
has reached at least $9.” In securing food, the girl on the higher
wage patronizes the $4 dining rooms, which are “so attractive in
appearance, and so adequate in food as to be thoroughly satisfactory.”
The subject of clothing brings at once two great problems. Here
the measure of the standard of living is apparent. A girl may make
sacrifices in room and board without immediate effect upon her
opportunities to secure employment: but a sacrifice in dress may mean
the loss of position--such is the consensus of opinion. The custom
of instalment buying follows as a natural result. It is in the field
of dress that the individual ability of the girl is most apparent.
Innate taste, knowledge of materials, physical strength and opportunity
to hunt bargains, readiness to forfeit sleep in order to get time
to remodel or make clothes--all these things tell. Home and school
training may help raise standards. Miss Bosworth concludes: “The
average working woman, with only the average ability to manage her
wardrobe economically, with the average trade demands on it, and with
the average amount of time for sewing and mending, cannot dress on less
than $1 a week as a minimum, and does not need as a dress allowance
more than $2 a week.” Elsewhere she states: “The severest strain of
providing clothes comes on incomes under $9; when an income of $12 is
reached, the strain is perceptibly lessened.”
Apparently a satisfactory standard--one which affords a room meeting
reasonable requirements, nourishing food, respectable clothing, medical
attendance, and incidentals of simple type, requires a wage of not less
than $9.
I regret that the shortness of space prevents a glance at the
contributions of the working girl to church, charity and the support
of others, or her expenditures for self-education and recreation.
Suffice it to say that the amount which goes for charity, for necessary
incidentals and for education bears a creditable relation to that
expended for recreation.
The savings bank insurance study is most significant in its
confirmation of the inadequacy of a three to five-dollar or even a six
to eight-dollar wage. Even though the girls whose records were thus
secured came largely from the group living at home, it was only in the
nine to twelve-dollar wage group that real savings became possible.
One scarcely dares accept the conclusion suggested by these facts,
that the minimum wage should be not less than $9, there are so many
modifying circumstances. Nor dares one assert that certain sums
represent the “cost of living”, it is so hard to determine a standard
of living. How can we fix the minimum or average of rent? How can
we place a limit on expenditure for food and clothing? How can we
tell how much of inefficiency is due to inadequacy of food, clothing
and shelter, how much to lack of training, how much to youth? All
results thus far obtained are only indicative; intensive scientific
investigation and cautious interpretation are needed to establish
conclusions that shall command general assent.
FOOTNOTES:
[37] See report on “The Economic Efficiency of College Women,” by the
writer of this paper, published in the _Magazine of the Association of
Collegiate Alumnae_, February, 1910.
[38] Miss Davida C. French was director of the savings bank insurance
committee of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, 1909-1910,
under which this study was made.
[39] The results of the investigation will be published this year.
Information with regard to this publication may be secured from the
Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, 264 Boylston St., Boston,
Mass.
A NEW SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT[40]
MARY KINGSBURY SIMKHOVITCH
Greenwich House, New York City
The entrance of women into industry means that they are going out from
the home. Closely related to the new economic status of women is a new
social adjustment to a larger world. I shall not attempt in this paper
to go beyond the consideration of what is happening before our eyes in
New York.
It is very interesting to see how much more concerned people are about
growing boys in great cities than they are about girls. This is really
illogical, for what is happening to girls is happening in a very
special way to the race. Everyone says glibly enough that the position
of woman in any society is an index of that society’s civilization.
This fact seems to be perceived, however, rather as some sort of
bookish generalization than as a subject of social concern, which ought
to be connected with a positive social purpose.
It would be idle to claim that the situation of the young girl entering
industry in New York to-day is in any way socially satisfactory.
It is not. There is a social--or as some prefer to call it,
moral--instability at the present time that is very serious. The purity
of the working girl is under a terrific strain, and it is criminal to
close our eyes to the fact. Those who know this to be the case seem
almost committed to a policy of silence. While they realize the gravity
of the facts, they are also among the sincerest admirers and friends of
the working girl, and they do not want to create the impression that
there is anything inherently debased about this army of youthful women
workers. It would, in fact, be a total misrepresentation to picture the
working girl as in any way different from any other girl. She is, of
course, the same sort of person as the society girl or the so-called
middle-class girl, but her position at just this juncture is a more
difficult one than that of any other young woman, for she is stepping
out from the most old-fashioned type of family into the newest type
of industry. This new social adjustment is just as inevitable as the
economic adjustments that followed the industrial revolution.