ECONOMIC PHASES
_By Arthur Evans Wood_
In any effort for social improvement it is necessary to know conditions
that make both for and against success. This is especially so in social
hygiene, for it is closely related to all aspects of modern life. Lack of
education and false instruction are largely responsible for sexual
immorality. It is not so generally known that economic conditions are
responsible for vice, opinions on this matter ranging all the way from a
denial that economic conditions have anything to do with vice to the
assertion that vice would disappear with the increase in the incomes of
working-people. Assuming that ignorance is the fundamental cause of vice
(an assumption which does not "stand to reason") the results of ignorance
must manifest themselves through the institutions of society. Some
institutions, such as slavery, encourage vice. Likewise, any caste system,
such as feudalism in the Middle Ages, in which there must be depths as
well as heights, supplies the vicious classes. The aim of this chapter is
to show that, while modern economic conditions do not create "the social
evil" they furnish an environment favorable to its spread. If this is so,
an improvement in these conditions must accompany all other measures for
the eradication of vice.
One of the most significant facts of the industrial evolution of the last
half-century is the increase in the number of women who have become
wage-earners outside the home. According to the Federal Census the number
of females fifteen years of age and over, employed as breadwinners in
1900, was 5,007,069, an increase of 34.9 per cent over the number thus
employed in 1890.[2] The largest number in any one occupation, 1,213,828,
were servants and waitresses. Of this class the domestics were not
employed "outside the home." The homes, however, were not their own, and
salutary influences of home life do not exist for the majority of
domestics. In the decade between 1900 and 1910 the increase in the number
of wage-earning women has been even more accelerated than in previous
decades, and to-day probably from 8,000,000 to 10,000,000 women in the
United States are industrially employed.
One important aspect of this influx of women into industry is that the
proportion of those in domestic and personal service, which has always
been women's work, has decreased; whereas the proportion of those in
manufacturing, trade, and transportation, which are new employments for
women, has increased.[3] This means that not only are working-girls and
women leaving the homes, but they are also abandoning in increasing
numbers those occupations to which in times past their sex has been most
accustomed. It is impossible that this prodigious change in the sphere and
work of women should not be accompanied by some change in the social and
moral standards that were nourished in the seclusion of the home. Miss
Jane Addams has made the suggestion that perhaps the superior reputation
of women for virtue is due to the fact that, generally speaking, women
have been secluded from the influences of the world.[4]
The increase in the proportion of girls engaged in non-domestic pursuits
means that industrial vocations for women are becoming more dissociated
from the arts of home-making,--a fact which is doubtless the cause of many
an inner struggle.
In the present lack of industrial education young girls who must work to
support themselves or their families drift about from place to place with
no definite vocational aims. Frequently they come to the offices of child
labor commissions wanting work, but not knowing what they can do, or even
what they would like to do. If they do find work, it is rarely of a sort
that offers incentives for a career. Lack of skill, of interests, and of
ambitions result in industrial inefficiency. They are also the usual
accompaniments of moral delinquency.
Even where opportunities for industrial training are offered, they may not
lessen the disparity between industrial opportunities that exist for girls
and womanly tastes. A recent report on the need for a trade school for
girls in Worcester, Massachusetts, advocates a school that will train for
skill in the machine-operating trades, because there is most demand for
workers in these trades.[5] One might think in reading the report that
machines for stitching corsets and underwear provided the ideal vocation
for women. Biological considerations, if no others, would favor
distribution of wage-earning women away from the mechanical pursuits into
those which are more or less associated with the domestic arts.
A further significance for social hygiene of the entrance of women into
industry is that it places a strain upon the spirit of chivalry which is a
basis of right relations between the sexes. Chivalry in men has
accompanied the comparative seclusion of women from the world, and is due
to those instincts which lead men to protect those who are weaker than
themselves. The term "the weaker sex" has a sound physiological basis.
With the passing of the domestic system of industry, however, the
seclusion of women becomes more and more a thing of the past. In factory
and shop they mingle promiscuously with men. Crowds of young working-girls
in every large city at the noon hour throng the streets. If they walk to
and from work they sometimes have to pass unprotected through parts of
the city given over to vice.[6] They thus become familiar with vice
conditions and are often subject to ungentlemanly, if not insulting,
conduct. There are in every community a number of men who are decent only
under restraint, and the economic position of wage-earning girls weakens
that restraint.
Moreover, the phrase "the weaker sex" has lost some of its significance.
Many occupations, such as clerking, stenographing, laundering, and certain
kinds of unskilled factory work are almost entirely taken over by women,
who labor throughout the same working-day as men, and usually at a lesser
wage than men would receive for the same kind of work. Under these
conditions, to talk of the physical weakness of women is to accuse our
civilization of cruelty.
Around wages most of the discussion has centered concerning the economic
aspect of vice. The investigations conducted throughout the country have
revealed a great variety of opinion concerning the relation between low
wages and immorality. There has been much confusion of thought on the
question. It is true, on the one hand, that injustice is done to
wage-earning girls and women of the country when the report is circulated
that the difference between morality and immorality is only one of dollars
and cents. On the other hand, to deny that low wages paid to working-girls
has any bearing on the question of vice is evidence of failure to grasp
the moral problem involved. Morality, to be sure, is always expressed in
the overcoming of difficulties. Yet we can hold a person blameworthy only
if in the full possession of his or her faculties. A poorly nourished,
fatigued girl has no such self-possession. If she does not earn enough on
which to live, and "goes wrong," her inadequate wage is a factor in her
wrong-doing, and the one who pays it to her cannot be rid of his share of
the responsibility. "Sin is misery, misery is poverty. The antidote for
poverty is income,"[7] says Professor Simon N. Patten, who is doing a vast
deal toward bringing economics and morals on speaking terms with each
other.
Vice investigations in Chicago, Minneapolis, Portland, Oregon,
Philadelphia, and elsewhere snow that there are many economic factors
besides wages involved as causes of vice. Some of these other factors are
housing, hours of work morally dangerous employments, associations at
work, and fatigue. The wage, however, is more important than all of these,
for the wage largely governs living conditions, associations and
recreation. The wage often makes the difference between life as mere
existence and life with the opportunities for self-improvement that should
belong to a human being.
It will be of value, then, to note some of the facts about wages that have
appeared in recent surveys made by the Consumers' League of Oregon, by the
State of Massachusetts, and by the Federal Government. After showing that
the minimum cost of living for a self-supporting woman in Portland is $10
a week, the Oregon Survey shows that in the nine principal occupations
employing women in Portland, from 22 to 92 per cent are receiving less
than $10 a week. The table is as follows:--
Occupations Per cent
under $10
Department stores 58.2
Factories 74.7
Hotels and restaurants 49.2
Laundries 92.6
Offices (clerks) 46.4
Offices (stenographers) 22.4
Printing-shops 56.1
Telephone exchanges 50.
Miscellaneous 48.7
Another table shows that in five different employments,--laundries,
factories, offices, department stores, and miscellaneous employment,--out
of 509 women all but 31 (office workers) close the year with a deficit.[8]
A significant point is that among all but factory workers the excess of
expenditures over incomes is greatest among those who live at home. This
disproves the statement often made that those who live at home do not need
a living wage. In conclusion, the _Report_ of the Oregon Survey says: "The
investigation has proved beyond a doubt that a large majority of
self-supporting women in the State are earning less than it costs them to
live decently; that many are receiving subsidiary help from their homes,
which thus contribute to the profits of their employers; that those who do
not receive help from relatives are breaking down in health from lack of
proper nourishing food and comfortable lodging quarters, or are
supplementing their wages by money received from immoral living."[9]
The Massachusetts Commission on Minimum Wage Boards reports even lower
standards in wages for women. Among wage-earning girls and women over 18
years of age, 93 per cent of the candy-workers, 60 per cent of the workers
in retail stores, and 75 per cent of laundry-women receive less than $8 a
week.[10] In the cotton textile industry, among the 8021 women over 18
years of age whose wages were investigated, 38 per cent received less than
$6 a week.[11] Among the individual stories that are buried in the
_Report_, the following are typical:--
Ernestine is an eighteen-year-old Canadian girl, very pretty and
neatly dressed. Her parents both died several months ago and left her
utterly alone, without living relatives. She worked as a stock girl at
$4.50 a week for two months, was laid off, and went to a summer hotel
as waitress for $3 a week, room and board. She worked there for two
months, or until the season was over, and then came to another store
for $5 a week. She pays $1.50 for her room, including light and heat,
has no carfare, does her laundering, except for shirt waists which
cost her $.30 during the summer. She goes without breakfast or eats
only a banana, gets her lunch for ten or fifteen cents, and her
dinners for twenty or twenty-five cents. She has never paid more than
twenty-five cents for a meal since she started to work. She is just a
child, and is quite bewildered over the problem of facing life on $5 a
week, and is terribly afraid of debt. She is intelligent and
clever.[12]
Jennie is a frail little body, about 40 years old. After working 16
years in a Boston department store her wage was $5 a week.... For
eleven years Jennie's little $5 a week had been the sole support of
herself and her aged mother.... When her astonished employer learned
that she had worked 16 years in his store and attained a wage of only
$5 a week, he raised it $1. So the wage is supplemented by the girls
(in the store) underpaid themselves, but comprehending the woman's
need.... Thus seventeen years of faithful service to one master has
won for Jennie this position of semi-dependence upon charity,
increasing anxiety over an unprovided-for future, and declining health
as a result of her pitiless struggle to stretch a miserable $5 over
the cost of support of herself and mother.[13]
The most comprehensive report has been made by the Federal Government, and
includes a survey of conditions among women in stores and factories in
seven cities[14]. According to this report the average earnings of the
women in retail stores of these cities is $6.88 in the case of those who
live at home, and $7.89 in the case of those who are "adrift."[15] Among
the factory women of these cities the average wage of those who live at
home is $6.40, and of those who are "adrift," $6.78. The Boston
investigation shows that from 11,000 to 12,000 women and girls were living
in lodging- or boarding-houses at an average cost of $5.18 a week for
prime necessities, leaving only $2.24 for clothing and all other expenses.
The following comment is made on this government report by the
Massachusetts Minimum Wage Commission:--
Although more than half the adrift women (in Boston) live in lodging-
or boarding-houses,--numbering be it remembered between 11,000 and
12,000 girls and women,--two thirds of them lack the use of a
sitting-room and must entertain men as well as women in their
bedrooms. Not a few indications were seen in the course of the
investigation of the demoralizing results of this practice. Many of
the young women in lodgings were young and were friendless and were
earning very low pay. Eighteen per cent of those who were reported
without the use of a sitting-room were under twenty-five. The housing
or food, or both, were reported as bad for a number of these
perilously defenceless young women.[16]
Consideration of wages and standards of living leads to the question, What
is a living wage? Studies in different parts of the country agree that it
is about $10 a week. An estimate made by social workers for the
Massachusetts Minimum Wage Commission places the minimum at $10.60 for
girls who are adrift, and $8.37 to $8.71 for girls and women living at
home. This estimate, however, made no allowance for unemployment,
sickness, accident, or old age.[17] The Portland Vice Commission and the
Consumers' League of Oregon have adopted a $10 minimum.[18] The first
conference called by the Oregon Industrial Welfare Commission adopted
$9.25 a week, or $40 per month, as "the sum required to maintain in frugal
but decent conditions of living a self-supporting woman employed in
mercantile establishments in Portland."[19] To this, however,
representatives of the employees on the conference made objection, stating
that a straight $10 a minimum was the only safe one.
If the minimum is rightly placed at $10, and if the investigations are
true in showing that the majority of self-supporting women the country
over are receiving less than this amount, we may now come to a more
detailed discussion as to the relation between underpayment and vice. It
is just here that it is easy to jump at conclusions. Most people approach
social questions not with a scientific mind, but with preconceptions which
mar their judgment. For example, the socialist exaggerates the effect of
bad wage conditions, and the Woman's Auxiliary Department of the police
exaggerate the influence of home conditions. Again, personal testimony is
unreliable, because, on the one hand, victims of the social evil are
liable to blame external conditions; and, on the other hand, well-fed,
well-housed investigators often underestimate the bad moral effect of poor
nourishment and fatigue.
Of this much we may be certain: low wages poor living, which involves
poor housing, poor food, no savings, and either no recreation or
dependence on others for it. In the federal report on living conditions of
women in stores and factories, it is estimated that in the seven cities
where the investigation took place approximately 65,000 women are
adrift.[20] Since the majority of these are receiving less than the
minimum cost of a decent living, they are "perilously defenseless young
women."
Another federal report,[21] bearing directly on the relation between
conditions of work and vice, concludes that whereas few girls "go wrong"
on account of poverty, the misstep once taken, poverty and want are
powerful deterrents to reform. A fourfold classification is made of
immoral women, as follows: (1) Unmarried mothers; (2) girls who leave and
regain the path of virtue, having their fling for the sake of good times;
(3) occasional prostitutes, who enter the career as a business for a
while; (4) professional prostitutes. Mention should be here made of this
report, because its total effect is to minimize economic causes of
prostitution, placing the responsibility elsewhere than on industrial
conditions. It is to be noted, however, that it does emphasize the
indirect effects of poverty, and does speak of the moral danger lurking in
certain occupations, and of the bad effects of the lack of industrial
education.
More definite responsibility for vice is ascribed to low wages in the
reports of vice commissions. The Chicago _Report_ says that of one group
of 119 immoral women, 18 came from department stores, and 38 said that
they had taken up the career for the need of money. The Portland _Report_
presents 22 women as "Cases in which Low Wage and Vice are closely
associated."[22] The _Report_ continues:--
In presenting the foregoing table and statements from girls, this
commission does not take the position that the low wages of
self-supporting girls is the sole contributing cause of their
delinquency, realizing that there are thousands of girls who would
endure the utmost hardships before yielding themselves to those who
are ready to seduce them. The evidence as to the effect of wage
conditions is taken from the girls themselves, who, perhaps lacking
adequate moral training, have, in the extremities of their position,
allowed themselves to be driven "the easiest way."[23]
In the vice investigation conducted by the Illinois State Senate, 50 girls
in one day testified under oath, 45 of whom said that their downfall had
been due to the lack of money. The foregoing evidence is the kind
unfortunate girls would be likely to give. Nevertheless, making due
allowances, this evidence tends to confirm reports of vice commissions
whose purpose has been strictly scientific.
If a conservative estimate of the proportion of vice due to low wages of
girls would be 10 to 15 per cent, it must not be concluded that this
represents all of the baneful moral effect of poverty. Whatever the other
non-economic causes of vice, they are aggravated where poverty exists. Not
only is this so, but alleged other causes may be partly economic. Bad home
conditions are due not only to the lack of moral discipline, but also to
the lack of income. The average wage of the adult male wage-earner of
that section of the United States lying east of the Rockies and north of
Mason and Dixon's line is said to be about $600. Sometimes the wage is as
low as $500, and in only a few instances as high as $750.[24] If
wage-earning men attempt to support families on these incomes, it means
that they are not able to provide adequately for their wives and children.
If they do not attempt to do so, it means, taking men as they are, an
increase in the army of men who support prostitution. Professor H.R.
Seager has said that prostitution in aid of wages is the greatest disgrace
of our civilization.[25] An accompanying disgrace lies in the fact that
economic conditions and other factors prevent the average male wage-earner
in so large a section of our country from fulfilling his desire for
marriage and a home of the sort that makes for health and happiness.
Besides the low wages of women and men, other economic facts have their
bearing upon sexual hygiene and morals. These facts may be grouped under
the head of industrial stress and strain which is moral as well as
physical. The underpaid factory or store girl is subject to constant
fatigue. In the rush season in department stores, girls often depend upon
opiates for dulling the nervous strain. No trade is free from its special
physical strain. There are, moreover, many morally dangerous trades. Work
as chambermaids in hotels is conspicuously perilous for girls. The Chicago
Juvenile Protective Association says, "The majority of girls who work in
hotels go wrong sooner or later." The modern department stores, which
employ the majority of young working-girls, offer temptations. Mrs.
Florence Kelley refers to work in these stores as "the most dangerous to
morals and health, of all occupations into which children can go."[26] Of
course, it may be said that a "good girl" will not go wrong. It may also
be said that a good social order will not place even good girls daily
under conditions that are liable to bring about a physical or moral
breakdown. Closer analysis of human character reveals the fact that
physical and moral health are more closely associated than we have
hitherto believed them to be.
According to statistics about female offenders, domestic service is
morally the most dangerous employment.[27] The reasons for this are two:
the social ostracism and the loneliness, and the low grade of worker. Each
of these causes augments the influence of the other. The application of
industrial standards to this neglected form of work should lead to
improvements.
For those dependent upon employment offices, the seeking of a job may
involve moral danger. The practice of private employment bureaus in
sending unsuspecting girls to immoral places under the pretext of finding
legitimate employment is common. The director of the Municipal Employment
Bureau in Portland says that, the managers of houses are sometimes so bold
as to telephone to the bureau for girls, telling for what purpose the
girls are wanted.[28] One of the private bureaus was detected several
times coöperating in such practices. The menace of such places can
scarcely be overestimated.
We may now conclude our review of the economic phases of social hygiene.
Economic conditions to-day are under indictment as endangering the health
and morals of working-girls and women. Moral delinquency may arise through
temptations met and hardships endured at the place of work; through scanty
wages, inadequate for daily necessities; through lack of sympathetic
consideration on the part of employers; through the stupidity of the
community in adhering to worn-out educational methods that do not train
wage-earners for earning a livelihood; through lack of protective
legislation in regard to hours and conditions of labor. As a matter of
fact, each of these conditions has been found to be an accompaniment of
vice; and taken all together they constitute an environment that makes
clean living difficult. Against the dark background of modern industry
should be portrayed the luxurious conditions that are apparently enjoyed
by those who have taken "the easiest way." In ancient society the status
of the prostitute was that of slave: to-day it is that of an industrial
citizen.[29] If the program of social hygiene comprehended only talking
about sex to working-girls--to laundry-girls, for example, who, after a
day's work of ten hours at the machines, go at night to their
boarding-houses where they wash dishes to eke out a living,--then this
program would not be unlike the advice of a physician who tells a poor man
with tuberculosis that he must go to the country for a year and live on
cream and eggs.
Even in the case of wage-earning girls who adopt loose ways to satisfy
extravagant desires, their tastes are established by women of the wealthy
and middle classes. The leisure of these women is due to their
wage-earning sisters, who in factories and mills make the cloth, prepare
food-stuffs, and do all sorts of tasks that formerly kept women of the
upper classes at home. Through the instinct of imitation, combined with
the American feeling of democracy, the habits of the well-to-do determine
the ambition of many a working-girl.
Other factors are industrial arrangements which segregate men in
construction and lumber camps for a part of the year, and then, without
providing for their further employment, turn them loose into cities where
only saloons welcome them and cash their checks, and where
disease-infected lodging-houses are their only places of abode.
Furthermore, standing armies take thousands of able-bodied men out of
normal industrial relationships, and keep them in camps that become the
congregating places of prostitutes.
The most hopeful phase of the whole problem that it lies within the power
of the State to transform the industrial environment through progressive
legislation. The law cannot form character, but it can protect that which
has been developed through voluntary effort. Vice is partly a by-product
of industrial chaos which can be eradicated by industrial organization.
When working-people can establish themselves more generally in homes of
their own,--"every man under his vine, and under his fig tree," as it
were,--then they will be able to give more time to their children, and
will perhaps coöperate better in the program for sex instruction.
Economic improvements should include a minimum wage for women, and one for
men based upon the needs of a family; the eight-hour day; insurance
against sickness, old age, and accidents; relief of unemployment; one
day's rest in seven for all continuous industries; industrial education
compulsory for all children; abolition of child labor; and amelioration of
conditions under which women work.
When wage standards are raised, there arises the problem concerning those
who cannot earn a living wage. "Who will pay poor, ignorant Mary Konovsky
more than $6.90 a week?" is a question asked by a manufacturer during a
minimum-wage discussion in New York State. The reply is, If Mary is really
not worth more, she must be sent by the State to an industrial school
until she can earn her living; and if she should be proved to be mentally
deficient (as about 50 per cent of prostitutes are said to be), then she
must be placed in an institution where she can be humanely and permanently
cared for. The impossible alternatives are that she should be denied a
living wage when she can earn it, or that she should be allowed to drift,
in danger of becoming the prey of vicious men.
Meanwhile, before the machinery of a full legislative program can be set
to work, the field is open for voluntary philanthropic endeavor. Welfare
work in stores and factories that is done by some one who acts, not as a
detective with condescending side interests in welfare, but
whole-heartedly and sympathetically can avail much. Real social work in
business establishments should be profitable to employers as well as to
employees. The aim of all public and private effort should be to make
industry not the occasion of stumbling, but what it should be, the
universal means of progress.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] _Statistical Abstract of U.S._, p. 163. (1911.)
[3] _Woman and Child Wage-Earners in U.S._, vol. IX, p. 20; "History of
Women in Industry."
[4] _A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil_, chap. I.
[5] _A Trade School for Girls_, U.S. Bureau of Education, Bulletin no. 17,
pp. 52 _ff._(1913.)
[6] Portland, Oregon, Vice Commission, _Report_, p. 188. (1913.)
[7] _Social Basis of Religion._
[8] Social Survey Committee of Consumers' League of Oregon, _Report_, pp.
21, 22.
[9] _Ibid._, p. 24.
[10] Massachusetts Commission on Minimum Wage Boards, _Report_, pp. 51,
114, 157.
[11] _Ibid._, p. 191.
[12] _Report_ of Massachusetts Commission, as above cited, p. 188.
[13] _Ibid._, p. 114.
[14] _Woman and Child Wage-Earners_, vol. V. The cities included were
Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and St.
Louis.
[15] By "adrift" is meant the condition of a self-supporting woman who is
alone or of a widow with children to support.
[16] _Report_ of Massachusetts Commission, p. 213.
[17] _Ibid._, p. 222.
[18] _Report_ of Portland Vice Commission, p. 165.
[19] _Morning Oregonian_, July 24, 1913.
[20] Referred to on p. 211 of the _Report_ of the Massachusetts Commission
on Minimum Wage Boards.
[21] _Woman and Child Wage-Earners_, vol. XV, pp. 81, _ff._; "Relation of
Occupation and Criminality of Women."
[22] _Report_ of Portland Vice Commission, p. 176.
[23] _Report_ of Portland Vice Commission, p. 176.
[24] Scott Nearing, _Wages in the United States_, pp. 208, _ff._
[25] _American Labor Legislation Review_, vol. III, no. 1, p. 88.
[26] _Social Diseases_, vol. III, no. 3, p. 9.
[27] See Portland Vice Commission _Report_, p. 193; also _Woman and Child
Wage-Earners_, vol. XV.
[28] Portland Vice Commission _Report_, p. 192.
[29] E.R. Seligman, _The Social Evil_, Introduction.