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XN O . /O Jj ß U. S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR JA M E S J . D A V IS , Secretary - ' CHILDREN'S BUREAU ‘ » "G R A C E A B B O T T . Chief \C, CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS A S T U D Y OF A SELECTED G RO U P IN C H IC A G O By HELEN RUSSELL WRIGHT <3* Bureau Publication N o. 102 W ASHINGTON GOVERNM ENT PRINTING OFFICE 1922 Ì, 3 (o <r| tL *5 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve À \ bBank 2-* of St. Louis https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis U -v r ^ c . # I» ^ CONTENTS. Page. Letter of transmittal----------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------Introduction--------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------- — ---------Description of group studied-------- -------------------------- ------------------------- -------------Reasons for the mothers’ employment----------------------------------------------------------The care of the children during the mothers’ working h ou rs.--------------------- v 1 2 8 IT, The mothers’ gainful employment---------------26 Housekeeping problems----------------------------------------------------------------------------------38 111 health and fatigue of the mothers--------------------- ---------------------------------------45 49 The family income___________________________— ,---------------------------------- -----------Housing conditions-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------59 Irregularity of school attendance and delinquency record of older chil dren -----------------6 7 -7 6 School records----------------------------------------------------------------- - -------------- ----------67 Delinquency records------------------------------------------- -------------------------- — — 73 Problems of social control--------------------- -— :----------------------------.------- ------------- 76-88 Disadvantages involved in employment o f mothers of young children. 76 Measures for reducing the necessity for wage earning by mothers of young children------------------------------------------------------- -— ------- ------------------ 77-84 Father’s earnings sufficient to maintain adequate standard of livin g----------------.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------77 Training of mothers in household management and the care of children______________ ;----------------------- — ------ -----------------------------------78 Preserving the normal family group---------------------------- ----------------78 Substitutes for the father’s support-------------- a ------------ ¡-------- -----------79 Special protection for children of wage-earning mothers-----------------— 85 APPENDIX TABLES. Page. Table 1. Marital condition of mother by class of case; working mothers" with dependent children-------- --------------------------------------------------------T a b le 2. Age of mother by class of case; working mothers with depend ent children______________________________________________________ — T a b le 3. Number of dependent children in the family by class of case; working mothers with dependent children-------------------------------Table 4. Number of children under 7 in fam ily by class o f case; working mothers with dependent children-------- -— ------------------------- ----------Table 5. Total family income by composition o f fa m ily ; mothers in daynurseries group working full time-------- _ _ _ _ _ ----------------------------Table 6. Total family income by composition o f fa m ily ; mothers in col ored group working full time--------------------------------------------------- ------Table 7. Number of persons in household by number o f rooms in apart ment and class of case; working mothers with dependent chil dren ----------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Table 8. Monthly rental by class of c a se ; working mothers with depend ent children--------------- „---------------------------------------- ------------------— _— h i https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 89 89 89 90 90 91 92 '92 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL. U . S. D epartment of L abor, C hildren ’ s B ureau , Washington, October 29, 1921. S ir : I transmit herewith a report on Children of Wage-Earning Mothers, by Helen R. Wright, fellow in the department o f eco nomics o f the University o f Chicago, prepared with the advice and > assistance of Dr. S. P. Breckinridge. Its conclusions are based on a study o f 848 wage-earning women, the mothers o f 2,066 children under 14 years o f age. A ll were resi dents of Chicago, where mothers’ pensions and private relief reduce the hardships o f families in the lower income level in which working mothers are usually found. Nevertheless, in many o f the cases cited the breakdown o f the mother under the triple burden o f wage earner, housekeeper, and mother seems only a matter o f weeks or months. It is hoped that this report, in addition to setting forth the dis advantages from which the children of such working mothers usually suffer, may be of some help in promoting plans for the special pro tection which is needed for these children, and, more important still, may lead to consideration of measures which will render the em ployment o f the mothers of young children unnecessary. Respectfully submitted. _ . • |gj| * G race A bbott, Chtef. Hon. James J. D avis, Secretary of Labor. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis v https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS. A STUDY OF A SELECTED GROUP IN CHICAGO. INTRODUCTION. The increase in the gainful employment o f women during the past few years has aroused new interest in the old questions connected with the social desirability o f women’s work and the social policy that should be pursued with regard to it. The present study is limited to one aspect of the problem, name y, the effect o f the employment o f mothers upon the welfare o f their children. With the industrial problems connected with the em ployment o f married women, their efficiency as workers, their posi tion as wage bargainers, their effect on the labor market, this study has nothing to do. It recognizes, however, that the industrial life o f mothers who are employed as wage earners so influences their wel fare, upon which depends in large measure the welfare of their children, that certain aspects o f the industrial problem can not be ignored even in a study concerned primarily with child welfare. Thus the nature of the mother’s work, her hours, the conditions under which she works, and, above all, her earnings play such a large part in determining the welfare o f her children that these have been studied, although the industrial problem as a whole lies outside the scope o f the inquiry. . . , The primary interest o f the study, as already indicated, is in the welfare o f the children. It seeks therefore to present a -picture o f the daily lives of a selected group o f children whose mothers were gainfully employed, in the hope that the facts thus brought out may help in answering the question as to how far the gainful employ ment o f mothers o f young children affects adversely the interests of the children, their health, school attendance, standards o f conduct, their chances o f the n orm a ljife to which every child is entitled. In general the aim has been to present the conditions as they were found, without attempting to say how far they were due to the fact that the mothers worked and how far they might be conditions com mon to larger groups o f which the families in which the mother worked were only a part. This is, o f course, a question which is diffi cult to answer and should not be attempted without the basis o f much more extensive inquiries, including similar studies o f the lives of children whose mothers’ work is limited to household tasks. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 2 CHILDREN OF W AGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. The present inquiry was made in Chicago in the winter o f 1918-19 and in the winter o f 1919-20. Schedules were obtained for 84a r r n f Chilu ren under. 14 years 0f a^* statistics mg the total number o f married women or mothers gainfully employed in Chicago even at the time o f the last census are available It is clear however, that the families studied include only a small fraction o f the families in Chicago in which the mother did work in addition to her own housework.* The group studied, moreover, is not typical o f the whole group o f working mothers; for, as will be seen from the later discussion, it was selected so as to include only families on the lower-income levels. The reason for such a method o f selection was not only that the great majority o f mothers who earn come from such groups, but also that the social problems connected with the gainful employment o f mothers o f families, i f not limited to this group, are at least found here in their most acute form. DESCRIPTION OF GROUP STUDIED. ® 843 families with 2,066 children under 14 years o f ago in° ^ Study fal1 into three main divisions according to the method by which they were selected: (1) The charities group, made up o f families on the records o f the united charities at some time dur ing the calendar year 1918; (2) the nurseries group, made up o f fam1^ q11wldclx children were cared for in day nurseries in the winter o f 1918-19— their names were furnished by the day nurseries - (3) the colored group, made up of colored families the names and addresses o f which were secured from the employment department o f the‘Chicago Urban League, which served as the agency o f the Fed eral Employment Service, and from two o f the schools in Chicago m which the enrollment-was largely colored. The first two groups were studied m the winter o f 1918-19; the study o f the colored families was made in the winter o f 1919-20. The first, or charities, group consisted o f 463 mothers with 1,365 dependent children. With a few exceptions these families were not visited, but the records of the united charities were utilized in ob taining the required information. On some points the records were silent, as was to be expected, but this defect was thought to be more than counterbalanced by the fullness o f detail in other respects that could only come from long acquaintance and frequent contact with the families. 1 the Illin o is In d u stria l C o m m issio n foun d in 1 9 1 8 th a t 2 3 1 ,0 0 0 w om en w ere em - o m fa c t o n e s an d w orksh ops s u b je ct to th e in sp e ctio n o f th e fa c to ry in spector Of 3 ,8 5 7 w om en se ected fo r special stu d y, 6 1 6 , or 1 6 per cen t, w ere w idow s o r T a r r i e d w om en w ith children. I f th is p roportion w ere ty p ica l or even a p p ro x im a tely so, som e w here betw een 3 0 ,0 0 0 and 4 0 ,0 0 0 m others m u st have been g a in fu lly em ployed I n C hicago https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 3 description of group studied . These families contained representatives of all the large nationality groups o f the city— 110 native white families, 11 Negro families, 109 Polish, 41 Italian, 34 German, 32 Irish, 21 Scandinavian, 19 Bohe mian 21 of other Slavic races, 18 Hungarian, 13 Lithuanian, and 14 o f other nationalities, while for 20 families the country o f birth was not reported. Most o f the families were “ broken families ” ; that is, the husband and father was no longer a member of the group. In 180 families he was dead; in 134 he had deserted or had been divorced or was living apart from the family without legal separation; and m 5 families the mother was not married to the father o f the children and he had never been a member of the group. This made a total of 319 (68.9 per cent) broken families, and only 144 (31.1 per cent) normally constituted families. This proportion was probably to be expected from the fact o f the families’ connection with a relief agency at a period when industries were working at full speed and there was no problem o f unemployment. „ The mothers were, on the whole, young women; 69 of the 405 tor whom the age was reported were under 30 years of a ge,-126 were between 30 and 35; 107 were between 35 and 40. That is, 302, or 74.6 per cent, were women under 40—women who should have been in the prime o f life and at the height o f their industrial efficiency. How ever, 103 women were past 40. The size of the family group is o f interest as an indication o f t e weight o f the burden the mothers were bearing. The number of dependent children in each family is given in Table I. T able l — Number of dependent children in the fa m ily; working mothers with * 1 i • .1 . ? i / ill n n o r t W' n ' l i n Working mothers with dependent children, chari ties group. Number of dependent children1in family. Per cent Number. distribuì tion. 1 child............................................................................................... .......................................................................................... ........ 3children................................................................................... 4 children.................................................. ............................ 5 children................................................................................... 6 children.................................................................................. 7 children........................................................................... ............... ............ ........ ......... ............ ......... 463 100.0 68 121 127 88 39 13 7 14.7 26.1 27.4 19.0 8.4 2.8 1.5 ------- — - ■ ' 1Children under 14 years of age. This table shows that whereas 68 women had only 1 child depend ent on them, a very much larger number, 147, had as many as 4 children and 20 had 6 or more children. In many instances, more over, the children for whom the mother had to provide care were https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 4 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. under 7; that is, below the age o f compulsory school attendance.2 In this group were 345 mothers with 583 children under 7 years o f age; 156 mothers had 1 child under 7, 143 had 2 children, 43 had 3 children, and 3 mothers in the group each had 4 children under 7. In 120 families there were also children between the ages o f 14 and 16. While these children were for the most, part either helping with the'financial burdens o f the family or relieving their mothers o f some o f the care o f the younger children, the responsibility of the oversight o f children at this critical age must have increased their mothers’ burdens in other ways. The second, or nurseries, group was composed o f 168 mothers with 358 dependent children. Information about them was obtained by personal interviews with the mothers on Sundays or during evenings after work. This nurseries group did not include all the women who made use o f the day nurseries in the winter o f 1918-19. It did not include mothers who refused to give addresses or gave incorrect addresses; women who had hacl contact with the united charities in the year 1918; or women who were known to be employed at day work.3 The selection was made in order that the total group studied might be as widely representative as possible and that the charities and nur series groups might present different aspects of the problem. The nationalities represented in the nurseries group were much the same as those in the charities group. The former consisted o f 58 native American mothers (55 white and 3 colored), 25 Polish, 33 Italian, 9 Bohemian, 10 from other Slavic groups, 6 German, 5 Irish, 5 Hungarian, 2 Lithuanian, and 15 o f other nationalities. O f the 168 women in this group, 104. (61.9 per cent) were married and liv ing with their husbands; the other 64 (38.1 per cent) were not living with their husbands at the time o f the study—34 were widows, 18 had been deserted, 11 were divorced or separated from their hus bands, and 1 was an unmarried mother. It will be noted that the proportion o f the married women to those for whom the marriage relation had ended is almost the exact reverse o f the proportion in the first group. In the nurseries group, as in the charities group, most o f the mothers were young. O f those whose ages were reported, only 13 were 40 years of age, while 88 were in their thirties, and 69 were under 30. On the whole, the women in the nurseries group were younger than the women in the charities group. 2 See A p p en d ix T a b le 4, p. 90. 3 T h is is n ot t o s a y -t h a t i t does n o t includ e an y w om en doing day w ork (t h a t is, w ash m fa n Vh f ^ ° r “ I0 8 iD/ riv a te hom es by the day ) . fo r such is n o t th e case. I t does m ean th a t th e proportion o f w om en so em ployed is u n du ly sm a ll, a s w om en know n by the nurseries to be doing day w ork w ere n o t visited. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis DESCRIPTION OF GROUP STUDIED. 5 The nurseries group was composed of smaller families than the charities group. None of the families had as many as 7 children, only 2 had 6, and only 22 had more than 3. Families with only I child, o f which there were 61, were the most numerous, closely fol lowed by 54 families with 2 childrep each. Thus, families with 1 or 2 children account for more than two-thirds o f this group. The children in the nurseries group were also younger than those in the charities group; 214 o f the 358 children in these families were under 7 years o f age. Only 22 families had no children under 7. The third group of 212 mothers and 343 dependent children con sisted exclusively o f colored families and might be said to form a random sample o f colored families in Chicago in which the mothers were, wage earners. The colored group was selected for special study for several reasons. In the first place, it was believed that gainful employment o f colored married women was very extensive and was thought by many to be more widespread than in similar economic groups of white women. More important, however, was the fact that the problems o f the colored working mother were more difficult to meet than in the case o f the white working mother, the community as* a whole having been slow to assist her in solving the problems common to all mothers who do work other than their own housework. It seemed, therefore, worth while to make a study 'of a rather large group o f colored children whose mothers were at w ork; for, while it will be remembered that some colored families were included in the two former groups, the number included, 14, was not sufficiently large to throw much light on the problems of the colored working mother. In many respects, of course, the body o f material collected about the colored families only serves to supple ment that collected earlier, without adding distinguishing features. This was to be expected, as, after all, the problems o f the mother who must maintain her hcyme, care for her children, and earn the money for their support or their partial support are fundamentally the same whether the mother is black or white. The colored population in Chicago increased very rapidly during the war and the years just preceding. The newcomers had in gen eral some difficulty in getting adjusted economically as well as socially to life under the new conditions, and hence it would be ex pected that a random sample of working mothers would include many o f the recent immigrants from the South.' Such in fact was the case, as 133 o f the 212 women visited had come to Chicago since 1915; 30 other women, although they did not form part o f the “ great migration,” had lived in the city less than 10 years. Only 49 of these colored women had been in the city as long as 10 years. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 6 C H IL D R E N OF W A G E -E A R N IN G M OTH ERS, C H IC A G O . O f the 212 families which made up the colored group, 98 (46.2 per cent) were broken families and 114 (58.8 per cent) were families in which the father was still a member o f the family group. In this respect the colored group stands midway between the charities group, in which 68.9 per cent of the families were broken, and the nurseries group, in which only 38.1 per cent of the families were broken. In age, too, the colored mothers stand between the two other groups, but in this case, much nearer the nurseries group. O f the 209 mothers whose ages were reported, 83 were under 30 years o f age, 91 were in the thirties, and 35 were 40 or over. In this group, as in the nurseries group, most of the families were small. In 132 cases there was only 1 child in the family, irf 46 cases 2 children, and in only 34 were there as many as 3 children in the family. The children below school age formed a smaller proportion o f the total in this group than in either o f the two other groups. ’ Only 80 o f the 343 children were under 7, and only 62 families, less than one-third, had children under this age. Summarizing briefly the facts obtained for all families studied, it is found that the total number o f families in which the father was no longer a member of the group, 481, was somewhat larger than the num ber in which he was still with the family, 362. The mothers were, on the whole, a group o f young women—219 were under 30, 227 were be tween 30. and 35, and 185 were between 35 and 40. Most o f the fami lies were small ; 261 had only 1 child in the family, 221 had 2 children, and 182 had 3 children. However, 179 families, or 21.2 per cent o f the total, a by no means neglible proportion, had 4 or more children. A large proportion o f the children with whose welfare the present study is concerned were o f school age, that is, between the ages o f 7 and 14, while 877, or 42.4 per cent, were under 7 years o f age.4 The mothers in this study were, on the whole, women whose indus trial experience had begun long before the year o f the investigation. Many o f them had worked before marriage. While it was impossi ble to obtain information on this point for the mothers of the charities group, 231, or 60.8 per cent, o f the mothers in the two other groups had worked for wages before marriage. Information about the nature of the work done before marriage was not obtained from the colored women, but an attempt was made to obtain it from the women in the day-nurseries group, and 32 women, or 27.6 per cent, reported that they had been in domestic service before marriage. Three women had been employed in professional service; 1 was a singer, 1 a teacher, and 1 an actress. Fifteen women had been em ployed in the hat and garment trades at the more skilled occupations, 4 See A p p en d ix tables, p. 8 9 . https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis D E S C R IP T IO N OP GROUP 7 S T U D IE D . 1 woman had been a typist, and the rest had done miscellaneous unskilled factory work. It is interesting to note that the occupation before marriage had little to do with determining the work after marriage, for only 21 women continued in the same occupation when they resumed work after marriage. This fact is in large measure to be explained by the unskilled nature o f the work they had been doing. It also emphasizes the point made in almost all discussions o f women in industry, namely, that the average girl who works for wages has neither the opportunity nor the interest to develop an industrial technique which will make it profitable to her to continue in the same work if she chooses or is forced by circumstances to be a wage earner after marriage. Most o f the women who had worked before marriage began work when they were very young. This was particularly true o f the colored mothers, most o f whom had come to the city fairly recently. Table I I shows the age at which the mothers began to work. T a b l e I I . — Age of beginning work by class of ca se; mothers who worked before marriage, nurseries, and colored groups. Mothers who worked before marriage. Age at beginning work. Both groups. Nurseries group. Colored group. Per cent Per cent Per cent Number. distribu Number. distribu Number. distribu tion. tion. tion. All ages............................................... 1224 100.0 10 and under 12............................................ 12 and under 14............................................ 14 and under 16............................................ 16 and under 18............................................ 18 and over...................... ............................ 12 18 64 68 47 25 5.4 .8.0 24.1 30.4 21.0 11.1 113 4 21 38 32 18 100.0 I ll 100,0 3.6 18.6 33.6 28.3 15.9 12 14 33 30 15 7 10. 8 12.6 29.8 27.0 13.5 6.3 1 E x clu d in g 7— 3 fro m the nu rseries grou p and 4 fro m th e colored group— fo r w hom th e age w a s n o t reported. This table shows that 12 women, all of them colored, worked be fore they were 10 years o f age. So far as known, this work was limited to that of nurse girls or domestic helpers. Eighteen other women, 14 from the colored group and 4 from the nurseries group, began work between the ages o f 10 and 12. This work also was largely domestic service; but 1 woman in the nurseries group began as a cigar maker in the “ old country” at the age of 11, and another woman began work in the garment trades in this country at the same age. Fifty-four women, 33 from the colored and 21 from the nurseries group, started work between the ages of 12 and 14, making a total o f 84 women— 59 from the colored and 25 from the nurseries https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 8 C H IL D R E N OF W A G E -E A R N I N G M OTH ERS, C H IC A G O . group— who worked before the age o f 14, the age now generally ac cepted as the minimum in child-labor legislation. Only 25 women in both groups did not work before they were 18 years o ld ; of these, 18 were from the nurseries, and only 7 from the colored group. Many o f the women had worked for considerable periods since their marriage. The 782 mothers for whom this information could be obtained had been married for varying periods o f time, but it was found that 105 o f them began work before 1909, more than 10 years before the study; 867 worked before 1915; and 657 were at work before 1918.5 In considering these figures it must, o f course, be remembered that the mother had not necessarily been employed continuously since the earliest date. Occasionally a deserting hus band may have returned; a widow may have remarried, only to be deserted or again widowed; an older child may for a time have assumed a share o f the burden o f supporting the family, later marry ing or shirking the burden; or there may have been one or several temporary periods of unusual difficulties, caused by the illness or unemployment o f the father. Nevertheless, it is an important fact that so many o f these mothers were called upon to support the family, even intermittently, for so many years; and the fact that more than one-third were working for wages before 1915 shows that the necessity o f contributing to the family income was for them not a new problem. REASONS FOR THE MOTHERS’ EMPLOYMENT. The circumstances that lead a mother to enter a gainful occupation are in most cases complicated. Among the factors that require atten tion if the situation is to be understood at all completely are the eco nomic circumstances, the social situation o f the families, and the per sonal characteristics o f the mothers themselves. The group selected was not such that a thorough study could be made o f all these subjects. Fortunately, however, the economic situ ation o f the families throws considerable light on the matter. The description o f the group studied has already indicated that a large proportion of these mothers who were at work were from families from which the natural breadwinner had been removed. Further analysis shows that a number o f other mothers were in the same situ ation at least so far as the support o f the family was concerned. Table I I I shows the position o f the family with regard to support by the father « O w ing to the fa c t th a t in fo rm a tio n fo r 4 1 1 o f th is group w a s obtain ed from ch arities records, it is possible th a t th e d a tes given in m a n y cases w ere n o t th e ea rliest a t w hich th e m others had w orked, since th e records la y no claim to ab so lu te accu racy as rega rds the p a st h isto ry o f the w om en. T h u s m a n y m a y have w orked fo r a m uch longer tim e th an the d a ta indicate. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis R EASO NS T a b le FOR THE M OTHERS EM PLOYM ENT. I I I .— Fam ily situation with reference to father’s _ mothers with dependent children. 9 support; working Working mothers with dependent children. Family situation. Per cent Number. distribu tion. Allsituations............................... Father’s support withdrawn............. Death..................................... Desertion, divorce, separation. .. Imprisonment............................. Institutional care.......................... Physicalincapacity........................... Entrance into army....................... Father’s support irregular........................ Physical disabilities....................... Moral delinquencies............................. Irregular or seasonal employment................ Father’s support regular............................. ------- 68.2 226 10 26.7 6 104 12. 3 29 42 33 3.9 104 19.5 Table I I I shows that in a total of 575 families, or 68.2 per cent o f the entire number, the father’s earnings were no longer available for the support o f the family. In most cases the reason was found in the death or desertion o f the father. But attention should be called to those families in which this was not the case. In 10 families the father was in prison; and as in Chicago no system had yet been worked out to provide for the families o f men in prison; part o f the punishment fell on the wives and children. In 25 families the father was physically or mentally incapacitated and was cared for in an institution; in 53 families he was incapacitated for work but remained in the home, in which case he was not only not contributing to the family income but was adding to the burden o f support that devolved upon his wife. In some cases he was able to relieve her o f part of the household tasks, but in others the care of a sick man was added to the mother’s, duties. The six families in which the father was in the Army either of the United States or one o f the Allies had funds from the Government to compensate in part for the loss of the father’s earnings, but the allowance received was not. sufficient to keep the women from the necessity o f outside work. The group o f families in which the earnings o f the father were irregular numbered 104, or 12.3 per cent o f the entire number. Little need be said to explain the mother’s working in 29 families in which this irregularity was due to the ill-health of the father or the 42 in which it was due to his moral delinquencies. These 42 fathers drank or gambled, worked irregularly, contributed little or nothing to the family income, and were often a source o f irritation and demoraliza https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 10 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. tion in the home. Just what this meant in adding to the burdens carried by women who were attempting to fill two positions at the same time was made clear by the stories of the mothers. Mrs. A , for example, had been the main support o f the family almost from the time of her arrival in the United States seven years before. Her hus band drank and associated with women of questionable character. In 1913 she had him arrested for nonsupport, and he was sentenced to three months in the house of correction. H is wife found, however, that even his irregular earnings helped with the family support and she secured his release before his term was out. From that time until the outbreak of the war he worked irregu larly and continued his carousing. When the United States entered the war and the possibility o f his being drafted seemed imminent, he found regular work and contributed $10 to $15 a week to the family. H e did not stop drinking, however, and when the investigator visited the family he was at home in a drunken stupor. The mother said she was intending to talk things over with the priest, as the language the father used in the home was unfit for their child, a girl o f 11, to hear. Mrs. B, a Bohemian woman with two children, worked as a domestic servant for $5 a week. H er husband was a heavy drinker, especially when with a group o f men. In February, 1918, his wife had him in court after he had turned over the stove and broken up the furniture. The judge advised him to try to do better, and the mother said she thought he had been somewhat better since that time. Another example was a Slovak fam ily with five children, the C’s. In the early years o f their married life the C’s prospered. The father worked steadily, and the family saved $1,000, with which they made a payment on a farm and moved to the country. Mrs. C attributed the beginning o f their trouble to a visit she made to her people in the old country. During her absence her hus band got into bad company, contracted a venereal disease, and began to drink. From that time on things went from bad to w orse; they lost the farm and moved back to the c ity ; he brought home less and less money, until in 1917 the mother was forced to go to work. Since that time she had worked steadily. She had tried every way she knew to make her husband contribute to the fam ily income, but without success. The 33 families in which the irregularity o f the father’s earnings was caused by irregular or seasonal employment fell into two groups; the first and largest, that o f 23 families in which the father was unemployed for some period during the year, and the second, that o f 10 families in which the father’s work was always seasonal. In this latter group was a family consisting of father, mother, and seven children ranging in age from 2 to 11. The father worked as a painter, earn ing $130 a month. In December the season was over, and he secured work in a department store at $13.50 a week. This was not sufficient for the needs o f the family, and they attempted to meet the situation as best they could. They rented for $20 a month the house which they were buying on the install ment plan and moved into, rooms which they secured for $16. A s this economy made only a slight difference in their necessary expenses, the mother went out to work by the day and the older children stayed away from school to look after the younger ones. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis REASONS FOR TH E MOTHERS EM PLOYM ENT. 11 This group o f 33 families differs from the other groups in which the earnings o f the father were irregular in that they were more directly the victims of industrial maladjustments, and hence were in many ways similar to the last group in Table I I I, which included 164 families, or 19.5 per cent o f all the families studied. The fathers in this group were said to be working steadily and contributing their wages to the family income, but their earnings proved inade quate for the support o f the family. A word should be said as to the meaning o f the term inadequate ” in this connection. It simply indicates that the father’s earnings did not meet the demands made upon them, without any consideration o f the character of those demands, whether rational or irrational, necessary or unnec essary, intelligent or foolish. Inadequate, in brief, means inadequate for the desires o f the particular family, not necessarily inadequate for its needs. In 20 families the father’s earnings provided for the ordinary wants o f the family but could not be stretched to meet unusual ex penses incident to sickness or other misfortune. In 14 cases the deficit was caused by illness and the resulting doctors’ bills, and in the other 6 by debts contracted for other reasons. Sickness was the cause o f the mother’s going to work in an Italian family o f four chil dren between the ages o f 1 a'nd 7. Although the father was tuber culous, he had been able to hold a steady position. His earnings were only $78 a month, but the family managed on that income until the little 7-year-old boy was crippled by a fall from a wagon. He had to spend six months in a hospital, and this expense together with a doctor’s bill o f $132 could not be met from the father’s meager wage. One o f the unfortunate things about the situation was that the mother was compelled to leave the home at the time when the convalescent boy most needed her. O f the 6 families who had other debts to meet, one man had failed in business in 1914, and his wife was still working to pay the debts incurred at that time and during the period o f unemployment that followed. Another family had lost their furniture in a fire, and the mother went to work to help replace it. In two instances the mother had gone to work to enable the father to make payments on Liberty bonds he had bought. One o f these men was a laborer with four children, earning $86 a month. The other was a worker in the shipyards, earning $130 a month; he had a family o f six children. One father was able to support his wife and the one child in this country, but his wife was working in order to help save money to bring two other children from Austria to the United States. The illustrations given call attention to the fact that while under normal circumstances these 20 families lived on the father’s earn79100°— 22------2 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 12 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. . ings, this does not mean that those earnings enabled them to attain the standard set up as desirable even i f all the income went for cur rent expenses and no provision was made for emergencies. Table I Y gives the nominal monthly earnings of the other 144 men in the group in which the father was working regularly and supporting his family. T a b l e I Y .— Monthly earnings of fa th er; working mothers toith dependent chil dren whose fathers w ere ^corking regularly.* W orking mothers with de pendent children whose fathers were working regu larly. Father’s monthly earnings. $70 to $79................................................................................................................................ $80 to $ 8 9 .*............................................................................................................................ $90 to $99................................................................................................................................. $100 to $124.........................................................! ................................................................. $125 to $149.................>.......................................................................................................... i Includes 144 of the 164 families in last group in Table I I I . definitely went to work to pay debts. * Studied in the winter of 1918-19. » Studied in thé winter of 1919-20. Both groups. Charities and nurseries groups.3 144 61 83 7 17 29 28 28 14 9 12 3 14 19 7 10 3 2 3 4 3 10 21 18 11 6 10 Colored group.3 The other 20 were families in which the mother These figures should be read in connection with some one of the estimated minimum budgets for family expenditures. A conserva tive estimate, inasmuch as it was worked out for dependent families, may be found in the Chicago standard budget. According to this esti mate approximately $96 a month in 1919 and $125 in 1920 was needed to support a family o f father, mother, and three children.6 The 1920 budget also works out an estimate for an independent family which is roughly 20 per cent higher than that for a dependent family. Making this-correction for both years, it would mean that $115 a month was needed for a family o f five in 1919 and $150 a month in 1920. Table IV shows that the earnings o f 36 fathers o f the charities and nurseries groups, studied in 1918-19, and the earnings o f 56 6 D erived fro m N e sb itt, F loren ce : T h e C hicago S tan d ard B u d g e t fo r D epen den t F a m ilie s issued by th e C hicago C ouncil o f So cia l A g en cies in 1 9 1 9 an d revised in 1 9 2 0 . T h e se figures are a som ew h a t rough a tte m p t a t s ta n d a rd iza tio n . T h e bu dget a s given is a sch edule fo r e stim a tin g th e needs o f in d ivid u al fa m ilie s in w h ich the age o f each ch ild , th e ca r-fa re req uirem ents o f the w ork in g m em bers o f the fa m ily — in sh o rt, the en tire fa m ily circu m stan ces— are know n. R en t h a s been figured on basis o f th is in v estig a tio n . https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis • REASONS FOR TH E MOTHERS* EM PLO YM EN T. 13 fathers o f the colored group, studied in 1919-20, were clearly below the estimate for a dependent family, while 43 and 67, respectively, were below the standard for an independent family. In only 15 families in the former group and 6 in the latter did the father’s earn ings fall in the same group or a higher group than that which in cludes the minimum estimated as necessary for an independent family o f five persons. According to estimates made by other experts8 the annual cost of maintaining a family o f five was for a minimum of subsistence $1,370 in June, 1918, and about $1,575 in August, 1919, and for a minimum o f comfort $1,760 in June, 1918, and about $2,024 in August, 1919. Table IV shows that in only 14 families out o f 144 for which this informa tion was obtained, less than 10 per cent, were the father’s annual earnings between $1,500 and $1,800, and in only 9 families, less than 7 per cent, were they $1,800 or over. In 81 families, 56 per cent of the 144, the father’s annual earnings were under $1,200. This analysis indicates that in most of the families where the father’s earnings were felt as inadequate by the family itself, so that the mother undertook to supplement the family income, the wages were also inadequate judged by the amounts estimated by experts as necessary to maintain an adequate standard o f living. The following concrete instances may perhaps suffice to illustrate some o f the specific wants that could not be satisfied by means of the father’s earnings, and to show also how interwoven with the general economic status of the family are the personal desires, obligations, and aspirations of a particular family as determining factors in causing the mother to take gainful employment. In a colored family consisting of father, mother, and two children, aged 1 and 3, the father earned $104 a month in a factory. The mother went to work to buy Christmas presents for the two children. The fam ily was slightly in debt, but the mother said her earnings would not be used for payment of the debt, as she wished the responsibility for the support of the fam ily to rest on her husband. In a Polish fam ily consisting of father, mother,' and three children, the eldest 8 years old, the father earned $83 a month as an assembler for an electrical concern and the mother earned $82 a month by working in the stockyards. The mother started Work soon after her marriage in 1908 and worked right up to the time her first baby was born. The baby lived only a few days. After three months’ rest, the mother returned to work and again worked up to the time of her next confinement. This baby also died a few days after birth. From this time until 1916 the mother did not work. The three children who lived were born in this period, in 1911, 1912, and 1913. In 1916, when the eldest child was 5 years old, the mother returned to work, so that the family might be enabled to make payments on a home. In 1917 she had an operation for hernia and was out of work for three months. After that she returned 8 InterChurch W orld M ovement o f N orth America : Report on the Steel Strike o f 1919 by the Commission o f Inquiry. Harcourt, Brace, and Howe, New York, 1920. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 14 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. to work and was still working when visited. The property the family was buying consisted of a one-story and basement shingle dwelling, , in only fair condition. The family lived in the basement and rented the first floor for $11 a month. In a family o f father, mother, and two children, a girl o f 15, still in school, and one o f 5, who went to kindergarten, the father was a butcher in a meat packing plant and was paid 53 cents an hour. By working overtime he had made as much as $43 in a week, and his earnings for the year had amounted to $1,700. The mother worked all the year in a meat-casing factory for $15 a week. The family had been in Chicago only four years, coming from Alabama, where the father had been a tenant farmer. They were putting away all the money they could save to buy a farm in Alabama on which to spend their old age. In another fam ily, the father worked in a roundhouse, earning $6 a? day. This work was new ; previously he had worked in a foundry, making $27 a week. H is earnings for the year averaged $125 a month, while the fam ily budget for himself, his wife, and his one child, a girl of 9, was under $100. The mother said her husband would not give her the money she wanted for clothes and for that reason she went to work. In a family consisting of the father, mother, a baby a year old, the mother’s mother, and a cousin who paid $6 a week for board and room, the father earned $126 a month at an iron foundry. The mother, who was only 19 years old, said that when she stopped work she thought of things she couldn’t have, usually clothes, got restless, and went to work. She worked only a few weeks at a time until she had the money she wanted. One father earned $50 a week at a tire factory. The budget for the family, which consisted of the man, his wife, and one child, a boy of 9, was $82 per month. The father did not want his wife to work, but she was tired o f “ set ting around ” and wanted more clothes than she could have if she did not work. In a fam ily consisting of the father, mother, and one child, the father earned $78 a month. The mother, who had been obliged to work during a previous marriage when her husband had failed to support her, had grown to like the feeling of independence that came with an income of her own and pre ferred to work even when it was no longer necessary. In a family of father, mother, and one child, aged 10, the father was a waiter in a hotel, earning with tips over $100 per month. The mother, a woman 44 years of age, was unusually competent and intelligent and had no patience with people who could not make their way by sheer determination. She had been doing day work ever since her marriage, for the past year six days a week. She said she liked to w ork ; she wanted nice things for her apartment, in which she took great pride, and wanted to provide music lessons for her little girl. Another family consisted of father, mother, and one child, aged 9. The father was chef on the private car of a railroad official and earned $100 a month. From the time she went to work as a nursemaid at the age of 12, the mother had always worked “ when convenient.” She was an expert laundress and evi dently took pride in her work. The home was immaculate and comfortably, almost luxuriously, furnished. The mother appeared to be an unusually good manager and said she found no difficulty in washing 5 days a week and caring for her own home. One father earned $100 per month for a family of four. The mother had worked irregularly during her entire married life. She was not strong and thought she “ felt better when at work.” The father would have preferred to have her stay at home. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis REASONS EOR THE M OTH ERS’ EM PLOYM ENT. 15 Another father was a porter on the railroad. H is earnings were irregular, depending largely on tips. The mother said, they were sufficient to support the family. The previous spring she had lost a baby 5 months old and had gone to work because she was worried and unhappy and wanted to occupy her mind. Another father earned $12 a week for the support o f his wife and one child. The mother said she went to work because £he was “ eating too much and getting too fat.” As her mother lived in the same building, she knew the 3-year-old child would not suffer from her' absence. In a fam ily with only one child, the father a laborer on the railroad, the mother had “ always worked.” She felt it was her duty to help out. The father o f a family which consisted o f himself, his wife, and four chil dren earned $150 a month in an iron foundry. The mother said the family could live on father’s earnings, but she liked to work- to save for a rainy day when he might be unemployed. Also she found it difficult to buy from thé father’s earnings all the clothes needed by the older girls, aged 15 and 12. À father who was a painter earned $100 a month in the busy season. The mother worked in the winter season when the father was unemployed. The fam ily income for the year was $1,300 for a fam ily o f four. From this income the family saved enough to buy four Liberty bonds. They were also savingmoney to enable them to go back to Italy, as the mother was not strong and the doctors told her she would be better in Italy. A father who was a barber was earning $95 a month at the time of this study. The family consisted o f the man and wife and six children. H is earn ings had never been sufficient to support the family. This father was absolute dictator in the household. H e decided when the mother should go to work and picked out the candy factory in which she w as to work. H e also placed the oldest girl in the same factory when she was 13 years old. H e continued to keep an eye on them at their work. In a family o f father, mother, and one child, age 4, the father earned $27 a week as presser in a tailor shop. H is work was seasonal,9 and he was not always able to save enough in busy seasons to carry them over slack periods. In addition to supporting his own family, the father felt that he must send money to Italy, where he had a mother and. three sisters, one o f the latter the mother of three small children whose father had been killed in the war. H is brother who had helped with their support had also been kiiled, increasing their dependence on the relatives in America. The father said he tried to send home $8 to $12 every month. He was also very ambitious to succeed and was plan ning not to remain a presser all his life. The accidental obligations of this family could not be met, with any chance of realizing their ambitions on the father’s earnings at a highly seasonal trade. These illustrations will perhaps suffice to show how interwoven with the general economic status o f the family are the personal desires, obli gations, and aspirations o f the particular family as determining factors in causing the mother to take gainful employment. A less tangible factor and one less easy to illustrate is that which has been referred to as the social factor. This very general term is used to cover the atti tudes current in the various groups to which the families belong, in particular their attitude toward work for mothers o f families, but more generally the whole scale o f social values. Obviously an adequate study 9 T h is w as th e fa th e r ’ s, s ta te m e n t a b o u t his w ork . H e w a s evid e n tly gen eralizin g from p a st experience as du ring the yea r o f th is stu d y em ploy m en t w as regu lar. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 16 C H IL D R E N OF W A G E -E A R N I N G M OTH ERS, C H IC A G O . o f this question is outside the scope o f the present inquiry, but the statements made by the mothers give hints o f some of the determin ing factors. The case cited o f the woman who had “ always worked ” is typical o f a large number in the colored group, including many who were working at the time o f this study because the father’s earnings were j i o longer available. There was, in short, considerable evidence that the employment o f the mother in the colored family had become traditional and that some o f the mothers who were asked why they were at work had never asked themselves this question. The frequent recurrence o f the desire for clothes as the mother’s explanation of why she was working and less frequently the ambition to buy prop erty likewise reflect current social values which have a tendency to bring women into the labor market. Traditional attitudes toward housekeeping and the care o f chil dren should also be considered in this connection. The opinion pre vailing in all the different racial or national groups from which these mothers came sets a high value on good housekeeping10 and regards .it as work which should prove satisfying to any woman. This atti tude was evident on the part o f most o f the mothers interviewed, al though it had been overbalanced by conflicting desires and needs. So far as their statements were the expression of their real feeling and not attempts to make the best o f a bad situation, the few women who said they found industrial employment more interesting than housework so that they preferred working to staying at home represent a break from the traditional attitude. How far this was due to individual preference and how far it was the reflection o f social values o f other groups is a question that need not be considered here. The important point for this study is that they form a very small part o f the women in this study and that in general the traditional attitude with its tendency to keep women in the home was present to a marked degree, even among these women who had gone outside the home for gainful employment. The prevailing tradition with regard to care o f children, however, places no such obstacle in the way o f employment o f mothers. The reason for this appears to be not a lower value placed on'the im portance o f child care but a failure to define the expression “ welfare o f children” in terms that are acceptable to scientific students of the subject. It is doubtless not necessary to point out that this is true in most groups o f the community and in all social classes so that very few mothers understand good care of children as it is under stood by the expert. The mothers in the groups from which the women in this study were drawn had, however, special disadvantages 10 “ G ood ” housekeeping, o f course, is interp reted by th e sta n d a rd s o f the group and n o t by the sta n d a rd s o f a hom e econom ics exp ert. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis CARE OF CHILDREN W H IL E MOTHERS WORKED. 17 not only in their lack o f early education but also in the fact that many o f them had come from rural and backward communities where modern methods o f child care were little understood and where it was doubtless true that care o f children did not take the same time and attention of the mother that it requires in a modern indus trial center. It is not surprising that the change in circumstances is not fully realized by the people who are experiencing it, arid that the traditional attitude toward what is necessary for the care of the children should change only slowly. A t any rate, whether it is to he accounted for by this or other reasons, it seems to be true that the traditional attitude is almost that after the child has passed the somewhat indefinite age o f infancy he will, Topsylike,wjust grow with some oversight, to be sure, but without much care except in sickness or other emergency. How far this attitude characterized the women visited for this study will be discussed later in connection with their methods o f providing for the care o f their children during their absence at work. Here it is sufficient to indicate that so far as tradition with regard to care o f children was binding, it •did not offer the obstacle to employment for mothers of families that was presented by the traditional value assigned to housekeeping. THE CARE OF TH E CHILDREN DURING TH E MOTHERS’ WORKING HOURS. As the gainful employment of the mother means in most instances absence from the home during the hours of employment, provision must be made for the children during those hours. The older chil dren, o f course, are in school 9 months o f the year, but this provides for their care only between the hours o f 9 a. m. and 3.30 p. m., and does not cover the hour’s recess at noon. In some schools “ penny lunches ” or lunches at small cost are served, but the children in most o f the schools are supposed to go home for their noon meal. For the children too young to be admitted to school and for the older children outside o f school hours some provision must be made. It is to furnish this provision that the day nurseries have been established. In Chicago, at the time o f this study, 45 day nurseries were carried on under the auspices o f a large variety o f organiza tions; some were maintained by settlements, others by organizations formed especially for that purpose, many were maintained by churches or religious orders, one was managed by the united chari ties, and one had recently been opened in a public school to make it unnecessary for school children to stay at home to care for their younger brothers and sisters. The standards o f these day nurseries with regard to sanitation as well as child care and training varied https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 18 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. widely. An investigation conducted by the Day Nursery Associa tion 11 in 1917 showed that the greater number of the day nurseries in Chicago did not make adequate provision for medical supervision o f children, and that most o f them did not approach the standard o f cleanliness and sanitation generally accepted as desirable. For example, in many o f the nurseries individual towels and wash cloths, combs, individual drinking cups or bubbling fountains were not pro vided; toothbrushes were not provided; soiled diapers had to be taken home to be washed; ventilation was inadequate. With regard to the feeding o f children, in the majority of nurs eries, “ there appeared to be general disregard o f the well-established principles o f diet.” 12 Very few nurseries could tell how much milk each child consumed or made a point o f watching to see that no child fell below a certain minimum.13 The majority o f the nurs eries had not made adequate provision for the cultural development o f their children,14 and this was especially true in their care o f the older children, although the majority o f the nurseries received children up to the age of 10 and even to 14 years. In many nurs eries the presence o f this older group constituted a serious problem. “ The difficulty in most instances seemed to be in the fact that the children had nothing to do and that they were not made welcome.” 15 This study o f the day nurseries was made in the spring o f 1917. and on December 28, 1917, the city passed an ordinance requiring all day nurseries to be licensed and prescribing minimum standards. According to the terms o f this ordinance, dry sweeping is no longer permitted, children from different families are not allowed to share the same bed, individual towels and wash cloths are required to be furnished, diapers are not to be taken from the building in a soiled condition, and medical examination before admission is made com pulsory. It is the opinion of the secretary o f the Chicago Associa tion o f Day Nurseries that this ordinance has done away with the worst abuses described in the report o f 1917. A later study o f 20 selected day nurseries, made in 1919-20,16 indicated, however, that the provisions o f the ordinance were not strictly enforced. Only 10 o f the 20 nurseries visited complied with all the provisions of the ordinance; 6 violated the requirements that an individual comb should be used for each child; 3 practiced dry sweeping, forbidden 11 B ren ton , H elen M c K e e : A S tu d y o£ da y nu rseries m ade fo r the C hicago A s s o c ia tio n of D ay N u rseries. , Chicago, 1 9 1 8 . 12 Ib id ., p. 4 4 . 13 Ibid., p. 4 5 . 14 Ib id ., p. 4 8 . 15 Ibid., p. 5 8 . 18A n un publish ed stu d y, D a y N u rseries as a n A g e n c y fo r C hild C are, Leazenb y, dep artm en t o f household a d m in istra tio n , U n iv ersity o f C hicago. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis by Am y J. CARE OF CHILDREN W H IL E MOTHERS WORKED; 19 by law; 1 still permitted unwashed diapers to be taken from the building; 3 violated the provision forbidding the use of a common towel ; 1 had more children than the capacity o f the nursery allowed. The number o f violations of the provision requiring “ proper food ” was not obtained, as this must be a matter o f judgment; but in 2 instances the nurseries reported food given to children about which there is little or no difference of opinion. Thus one nursery gave them “ everything—pie, pork, beans, soup, and milk ’’— and another reported “ black tea ” as a regular item in the diet. Mothers often raise various objections to taking their children to the nursery. One o f the most frequent objections is that of distance, for many working mothers do not live within easy access o f a nurs ery. Another difficulty stated by some mothers is that the child to. be taken to the nursery must be dressed, and the same standard of cleanliness maintained, as though the child were in school. A mother who goes out to work is likely to feel that this adds another burden to those she is already carrying and to slip into a course that is ap parently easier, leaving the child to the care of a kindly disposed neighbor or landlady, to his older sisters when they are not in school or, when possible, taking him to a relative to care for. Several of the mothers who were interviewed in this study complained o f the early hour at which it was necessary to waken the children in order to get them dressed and ready before time to be at work. When work began at 7.30, as in the stockyards and in some of the tailor ing establishments, it meant that the child must be awakened by 6 or 6.30 in the morning. The extent to which the mothers included in this study made use o f the day nursery varied from group to group and in no group can it be considered typical o f the use o f day nurseries by the majority o f wage-earning mothers in Chicago. For the colored mothers the opportunities to avail themselves o f day-nursery care for their chil dren were extremely limited as the color line was rigidly drawn in Chicago nurseries, and there were only two nurseries for colored children in the city, with a capacity o f 20 children each. One of these was located on the west side of the city in a district in which none o f the colored women included in this study were living, and the other was in the more prosperous part o f the south side district. As a matter o f fact, none of the colored women visited in this study were using either o f these day nurseries, and the majority o f those interviewed did not know of their existence. Two groups o f mothers studied were exactly those from which the nursery clientele might be expected to be drawn, as the names for one group were obtained from the nurseries themselves and the other was composed o f women in touch with the united charities, which https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 20 C H IL D R E N OF W A G E -E A R N I N G M OTH ERS, C H IC A G O . put constant pressure on the families under its care to take the children to a day nursery when the mother was obliged to work out side her home. That is, the use of the day nursery by these two groups o f mothers studied is probably more extensive than by work ing mothers in Chicago who were not included in the present inves tigation. However, many mothers even in these selected groups did not use the nursery. At the time of this study 147 o f the 168 families on the daynursery list were sending some o f their children to the nursery— 118 were sending all their children, and 29 were sending the younger ones only, leaving the others in 18 instances to care for themselves, in 4 instances to be cared for by relatives, in 4 instances by neighbors, in 1 family by a girl o f 13, in another by the sick father; and in one instance, sending the older boy to a settlement house after school. In the nurseries group there were 21 mothers who were not using the day nursery at all at the time they were visited for this study. The care provided for their children will be discussed later in connection with a similar group from the united-charities families. The information about the use o f day nurseries is not available in as great detail for the families on the united-charities list, but it is possible to state that only 91 o f the 390 families for whom the care o f the children was recorded sent any o f their children to the day nursery. Not all these, o f course, sent all their children or sent them regularly. For 9 families it is recorded that they sent only those below school age, leaving the older ones to look after themselves, to play on the streets, or to be cared for by neighbors. For 5 more it is recorded that they took the children to the nursery “ sometimes.” I f a full statement from each one o f the 91 mothers were available, similar conditions with reference to the extent to which nurseries were used would probably be found in many cases. O f 390 mothers, 299, or 76.7 per cent, did not send any o f their children to the day nursery. Many o f these mothers, -moreover, had children under school age, inasmuch as 266 had children under 7. The care that was arranged for the children in these 299 families, the 21 already mentioned on the day-nurseries list, and the children in the colored group, has been studied in some detail. Table V gives the method o f providing for the care o f the chil dren o f each family and the number o f children in those families. In some families, o f course, different methods were adopted for pro viding for the care o f different children. Since in general the infor mation is not sufficiently detailed to show what provision was made for each individual child in every family, it has seemed best not to divide the family groups but to assume that the best method o f care provided for any child in a family was given to all the children https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 21 CARE CF CHILDREN W H IL E MOTHERS WORKED. o f that family. Thus the number o f children for whom inadequate methods o f care were provided17 has been understated throughout. T able -V .-—Provision for care o f children by class of case; families not sending children to day nursery. Working mothers with de pendent children. Provision for care. Children of working mothers. Charities and nurseries groups. Charities and nurseries groups. Colored group. 532 320 213 1,328 954 374 53 41 128 47 23 64 23 153 42 32 63 40 10 42 5 86 11 9 65 7 13 22 16 69 150 124 299 143 53 161 33 365 129 95 187 127 28 121 10 257 21 29 112 16 25 40 23 108 Total. Total. Colored group. As a general rule, a child is best cared for by his mother. Lnder certain circumstances, however, this does not hold true. The mother who has her child with her at her work, whether in her own home or elsewhere, has not much time to devote to the care o f the child, and his needs are likely to be slighted in favor o f her work. The father would at first thought appear as second only to the mother in giving good care to the children, and so far as interest goes this is undoubtedly true; but a man is not usually so skilled in child care as a woman, and in these families it must be remembered that the father was laboring under an additional handicap, as he was physically incapacitated. Four o f the fathers who had the care o f their children had tuberculosis in advanced stages, two were blind, and one o f these was also syphilitic. The others were more or less incapacitated, in some cases not to such a degree as to interfere seriously with their care o f the children, and in eight instances the record definitely states that the father was able to give the children good care. One hundred and five children in 37 families .were cared for by older sisters who had left school, although most o f these older sisters were themselves under 18 years of age. In 59 families the children were cared for by the grandmother. This might seem in general to be a satisfactory arrangement, but the grandmothers were frequently . old and in many cases they had been worn out by years o f hard work. In 5 o f the families where the grandmother took care o f the children m i t is recognized th a t the seriou sness o f th e resu lts o f in ad equ ate care va ries d irectly w ith the am ou n t o f th e m oth er’ s w ork. A stu d y o f th e differences betw een th e care p r o v id ^ l by fu ll-tim e an d p a rt-tim e w orkers show ed, how ever, no sign ifican t differences betw een the grou ps in th e kind o f p ro vision s m ade. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 22 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING ^O T H E R S, CHICAGO. the evidence was clear that the children were not well cared for. In 24 families the children were cared for by an aunt who made her home with the family. This care, so far as the records show, was satisfactory. In 5 instances cousins o f either the mother or father took care o f the children while the mother worked, and for 2 o f the families this care was said to be unsatisfactory. Other relatives who took care o f children whose mothers worked included a married sister, a 16-year-old cousin, and an uncle. Relatives who did not live with the family cared for 143 children o f 47 families. In 17 o f these families the grandmother cared for the children, in 19 an aunt, in 3 a cousin, while in 8 families from the charities group the record merely states that the children were cared for by relatives. In general, so far as the records show, these • relatives lived near the family, sometimes in the same building, and apparently the care they gave the children was usually little more than general oversight. One grandmother, however, who lived at a distance from her daughter met her at the car every morning and took the children home with her for the day. The group o f 23 women who paid some one to care for their chil dren is interesting as it shows the mother’s realization that some .definite provision must be made for their care. In 1 case the amount paid was only for shelter, in 6 it was not reported. The weekly charges in the other 16 cases were as follow s: One dollar in 3 cases, $1.25 in 2, $1.50 in 4, $2 in 3, $2.50 in 2, $3 in 1, and $4 in 1. In most cases payment was made for the care o f only one child, but one o f the women paying $1 a week had 3 children cared for, another paying $1.25 had 2 children, and each o f the 3 women paying $2.50 and $3 a week had 3 children cared for. IVhile these payments, made from weekly earnings that were themselves small, are evidence o f the seriousness with which the mothers took the problem o f pro viding care for their children, they are so small that it obviously did not pay a woman to give a great deal o f time to the task. In fact most o f the women who undertook the work were either women living in the family group or women in the neighborhood, friends of the mothers who agreed to care for the children partly as an act o f neighborly kindness and partly because they were glad to receive a little extra money to eke out a scanty income. In general, the mothers who paid for care expressed themselves as satisfied with the arrangement. One mother, however, a colored woman who paid the woman on the floor below $1.50 for the care o f . her 5-year-old boy, said that she had worried a great deal about the boy, for the woman was old and, she was afraid, not able to care properly for such a small child. The reasons given by these wage-earning mothers for prodding care for their children in this way instead of taking them to a day https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis CARE OF CHILDREN W H IL E MOTHERS WORKED. 23 nursery is a matter o f interest. In nine instances the woman who cared for the children was either living in the home or came to the house. This meant that the mother was relieved o f the burden of getting children ready to go from home at an early hour in the morning and also that the house was cared for in the mother’s absence, for in all these cases the caretakers’ duties included some help with the housework. Other factors that appeared to influence the mothers were distance from the nursery, regulations o f the nurs ery respecting the children they will admit, and in some instances dissatisfaction with the care the children received at the nursery. The 14 mothers who took their children outside the home to be cared for were all living in districts in which no nursery was avail able. Eleven o f them were colored mothers, and the other 3 were living in the district known as South Chicago, which had no day nurseries and was not within reach of any. One hundred and sixty-one children were left in the care o f neigh bors who were not paid. While in some cases the neighbors appeared to give real care to the children and feel definite responsibility for looking after them, usually the neighbors’ Care, especially for those children in school, appeared to consist merely o f general oversight. In other words it is probable that in a great many instances this method o f providing for the care o f the children covered a more or less indefinite provision which is only one degree removed from entire lack o f provision. For example, one little colored girl, 7 years o f age, was included in the group cared for by neighbors. The concrete situation was that the woman “ downstairs ” had children of her own and “ kept her eye on ” this 7-year-old child until the mother came home. “ But,” the mother added, “ she is a big girl and can take care o f herself most o f the time.” Children classed under “ other provision” included those in 17 families cared for by landladies and by lodgers and those who were boarded outside the home. These last children were all colored. One, a boy of 7, was in an institution for dependents, because the mother worked as a domestic and had no home; three children from two families were with relatives in the South, the mothers sending money for their care because they did not feel able to work and also care for the children; and one child, a baby o f 15 months, was boarded for $4 a week in a neighboring town. Over one-fourth of all the children, or 365 children from 153 fami lies, were left with no provision made for their care while their mothers were at work aside from the care they received in school during school hours. In some cases the mother had made one o f the older children responsible for the younger ones, but as the child to whom this task was given was herself only a school child this was not classed as provision for the care o f the children. The potential https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 24 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. seriousness o f a situation in which young children are left to look out for themselves is so apparent that it hardly needs emphasis. The mothers themselves were in many cases quite aware of it and expressed themselves as much worried over the necessity o f leaving their children in this way. One mother, for example, from the col ored group who had three children aged 7, 9, and 11, said that while the children, in her opinion, were all right when they were at home together, she had been much worried over the fact that the class which the 7-year-old girl attended in school had been dismissed early from time to time and the little girl had no place to go until her big brother (aged 11) came home with the key. One very cold day a barber in the neighborhood saw her and took her into his shop to keep her warm. The mother became so worried over the situation that she finally stopped work. Other mothers, however, were less aware of the dangers o f leaving their children to care for themselves, and many of them said they were not at all worried about leaving their children alone as they were old enough to look after themselves. One mother went to work when her 10-year-old boy was expelled from school as incorrigible because she then had some one to care for the younger children. This is perhaps an exceptional case, but again and again investiga tors reported that the mothers thought children aged 10, 12, or 1& “ big enough to look after themselves.” Attention has already been called to this attitude on the part of the mothers as a factor in accounting for their presence in the labor mar ket. It is more important probably in the effect it had in determin ing the care the mother provided for her children during her neces sary absence from the home. The following illustrations show the concrete situation in certain . families where the children were left alone: A mother worked at night in a pie factory. Six children, the eldest 12, the youngest 2, stayed at home alone. A Bohemian family consisted of mother and three children, 8, 4, and 2 years o f age. Children were left alone at night while mother worked. A Slovak family consisted of the mother and three boys, aged 12, 5, and 3. Mother worked at night in a tin shop. The boys were alone at night. Three Polish children, aged 9, 6, and 4, were alone after school. Colored families. Two children, 11 and 8, were alone at noon and after school. Mother gave them' key to house and thought they were old enough to care for themselves. A girl o f 11 was home alone until 8 o’clock at night, as mother worked from 11 a. m. to 7 p. m. Child did housework and heated up the supper which mother had prepared. Mother said child was very good and did not suffer from her absence. A mother worked as housekeeper in a rooming house, working from 10.30 in the morning to 6 at night. The only child, a little girl of 7, went with her mother on warm days but was at home, alone, in cold weather. A family on the https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 25 CARE OF CHILDREN W H IL E MOTHERS WORKED. floor below were very kind to the child, and she went down there when she was lonesome. In March the mother reported that the child had not been in school since November. > ) Sf Three children, aged 11, 8, and 7, all girls, were home alone at noon and after school. Mother said fire was often out and house cold when children got home. A girl of 7 was alone after school until after 7 in the evening. Two boys, aged 5 and 7, came home at noon and got their own lunch. Family lived in furnished room, and the landlady was home after school every other day. Alternate days the two boys were home alone. Care o f the children during the mother’s absence at work involves not only the more or less intangible duties o f supervision but it in volves the very definite duty of providing for the children’s lunch. Information with regard to the provision made for the children’s lunch is presented in Table Y I, for the nurseries group and the col ored group. T a b l e V I.— Kinds of provision for children's lunch made by working mothers icith dependent children o f school age. Working mothers with de pendent children.1 Provision for lunch. Both groups. Total.................................................. Nurseries Colored group. group. 368 U94 At nursery............................................ 143 2143 At hom e.......................................»................. 131 25 106 19 40 19 40 3 10 7 2 7 4 3 2 12 38 12 36 ............ 47 10 37 Taken from home.................................. Obtained at school.............................................. 12 6 4 29 8 40 9 31 12 8 18 2 5 7 4 18 2 Prepared by mother at noon...................................................... Prepared by mother (cold lunch)........................ Prepared by children themselves........................... Prepared by relatives.................................. Prepared by father................................... ............... Prepared by others............................................... At school............... . ................................... Other places....... .................: ............................................................. At neighbors................................................................................... With relatives.......................................................................... Store or restaurant................................................................................ Mother’s work place................................................................... Not reported................................................................................................ 4 174 8 7 1 In 26 cases in the nurseries group two kinds of provision by a family were reported. The actual number of families in this group was, therefore, 168, and the total number, in both groups, 342. * In 5 cases children went home from the nursery for lunch and in 1 case a child not there at other times had his lunch there. Of these 143 families, 115 were sending all their children to the day nursery; 2 were making other provision for the care of some o f their children, but sending them all to the nursery to eat lunch; and 25 had 1 or more children in the nursery but made other provision for the lunch of the older children. Table V I shows that, while the number o f mothers who left the children to shift for themselves at noon was smaller than the number who left them alone at other times, in 19 families the children got their own lunch, and in 40 the lunch was left prepared by the mother https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 26 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. and the children either ate a cold lunch or warmed up what their mother had left. In either case the children were alone in the house during the lunch hours. In 18 families in the colored group the chil dren were given money to buy their lunches at a delicatessen store or a restaurant. These cases represent the greatest freedom given to children in choosing their food, and it is obvious that this freedom of choice would ordinarily be misused. Two little Polish, schoolboys, aged 9 and 11, prepared their lunch and also purchased food at a store. Their purchases were said to include cakes and buns and occasionally sausage. The children were reported by the investigator to be pale and thin. A colored boy, aged 10, given money to buy his lunch ate nothing but fruit. The mother said he was sick “ an awful lot.” A little girl of 9, also colored, was given 15 or 20 cents by her mother. The mother did not know what she had for lunch, but the child volunteered the information that she usually had pie or cake or sometimes sandwiches. The 19 children who got their own lunch at home were o f course more limited in their choice of foods, but it is to be expected that the lunch they would provide for themselves would be at best haphazard. The situation described below was apparently all too common. A girl of 13 got her own lunch, sometimes hot, sometimes cold. Lunch was very irregular; the child ate anything there happened to be in the house and usually ate standing up. I f there was nothing in the house she went without lunch. In 47 families the children had lunch at school, but in 35 o f these the children took their lunch from home, and in only 12 did they have a so-called penny lunch furnished by the schools. It is evident that the penny lunches were o f very slight service to these children by whom they were most needed. THE MOTHERS’ GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT. The mother’s absence from home while she is at work necessarily means an inability to care for the children during the hours she is employed. Moreover, her ability to give them proper care during the hours she is at home is, in part at least, dependent on her not getting overtired at her work. This in turn depends on a number o f factors— the physical condition o f the mother, the nature of the work she is called on to perform, the length o f her working day, the conditions under which the work is done and her other duties. The present chapter is concerned with the purely industrial factors—the occupa tions o f the mothers, the hours of work, and the general working con ditions—while the chapter following deals with the mother’s other duties as bearing on the question o f fatigue. The character o f the employment of these mothers is shown by Table V II, which divides their work into six main groups: (1) manu https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis TH E MOTHERS GAINFUL EM PLOYM ENT. 27 facturing, (2) transportation, (3) trade and clerical occupations, (4) domestic and personal service, (5) home work, and (6) agricul ture. O f all the women scheduled, 86.6 per cent were found to belong to two groups—manufacturing and domestic and personal service—so that the four other groups are relatively unimportant. T a b l e V II.— Industry of mother’s employment t>y Glass of case; working mothers with dependent children. Working mothers with dependent children. All groups. Charities group. Nurseries group. Colored group. Industry of mother’s employment. Num ber. Per cent distri bution. Num ber. All industries............................. 843 100.0 463 100.0 168 100.0 Manufacturing..................................... Domestic and personal service........... Trade and clerical................................ Home work.......................................... Transnortation.................................... Agriculture......................................... 360 379 56 36 20 1 42.7 43.9 6.6 4.3 2.4 0.1 182 216 20 31 13 1 39.3 46.7 4.3 6.7 2.8 0.2 115 33 18 2 68.5 19.6 10.7 1.2 Per Per Num cent cent distri ber. distri bution. bution. Num ber. Per cent distri bution. 212 100.0 63 29.7 121 • 57.1 18 8.5 1.4 3 7 3.3 !■ | The largest group was employed in manufacturing and included 360 of the 843 women. They formed 39.3 per cent of the charities group, and 68.5 per cent o f the nurseries group, but only 29.7 per cent o f the colored group. The difference between the day-nurseries and the charities group is partly to be accounted for by the fact that the day-nurseries group was a selected group occupationally and also by the fact that the united charities urged many of the mothers to secure part-time work, which is ordinarily difficult if not impossible in the manufacturing industries. Food manufacturing employed 137, or 16.3 per cent, the largest single group with the exception o f the day. workers. H alf the factory workers from the charities group, nearly one-fourth from the nurseries group, and one-third from the colored group were found in this industry. Five food industries were represented—meat pack ing and its by-products, biscuit or cracker making, candy manufac ture, nut shelling, and pie making. The last three were relatively unimportant, employing only 10, 4, and 3, respectively. The biscuit factories also claimed only a small number of these women— 15 from the entire group. Women usually had very light work in these factories. Meat packing, then, was by far the most important o f these ’food industries, 104 mothers being employed in the packing houses. While in many cases information concerning the occupations o f these 79100°— 22----- - 3 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 28 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. women was not available from the charities records, for about half the number the nature o f their work was indicated. Women are not employed in the actual work o f slaughtering the animals, but the processes o f preparing and packing the meat and utilizing the by products have been so subdivided and reorganized by machine inventions that women are employed in nearly every other department o f the industry.18 Among the women in this group were meat-casing scrapers, bladder stitchers, sausage stuffers and packers, meat trim mers, carding machine operators, padding machine operators, can fillers, solderers, labelers, can lifters, vegetable peelers, tin wipers, and butterine wrappers, besides workers at unspecified occupations in the dried-beef and corned-beef departments, the curled-hair depart ment, the glue department, and the tin shop where cans and pails were made. Both colored and white women were employed in the same occupations. Most of these women did work which was either very like preparing food in their own kitchens or was.simple machine work such as they might do in any factory. Clothing manufacturing employed 99, or 11.7 per cent, of the mothers. Among those from the day nurseries it was more impor tant than the food industries, forming 50.3 per cent o f the group. The garment trades included small tailor shops as well as the large factories, consequently the conditions under which the women worked varied widely. Nineteen separate occupations were represented among the women in these trades.19 Besides the garment trades there were represented in this group hat manufacturing, glove making, corset making, sweater knitting, apron manufacturing, and hand kerchief making. The colored women employed in the clothing trade constituted a small proportion o f the total employed in manufacturing. A more detailed study o f the firms in which they were employed shows that while 5 o f the 12 were employed in the garment trades all o f them were employed in the small shops which are characterized on the whole by less desirable working conditions than the larger factories. Seven of the colored women were working in other branches of the «A b bott, E., and Breckinridge, S. P. : “ W omen in Industry : The Chicago Stockyards.” Journal o f P olitical Econom y, U niversity o f Chicago Press, V ol. X I X (October, 1911), p. 644. “ The great m ajority o f girls perform simple m echanical processes such as are carried on in large numbers o f factories all over the city and country. I f the canning department, fo r example, were outside o f the yards, the character o f the work would n ot distinguish it from thousands o f other factories. It remains, however, in the yards sur rounded by the ugly sights and sounds and the offensive smells that are characteristic o f these great slaughterhouses.” 18 Including 13 sewing machine operators, 12 coat finishers, 4 pants finishers, 1 collar finisher, 1 dress finisher, 5 finishers (n ot specified), 3 sewers (n ot specified), 4 pocket stitchers, 1 canvas maker, 1 corner tacker, 6 basters, 1 basting puller, 1 seamer, 1 piecer, 3 buttonhole makers, 2 button sewers, 4 fitters, 3 inspectors, 1 sleeve liner, 1 presser, 1 cleaner, 1 labeler, 1 checker, 1 shopper, 1 draper, -1 padding sewer, and 12 whose occu pations were not reported. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis TH E M OTH ERS7 GAINFUL EM PLOYM ENT. 29 clothing trade, 4 in apron manufacturing, 1 at hat making, 1 in the manufacture of corsets, and 1 in a handkerchief factory, industries in which the conditions o f work had not been standardized by agreements with unions. The iron and steel industry employed 28 o f the mothers. Three were employed in a mimeograph factory; 2 were in adding-machine factories; 3 were in hardware factories; 2 in wheel factories; 2 in a harvester factory; 4 in a speedometer factory; 1 in a foundry; 1 in a chair-spring factory; and 2 in steel-castings factories, 1 of whom rolled castings and loaded them on trucks. The remaining 8 worked in railroad car shops. Manufacturing of other metals gave work to only 12 women, 10 workers in tin-can factories, 1 in a novelties factory, and 1 in a lamp factory. Other manufacturing industries employed a smaller number o f women. Lumber and furniture manufacture employed 9— 5 in the making of furniture and 4 in a box factory, 2 o f whom stacked the . lumber from which the boxes were made. Leather, printing and publishing, and the textile trades each employed 8 women, among whom were workers in shoe factories, tanneries, a leather belting factory, twine mills, bag factories, a tent factory, and a silk factory. The making o f electrical supplies gave employment to 7, and the tobacco industry and paper-box making to 6 women. Other in dustries represented included automobile accessories, 6 women; soap making, 2 women; glass manufacture, 2 women; lamp-shade fac tories, 2 women; a film factory, 2 women; a surgical supply house, 2 women; paper manufacturing, 3 women; pillow and mattress mak ing, 2 women; a straw-hat factory, 1 woman; a kodak company, T woman; a broom factory, 1 woman; a tar factory, 1 woman'; a mu nitions factory, 1 woman. Four women were working in factories the nature o f which was unknown; 2 o f them were employed at sorting feathers.20 The most significant fact that stands out from this enumeration is doubtless the diversified character o f the group in respect to their work. At the same time it is clear that most o f the women were engaged in work that could be done with little skill and for which little training was necessary. The group employed in domestic and personal service included 370 women, or 43.9 per cent o f the whole group studied. This group was composed o f 54 workers in restaurants, 38 workers in laundries, 45 charwomen, 43 domestic servants, 189 day workers, and 1 manicurist. ®A word should be said in explanation o f the number o f unknown either as to occu pation or industry. The greater part o f them are explained by the fa ct that the unitedcharities records did not have the inform ation, but instances were found in the fam ilies visited in which the women did not know the name o f the place they worked nor the nature o f the product and could only vaguely describe their own occupation. This latter difficulty was usually due to inability to speak English, https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis ■30 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. The “ day workers,” 22.4 per cent o f all the mothers, included those women who went out to work by the day, regularly or irregularly, to do washing, ironing, or cleaning in private homes. From an occu pational point o f view, these women might perhaps be classed with the domestic servants, except that the work of women who go out by the day is almost invariably the hardest part o f domestic service. It is probably possible to make too much o f the difficulties o f day work as compared with factory work, as in some instances, at least, it seemed to offer a chance for personal initiative and planning that is lacking in most factory work. One woman said she found laundry work very interesting; she liked plan ning her work so as to be through in an 8-hour day, and she even enjoyed washing the difficult pieces. Another woman also said she enjoyed doing laundry work, as she could arrange her work so that she did not get very tired. For example, when she w as tired from leaning over, she would wring clothes, which gave her a change o f position and rest. This woman was interested in doing good work and felt guilty when she had not done her best. She had found some families w ho, were not particular about the way the work was done, but were interested in getting a big washing out o f the way. She did not like to work for such peo ple and was always able to keep busy working for employers who were more appreciative of good work. When all allowance is made, however, for factors o f this kind, which, it should be said, appeared to operate only in rare instances, the fact remains that day work is harder physically than most fac tory w ork; that in common with all domestic service it is unstandard ized and unregulated, and that it is on a lower plane socially than work in a factory. Also, it is more irregular than industrial employment _ ^ fact which, while offering some advantages, makes earnings uncertain and the problem o f having steady work more difficult. The advantages from the irregularity of this employment are obvious— it is one o f the few kinds of work that a woman can do and arrange to have free days for her own household. It is for this reason that social agencies, the united charities and the aid-tomothers division o f the juvenile court, encouraged many o f the women whom they were helping to do day work instead of taking work in a factory. The advantages o f this arrangement appealed more strongly to the agencies than to the women themselves, in w’hose eyes the disadvantages loomed larger than any possible gains. This was particularly true o f groups o f certain nationalities who were almost invariably opposed to day work, even preferring the more laborious scrubbing in offices. This opposition to day work on the part o f the mothers has in creased greatly in the past few years with the increased demand for women in factories. The tendency has been more and more for the white women to leave this work for the colored women, for whom https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis TH E M OTH EKS’ GAINFUL EM PLOYM ENT. . 31 industrial openings have been more limited. The effect of the pres sure exerted by the united charities can be seen from the fact that in spite o f this tendency a larger proportion o f the women in the charities group (27.6 per cent) than in the colored group (23.6 per cent) were engaged in day work. In this connection it is important to remember that the charities group was studied a year earlier than the colored group. It is extremely doubtful whether the influence o f the united charities could keep as many women in day work to day. A very noticeable difference between the day workers in the two groups is that almost all those in the charities group for whom the information could be obtained (107 o f the 128) were working only part time, 71 were working three days or less per week, and only 36 more than three days, and o f these only 13 worked as many as five days a week. In the colored group, on the other hand, only 15 o f the 50 worked as little as three days a week, while 35 worked four days or more, 20 worked five days or more, and 10 worked six days. This only emphasizes the fact that the possibility of working part time at this occupation was not so important a factor in inducing colored women to do day work as it was for the other group. The 43 domestic servants formed only 5.1 per cent o f the whole group. They included chambermaids in hotels, boarding houses, and settlements, as well as general housemaids and nursemaids in private families and matrons in factories and schools. Cleaning,’ sweeping, and scrubbing in office buildings, factories, theaters, schools, churches, and other public buildings employed 8.6 per cent o f the charities group, 5.1 per cent o f the whole. It was in some cases short-hour work, but often had to be done when the buildings were not in use— at night, early in the morning, or late in the evening, hours which often make a special appeal to mothers of families, as the immediate problem o f caring for the children is somewhat simpler, but hours when from the social point of view the mother’s presence in the home is most needed. The work itself is hard physical labor, it often involves the danger o f breathing dust, and it necessarily means exposure to the weather in the late evening or early morning hours, as well as physical and moral hazards. Thirty-eight o f the mothers worked in laundries. O f these, 27 were colored women. Much o f the work in laundries is heavy and disagreeable, and many o f these women were engaged in processes that involved exposure to excessive heat and humidity and longcontinued standing. The last division o f the group of domestic and personal service— the restaurant workers— included 54 women. Only 11 o f these were waitresses, while 20 were dishwashers^ (1 in a saloon), and 9 others https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 32 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. kitchen helpers; 2 were cooks. One kitchen helper was employed in a hotel, another in a hospital, and a third in a public school. Eight o f these women were employed in factory restaurants, five o f which were in the stockyards. Most of the others were at work in cheap restaurants where the noise and the necessity for haste are unusually great. The women employed in trade, at clerical work, or at work that is termed “ professional,” numbered 56, or 6.6 per cent o f the mothers in this study. The occupations included in this group are gen erally thought o f as requiring a greater amount o f education and intelligence than the other occupations considered. The extent to which this is true varies from occupation to occupation within the group, as the education or intelligence demanded o f a messenger is doubtless no more than is required for unskilled work in factories. However illogical this distinction between trade and clerical work is in theory, in fact it does exist and results in a certain amount of social prestige being attached to work o f this nature. In view of this fact, it is interesting to note that 18 colored women, or 8.5 per cent o f the colored group, were engaged in these occupations. This was a slightly lower proportion than was found in the nurseries group but almost double that o f the charities group. A study of the occupations o f the women in the colored group, and in the other two groups considered as one, shows that more o f the colored women were employed at the lowest grade occupations in the group. The exact occupations o f the women of both groups are given below : Colored group— 18: 1 stock girl. 1 check girl. 1 messenger. 1 glass washer ( secondhand store). 1 duster (furniture store). 2 ushers (theater). 2 saleswomen (grocery). 1 catalogue inspector. 1 addresser. 1 insurance solicitor. 5 typists. Charities and nurseries group— 88: 1 sorter (rag shop). 9 saleswomen. 8 clerks (mail-order house). 8 clerks (offices, factories, and laundries). 3 bookkeepers. 1 cashier. 2 meter readers. 1 translator (mail-order house). 1 timekeeper. 1 sheet writer. 2 inspectors. 1 typist. O f the entire group studied, 36 women (4.3 per cent) were en gaged in gainful occupations in their own homes. The long agita tion against home work has made it widely known that the long and irregular hours of home work, the lack of systematic supervi sion, and the resulting chaos in the house often means that the child must receive very little attention from the busy mother. Among these 36 women, 13 were doing family washings; 19 were sewing, https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis TH E M OTH ERS’ GAINFUL EM PLOYM ENT. 33 most of them finishing garments for tailor shops; and 4 did miscel laneous work, such as stringing tags, making cords, or operating a glove-knitting machine. Most of these occupations are notoriously “ sweated.” A Polish mother who finished coats at 15 cents a coat began work at 7.30 in the morning, after she had cleared away the breakfast dishes. She sewed all day and often until late in the evening to earn $8 a week. W hen the investigator called at 8 o’clock in the evening she was still sewing. She washed, ironed, scrubbed, and made beds after she had finished work at night. It is not surprising that the house and the children were very dirty, and the mother too tired to be patient with the three small children. Many kinds of home work are irregular from day to day and also seasonal. An Italian woman reported that during the season she often worked until midnight earning from $8 to $12.75 a week, finishing coats at 15 or 16 cents each, but between the 1st o f July and the 1st of September she could get no work at all. Transportation gave employment to 20 women, 2.4 per cent of the mothers. Fifteen o f the 20 worked as railroad laborers. This represents a class o f work comparatively new to women, one o f the employments in which women to some extent replaced men during the war. Nine o f the mothers were employed as car cleaners in the yards o f steam and electric railways; 2 others were yard laborers; 2 even cleaned engines, 1 picked up scrap iron in the yards; and the last shoveled grain from cars. Two o f the car cleaners worked at night. It was hard, dirty, and smoky work, and the surroundings and associations involved certain moral hazards. O f the 5 women working in other lines of the transportation in dustry, 3 worked as switchboard operators, 1 for the telephone com pany, and the others for private concerns, and 2 for a taxicab com pany, cleaning cars. These last women and 2 of the telephone opera tors worked at night. Agriculture was represented by only one woman, who was em ployed during the summer o f 1918 at a truck garden in the outskirts o f the city,- weeding, gathering vegetables, and preparing them for the market. A few other women had been employed at. this work during the summer but had returned to factory work in the autumn before this inquiry was made. . An elaborate analysis of each occupation would be required before it would be possible to pass judgment on the different kinds o f work as to which ones were unduly fatiguing for mothers of families and which ones could be followed without leaving the mother so tired at night that she had no strength to devote to the training o f her children. "N o attempt is made here to say how far the women with whom this inquiry is concerned were in occupations that were in https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 34 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. themselves unsuitable. The facts already brought out show, how ever, that these women were not exclusively engaged in light occu pations but that on the contrary, a fairly large number were employed in occupations popularly regarded as very laborious, some of which probably involve as hard work as is done by any women. In other words, the present methods of selecting workers did not operate soas to insure to the married women with children dependent on them for care, and possibly also for support, work that is light and easy to perform. The hours during which the mothers were employed are perhaps more important than the nature of the work they did, affecting as they do both the question of fatigue and the leisure that can be de voted to the children. Table V I II shows the number o f hours o f work for the mothers o f the nurseries and colored groups, who were working full time.21 That is, home workers, day workers, and part-time workers, about 15 per cent o f the group, have been excluded, since their work was in general too irregular to allow any accurate estimate. The information as to hours o f work is given for the two groups only, because the records o f the united charities contained informa tion in such a small number o f cases that no attempt has been made to tabulate the data for the families in that group. T abt.e V I I I .— Hours worked per day ; working mothers with dependent children nurseries and colored groups.1 Working mothers with dependent children.* Both groups. Nurseries group. Colored group. Hours per day. Number. Per cent, Per cent Per cent distri Number. distri Number. distri bution. bution. bution. A ll........................................ - ............. 290 100.0 142 100.0 148 100.0 Less than 8................................................... 8 and less than 9.......................................... 9 and less than 10......................................... 10 hours........................................................ Over 10 hours.................... .................... . - 37 138 94 16 5 12.8 47.6 32.4 5.5 1.7 23 -76 38 4 1 16.2 53.5 26.8 2.8 0.7 14 62 56 12 .4 9.5 41.0 37.8 8.1 2.7 • 1 Exclflding 90 women, 26 from the nurseries group and 64 from the colored group, who were doing day work, home work, or part-time work, or whose hours of wyrk were irregular. It will be noted in connection with Table V I II that comparatively few women, 21 of the 290, worked as long as 10 hours per day, the maximum allowed under the Illinois law, although 5 of the 21 were 31 T h ere is such v a ria tio n in th e num ber o f hours th a t different e sta b lish m en ts run th a t it h a s been im possible to set an y definite sta n d a rd o f the num ber o f hours per da y or w eek th a t should c o n stitu te fu ll-tim e w ork. W h e th e r o r n o t a w om an w as w orkin g fu ll tim e w a s decided by a con sid eration o f her in d ivid u al case. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis TH E M OTH ERS’ GAINFUL EM PLOYM ENT. 35 found working over 10 hours daily in violation of the law. The great majority o f the women, 175, were working less than 9 hours per day and 37 were working less than 8 hours daily. Somewhat over one-third, however, were working 9 or more hours daily. The hours worked by this group o f working mothers were fairly typical o f the hours o f work of women in the city as reported by the Illinois In dustrial Survey of 1917.22 Out of 85,348 women employees in Chi cago 11.07 per cent worked less than 8 hours per day, 59.73 per cent worked 8 hours and less than 9, 22.02 per cent worked 9 hours and less than 10, and 7.16 per cent worked 10 hours. While the same information is not available for the united-chari ties families, only 58 of those mothers engaged’in work definitely specified as short-hour work; another 71 were doing day work not more than three days a week. On the other hand, 40 mothers were working at night, 29 of them, full time ; and 206 did other full-time work. As seen in Table VTI, they were for the most part doing the same type o f work as the mothers in the other two groups, and it may be assumed that they were employed about the same number o f hours. It is generally recognized that the fatigue incident to any indus trial employment can be greatly reduced by the provision o f favorable working conditions and conversely that insanitary workshops, poorly ventilated, with inadequate toilet facilities and rest rooms, not only unnecessarily increase the fatigue but are a positive menace to the health of the workers. The State ^f Illinois has shown its recog nition o f these facts as well ¿is the importance it attaches to protect ing the health o f all workers by its factory acts, which provide cer tain minimum conditions which are required o f all factories or work shops. Among the most important of these are provisions for the safeguarding of machinery, provisions requiring a reasonable and equable temperature “ consistent with the reasonable requirements of the manufacturing process” and forbidding all “ unnecessary humidity,” provisions prescribing the ratio of toilets and wash rooms to employees and requiring separate toilets and wash rooms for work ers o f different sexes, and minute provisions for ventilation.23 It is outside the scope o f this study to inquire how far the provisions o f the law are enforced, but the report of the factory inspector for 1919 indicates that in 5,474 inspections of Chicago and Cook County firms, it was necessary to issue 1,995 orders for compliance with the provi sions with regard to sanitation. The nature o f those orders is given below. 22 Illinois Industrial Surveys H ours and H ealth o f W omen W orkers, December, 1918, p. 35. Schnepp and Barnes, State printers, Springfield, 1919. 23 Illinois : H urd’s Revised Statutes, 1919, Ch. 48, secs. 89-120. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 36 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. T a b l e I X .— Orders respecting1 sanitation of factories issued in Chicago and Cook County in fiscal year 1919 6y the Illinois Department of Labor, Division o f Factory Inspection.1 Nature of orders.* Orders . respect ing sani tation of factories issued in Chicago and Cook County. 1,995 818 906 12 51 Nature of orders.* 7. 8. 9. 10. Remove dust and films...................... Rooms dry, clean, and sanitary....... Install or guard fans and blowers.. Guard ovens, furnaces, vats, pans, Orders respect ing sani tation of factories issued in Chicago and Cook County. 145 42 16 5 — 1From the Report of the Directors of Departments under the Civil Administrative Code, 1919, p. 123. Illinois State Journal Co., Springfield, 1920. , , 8 The wording of these orders is a little obscure, but it may be taken to mean any orders referring to the provisions of law in respect to subject specified. Table I X indicates a widespread failure to comply with the law, which may or may not have been remedied by the orders issued by the factory inspector. How far the mothers included in this study were employed by firms that had to be ordered to comply with the law is not disclosed by the information obtained, but there is no reason to think that they were more fortunate than other workers in Chicago. It should also be noted that the requirements o f the law are, strictly speaking, minimum requirements, and that many things recognized as both desirable and possible are omitted, notably pro vision o f separate lunch rooms and of rest rooms, where a place to lie down is .provided, and arrangement for rest periods at suitable intervals. A ll these are factors which tend to reduce fatigue and deserve consideration here. Besides these, too, is what may be called the personal equation. Otherwise favorable conditions may be over balanced by irritations from unfortunate personal contacts and a lack o f consideration in small matters. It is impossible to say ho'vtf many o f the mothers in the present study worked under the most favorable conditions that could have prevailed. The statements of the mothers show that some, at least, were working under conditions that were unnecessarily hard. The conditions complained o f ranged from minor grievances to positive violations o f the law. Some o f the mothers’ stateménts regarding their work follow : Mother lifted loads o f bacon from a chute to a bench. Every load weighed SO pounds. There was no time to look around. The woman in charge called all the time, “ Hurry up, hurry up ! ” Mother of one child worked as chocolate dipper. Until recently the foreman had hurried the workers all the time, and she got very tired. Under a new and more considerate foreman she found the work much easier. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis TH E M O TH ERS7 GAINFUL EM PLOYM ENT. 37 Mother of four children w as a casing scraper in a packing house. Old drafty building. Worked in basement, where it was cold and damp. Stood on loose boards at a trough through which water ran continually. Floor wet. Women wore rubber boots. Mother worked in a glue factory. Steamy. Very hot. Floor always wet. She lifted heavy wooden frames all day and got very tired. Mother operated a power machine at a steel barrel and tank factory. The women wore overalls at their work. The dressing room was very dirty and had only cold water with which it w as impossible to get clean, as the work was greasy. No place was provided to lie down in case o f illness and no lunch room. The workers had to eat their lunch in 20 minutes sitting at the machines. Mother o f two children worked in a laundry. She reported that the toilet was in bad condition; that there were no lavatories in the dressing rooms, no place to lie down, and no lunch room. Workers ate in the workroom, where the machines were going. Mother found noise very wearing. Mother o f three children worked 6 weeks in apron factory where many o f the mothers in this study were employed. Mother reported the machines were very high, and the chairs very low so that by 10 a. m. her back and legs ached and she felt as though she had done a day’s work. Boss was always “ going to ” get higher chairs but never did. Toilet and’ dressing rooms for 40 girls were hardly big enough for 6. Mother o f one child worked in laundry. Dressing room in bad condition. W ater in washbowls did not ru n; one toilet was so dirty it could n‘ot be used. There was no one to keep the room clean. There was no place to lie down, and no lunch room. Workers all ate in workroom. Mother o f one child had worked for a week as can washer and sausage packer. She stood in water at her work so that her feet were always wet at night; front o f dress also wet from the steam of the glasses she scalded. “ Nothing even to lean against.” No dressing room. Boss shouted at workers as if they were animals. “ I f you looked at anyone 'they hollered at you.” Mother of one child was a dishwasher in restaurant; worked in small room about 6 feet square with four other women. She .stood all day at her work and lifted heavy baskets of dishes out of washing machines. In warm weather the room was sickeningly hot and close. As already stated, this study did not secure information that would indicate how typical such conditions were among the group of work ers studied. It is interesting to observe, however, that not all the women who commented on their working conditions were dissatisfied. Some o f the favorable comments are given below. In part they re flect perhaps different personal reactions, but in part it is evident that they are the response to better working environment. Mother of one child worked at girls’ clu b ; she found it a very pleasant place to work. She was allowed to do all her own washing and ironing with no expense for gas, soap, etc., in the club laundry. Also her child was allowed to come there at lunch time. * Mother of one child worked as packer in biscuit factory. She found her employer very considerate. W orkers had an hour for lunch and a 20-minute rest period both morning and afternoon. She particularly appreciated these rest periods, as she found herself tired and nervous from prolonged standing. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 38 C H IL D R E N OE W A G E -E A R N IN G M OTH ERS, C H IC A G O . Mother worked in “ the yards.” She said her work was easy and pleasant. She stood and stamped sausages until 10 a. m .; then she sat down and wrapped them. She had a 10-minute rest period twice a day. HOUSEKEEPING PROBLEMS. The wage-earning mother of a family who tries to maintain a home for her children has a large number o f duties outside her working hours. In solving the housekeeping problem the working mother has a number o f alternatives. She may try to do all the work herself outside her working hours; she may have the children help her while she herself bears the general responsibility for the work; she may be so fortunate as to have others on whom she may call for help; she may send part of her work outside the home to be done; or she may leaye to the children the responsibility o f doing a large part of it while she is away. From the point of view o f the welfare o f the children all these methods except that of having others in the family help with the work are open to serious objection. I f the mother does all the work herself, she reduces the amount o f time that she can give to the care o f the children; and she is more likely to become irritable and “ run down ” from overwork so that she will be unable to give them proper care. Sending work out o f the house is undoubtedly very desirable if the family income is adequate, but where that income is already inadequate, the expense of sending the work out means a reduction in the amount that can be spent on necessities such as food and clothing. I f the children are o f suit able age and the work given them to do is appropriate to their years, there is, o f course, no objection to their helping with the housework. On the other hand, there is serious danger in giving young children too much work and responsibility. In order to learn how the working mothers in this study solved the problem o f housekeeping, those visited were questioned in detail about their arrangements.24 One hundred and twenty-five of the 861 25 mothers who answered the question said that they did all work themselves, 118 did it with the help of children, 38 had husbands who helped with the work, 64 received help from others—relatives, lodg ers, and in a few instances from paid workers. Sixteen mothers were relieved o f all responsibility for the housework, which was assumed in one family by the father, in another by the father and a 15-yearold daughter, and in a third by the father and two o f the children. The other 13 mothers were relieved o f the burden o f the housekeep ing—usually by their mothers, who were living with them, oc24 T h is in fo rm a tio n is fo r th e fa m ilie s in the n u rseries an d colored grou ps on ly, as the records o f the u n ited ch arities did n o t go in to de ta il on th is sub ject. 25 O f the 19 m others fro m w hom in fo rm a tio n w as n o t obtain ed, 14 w ere boarding and hence relieved o f housekeeping problem s; https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis * 39 HOUSEKEEPING PROBLEMS. oasionally by other relatives, but in one instance by a 14-year-old -daughter, who should have been in school and whose attendance when not at work was required by the compulsory school law. Comment is superfluous as to the burden carried by the 125 mothers who did single-handed two jobs, each o f which is normally a full-time occupation, who after spending a day in shop or factory were busy far into the night with household and family tasks. Evi dence o f the burden borne by these mothers and by those who had some help from other members of the family group is clearly shown by the study o f the methods by which the housework was done. The heaviest work that is done in the home is the family wash ing and ironing. It is also the work that can be most readily sent out, and in fact was sent out by a large number o f the working mothers in this study, where the family income made it possible^ Table X shows the method o f handling the problem o f the family washing adopted by the mothers. T ab ^e X .— Arrangements for family washing by class of ca se; working mothers with dependent children, nurseries and 'colored groups. Working mothers with de pendent children. Arrangements for family washing. Both Nurseries Colored groups. group. group. i 345 159 107 63 44 80 23 3 1 47 12 3 1 33 11 Done in the h o m e : .............................. 238 96 142 M other.................... ........................... * Nights.......................................... 185 112 73 32 8 12 12 21 15 3 3 85 50 35 7 100 62 38 25 • 8 8 9 17 14 2 1 T otal.......................................... .. Sen t out of hom e..................................... A ll to laundry.................................. . Part to laundry, rest by mother. T o neighbors........... ......................... Taken to mother’s place of work. * Other times.......................... Mother and others.......................... Grandmother............................ Children................ ..................... Others in fam ily....................... Others alone...................................... Relatives..................................... Children...................................... Hired help.................................. 4 3 4 1 1 2 186 1Not including 35 mothers who were relieved of all housekeeping responsibilities. From Table X it is seen that 107 mothers, almost one-third o f the number, sent at least part of the washing out o f the home, and that 83 sent it all out. Twenty-three o f the 107, however, sent the flat work only and still had the family clothing to care for. One hundred eighty-five mothers, more than one-half o f the total, did all the family washing themselves, and 32 others did it with the help o f others in the family. This makes a total o f 240 mothers, or 241 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 40 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. counting one who did it during noon hours at the laundry where she worked, who had all or part o f the family washing to do in addition to the work that they did for wages. Most o f these women were obliged to wash at night after the day’s work was done, although 73 o f the mothers, including most o f those who worked part time and a number of others who had Saturday half-holidays, managed to avoid washing at night. A few women took one day off each week from their regular employment to enable them to do their washing. Attention should be called to the fact that while there were 118 families ±n which the children assisted with the household tasks, there were only 15, 5 in the nurseries group and 10 in the colored group, in which they washed or helped with the washing. This is further evidence o f the mothers’ willingness to sacrifice themselves to save the children from burdens too heavy for them. The 15 families in which the children were allowed to help, and especially the 3 families in which children did all the washing, deserve special attention. The nurseries group included 2 families in which children 15 and 16 years old helped with the washing, 2 families in which children 12 years old helped, and 1 family in which it was all done by a child o f 10. In the colored group the 2 children who did all the washing were aged 14 and 15; the 15-year-old girl stayed home from school on the day she washed, but the 14-year-old girl did the family wash ing after school. The children who helped their mothers with the washing were all 14 or over except in two instances, in one o f which the child was 12 and in the other 13. The exact nature o f the help they gave was not reported, and it is o f course possible that the work was not heavy. It should, however, be noted that in these families the washing was done at night, which meant that not only the mothers but the children were forced to work at a time when the day’s work should normally be finished. Ironing is quite as hard in its way as washing. From the point o f view o f the woman who works, however, it has this distinct advan tage : It is not a task which once begun must be continued until com pleted, but on the contrary little i f any loss is involved in doing part o f the ironing one night and part the next. Most o f the women in this study took advantage o f this fact, although in a number of in stances the mother spoke with some scorn of women who let the iron ing “ hang around.” Most o f the mothers who did their own washing did the ironing too, although in a few instances they had help with the ironing when they did not have it with the washing. Many women who sent the washing to the laundry did the ironing at home themselves; only 14 o f the 80 who sent the washing to the laundry had the ironing done there too. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis H O U S E K E E P IN G PROBLEM S. 41 Information with regard to cleaning the house was obtained from 516 mothers; 211 did this work alone, 28 did it with the help of chil dren, 15 with the help o f their husbands, 26 with the help o f others in the family, usually their mothers, and 36 did not do the cleaning. In 19 o f these 36 families this work fell to the lot of the children, some o f whom were very young. Certain cases indicate that the help given by the children was substantial. A girl of 10 scrubbed the kitchen floor every Saturday; a 7-year-old boy swept the kitchen floor daily and mopped it on Saturday. One o f the most important duties of the housewife from the point o f view o f the welfare o f the children is the preparation of the fam ily meals. I f this duty falls on the working mother she will have little time to devote to the choice o f foods, but will be forced to follow the line o f least resistance, taking those foods with the preparation o f which she is familiar and which can be prepared in the least time. To some extent the mother may shift this duty to other members of the family group. The women included in this study, however, were for the most part responsible for the family meals—252 mothers got the meals alone and unaided, 81 assisted in the preparation o f the meals. Only 47 had no responsibility for preparing the meals. This included 28 families who were boarding or living with relatives, and 19 in which the meals were prepared by another member o f the family group. In general the mothers were more dependent on their own resources in getting meals for the family than in any other part o f the w ork; and, where they were able to shift this work to other shoul ders, it was usually to persons who were less responsible or from whom there was less reason to expect ability to choose wisely. This was not true o f course in every case, particularly in some o f those families most numerous in the colored group where the cooking had been taken over by the grandmothers. In some o f the families the grand mothers had evidently gained from their years o f experience more practical knowledge o f food values and cookery than their daughters whose experience had been o f shorter duration. More than one woman visited, who was able to turn over the housework to her mother, ex plained to the visitor that she was very fortunate, for her mother managed better than she could if she had her time free for this work. This somewhat detailed study o f the more important tasks that comprise the housework has perhaps served to indicate to some ex tent the nature o f the mother’s burdens and the arrangements that some o f the mothers were able to work out to relieve themselves. It has failed utterly, however, to show the skill in planning and man agement that was exercised by many of the women in seeing that the work was done. For it is a remarkable testimony to the ability o f the women who had two occupations that in most cases it did not mean that they neglected their housework. Out of the 353 homes https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 42 C H IL D R E N OF W A G E -E A R N I N G M OTH ERS, C H IC A G O . visited for this study 287 were described by the investigators as clean and only 66 as dirty or very dirty. The phrase “ house immaculate and in good order” was one that occurred over and over again in the description of these homes. The individual housekeeping ar rangements of several of the women will perhaps indicate more clearly how this was accomplished. The mother o f three children, aged 11, 7, and 3, worked in a tailor shop from 8 a. m. to 5.45 p. m. She did most o f the housework herself, although the 11-year-old girl helped with the dishes and sometimes with the sweeping. The laundry was sent to the wet wash, and the ironing was done at night or on Saturday. The weekly cleaning was also done Saturday, and the mother tried to take Saturday off, although this was impossible in the busy seasons. She managed her cooking by starting the dinner the night before, so it had simply to be warmed up the night it was eaten. She said they usually had meat «tew , bread, and coffee. One widow had three children under 14 and a boy of 15, who helped with the support o f the family. She worked at a surgical supply house, sorting rubber bands, from 7.30 a. m. to 5.30 p. m. Before she went to work in the morning, that is before leaving home at 7.15, she made the beds and straight ened the house and got the “ baby,” 4 years old, ready for the nursery. Her washing was done at night, the ironing usually on Sunday, scrubbing and •cleaning Saturday afternoons, and the family mending on Sunday. The chil dren in school helped with the lighter w o rk ; the boy of 11 washed the dishes and the boy aged 9 chopped the wood, brought in coal, and disposed of the ashes. Another family consisted of father, mother, three children o f working age and four children under 14, aged 12, 11, 10, and 5. The housework was done by the mother and the daughters and each had her dearly defined share. The mother did the cooking, made the beds in the morning before going to work, and did the ironing evenings— the washing was done at the laundry. She usually worked until about 11 p. m. The eldest daughter, a girl o f 18, em ployed at making fishnets, scrubbed the house Saturday afternoons and Sun days. The second daughter, aged 15, employed by the same firm, scrubbed the stairs. The next child, a girl o f 12, brought up the coal, swept the house, and dressed the baby. The child of 11 washed the dishes and hung up all the clothing left around, and the child of 10 wiped the dishes and put them away' and helped clean up the kitchen. A Russian family consisted of the father, mother, and five children, the eldest 11 years of age, the youngest 1 year. The mother worked as a fitter in a woman’s ready-to-wear clothing house in the neighborhood. H er hours of work were irregular, as the firm allowed her considerable freedom in going to work when it was convenient. Usually she did not go to work before 10 a. m. This gave her a chance to get the house in order and things ready for the evening meal, which she left all ready to put on the stove. A t noon she came home and got herself a “ b ite ” of lunch, but sent the boy of 11 to the nursery with his younger sisters. Some days in the week she worked nights until 11 p. m., but then she was given time to go home and get the family dinner. Her husband helped her with all the heavy part of the housework— he always scrubbed the floor and helped with the washing. A Hungarian-Jewish family consisted of the man, his wife, and two children, .aged 4 and 2. The father, an unskilled factory .worker, earned $18 a week. The https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis H O U S E K E E P IN G PRO BLEM S. 43 mother worked “ in the yards ” as a meat cutter from 3.30 to 11.30 p. m. The washing was sent to the laundry, and the rest of the work was done by the man and his wife. He did the scrubbing on Sunday, got his own breakfast and supper for himself and the children. She cleaned the house, washed the dishes, made the beds before she went to work in thei afternoon, and got breakfast and lunch for herself and the children. She had little sleep for she seldom got to bed be fore 1 a. m., and the children kept her from sleeping late in the morning. In spite o f their skill and ingenuity, it is evident from the state ments given above that many o f the women, however patient and uncomplaining, were under a severe strain which sometimes was more, apparent to the investigator than to the mother herself. For example, in the Russian family mentioned above the mother said she liked her work and did not find it hard, but the investigator reported that she “ seemed very tired.” The burden that wage-earning mothers accept without comment comes out clearly from the simple matter-of-fact statement o f an Italian mother. The father and mother both worked in a tailoring shop. The mother did all the housework aside from the washing, which was sent out, except that her husband dried the dishes for her “ when he was not too tired.” Most of the women whose arrangements are described above were women who had been able to plan their household duties so that they were relieved o f some of them. The women in the group below were less fortunate and some of them realized quite clearly what the over work was costing them and their children. An Irish woman 30 years of age had two children aged 6 and 3. She worked in one o f the meat-packing companies, pasting labels from 7 a. m. to 3.30 p. m. She had entered the eldest child at school but sent her to the nursery for lunch and after school. The youngest was in the nursery all day. She kept her house “ immaculately clean and in perfect order,” but to do so worked until 11 o’clock every night in the week and on Saturday night she worked until 5 o’clock in the morning. She described her schedule as follow s: On Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday she cleaned one room each n igh t; Saturday afternoon she finished the cleaning and put the house in order; Saturday night she washed; Sunday she baked; Monday night she ironed. A Polish woman with three children, aged 6, 5, and 4, had a pension of $30 a month under the aid-to-mothers law. She worked as a waitress in a cafeteria from 8 a. m. to 3 p. m., leaving home about 7.30 a. m. and getting back at 3.30 p. m. She did most of her work in the afternoon but had no fixed schedule. The washing and ironing she did any day she felt a b le; she scrubbed three times a wreek, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. She tried to do her dishes in the morning but frequently left them until afternoon. Sometimes she baked on Saturday and at other times bought “ bakery goods.” She made the children’s clothing at night. She said she got very tired at her work and noticed that as she got tired she was very cross with the children. An American woman had gone to work because of her husband’s illness. H e was able to work again at the time of this study, but as his health was not good his earnings were irregular. There was only one child in the family, a boy of 7. The mother had comparatively light work as inspector in an underwear 79100°— 22------4 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 44 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. factory. She said the place was quiet and her work easy. The hours were from 8 a. m. to 5.30 p. m. with only a half-hour for lunch, and afterwards she had the housework to do, with no assistance. She did her washing at n igh t; some weeks on two different nights, as she was too tired to do it all at one time. She ironed at night whenever she felt able. Saturday afternoon she scrubbed and swept and Sunday she baked. In addition to her regular work she made all her own and her little boy’s clothing. She said that she got very tired and nervous;; she knew that the little boy often got scolded when he did not deserve it and she had not the time to give him the kind o f care she did before she worked. She used to take him to the public playground’ afternoons, but could not do that after she began work. One mother from the colored group who worked nine hours every night washing cabs did the family washing each week on Wednesday and the ironing on Thursday. On other days, “ when not too tired,” she did the general house work and all the family’s plain sewing. In the morning on her way home from work she bought the daily provisions; she got the family breakfast before going to b ed ; she was usually up again at noon to prepare lunch for the children and was always ready with their dinner at night. Evidently, most o f this mother’s housekeeping was attended to when she should have been in bed, resting for the next night’s work. Another mother o f the colored group who worked in a laundry from 9 p. m. to 7 a. m. said she slept only three or four hours a day. She cooked for the children early in the morning immediately after getting home, had to wake up and get their lunch at noon, and got the family dinner at night. She washed on Tuesday, ironed on Friday, cleaned on Saturday, baked on another day, and attended to the ordinary domestic details, including a large amount of sewing, every morning. Instances o f this kind could be multiplied many times.over. The cases cited are far from being the most extreme instances o f over work on the part o f the mothers. They are cases, however, in which the mother realized more clearly or spoke more freely o f the con nection between her own tired condition and the welfare of the children. The connection between the outside duties o f the mothers and their industrial efficiency does not come within the scope of this study. It is clear, however, that the connection is there, even though it is not always so direct as in the case of one woman who said that she could not work very fast in the tailoring establishment because she had to save her strength for her household tasks and the Care o f her children. Attention has been called to the fact that the mothers for the most part preferred to wear themselves out doing the work o f two persons rather than to give the heavier tasks of the household to the children.. There were, however, a number o f instances in which the mothers' either because o f a lack of realization of the dangers involved or from an inability to carry the burden alone had allowed the children to take over most o f the heavy part o f the housework. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis IL L HEALTH A £TD F A T IG U E OF THE M OTH ERS. 4 5 An illustration o f what may happen is found in the case of a 10-year-old girl, already mentioned,26 who did most o f the house keeping. H er mother, a widow, worked in a tailoring shop at piecework and earned only $7 a week. There were four children in the family younger than the 10-year-old girl. Before school she made the beds, washed the dishes, and took the youngest children, aged 6 and 2, to a day nursery. She had her lunch a t the nursery, but after school she went home to do the housework. One day in the week, “ most any day,” she did the washing. Other days she did only the routine tasks, but no cooking. Saturday she scrubbed and swept and ironed. Sunday morning she finished the ironing if she did not get through Saturday. The investigator described her as an unresponsive, careworn child who had no time for play and seemed scarcely to know the meaning o f the term. She was ironing when the visitor called, while her mother was talking with the neigh bors. It is only fair to the mother to say that she had been employed for only, a y e a r ; that this was her first experience in industrial employment, and that she found the work hard and fatiguing. ILL HEALTH AND FATIGUE OF THE MOTHERS. The description o f the nature of the burden carried by most o f these women wage earners makes it clear that only a woman in very good health could successfully perform all the tasks included in their daily routine. It raises the (question also whether even a woman with exceptional health could carry the burden long without serious detriment to her own welfare. As a matter of fact, many o f the women included in this study were in very poor health, some o f them apparently as a result o f overwork and undernourishment and others about whom the most that can be said is that their already heavy burdens were increased by ill health. More is known in respect to the matter o f health about the fam ilies in the charities group than about those in the other groups, as the families had been in contact with the agency for some time and in many cases the agency record contained a doctor’s report on the mother’s physical condition. Out o f 463 women in that group, 120 had some form o f tuberculosis and 99 others had other ailments usually associated with overwork or malnutrition. The circum stances in some o f the more interesting cases are given below. The X ’s were a German-Hurigarian family of father, mother, and three chil dren, who were first known to the united charities in 1915. Mr. X was ill and at that time had not been doing any work for a long time. The fam ily was supported by the mother who went out to work by the day, by sick benefit paid the father, and by contributions from various charitable organizations The mother worked steadily, but only two or three days a week. The records of the united charities show that she usually appeared to be working beyond https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 46 C H IL D R E N OF W A G E -E A R N IN G M OTH ERS, C H IC A G O . her strength. In January, 1917, she was reported to have chronic heart trouble, and. in February, 1918, she was diagnosed at the municipal tuberculosis dis pensary as having incipient tuberculosis. A similar case was that of the Y ’s, an American family consisting o f the mother and four children, the eldest a boy of 18 unable to work because o f congenital heart trouble, and the youngest a boy of 7. The father deserted the family when the eldest child was 12 years of age and the mother tried to sup port the family. For a time she put two of the children in an institution. After 1916, however, when the family were first known to the united charities, the mother had. all the children with her and supported them with some help from relatives. She worked in a laundry, for a sign company, as a machine operator in a corset factory, as a saleswoman in a delicatessen shop, earning from $8 to $9 a week. In April, 1918, she was taken ill and an examination showed that she had tuberculosis in a moderately advanced stage. Two o f the children were examined at the same time and proved, to have tuberculosis of the glands. A little girl o f 11 who had not been examined was reported to faint frequently. The mother stayed at home one month and then returned to work, first as an inspector for the gas company, earning $11 a week, and when that proved too difficult, she worked in the curling-iron department o f a hard ware manufacturing concern. A t the last report the visiting nurse associa tion was trying to persuade her and the oldest boy to go to a convalescent home for a rest. There was also a Polish family consisting of the mother and two children. The father died in 1912 of tuberculosis and after that the mother was the sole support of the family. Her .brother lived with them and paid $5 a month for his room. W hen the family was first visited by >he united charities in 1917 they were living in insanitary basement rooms. The mother was working in a packing plant 10 hours a day and earning $21 a week. She said she got very tired from her work and was afraid she could not keep it up much longer. In February, 1919, her brother reported- that she. had had a cough for months. An examination at the municipal tuberculosis dispensary showed that she had tuberculosis in the first stages. She was told she might work four days a week. She did so for a time, but earned only $9 a week and was unable to support her family on this and began working from 8 a. m. to 3 p. m. six days a week for $14. In June the doctor said she must have a complete rest or she would break down. It was then arranged for her to go to a summer camp where she could work, being paid $20 a month and room and board for herself and the children. The families in which there was tuberculosis represented the most serious cases of ill health; those in which there was evidence o f other sickness which was usually attributed to their work or their poverty ranged from cases o f suspected lead poisoning to a run-down anemic condition which is not so serious in itself but is a warning of possi ble dangers to come. One Bohemian mother of two children, for example, first worked in 1912 when her husband was sick and not able to work. From August, 1913, to January, 1918, he was better and at work and the mother did not work. After his death in January, 1918, she tried to support the family by going out by the day doing washing and cleaning. By July she appeared so run down that the united charities persuaded her to have a medical examination, which showed that she was threatened with tuberculosis. She then stopped work and the united charities supported the family, https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis IL L HEALTH AND F A T IG U E OF THE M OTH ERS. 47 A Hungarian mother of three children began work in 1916 when her husband was unable to work because of heart trouble. From that time until April, 1918, she worked steadily, washing five and six days a week until she became so run down that the doctor insisted she must have a complete rest. The strain on the mother’s health must inevitably deprive her children o f her best efforts. It may, moreover, become so great that she is no longer able to care for them and has to be relieved o f their care. In a few cases in this group o f mothers the situation had reached the point where either because o f the mother’s breakdown or their own ill health, one or more o f the children had to be cared for outside the home. A deserted colored mother, for example, asked the juvenile court in 1914 to send her four children to an institution. One of the girls at this time was sent to a home for colored girls, but the other three children were left at home. For four years the mother worked by the day in private families earning from $3 to $10 a week and receiving small amounts o f relief. During this time -she developed heart trouble, bronchitis, and finally tuberculosis. The girl, who had been released from the institution after a year, was later found to be sub normal and was committed to a home for the feeble-minded. The three other children developed tuberculosis; one of the girls, when the disease reached an advanced stage, was taken to the county hospital and soon died; the other girl was committed to a home for dependent girls. The mother, left with a boy o f 6, was given an allowance by the united charities and began working part time. Another mother had incipient tuberculosis, was very nervous and anemic ' and was hard to get along with. The father died o f tuberculosis in the municipal tuberculosis sanitarium in January, 1919, after having been ill for a number of years. Caroline, the 8-year-old daughter, had tuberculosis of the glands and was in the open-air school at the day nursery The mother worked from 7.30 a. m. until 5.30 p. m. as a baster in a tailor shop, earning about $9.50 a week. The grandmother, who lived with her, also worked for the same company. A s the mother did not reach home until 7 p. m., Caroline was forced to stay out on the streets awaiting her return. She had been anxious, therefore, to place the child in an institution and brought the matter to the attention o f the juvenile court. The court officer did not see any legitimate reason for placing her and discouraged the mother from taking this course. The case was dismissed at the court hearing with the promise from the united charities that Caroline should be placed in a country home for tuberculous children. Another mother of two children, aged 5 and 3, secured a divorce after 10 years o f intermittent desertion and drunkenness on the part o f her husband She had worked for several years in the stockyards, earning about $7 a week* She tried hard to keep both children with her. Finally, however, as she was in a very bad physical condition, having pulmonary tuberculosis, diseased tonsils, a goitre, anemia, and a chronic ulcer o f the stomach, and as both the children were tuberculous, the united charities persuaded her to allow one to go the municipal tuberculosis sanitarium. When last visited she was working and caring for one child. The father o f a Croatian family in which there were two children had been unable to work since 1910, first because he had heart trouble and later because of tuberculosis. During all this period the mother tried to support https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 48 CHILDREN OF W AGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. the family, but there was so much sickness in the family that her work was very irregular and her earnings low. She had some assistance from relief agencies each year— $123 in 1910-11, and amounts varying from $1 to $40 in the succeeding years before 1916. In that year it was discovered that the whole family, father, mother, and two children, had tuberculosis. The father was sent to the municipal tuberculosis sanitarium at once and more adequate relief was given, but the mother continued her work as she could, working part time or doing home work, sewing for a tailoring firm. In 1917 the oldest child was sent to the sanitarium. The mother then did crocheting which she tried to sell. A year later the younger child was also sent to the sanitarium and the mother took full-time work in a tailor shop. Information about the health o f the mothers in the other two groups, obtained as it was from the mothers’ own statements, is naturally less complete. Among the 380 women in the nurseries and colored groups 6 had tuberculosis, 34 said they were tired out and nervous, 10 reported pelvic disorders, 7 indigestion, 4 heart trouble, 4 rheumatism; 14 had ailments usually described as pains' in the head or back; and 9 reported miscellaneous diseases, varicose veins, asthma, rectal tumor, fallen arches, swolleli ankles, chronic colds, neuralgia. Occasionally the mother had seen a doctor and reported a definite diagnosis, but more often her reports of her health were vague and in unscientific terms. One mother, for ex ample, said she was “ all stove up in the back ” from working too soon after an operation. The reports do indicate, however, that many o f the women were far from well, although the number who had serious disabilities was smaller than in the charities group. This may be partly accounted for by the failure to have medical examination by the women in these groups, but it probably is also partly due to the facts already noted that in general the women from the charities group were older and were carrying heavier burdens. While the ill health o f these women may not have been due to over work and while in some cases continuance at work may not have aggravated their condition, there is reason to think that in the major ity o f instances these women were working beyond their strength. This was obviously true in the cases of the six women who had tuber culosis; in fact three o f them had been told by their doctors that they must stop work and rest, but had not been able to give up their work. The other three appeared to the investigators to be in even worse condition. One colored woman deserted by her husband had come to Chicago from the South hoping to get rid of tuberculosis. Another woman, also colored, had attempted to follow the doctor’s directions to get more fresh air by taking a position cleaning a school building where she could work with the windows open. At the time the in vestigator called she had been ill and out o f work for 10 days and had not felt able to afford a doctor. The investigator reported that she https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis THE F A M IL Y IN C O M E . 49 looked very ill although she was expecting to return to work immedi ately. The third woman had not had a doctor’s diagnosis but seemed so clearly tuberculous that she was included in the number of women with tuberculosis. She got very tired, coughed, and had frequent hemorrhages. With respect to the other women, the effect on their health o f con tinuing at work was not so apparent. In three cases, however, they had been advised by doctors to stop work or do less work, two women had stopped because of nervous breakdown and five others had stopped because they felt too tired to go on. These last were women whose earnings were not the sole or chief support of the family so that it is probable their fatigue was not greater than that of some of the less fortunate women who continued working. The women who were not ill but just “ tired” and who were still carrying the burden o f household duties and gainful employment call for further comment. The situation in concrete instances is seen from the reports o f the investigators: Colored mother with three children was well but “ very tired ” and weighed only 80 pounds. Planned to rest soon, as husband earned $30 a week. Mother well but wearing out. Seemed languid and very tired. Mother well and strong but very tired. Got up at 5 a. m. and left for work at 6. Mother complained of being tired all.the time. Mother anemic— could not work steadily. Mother nervous and overtired all the time. Mother looked worn and discouraged. Out of work part of each week because o f her health. Mother seldom able to work full time because of her health. Eyes and head hurt continually. Very tired. Mother stood at her work all day. Got very tired. Afraid she could not stand the strain. Worried for fear of becoming dependent on charity because o f ill health. Whether or not these women were working hard enough to en danger their health, it is obvious that they were working enough to affect their ability to care for their children. THE FAM ILY INCOME. The importance o f an adequate family income in the welfare o f the children is too widely recognized to need emphasis. As already pointed out, it was in most cases due to the absence o f this first pre requisite condition o f child welfare that the mothers in this study had taken gainful employment. Their earnings therefore are im portant both as measuring the compensation they received for work that was on the whole distasteful to them and also as indicating the contribution they were able to make to the material well-being o f the children. In the case o f those families in which the earnings of https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 50 C H IL D R E N OF W A G E -E A R N I N G M OTH ERS, C H IC A G O . the natural breadwinner were no longer available for the support o f the family, a group which formed, it will be remembered, 57.1 per cent o f the entire number, the mother’s earnings were o f addi tional importance as in most cases they were expected to take the place o f the father’s earnings, and on them depended in large meas ure the food, clothing, and shelter that could be given the children. Table X I gives the mothers’ estimates o f their average weekly earn ings at their last job and at their last rate o f wages, for all women who were working full time. The women who did home work, parttime work, and day work were not included because in general their earnings were so irregular and uncertain that they were unable to form an estimate of the amount. T a b l e X I . — Average w eekly earnings of mother by class of case; mothers work ing full time. Mothers working full time. Average weekly earnings cf mother. Charities and nur series groups.1 Number. Colored group.2 Per cent Per cent distri Number. distri bution. bution. s 331 100.0 13 2S 22 50 18 61 23 28 40 13 30 5.4 8.5 6.6 15.1 5.4 18.4 6.9 8.5 12.1 3.9 9.1 * 148 100.0 3 3 5 16 19 29 7 9 18 5 2.0 2.0 3.4 10.8 12.9 19.6 4.7 6.1 12.2 4.7 21.6 90 i Studied in the winter of 1918-19. » Studied in the winter of 1919-20. , , * Not including 253 day workers, part-time workers, and home workers and 47 whose-earmngs were not re*>Not<hicluding 72 day workers, part-time workers, and home workers and 2 whose earnings were not reported. Compared with the earnings revealed in earlier studies of women’s wages—those o f the United States Bureau o f Labor Statistics on women and child wage earners,27 for example—the earnings o f these women seem very high, for only 21 o f the entire number, or 4.4 per cent, were earning less than $8 a week, a higher figure than the wages o f a great majority o f women as reported in earlier studies. This, o f course, only confirms popular knowledge o f the increase in wage levels. The wide variation in earnings indicates the irregularity of the advance in wages. This is confirmed by a study of the earnings o f the women in different industries; for the women working in those 27R eport on Condition o f W omen and Child W age Earners in the United States. Bureau o f Labor Statistics, W ashington, 1910-1913. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis U. S. TH E FAM ILY INCOM E. f * 1 51 occupations classed as domestic and personal service, the restaurant workers, laundry workers, charwomen, and domestic servants, were on a distinctly lower wage level than those engaged in manufactur ing. For example, in the.charities and nurseries groups less than one-fourth of the women in manufacturing earned less than $10 a week, while this was true o f exactly one-half of the women in per sonal service. Different industries within the manufacturing group were likewise on different wage levels—those which were engaged in distinctly war work, or which were using women to replace men, paid the*highest wages; food manufacturing, in which meat packing predominates, where wages had recently been fixed by an arbitra tion commission appointed by the Secretary of Labor, also paid higher wages than the average. Although the earnings of these mothers seem to have been much higher than the earnings o f women at an earlier period, they were inadequate to provide for the families according to the standard set by the Chicago standard budget for dependent families.28 Accord ing to that standard, $10.50 a week was needed in 1919 for a family consisting o f a mother and one child under 7 ; 68, or 20.5 per cent, o f the mothers o f the charities and nurseries groups who were em ployed at full-time work earned less than $10 a week. When it is remembered that this standard was for dependent families and is the amount estimated as needed for current expenses, only without making any provision for special extraordinary expenditures, it seems probable that at least $11 would have been needed for an inde pendent family o f a mother and one child, certainly i f she was to provide for even short periods o f unemployment*or for expenses connected with occasional sickness. I f $11 is accepted as the stand ard, 50 more women o f the original group, making a total o f 118, or 35.6 per cent o f the groups referred to above, were earning less than enough to support themselves and one dependent child. When a similar comparison is made for the colored group the results are even worse. Schedules for this group, it will be remem bered, were taken in 1919-20. According to the 1920 standard Chi cago budget28 approximately $14 a week was needed to maintain a mother and one child, assuming the family to be dependent. Table X I shows that 82 o f the 148 mothers in the group were earning less than this amount. By combining these figures with those from the original groups, it is found that 150 mothers, or 31.3 per cent, o f those doing full-time work earned less than the amount estimated as necessary for the support o f a dependent family o f a mother and one child. This number is especially significant in view o f the fact that the attitude o f social agencies in Chicago was that a woman 28 See note p. 12. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 52 CHILDREN o r WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. with one child in normal health should not be given relief to enable her to stay in her own home but should be encouraged to support herself and her child without material assistance. It has already been pointed out that while in a large number of «cases there was only one child in the family, there were more families with two or three and some with four or more children. The amount needed for a family o f mother and two children was $14 in 1919 and •■$17 in 1920, and for a family o f mother and three children it was -$17 in 1919 and $21 in 1920. Table X I shows that about one-third o f the original groups and only about one-fifth o f the colored group reached the standard for families o f two children, and that only 30 mothers in the charities and nurseries groups earned enough for the support o f themselves and three children. Table X I I does not give information in regard to average weekly earnings o f mothers for the latter group, but study o f the actual earnings o f the 32 colored mothers earning $17 or over shows that 8 earned $17, 13 earned :$18, 3 earned $19, 3 earned $20, 1 earned $23, 3 earned $24, and 1 .who was head waitress and realized a large amount from tips esti mated her weekly earnings at $30, although her wages were only $7. That is, only 5 colored women, 3.4 per cent of the group, reached the standard adopted for the support o f a woman and three depend ent children. These figures indicate quite clearly that it was the exceptional mother in this group who was able to earn enough to support herself and a family o f three. Not only were the weekly earnings in the last employment in many cases inadequate for the support o f a family, but they did not repre sent the average earnings for the year, for the last occupation o f many o f these women was a comparatively recent one and in most cases the wages in this position were somewhat higher than the wages in previous positions. Thus it is not possible to arrive at the mother’s annual earnings by multiplying these weekly earnings by 52. Table X I I gives the duration of the position for 551 mothers from whom the information was obtained. T able X I I . — Duration of last position; working mothers children. until Working mothers with dependent children. 'Duration of position (in weeks). 9 to 16...................................... 17 to 24..................................... https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Per cent Number. distribu tion. 551 100.0 152 103 55 27.6 18.7 10.0 dependent Working mothers with dependent children. Duration of position (in weeks). Per cent Number. distribu tion. ,33 to 40 41 to 48..................................... 44 8.0 22 138 4!o 25.0 TH E FAM ILY INCOM E. 53 This table shows that somewhat more than one-fourth o f the women had been employed in the last position for less than 8 weeks, slightly less than one-fifth for more than 8 weeks but less than 16 weeks. On the other hand, one-fourth o f the 551 had been in their last position more than 48 weeks. Some o f these had had an increase in wages during the year. Not only had the last position been'in many cases o f short dura tion, so that the earnings in it could not be considered typical for the year, but there had been a considerable amount o f shifting from place to place during the year, with the inevitable loss o f time be tween positions. Thus o f 595 workers for whom the information could be obtained 338 had held 2 or more positions, 141 had held 3 or more, and 53 had held 4 or more during the year. This frequent shifting was particularly marked in the colored group ; 24 colored women comprised 45.3 per cent o f the women who had held 4 posi tions during the year, while the colored group as a whole formed only 25.1 per cent o f all the women studied. An interesting illustration o f some o f the difficulties of the colored woman fitting into industrial employment is seen in the case o f Mrs. A , a colored mother, who before her marriage had taught school in the South. Her husband practically never supported her. Tired o f depending upon his parents in Virginia she came to Chicago with her 2-year-old child. First she worked for 3 months in a laundry, tying sheets into bun dles o f 10. This work she found too hard because o f the constant standing. After 4 weeks in a glue factory, she again stopped be cause the work was too hard. For 2 weeks she tried packing in an ice cream cone factory, but could not endure working at night. Her last four positions were in garment factories. In the first, where she sewed shoulder straps on raincoats, she was laid off after 22 weeks, when a Government contract was finished. At the next two places she worked four weeks altogether, but was unable to earn enough at the piece rates, because she was not quick enough at run ning the power machines. In her last position, where she had been employed four weeks, she was paid a time rate, earning $10.50 a week. This is not the place to go into the interesting industrial problems raised by these records o f shifting from one position to another on the part o f a large number o f women. The *present interest in the subject is for the light it throws on the regularity o f the mothers’ warnings and only incidentally on their industrial position. Another fact that tended to reduce the average weekly earnings fo r the year below the earnings in the last position was the fact that many o f the women had not worked steadily throughout the year. Table X I I I gives the number o f weeks worked during the year o f the study. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 54 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. T a b l e X I I I . — W eeks worked in the y e a r ; working mothers with dependent children. Working mothers with dependent children. Weeks worked in year. Working mothers with dependent children. Weeks worked in year. Per cent Number. . distribu tion. A l l . .............................. 1665 100.0 I t o 4....... ................................. 5 t o 8 ............... : ...................... 9 to 12.................................. 13 to 16..................................... 17 to 20.................................. 21 to 24..................................... 7 18 26 36 40 19 1.0 2.7 3.9 5. 4 6.0 2.9 Per cent Number. distribu tion. 25 to 28....... 29 to 22 33 to 36. 37 to 40 . 45 to 48. 49 to 52. 35 35 52 59 97 219 5 3: 78 32! 9 1 Not including 178 mothers for whom the weeks worked were unknown. Table X I I I shows that only about one-third o f the 665 for whom this information was obtained worked more than 48 weeks during the year. In other words, slightly over two-thirds of the number lost as much as 4 weeks during the year, which means that their total annual earnings fell short o f 52 times their average weekly earnings for the weeks employed by an amount that would certainly be notice able in the family budget.30 How far the failure to work 52 weeks in the year was due to circumstances over which they had no control and how far it was due to their own choice is a subject about which there is insufficient information to generalize. It may be pointed out, however, that while there was practically no unemployment from a slowing down o f industry during the period o f the study, circumstances that make it imperative for mothers o f families to stay home from work occurred in this year as in all years, mothers and children- were sick,« babies were born, deaths occurred. Once again thè industrial problems suggested lie outside the scope o f the present inquiry, but a word o f warning may be uttered with regard to the interpretation o f the figures showing the number o f women who had worked for very short periods during the year. This group falls into two main classes: The casual workers who worked a while, until they had satisfied the particular desire that sent them to work, or until they found the work more than they could manage ; and the mothers who toward the end o f the year were obliged to become wage earners, for example, the women whose husbands had died or deserted them. This group took their work just as seriously and were just as steady workers as the group who had worked longer during the year. In other words, the fact that many of the mothers had worked only a comparatively short time during the year does not 30It is probable that this slightly overestim ates the amount o f nonemployment fo r the full-tim e workers whose earnings are given in Table X II , as the figures fo r Table X II I include all workers fo r whom the inform ation was obtained. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis TH E FAM ILY INCOM E. 55 mean the lack o f permanence in industry that might at first sight be supposed. As the earnings o f the mother are thus seen to be inadequate to support the family according to the standard for dependent families set by the Chicago standard budget, it is important to learn to what extent the mother’s earnings were supplemented by other income ;31 that is, to learn how far it was necessary that the mother’s earnings should be sufficient to support her family. The three groups studied varied so considerably in this respect that it seems best to consider each one separately. The charities group o f full-time workers whose earnings were reported consisted o f 189 women. In 6 o f these families the sources o f income in the family were unknown, but of the remaining 188 families, 101 had no source o f income other than the mother’s earn ings; 14 supplemented their earnings by taking in lodgers—which, o f course, also added to their burdens; 37 had some income from the earnings o f their husbands; 21 had children who contributed to the family income; 5 received income from property, 3 from insurance, 1 from the settlement o f a damage suit; and 1 woman lived with her parents, paying very little for board for herself and her one child. In many o f the families in which there was nominally an other source o f support than the mother’s earnings, the contributions from that source were either irregular or o f very little value. O f the 37 fathers, for example, who were contributing to the income, 9 were partially incapacitated and able to do only very light work; 5 others were not living with their families but were contributing to their support because o f an order of the court—in some cases these contributions appear to have been regular, but in more they could not be relied upon; 5 men were at home off and on but were alcoholic and generally unreliable; and for 9 it was definitely stated that their earnings were irregular and amounted to little. There were, in fact, very few cases in the 183 families in which the mother’s earnings did not comprise the larger part of the family’s income. And in the comparatively small number of cases in which the contributions from other sources were substantial in amount, there were other factors in the situation which made the family’s needs greater than those allowed for in the Chicago standard budget. One family, for example, had a sick benefit o f $5 a week for a considerable period, but most o f this was needed to meet the extra expenses incident to a prolonged illness. In the charities group o f families then, when the mother’s earn ings were inadequate, as they were in a large number o f cases, the 81 Income, as used in thfs passage, does not include m aterial relief even in cases where this relief was given regularly and could be relied upon by the mother in planning her household expenses. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 56 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. children had to go without many o f the things which social agencies in Chicago regarded as essential to health and decency, or the mother’s earnings had to be supplemented by relief. The extent to which earnings were supplemented in this way may be taken as evidence o f the inadequacy o f the wages paid women workers to do the work assigned to them j for while failure to receive relief might not mean that the mother’s earnings were theoretically adequate tested by any rational standard, the fact that relief was given shows that in practice they proved insufficient.32 There were in all only 39 families in the group who did not have some form o f relief during the year. This relief ranged from nursery care for the children—for which the families often paid something but not enough to maintain the nurseries—to a regular cash allow ance either from the united charities or from the county under the aid-to-mothers law. Four families had this public pension, and 16 had a regular allowance from the united charities. A great many more, 53 families in all, had aid from the county in the form o f ra tions, coal, and shoes. There was, moreover, a large number of fami lies who had help in emergencies, either in the form o f medical atten tion for which no payment was made, or special gifts o f clothing or other material. An income made up by irregular contributions from several sources is unsatisfactory, even i f the total amount for the year i£ reasonably adequate. In the majority o f the cases, however, the total amount was apparently far from adequate. It has been impos sible to estimate with even a reasonable degree o f accuracy the total income in these families; but evidences o f its inadequacy were found in the conditions under which the families were living and in the ill health o f both mothers and children. In the nurseries group the situation was very different, as would be expected from the differences already noted in the composition o f the family groups. In the majority o f these families there were sources o f income other than the mother’s earnings, although even in this group there were many families in which the main burden o f support fell on the mother. In 36 cases her earnings were the sole income except for relief, and in only 6 o f these families was the relief regular and substantial in amount, 3 of them being pensioned under the aidto-mothers law and 3 assisted by the Jewish A id Society. In 6 other families the only addition to the family income was the amount real ized by taking in lodgers or boarders and hence may be considered as earned by the mother, although in some cases where the lodgers were women relatives they appear to have decreased rather than in creased the mother’s w ork; in 3 cases the mother’s earnings were sup32 For a discussion o f the social policy involved in supplementing the earnings o f fu ll tim e workers, see p. 84. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis TH E FAM ILY INCOM E. 57 planted by insurance, in 1 case a sick benefit o f $20 a month paid by a foreign society for the insane father, and in the other 2 cases insur ance money received at the death o f the father; one woman owned her home and rented one floor for $11 a month, and one mother lived with relatives who gave her board'and room for herself and her children. In another group o f 8 families the mother was the main support o f the family, although the family had some income from the father ; in 4 instances he was not living with the family, but made contribu tions to its support, and in 4 he was with his family but owing to poor health he was able to earn very little. In 3 other cases in which the father was nominally contributing to the family income he was stated to be a heavy drinker and the value o f his contribution could not be estimated. This leaves a group o f 83 families33 in which the mothers were working full time which had substantial sources o f income in addition to the mother’s earnings. In 4 o f these families it was the earnings o f older children, and in the other 79 it was the earnings o f the father which formed the other sources o f family income. A study o f the sources of income in the group o f colored families shows much the same picture. O f the 172 women working full time, 38 34 mothers supported their families from their earnings, 10 from their earnings supplemented by the income from lodgers, 11 from their earnings plus income from property or insurance or contri butions from relatives, 10 from their earnings and those o f their children, 11 from their earnings and contributions received from hus bands not living with the family, while in 88 of the 168 cases in which the sources o f the income were reported, the mother’s earnings sup plemented those o f the father in supporting the family. In 38 o f this last group there were also other sources o f income, most frequently lodgers. This study o f the sources o f the family income makes it clear that in the day-nurseries and colored groups the inadequacy o f the mother’s earnings to support a family did not necessarily mean that the family income as a whole was insufficient to give the children those things that were considered essential for their physical, mental, and moral development. The question that remains to be answered is how far the mothers succeeded by taking gainful employment in raising the family income to the standard set by the Chicago standard budget. Table X IV , constructed from a table in the Appendix35 showing the total family income in relation to the size o f the family, gives the total family income for the families in the day-nurseries group and 83 The sources o f the incom e in one fam ily could not be learned. 84 This includes the 150 women included in Table X I and 22 women who worked as much as five days a week at day work. 35 See also Table 5, Appendix, p. 90. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 58 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. its relation to a standardized budget for a family o f the size for which it was to be used.36 T able X I V .— Total family income and relation of income to budget; working mothers with dependent children, mothers in nurseries group, working full time.1 Income. All families. Below budget. 132 1;o $849 $850 to $040 $050 to $1;049 $1.050 to $1,149......................... 22 22 10 7 10 Income. $1,150 to $1,349......................... $ 1 '350 to $l'549 22 11 7 2 6 $1,550 to $l'649......................... $1*650 to $lj749......................... $1*750 to $1*949......................... All families. Below budget. 6 lo* 18 7 6 6 9 2 1 The interval for these tables was chosen with reference to the budgets for families of different sizes. Table X I V shows that in 45 per cent o f the families, the total family income, as nearly as it could be estimated, was below the standard set by the Chicago budget, while in 55 per cent of the families in the nurseries group the income was apparently equal to or greater than the budget requirements. The estimate used, how ever, included no allowance for savings and made no allowance for the inevitable waste which must result from the mother’s having no time for the careful planning of her expenditures that the budget assumes. When allowance is made for these factors, it seems prob able that considerably more than one-half the families were living on an income below that set by the Chicago standard budget, while in a very large proportion of the other families the mother’s wages had raised the family income high enough to give the children the material things considered essential for their physical, mental, and moral development. Table X V gives the same information for the colored group : X V . — Total family income and relation of income to budget ; working mothers with dependent children; mothers in colored group working full time.1 T able Income. TTthìpt Ä800 fl',400 to $1*499......................... All families. Below budget. 141 73 47 11 7 9 11 47 4 7 4* 7 Income. $1,500 to $1,599......................... $1 600 to $1,699 $1*700 to $L799......................... $1,800 to $1.899......................... $ 0 00 to $1,999......................... $2,000 to $2,199......................... $2^200 and over........................ All families. Below budget. 2 11 3 6 7 11 13 1 1 1 The interval for these tables was chosen with reference to the budgets for families of different sizes. Table X V shows that 73 out o f the 141 families for whom the income was estimated—52 per cent.—were living on an income below 38 N esb itt, F lo r e n c e : T h e C hicago S tan d ard B u d ge t fo r D epen den t F a m ilie s . C ouncil o f Social A g en cies, C hicago, A p ril, 1 9 1 9 , and Septem ber, 1 9 2 0 . https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis C hicago, HOUSING CONDITIONS. 59 the standard budget for a family of similar composition. The pro portion, it will be noted, is somewhat larger than for families in the nurseries group. In both groups it was found that about one-half o f the families did not have an income equal in amount to the stand ard set as a minimum on which the reasonable requirements o f the family could be met.37 On the other hand, the fact that 141 o f the 273 women had brought the family income up to a point where it was theoretically adequate for the family needs must be remembered in any attempt to judge o f the contribution they had made to the welfare o f their children by taking gainful employment. HOUSING CONDITIONS. The housing conditions in which the families were found to be living are o f interest, as they show to some extent how far these wage-earning mothers succeeded in providing their children with the material comforts o f life. The importance o f proper housing for the welfare o f children is widely recognized, and standards o f what constitutes good housing have been formulated from time to time. The more recent standards, those adopted by the Federal Government for its housing projects, those o f the Massachusetts Homestead Commission, and in Canada those o f the Province o f Ontario, designed as they are for the con struction o f new houses, put the standard so far above what it was possible to secure in Chicago that they are not considered here. The standard suggested by the committee which drew up the Chicago standard budget, however, is one which in the judgment o f social workers familiar with Chicago conditions should be attainable in that city. The standard o f that committee is given in fu ll: Housing space must be above ground, dry, clean, in good repair, well lighted, sunned, and ventilated. Bedrooms and sitting room at least should have win dows opening, into free space— not on court, air shaft, or narrow passage between houses. There should be toilet facilities in good condition with a door which can be locked, for the use of the family alone; running water in at least one room in the house besides the toilet. A bathroom is highly desirable and should be included wherever possible. It may be considered essential in families where there are a number o f older children in rooms which would not 37 It is evident that any attem pt to judge o f adequacy o f incom e by the use o f this standardized budget is rough at best, fo r it ignores all the personal fa ctors upon which depends to a large extent whether or not an incom e o f a given size provides sufficient fo r a fam ily’ s needs. It ignores, fo r example, the accum ulation o f debt w hich had driven some o f the m others to work, it ignores special obligations in the way o f duty to aged and infirm relatives w hich was a fa ctor in some cases, it makes no allowance fo r special needs in the w ay o f extra diet. On the other side it makes no reductions fo r intangible and irregular contributions from relatives, the dollars that m arried daughters give their m others from time to time, past savings on w hich the fam ily may draw, or special ar rangements which the fam ily may make to reduce ordinary living expenses. 79100°—22----- 5 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 60 C H IL D R E N OF W A G E -E A R N IN G M OTH ERS, C H IC A G O . otherwise permit the necessary privacy for bathing. A public bath in the neighborhood will make it possible to dispense with one in the home. There should be sufficient bedrooms used for sleeping so that no more than two per sons are required to occupy one bed and so that there will be a bedroom for the parents and at least one for the children o f each sex. Sufficient ventilation can not be secured with less than one window for each two persons occupying a sleeping room, except where a good cross current of air can be arranged through a door or transom opposite the window. In most families two rooms will be needed for cooking, eating, and social purposes. These may be com bined kitchen and dining room with a sitting room, or kitchen with combined sitting room and dining room. A young couple or widow with one or two small children may soïnetimes use one room of suitable size for kitchen, dining room, and sitting room. The size o f the rooms should be in such proportion to the number of the family that it will be possible for each member to have closet and drawer space for his individual possessions. There must be suitable play space for children, either on the lot or on a properly supervised playground within reach. The neighborhood influences should, be wholesome— well re moved from places used for gambling or disreputable amusement.88 The information obtained about the housing of the families in this study does not cover all the items suggested in this standard. The information that was obtained shows, however, that many o f the families had not secured one or more of the items regarded as essential. In Table X V I is given the information about the size o f the dwell ing in relation to the size of the household for the three groups of families included in this study. The zigzag line has been drawn so as to place above it the number o f households in which there was more than one person to a room. T able X V I .— N u m b er o f persons in household by num ber o f room s m apart m e n t ; w orkin g m oth ers w ith dependent children. Working mothers with dependent children. Number of rooms in apartment. All households. Number. Charities and nurseries groups....... a 508 One room........................ Two rooms...................... Three rooms.................... Four rooms...................... Five rooms...................... Six rooms and over......... 21 55 102 231 73 26 Per cent distri bution. Number of persons in household. 2 4 3 5 G 8 and over. 7 100.00 33 101 140 102 72 30 30 4.1 10.8 20.1 45.5 14.4 5.1 6 9 9 8 1 9 22 20 42 6 2 2 12 30 bS 25 3 3 5 29 45 17 3 1 5 9 41 10 » 2 17 8 3 2 3 10 6 9 a Not including 118 for whom the number of rooms or persons was not reported and 5 who were not house keeping. 38 Nesbitt, Florence, supra cit., p. 4. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 61 HOUSING CONDITIONS. T able X V I . — Number of persons in household' by number of rooms in apart m en t; working mothers with dependent children— Continued. Working mothers with dependent children. Number of rooms in apartment. All households. Number of persons in household. Number. Per cent distri bution. Colored group........ 6 208 100.0 15 35 34 One room......................... Two rooms...................... Three rooms.................... Four rooms...................... Five rooms...................... Six rooms........................ Seven rooms.................... Eight rooms and over__ 24 8 11 41 35 47 24 18 it 6 3.9 5.3 19.7 16.8 22.6 11.5 8.7 10 13 3 3 5 6 4 1 1 4 1 iè ;6> 4 2 2 4 3 4 1 6 5 43 1 1 11 T 14 5 2 8 and over. 7 28 27 1 6 5 1 2 6 7 ------ T 6 1 ê 5 26 3 9 4 Ï3 6 Not including 4 for whom facts were unknown. The number o f families living in one, two, or three rooms deserves special attention as the four-room apartment is the smallest that was acceptable in any o f the housing projects to which reference has been made above. There were in all 221 families who were living in quarters with less than four rooms. While the standard of four rooms might be higher than necessary for some o f these small fami lies, it should be noted that 108, almost half o f these 221 families, were living in apartments of one or two rooms. This means, ob viously, that whatever the size o f the family the requirement o f the Chicago standard budget which prescribes one room for cooking and one room which was not used for cooking or sleeping could not be met. The larger number o f families in one-room apartments were families living in furnished rooms. This was especially true o f the colored group, which had the largest number o f families living in one room. There is general agreement as to the impossibility o f whole some family life in furnished rooms, at least in the type of furnished rooms that are available for people with small incomes. Whatever the size o f the family, then, the one- and two-room apart ments may be accepted as undesirable. Reference to Table X V I I shows, however, that the occupancy o f these small quarters was by no means confined to small families. In 75 families belonging to the charities and nurseries groups occupying one-room apartments, there were as many as 3 persons in the household and in 14 families in the colored group. In the. two-room apartments there were 24 families in the charities and nurseries groups and 5 colored families, with as many as 4 persons to a household. Among the 102 families https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 62 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. of the charities and nurseries groups living in three-room apartments there were 29 families of 5 persons and 14 families in which there were six, seven, and even eight or more persons. The significance o f these figures may perhaps be made clear by the citation o f actual instances: A Slovak family o f nine persons— father, mother, five children under 12 years of age, and two between the ages o f 12 and 16— occupied a three-room cottage which they owned. In spite o f the obvious crowding it was kept immaculately clean and was re ported attractive. A Polish family, also o f nine persons—father, mother, and seven children under 14—occupied a three-room apart ment. One household o f 11 persons was living in a four-room base ment apartment. In this case the crowding was rendered more seri ous by the presence o f lodgers in addition to the family group. The father was dead, but his brother and cousin were living with the family, which consisted of the mother and eight children, the oldest a boy o f 15 years. It is noticeable that there were a larger number o f families in the colored group than in the other groups occupying apartments o f six rooms and over, for there were 89 colored families in apartments of that size and only 26 o f the 508 families in the charities and nurseries groups. This corresponds with the facts found in other studies of housing conditions among the colored population in Chicago, which have pointed out that in general crowding large numbers into a small number o f rooms was not a characteristic evil o f housing in the col ored districts.39 The size o f the apartments is doubtless in part to be explained by the fact that the newer districts in which the Negroes were settling were once occupied by the more fashionable inhabitants o f the city and the houses built to suit their needs and tastes were being taken by the colored people and were the only ones available for them. When the resources o f a single family were not sufficient to meet the rent and upkeep o f a house o f that size, it frequently happened that two or three families took the house jointly, or that one family took the house and rented rooms with kitchen privileges to one or more families. In either event, the household ceased to be a simple family group and became a group o f families with common kitchen and living rooms, in which housekeeping arrangements were more or less complicated and family life as it exists in the household o f the single family group was impossible. One such household visited in the course o f this study consisted o f an old couple, an unmarried son, a married daughter with her husband and one child, and two married daughters separated from their husbands, one o f whom had 88 See “ H ousing conditions in Chicago,” edited by Sophonisba P. Breckinridge and Edith Abbott, “ V I, The Problem o f the N egro,” by Alzada P. Comstock. Am erican Jour nal o f Sociology, V ol. X V I I I (September, 19 12), pp. 241—257. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis H O U S IN G C O N D IT IO N S . 63 three children and the other one. The household thus consisted o f 12 persons. The house was an old residence of the better class, still in good repair, and contained nine rooms. The entire first floor was occupied by what had evi dently been a living room and library o f some elegance. The floors were o f oak, the walls were paneled, and one side o f the room was lined with built-in bookcases. For the occupants the house was obviously unsuited, and the room presented a dreary picture. The sole furnishings were two chairs placed close to the hot-air register. Yet this room served as the living room for the household o f 12. In this case the four families occupying the house were closely related, but the group did not live as one family. One married daughter and her child, the unmarried son, and the old couple formed one group, who had their meals together, with the expense divided between the daughter and son. The other families kept their purchases o f food independent. In some ways perhaps the case cited is extreme, but the necessity for taking lodgers or doubling up in some way was widespread both for reasons o f economy and because o f the scarcity o f housing ac commodations. Only 56 o f the 212 families in the colored group were living by themselves in houses sheltering only their own family group. The remaining 156 in some way combined their domestic arrangements with those of other groups. Seventy-four families lived with relatives, either renting the house in partnership with them or taking them in as lodgers. In 42 cases the family rented rooms to strangers, occasionally also being responsible for their meals, though usually the roomers ate elsewhere. Eleven family groups included both relatives and lodgers. The other 29 were either living in furnished rooms or boarding. The bearing o f these facts on the family situation with regard to crowding is clear. Obviously, a given number o f rooms with a given number o f people in them are more congested if they house two or three families or a family and half a dozen lodgers than when the occupants form only a single family. A six-room apartment may to the casual observer seem adequate enough for six or seven people; but if those six or seven people comprise two separate families of three or four members each, or a family and three or four lodgers besides, six rooms are entirely insufficient to furnish them normal and healthy privacy. The families o f the colored working mothers were, then, living under'much more crowded conditions than appears from Table X V I. . Taking into consideration the other items mentioned in the hous ing standard, an attempt has been made to sum up the general sani tary condition o f the apartments in terms o f good, fair, and bad. A liberal interpretation has been given the word “ g ood ” and in general all apartments were called good in which there was no men tion o f a bad condition. Apartments about which there was no in formation are not included. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 64 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. T able X V I I .— Condition of apartment by class of ca se; working mothers with dependent children. Working mothers with dependent children. Charities and nurseries groups. All. Condition of apartment. Number. Colored group. Per cent Per cent Per cent distri Number. distri Number. distri bution. bution. bution. All....................................................... 1672 100.0 1460 100.0 212 100.0 Bad............................................................... 292 162 218 43.6 24.1 32.4 202 121 137 43.9 26.3 29.8 90 41 81 42.5 19.3 38.2 1 Not including 171 families for whom the condition of the apartment wks not given. Table X V I I shows that less than one-half o f the families were living in apartments that could be called good, and that almost one-third o f them were in apartments that were definitely bad. What the term “ bad ” means is suggested by the following quota tions taken from the investigators’ descriptions o f the homes visited : “ Six-family hall toilet” ; “ four-family yard toilet” ; “ cottage damp and hard to heat” ; “ rooms dark” ; “ outside toilet” ; “ cold and damp ” ; “ plaster falling off walls ” ; “ no bathroom, rooms dark ” ; “ two toilets under sidewalk for three families ” ; “ toilet in bad repair” ; “ rooming house” ; “ basement toilet for three fami lies ” ; “ rear house, toilet in front house ” ; “ house dilapidated, yard full o f junk ” ; “ bedroom with only window opening into small hall ” ; “ can not use toilet, no water, rats in house ” ; “ rear o f store, light and ventilation p oor” ; “ rear house, rooms dark, toilet under front walk.” This table also shows that the proportion o f colored families living in apartments whose condition was bad was somewhat greater than for families in the other group. In addition to this, the “ bad ” apartments occupied by the colored group seemed to be in worse con dition than those occupied by families in the other groups. O f the 122 apartments in the colored group described as “ b ad ” or “ fair,” 42 had insanitary toilets, 10 o f which were in the yard and 7 in the basement; in 31 apartments most or all o f the rooms were very dark ; in 15 the roof or walls leaked ; 41 were in a state o f general dilapidation; and one, while in good repair, was accessible only through a porch overlooking a very dirty alley piled full of garbage. Landlords seemed indifferent to demands for repairs, and complaints that the roof had leaked or the waterpipes had been frozen all winter were o f common occurrence. In one house the pipes had frozen in November and were not repaired until the middle of the following April. A ll winter all the water used by two fam i lies had to be carried from a grocery two doors away. Part o f the time it was not even possible to pour water down the toilet to flush it. When the https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis HOUSING CONDITIONS. 65 plumbing was finally put in order it was necessary to tear out part o f the inside walls, and although this had been done some weeks before the house was visited, no attempt had been made to build them up again and the house was in very bad condition. In addition, plaster had cracked off the walls and ceilings in several rooms and the furnace could not be used, so that the house had to be heated by stoves— all this in spite o f the fact that it rented for $30 a month. In another house part of the kitchen floor had broken through, leaving un covered a deep space beneath. Pipes were cracked so that the water had to be kept turned off and a leaky drain pipe from the roof made it necessary to keep rags stuffed along the edges of the floor to soak up the water as It accumulated. The investigator’s comment on still another dwelling is quite typical: Toilet filthy because of poor plumbing. Only a thin partition separates it from the pantry where dishes, pans, food, and coal are kept. Stench in pantry is bad. Garbage is dumped in alley and not carted away until summer. Another house was a tumble-down shack in the rear, with no furnace, thin walls, and cold floors. It had no bathtub or washbowl and the toilet was out side on the porch. The water in the house always froze in winter, and the toilet was out of commission from the time cold weather began until spring thaws. One woman had succeeded in getting her toilet put in order by appeal ing to the health department. Other women, however, had not succeeded in having conditions improved. The extremely, bad housing conditions found in the colored group take on added significance from a study o f the rental of the apart ments in which they were living compared with the rental o f the apartments occupied by the charities and nurseries groups. This information is given in Table X V II I. T a b l e X V I I I . — M o n th ly rental b y class o f ca se; pendent children. w orkin g m o th ers witti de Working mothers with dependent children. Monthly rental. All groups. Number. All rentals...................................... Under $5.............................. $5 to $9............................. $10 to $14....................... $15 to $19....................... $20 to $24................. $25 to $29.................... $30 to $39........................... $40 to $49.............................. $50 and over............... Charities and nurseries groups.1 Colored group.» Per cent Per cent Per cent distri Number. distri Number. distri bution. bution. bution. »709 100.0 511 100.0 17 245 253 88 48 17 21 14 6 2.4 34.6 35.7 12.4 6.8 2.4 2.9 1.9 .9 17 234 211 39 7 2 3.3 45.8 41.3 7.6 1.4 .4. 1 .2 198 100.0 11 42 49 41 15 21 13 6 5.6 21.2 24.7 20.7 7.6 10.6 6.6 3.0 1 Studied in the winter of 1918-19. * Studied in the winter of 1919-20. * Not including 134 families, of whom 32 owned their homes and 102 were living in apartments whose rental was unknown. Z https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 66 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. Table X V I I I shows that while the largest number o f families in the charities and nurseries groups occupied apartments renting for $5 to $9 a month, the largest group among the colored were in apartments whose rent was between $15 and $20. And while in the other two groups there were only 10 families in apartments renting for as much as $20, in the colored group 96 families, almost one-half o f the num ber for whom information was obtained, lived in apartments renting for $20 or more. On the other hand the colored families in apart ments with extremely low rentals were very few in number; there were none in apartments renting for less than $5 and only 11 in those renting for less than $10. These facts would seem to indicate that most o f the colored families were able, by doubling up in some way or from their own resources, to pay a monthly rental that should have secured them accommodations with roof and walls that did not leak, doors that would lock against intruders, and plumbing that could still be used for the purposes it was intended, in winter as well as in summer. It has already been shown that this was not always the case. In contrast with the colored group, large fFumbers o f persons in the two other groups were living in apartments whose rentals were so low that it is not surprising that many o f them were found in bad sanitary condition. Although rentals were so varied from district to district that the committee o f experienced workers who drew up the Chicago standard refused to set a minimum figure for the city, it is certainly true that, except in isolated instances in which personal re lations are usually a factor, an apartment which was up to the stand ard demanded could not be secured for less than $10, and it is prob able jthat most apartments available for from $10 to $14 failed to meet the requirements in some respects. Yet over nine-tenths o f the fam ilies in the charities and nurseries groups lived in apartments renting for less than, $15. How far the bad housing conditions found resulted from an inade quate family income, and how far they were due to an unwise ap portionment o f the income, was a matter that could be determined only by careful analysis of individual expenditures, the data for which were not available. The important fact remains, however, that for many o f the children whose mothers had taken gainful em ployment, the loss of their mother’s time and attention was not com pensated for by suitable physical surroundings in the way o f sanitary housing conditions and adequate accommodations. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis SCHOOL ATTENDANCE AND DELINQUENCY RECORD. 67 IRREGULARITY OF SCHOOL ATTENDANCE AND DELIN QUENCY RECORD OF OLDER CHILDREN. SCH OOL RECORDS. Th© regularity o f school attendance o f any group o f children is a very important index of the care the mother is able to give them, as well as o f the effectiveness o f the community’s provisions to insure the proper care o f its children. An attempt was made, therefore, in this study to obtain the records o f attendance for all the children o f school age o f the 631 working mothers first studied—the charities and nurseries groups. Not all the mothers had children old enough to be in school, and it proved impossible to locate all the chidren o f school age. Records were obtained, however, o f the attendance o f 742 children. Four hundred and sixty-six o f these children were in the public schools and 275 in parochial schools, while 1 child had divided his time between the two systems. Table X I X gives their distribution by age. T able X I X . Age of children in school; children o f working mothers, charities and nurseries groups. Children who were in school. Children who were in school. Age. Number. Per cent distri bution. 742 100.0 76 88 113 91 10.2 11.9 15.2 12.3 Total......................... Under 7................ 7 .......................... 8....................... 9................... Age. Number. 1 0 .... 11 12.. 13 Per cent distri bution. 12.4 54 . 7* 4 A n interesting point about the age distribution o f these school children, as shown in Table X I X , is the large number under 7 years o f age. One-tenth o f the entire number were not yet o f compulsory school age. This is perhaps only natural, as the school offers the simplest and easiest way o f providing for the care o f children for at least part o f the day. It is more surprising to find that 54 o f these children o f working mothers were 14 years of age or over. Reference to Table X X , giving the grade of these children, shows that 11 were still in school because they had not completed the fifth grade and hence were required by law to attend, while some o f the other 43 may have been there because they could not meet the physical requirements for a working certificate, yet it is probable that in many cases, in spite o f the inadequate income o f the family, the mother wished the child to continue his education even after the https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 68 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. time when he could legally become a wage earner and help with the support o f the family. Table X X shows that a large number o f these children were below the grade they should normally have attained at their age. The zigzag line has been drawn so that the numbers above the line repre sent the children who were up to their grade, and all below the, line represent those who were below their grade. Over one-third o f the whole number were not up to the standard grade in their schooling, four were in the room for subnormal children, and two in the room for truants. T a b l e X X .— School grade by a g e; children of working mothers. Children attending school. Grade attained.1 Age. Total. Sub Kinnor dergarmal. ten. Total... 742 4 76 88 8 g 10................... 11. 12................... 13 14 and over... 113 91 92 94 79 55 54 1 2 3 4 5 6 21 131 132 120 104 90 71 21 52 43 3 41 __ 47 10 25 8 1 1 6 1 1 1 1 1 3 37 27 30 16 6 1 '7 33 Tru No Trade re ant room. port. school. 8 29 2 ’ 4 1 2 2 26 27 29 13 5 2 1 3 23 22 22 11 9 1 15 24 18 13 1 1 4 9 10 10 3 i 8 1 18 1 Total below grade, 266, or 35.8 per cent. The retardation observed is easy to understand from the record o f absences as obtained from the schools^ The records o f attendance cover the period from the opening o f school, September, 1918, to April 1, 1919, a period of seven months, or 280 half days. Table X X I gives the absences for 714 children. T able X X I .— Absence from sc h o o l:1 Children of working mothers, charities and nurseries groups. C hildren a tten d in g school. C h ildren a tte n d in g school. N u m b e r o f h alf-days absent. N one 1-4 5_q 10-1Ö 20-29 N u m b e r. P e r cen t d istribu tio n . a 714 100.0 60 76 55 137 109 8.4 10.6 7.7 19.2 15.3 N u m b e r o f half-days absent. N u m b er. 30-39......................................... 40-49 . 50-59......................................... 60-69......................................... 70-79......................................... 80-99......................................... 100 a n d o v e r .................................. 66 55 32 33 21 35 35 P e r cen t d istribu tio n . 9.2 7.7 4.5 4.6 2.9 4.9 4.9 . 1 A study of the absences distributed by age and sex showed very little difference in the attendance records between boys and girls or between the children required by law to be in school and those below school age. * Not including 28 children whose absences were not given. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis SCHOOL ATTEND AH CE AND DELINQUENCY RECORD. 69 Table X X I shows that 60 children (8.4 per cent o f all) had at tended school the entire 7 months without the loss o f a single half day a remarkable testimony to the efficiency of their mothers who were both the breadwinners and the housekeepers of the families. A t the other extreme were those children, 35 in number, or 4.9 per cent o f the 714 for whom reports were available, who missed 100 or more half days out o f a possible 280; and another 35, who missed as many as 80 but less than 100 half days. The question o f first interest is, o f course, whether the children o f working mothers are more irregular in their attendance than the children o f mothers who do only their own housekeeping. Unfortu nately, there are no statistics o f attendance for all school children such as are given for the 714 children included in Table X X I . A careful study40 was made, however, o f the attendance records o f nine selected schools in the year 1911-12, and the findings offer a basis for comparison with those o f this study, though the figures are not perfectly comparable. One year is not like another, and the year 1918-19— when the records o f the children in this study were ob tained— was the year o f the influenza epidemic, and more absences were to be expected. On the other hand, the nine schools o f the earlier study are in the poorer districts of the city, and it is probable that many o f the 4,863 children whose records are given were also children o f working mothers. Recognizing these limitations, it yet seems worth while to present a comparison o f the two groups o f children. The period covered in the earlier record was an entire school year o f 10 months— 400 half days; while the period covered in the study o f the children of working mothers was, as already stated, 7 months only—280 half days. T a b l e X X I I . — Absence from school; comparison of children o f working mothers 1918-19 with children in nine selected schools, 1911-X'2.a Number. Period of absence in equivalent of weeks. 8 weeks or more.. 7 weeks or m ore.. 6 weeks or m ore.. 5 weeks or m ore.. 4 weeks or m ore.. 3 weeks or m ore.. 2 weeks or m ore.. 1 week or more... Less than 1 week. Per cent. Children Children Children Children in of in of selected working selected working schools. mothers. schools. mothers. 359 497 659 931 1,340 1,933 2,770 3,755 1,108 70 91 124 156 211 277 386 523 191 7 10 13 19 28 40 57 77 23 10 13 17 22 30 39 54 73 27 ° Figures for nine selected schools from Abbott, Edith, and Breckinridge, S. P.: Truancy and Nonattendance in the Chicago Schools, p. 98. 40 A b b o tt, E d ith , and B reckin rid ge, S. P . : T r u a n c y an d N on atten d an c e in th e C hicago S chools. C h. V I . U n iv ersity o f C hicago P ress, C hicago, 1 9 1 7 . https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 70 CHILDREN" OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. Table X X I I shows that 10 per cent o f the children o f working mothers had lost as much time as 8 weeks in 28 weeks of the school year, while only 7 per cent o f the children in the earlier study had lost that much time in the 40 weeks of the entire school year. A com parison o f those who lost as much as 7 weeks, 6 weeks, 5 weeks, or even 4 weeks shows similar differences. But 80 half-day absences out o f a possible 280 are obviously more serious than an equal number o f absences out o f a possible 400 half days. In Table X X I I I comparison is made between the two groups on the basis of the percentage o f absence based on total possible attendance. T a b l e X X I I I . — Percentage of school time absent; comparison of children of working mothers with children in nine selected schools, 1911-12.1 Per cent. Number. Per cent of time absent. Children Children Children Children of in in of selected working selected working schools. mothers. schools. mothers. 359 659 1,340 2,770 2,093 124 211 277 523 191 7 13 28 57 43 17 30 39 73 27 1 Figures for 9 selected schools from Abbott and Breckinridge, supra cit., p. 98. Table' X X I I I shows that 17 per cent o f the children o f working mothers had lost 20 per cent or more o f the time they could have been in school, whereas only 7 per cent o f the children in the other group had lost so large a proportion o f their school year. These figures seem to indicate a very real difference between the school attendance o f children o f working mothers and that o f children not selected on this basis.41 More light could be thrown on the question o f the relation o f the mother’s work to the irregular school attendance o f the child by a detailed statement o f the causes o f these absences. A n attempt was made to get from the schools the reason for each absence, but this information could be obtained in so few cases that a detailed state ment is impossible. A few significant facts stand out from the meager details furnished. Thus, 26 children were kept out o f school to help care for members o f the family who were sick; 12 to take care 41A pplication o f the m athem atical form ula fo r the standard error gives an error of 1.85 pet cent fo r those absent less than 5 per cent o f the time and 0.95 per cent for those absent more than 20 per cent o f the period. This indicates that on ly deviations of 5.55 per cent and 2.85 per cent, respectively, could be accounted fo r by the errors due to simple sampling. As the «actual deviations were 16 to 10 per cent, the differences are to be regarded as significant. This, o f course, is not to say that they must be ascribed to the m other’ s employment. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis SCHOOL ATTENDANCE AND DELINQUENCY RECORD. , 71 other children; 6 to help at home in other ways. The time lost for these reasons varied from a single half-day to 140 half-days, as in the case o f an 11-year-old girl in the second grade o f a parochial school. Another girl o f 13 had lost altogether 126 out o f the 280 half-days— 66 when her mother was ill, 52 when her help was needed at home, and 8 for which no reason was reported. Another 13-year-old girl in the third grade had lost 80 half-days— 26 because o f the sickness o f her mother and 54 in order to take care o f a 6-year-old brother. The teacher believed that this child’s progress had been hampered by her frequent absences both this year and previous years. Reference to other information shows that this child came from a home where the father was a casual laborer, unable to work regülarly because o f ill health, and brutal to the mother and children. The mother had been the main support o f the fam ily since 1013, and the 13-year-old girl helped with all fh e house work, even the washing and scrubbing. A little Polish girl, 8 years old and in the first grade, had been absent 76 half-days— 32 when she herself was ill and 44 in order to take care o f younger children, o f whom there were three in the fam ily, aged 6 , 4, and 2. While the regularity with which the child o f the working mother goes to school is an important test o f the mother’s ability to per form her double duties o f mother and wage earner, the condition in which he comes and his behavior while there also indicate the kind o f home care the mother is able to give him. In order that these facts might be ascertained, the teachers were interviewed with regard to each child’s cleanliness, dress, behavior, progress in school, and condition as to nutrition. A large number o f the children (361) came to school clean and neat and seemed adequately clothed and fed. Such a report, for example, was made about two little Hungarian boys, aged 9 and 10, who had lost 26 and 18 half days, respectively ; their mother was work ing only two and a half days a week, and her earnings were supplemented by relief agencies. A similar report was made about three children in another family— a boy o f 12 in the sixth grade, one o f 9 in the second grade, and a girl of 7 in the first grade ; their mother was a German woman who did wash ing four or five days a week and did housework for her fam ily o f eight. The united charities said that in the past she had kept the older children out o f sçhool to take care of the younger ones, but in the year o f the study none o f them missed as much as six half days. About a 9-year-old girl in thé third grade, the teacher reported that “ she is well, neat, and clean. The mother helps the child at home and sometimes visits the school.” This mother was a Polish woman, who worked at cleaning and scrubbing six days a week from 9 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon. H er husband was dead, and she had been the main support o f her fam ily which consisted of two children under school age in addition to the 9-year-old girl. H er mother and brother live with her and together contributed approximately $150 to the family in the year. The grandmother got lunch for the children and did the fam ily mending, and the 9-year-old girl washed the dishes ; the rest of the work was done by the mother after her day s work was over. The school-teacher said the mother was a “ remarkable woman.” https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 72 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. While comments o f this kind were made in a strikingly large num- • ber o f cases, there were, as was to be expected, many cases where the teachers had to report that the child was “ clean but poorly clothed,” or “ appeared undernourished.” Such reports were made about 165 children. For example, a boy in the third grade and his brother o f 7 in the first grade were said to be “ clean and neat but not warmly dressed.” Their mother was working in the stockyards, and the united charities was supplementing her wages. About three Polish chil dren, aged 13, 10 , and 9, the teacher reported that they were “ all neat, clean, and fairly clothed but decidedly undernourished.” Their mother was also working in the stockyards. The reports about another family of four children were as follow s: The youngest, a child of 4, admitted into the kindergarten, was said to be fairly clean; her clothing was insufficient, but she seemed well fed. The next child, a girl o f 7 in the second grade, was reported clean, well fed, usually adequately clothed. The two older children, girls o f 8 and 11, were both reported under fed and poorly clothed. The children discussed above came from homes where, in the judgment o f the teachers, the mother had been able to fulfill her double duties passably w ell; where the teachers made criticisms the conditions were the direct result o f poverty. That is, the mother might have been unable to buy the proper food or clothing, but had been able to give time enough to keep them neat and clean and to train them in behavior. In some cases these children o f working mothers conducted themselves so well as to cause favorable comment by their teachers. But there was a group o f 103 children who seemed to the teachers not to have adequate care at home. They came to school dirty and neglected in appearance and their behavior showed evidence o f lack o f discipline at home. How far these conditions were to be accounted for by the fact that the mothers were gainfully employed is not clear. It is clear, however, that in some cases there were other factors in the situation which were more immediately responsible. In 17 families, for example, the mothers might be called delinquent mothers; they drank, or were slovenly housekeepers even when unemployed, or were o f doubtful morality. In 7 other fam ilies the fathers appeared to be a demoralizing influence in the home by reason of drink or brutality. In other cases, however, the condition noted at school seemed to be more directly the result o f the mother’s lack o f time to devote to her children. For example, there was the Z family with three children in school. The eldest, a boy of 14, was reported subnormal, the other two were reported apparently undernourished and not always clean. In 1917 their father had been run over by an automobile and seriously injured and since then had been unable to work. The mother and a boy o f 15 supported the family with some assistance from charity. The mother first tried agricultural work— clipping hedges at a cemetery, then pulling onions and picking peas for a market gardener. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis SCHOOL ATTENDANCE AND DELINQUENCY BECORD. 73 When the season was over, she found work scrubbing. She went on with this work during the winter months and in the spring returned to work on a farm. Thus, the mother was continuously employed for over a year and had to leave the care of the children to the father, who was barely able to move around the house and was obviously unskilled in keeping little children neat and clean. The united charities, which helped the family, found them to have high standards; and when the mother could attend to the children they were always reported clean. The income o f the family, less than $600 a year for six people, including a working boy and an incapacitated father, was obviously inadequate to feed and clothe the family properly, as it was less than one-half the amount required by the Chicago standard budget. Two little boys in another family, aged 11 and 6 years, were reported as “ always filthy.” Their mother, a young Polish widow, also had a child of 3. years. For two years the mother had been working in a box factory from 7 a. m. until 5.30 p. m. H er earnings for the year were slightly under $500, and this constituted the entire income except for relief amounting to less than $50. The only care provided for the children while the mother was away was given by the neighbors. D E L IN Q U E N C Y RECORDS. While the school records of the children are important indices o f the care they received, other evidence o f the children’s behavior should not be neglected. Studies o f delinquent children have frequently pointed out that a large proportion, possibly an unduly large propor tion, have come from homes in which the mother was gainfully em ployed, or have sought to establish a causal connection between the employment o f the mother and the delinquency o f the child.42 The children included in the present investigation were too few in number and most o f them too young to afford a basis for the discussion o f this question. It is, however, important to notice those'cases in which there is evidence that the child was getting beyond the mother’s con trol. Such evidence, o f course, is to be found primarily in the records o f the juvenile court, where the child had been brought in as delin quent. O f the 1,189 children in this study 7 to 13 years o f age, 17 had been before the court, 15 as delinquents and 2 as truants. Three o f these children were girls brought into court for immorality and the others were boys charged with stealing, vagrancy, and incorrigibility. In 3 instances after investigation the case was settled out o f court; in 5 cases the child was committed to an institution, and 7 children were placed on probation. The connection with the mother’s work is not always clear, and in general it is impossible to say that this was the sole Or even the deter mining factor in the situation. 4S See, for example, Breckinridge, S. P., and A bbott, E d it h : The Delinquent Child and the Home. Charities Publication Committee, New York, 19 12; see also certain studies made of the delinquency o f children in war time, especially Leeson, C e c il: The Child and the W ar. P. S. K ing & Son, Ltd., London, 1917, and H ellwig, A lb e r t : Der K rieg und die K rim inalität der Jugendlichen. V erlag der Buchhandlung der W aisenhauses Halle, 1916. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 74 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. There was, for example, a Polish fam ily in which the eldest boy, aged 13, had been in court a number o f times for stealing and once for gambling. The father was a heavy drinker, an irregular worker, and a chronic deserter who had served several terms in the house o f correction. For nine years the main burden o f supporting the family fell on the wife, who had been employed as a char woman, working at night. She was a poor housekeeper, had never had much control over the children, and there were rumors that she also drank. In other cases, however, there are fewer complicating factors, and in some cases the connection between the mother’s absence from home and the child’s delinquency seems fairly clear. Such, for example, is the case of a 15-year-old girl, the eldest of six children in a Polish family. H er mother, a widow, worked seven nights a week, scrub bing at a country club. The girl was ashamed o f their basement home and would not invite her friends to the house. After her mother, started to work at night she began to stay away evenings in the company o f men. She was easily influenced and finally became the victim of a boy friend and a saloon keeper. After this she was brought to the juvenile court and committed to a school for delinquent girls. The mother said that she thought the girl’s tragedy could have been avoided i f she “ could have been at home and watching her more.” In addition to the children whose behavior had been such as to bring them to the attention o f the court there was a somewhat larger group, 42 in all, who had shown tendencies to delinquency that were noted by agencies interested in the family or by the mothers them selves. The seriousness o f the child’s misbehavior varied from steal ing to mere disobedience and a tendency to run wild or get beyond the mother’s control. A s an example o f the more serious situations there is the case o f the 15-yearold colored boy who had run away from home two weeks before the investi gator called and had not been found at that time. H is mother thought he had gone off with another “ bad ” boy. She said he never had had proper training— she had to work, and hence had little time for him, but she felt, too, that he would have been a better child if he had had a father to manage him. Less serious is the case o f Mary, a colored girl of 8, whose mother asked an agency to help her plan for the child, who did not go home after school regu larly, was mischievous, and annoying to the other lodgers in the house where they lived, and had even taken little things from their rooms. Somewhat similar is the case of Susie, aged 10, whose mother reported that she was getting beyond her control, spent most of her time on the streets, and had got into bad company. Attention may also be called at this point to a number o f instances o f violations o f the child-labor law which were reported by the investigators in the course o f this study.' Reference has already been made (p. 39) to the 14-year-old girl who stayed at home to do the family housework in violation o f the compulsory school law, and to the girl (p. 15) whose father found factory employment for her when she was only 13. The other cases o f violations o f the law that came to the attention of the investigators were infringements o f the section o f the law prescribing the hours and conditions o f labor. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis SCHOOL ATTENDANCE AND DELINQUENCY RECORD. 75 Two boys in one family aged 14 and 16, both in school, worked as delivery boys from 3 to 8 p. m., while the law forbade their employment after 7 p. m.4S Another boy of 15, also in school, worked three nights a week between 5 and 11.30, and worked, moreover, in a bowling alley, an employment forbidden to children under 16. H is mother said sjie did not like to have him go so far away— his work was on the other side o f the city. “ But,” she added, “ he gives me all his money.” Another boy of 15 was employed in a bowling alley, but in this case only on Saturdays. In a fourth family a boy o f 13 in the eighth grade at school worked in a restaurant washing glass and silver ware from 5 to 8 p. m. for six days a week and from 1 1 a. m. to 8 p. m. on Sundays. Undue importance should probably not be attached to the cases of delinquency .and neglect that have been cited. They represent a small fraction o f the children included in this study and in most cases the weight that should be attached to the employment o f the mother as a causal factor is difficult to determine. While on the other hand cases o f minor difficulties were probably much more common than the reports indicate, such difficulties occur with many normally active children. The employment o f the mother does mean, however, additional difficulties in coping with the problems as they arise. The study o f the homes o f this group o f wage-earning mothers seems on the whole to indicate that most o f them were surprisingly successful in training and disciplining the children so that they did not get into serious mischief. The following case is typical o f a rather large group. The mother of a 12-year-old girl worked 6 days a week, washing and cleaning. She said she “ kept a close watch o n ” the child, allowed her to play with only one child in the neighborhood as she thought most o f the children were rough, and never allowed her to play in the streets. The most remarkable case o f attention to the problem o f recreation for the children.comes from the colored group. _The family consisted o f a man employed as janitor and earning $100 a month, his wife who worked as maid at a wall-paper manufacturing house, and two children, both in school, aged 14 and 12. They lived in a seven-room flat in the more prosperous part of the colored district. The mother felt concerned about the children’s recreation and had made arrangements to see that they got wholesome amusement. Friday nights she had them bring their friends to the apartment and have a little dance. She and her husband were always there and saw to it that the children did not stay late. Sunday afternoons, also, the children brought in their friends after Sunday school when they amused themselves by playing the piano and the victrola, singing, and reciting poems and Bible verses. Twice each year the children had a large party. The father and mother both said that they enjoyed the children’s pleasures as much as the children themselves. A case o f this kind is o f course exceptional but apparently not more exceptional than the cases o f extreme neglect. I t “ Illinois : H urd’s Revised Statutes, 1917, ch. 48, sec. 2 0 -1 . This does not apply to a 16-year-old boy, but as the boy had been w orking fo r a year he had violated the law during part o f that period. 79100°— 22------ 6 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 76 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. presents another aspect o f the problem of women’s work as in this fam ily the unusual recreational opportunities described above could not have been secured without the mother’s earnings. PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL CONTROL. D IS A D V A N T A G E S IN V O L V E D IN YOUNG EM PLOYM ENT OF M OTHERS OF C H IL D R E N . A small study like the present inquiry is obviously too limited in its scope to warrant any general conclusions with regard to the social disadvantages involved in the gainful employment o f mothers of young children. It is believed, however, that the information se cured serves to reinforce conclusions already drawn as avresult of other studies or o f direct experience, and to cast additional light on some o f the problems o f social control. Without attempting to say how far they are directly traceable to the employment o f the mother, the conditions found in the homes studied that call for remedial action or indicate the nature o f the problem that must be faced are summarized briefly. It was found in the first place that the problem o f the employ ment o f mothers had to do with both normal and broken families, though the latter predominated in the group studied, forming 57.1 per cent of the total number o f families. It was found further that wThere the father was a member of the family group and worked regularly his earnings were, in the great majority of cases, inade quate for the family support. On the other hand, attention was called to the other personal and social factors that entered in to com plicate the problem and render it not exclusively an economic ques tion. The children whose mothers were employed were found to suffer in a number of ways. The care that was provided for them during the hours when the mother was away was subject to wide variation and though apparently satisfactory in some cases was very unsatis factory in others, while in a large number of instances no provision at all was made for the care o f very young children. The school records o f the children in school were on the whole unsatisfactory and compared very unfavorably with those of a group o f children not selected on the basis of the employment of the mother. Among the older children, cases o f behavior problems were found, sometimes a clear connection with the employment o f the mother being indi cated. In less tangible but possibly more important ways the chil dren suffered from the fact that their mothers were under the strain of carrying a double job, for it was found that most of the women, though working at factory work o f average difficulty did not escape the burden o f domestic duties. In some cases this meant that the https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL CONTROL. 77 children lived in disorderly and untidy households or had tasks thrust upon them which they were too young to perform. On the whole, however, there was surprisingly little of this; for the most part the mothers kept their homes clean and in order and wore themselves out in order to spare the children. Numerous instances o f overfatigue and ill-health o f the mother were reported, and atten tion has been called to the loss to the children which this involved. The study of the family income and housing conditions showed moreover that in somewhat over half the families the inevitable dis advantages attendant upon the mother’s employment, away from home were not compensated for by an “ adequate” family income or sanitary material surroundings. On the other hand, it was true that in a large number o f cases the mothers had succeeded by taking gainful employment in bringing the family income up to a minimum o f adequacy, and in securing decent homes for their families. It is, o f course, impossible to balance the very real gain to the children thus accomplished with the equally real though less material loss occasioned by the mother’s absence from home. The problems involved in the employment o f mothers are so in extricably bound up with other problems that practically no measure proposed as an aid in their solution is not also urged as a method o f meeting other and more general social maladjustments. M E A S U R E S F O R R E D U C IN G T H E N E C E S S IT Y F O R W A G E E A R N IN G BY M OTHERS OF YOUNG C H IL D R E N . I f it is agreed that the gainful employment o f mothers of young children is usually undesirable from the point o f view o f social wel fare, it is the duty o f society to find the best methods o f obviating the need for such employment. It is not the purpose o f this report to attempt to settle the momentous questions involved; it aims only at indicating the nature o f the problem and some o f the measures that have been suggested which might be expected to contribute to the end in view. Father’s earnings sufficient to maintain adequate standard of living. The problem of securing an adequate family income without con tributions from the mother obviously differs with the presence or absence o f the father as principal breadwinner in the family group. So long as the earnings o f the father are available for the support o f the family, American theory, though not American practice, has been that the wages o f the father should be adequate for a “ healthand-efficiency ” standard of living for himself and his family. It is evident that any attempt to reduce the necessity for the employment https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 78 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. o f mothers by putting this theory into practice would mean a con siderable increase in wages for large numbers of industrial workers. Although this “ health-and-efficiency ” standard must be maintained as the desirable goal, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to ad just the wages of all workers so that no family would have need of additional contributions,. Training of mothers in household management and the care of children. In order to insure to every family an income sufficient for a “ healthand-efficiency ” standard it. would be necessary not only for the father to be paid an adequate wage but also for the mother to be equipped with a knowledge o f household economy and methods of child care that will enable her to make intelligent expenditures. The services o f the visiting housekeeper and the visiting teacher, and class in struction in domestic economy and child care are means that have already been used with a degree o f success. To some extent, doubt less, work o f this kind when intelligently carried on might be ex pected also, by increasing the interest o f the mother in her j-ob in her home, to render her less ready to take industrial employment. Preserving the normal family group. A large number o f women wage earners come from families in which the father is no longer a member of the family group and it is necessary to find some substitute for his earnings. This'necessity is the same whatever the cause o f his absence from the family, but the pressing nature o f the need should not be allowed to obscure the. fact that the number o f families in which this is true could be greatly re duced by proper measures to safeguard the integrity of the family group. In this connection attention may be called to the efforts to reduce the hazards in industry and to the various movements for the promotion o f public health, such as those for the elimination o f tuberculosis and for housing reform. A ll activities of this kind though instigated primarily for other ends might be expected to de crease the amount o f employment on the part o f mothers o f young children so far as such employment is occasioned by the untimely death or disability o f the head o f the family. Many families have been broken not by the death of. the father but by his desertion or his failure to support the family. More effective laws relating to desertion and nonsupport and better enforcement of these laws are doubtless needed, so that every father capable o f pro viding for his family may be held to his legal responsibilities. This applies to fathers o f children born out o f wedlock as well as to fathers o f children o f legitimate birth. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL CONTROL. 79 Substitutes for the father’s support. When the preventive measures that might maintain the family group in its integrity have been neglected or have failed in their pur pose, it is clearly the duty o f society to find some substitute for the earnings o f the father. The Minority Report o f the British Royal Commission on the Poor Laws (1909) states the problem in this way : W e have chosen so to organize the industrial work that the wife and children are normally supported by the industrial earnings o f the husband and father, with the result that when women engage in industries their wages are habitually fixed at rates calculated to support themselves alone, without a family o f chil dren. If, by some mischance, the husband and father is withdrawn from the fam ily group, the wife and mother is, with regard to self-support, under -a double impossibility. She can not consistently with her legal obligation to rear her children properly, give her time and strength to wage-earnings to the extent that modern competitive industry demands ; and even if she could do so, she finds the woman’s remuneration fixed on the basis o f supporting one person, and not several. Hence it becomes practically indispensable, as it is only equitable, that there should be afforded to the mother bereft o f the man upon whom she had been encouraged to depend suitable public assistance, not so much for her self as to enable her to bring up the children, whom the community, though the breadwinner is withdrawn, still expects her to rear.44 How far the income which the family should have must be given in the form, o f relief by public or private case-work agencies will depend in part upon the extent to which .the community has worked out a system o f industrial insurance, or workmen’s compensation for death, industrial accident, and industrial disease. In Illinois at present the workmen’s compensation law covers death and disabilitv from injuries received in the course o f employment, but in the case o f industrial disease the problem o f finding a substitute for the father’s earnings still falls in large measure upon the case-work agencies. For this reason the policies and practices o f Chicago social agencies become a matter o f importance for this inquiry. The ques tion o f interest is how far the policies and practices o f those agencies are adapted to the end o f making it possible for the mothers o f young children to be supported without engaging in wage-paid employment. The representatives o f Chicago social agencies are agreed that in general, gainful employment for mothers o f young children is undesirable, and that when the support o f the father is no longer available the family should be given adequate support from either public or private funds. However, the policy thus stated is only a general policy and is subject to modifications in application, not only because the resources o f the agencies are inadequate but also because the women with whom they deal present individual problems and it- is impossible to lay down any general line o f treatment that U Report o f tbe Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and R elief o f Distress V ol III being the m inority report, p. 450. W ym an & Sons, London, 1909. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 80 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. would prove suitable for all. Among the difficulties that have been pointed out is the danger o f demoralization in neighborhoods where the attitude o f the group demands that the mother make some con tribution to the family income or in families where the mother’s selfrespect demands that she make this contribution. However one representative o f a social agency considered that this danger had been overemphasized and could be avoided by the rigid enforcement of high standards o f child care on the part of women to whom relief is given. She pointed out that it was in her opinion a problem of making the .visitor and the mother herself understand that the carfe o f the children was a “ job ” for which the mother was being paid and in which she must come up to the requirements o f her supervisor. Possibly more important than the opinion o f Chicago social workers with reference to the best policy to be pursued are the actual practices of the agencies. These practices are determined not only by the opinion of the workers as to the social desirability o f any policy but also by the financial and other resources of the agency. The agencies o f Chicago which are considered in this connection, the aid-to-mothers division o f the juvenile court, the united charities, and the Jewish charities, differed somewhat in their practices. It has been considered best, however, to discuss them together, as their differences were less important than their agree ments. The discussion is confined to their standard practices or policies, and the fact is recognized that there are in all agencies many departures from these practices due to overworked visitors and in adequate resources. While the opinion o f the responsible officers o f the large case-work agencies o f Chicago was that, in general, the employment of mothers o f young children was socially undesirable, their practices were based on a frank recognition o f the fact that for the present at least such employment could not be prevented in the case o f all the women with whom they came in contact. They had had, therefore, to devote their attention to keeping in their homes those women whose pres ence there was most needed. Allowing always for personal factors that may modify the de cision, the agencies in Chicago were fairly well agreed upon the following points: 1. Whether or not relief shall be given so that the mother can ' stay in her home depends in part upon the physical condition o f the mother, which should be determined by a medical examination. The question o f whether she should do part-time work and have her earnings supplemented is to be determined in part by the doctor’s report. This report should also be used to decide the kind o f work the woman should do, but in practice doctors’ reports https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL CONTROL. 81 are little used as a basis for fitting women into suitable positions, owing to the lack o f employment departments or visitors with time for this work. 2. Whether or not relief shall be given depends also upon the number o f children. The mother o f one child over 2 years o f age is not given relief unless she is physically unfit for work, but she is left with full responsibility for the support o f herself and thé child. The mother of two or three children, if in normal health, is expected to help with the support o f the family. It is agreed, however, that the mother o f four children should be given relief sufficient in amount to enable her to stay home with the children. Whether relief should be given and whether the mother should work full time or part time depends upon the earnings and the compe tence o f the individual woman as well as upon the domestic arrange ments that can be worked out. 3. The question o f giving relief depends in part at least upon the character o f the mother, upon her ability to maintain a good home, and upon her willingness to cooperate in plans that mean proper care for the family. Several points in the policy thus outlined call for further comment. The study o f the families included in this inquiry has shown that a number o f women receiving regular relief were engaged in full-time employment. In J une, 1919, the head o f the aid-to-mothers division o f the juvenile court furnished the following summary of the work 501 women receiving aid were doing at that time. Total rep o rte d ____ :_________________ ;_______ ________________ _____ ______ 501 Women Women Women Women Women doing no work other than housework____________________ ___________ 167 gainfully employed at home__________________i _ ___ _________ _____ '1__60 doing part-time outside work d a ily -_________ _______ ,_________________ 66 doing outside work three days a week or less____ _________________ 166 doing full-time outside work________________ _________________________ 42 In December, 1920, reports o f individual probation officers, ob tained with the assistance o f the head o f the division, showed that out o f 556 women who were working to supplement their pensions, 130 were doing full-time work and earning full-time wages.45 This indicates a somewhat striking increase both absolute and relative in the extent to which women being aided by public funds were work ing full time.46 Another practice that’’ seems to call for special comment is the method o f determining what constitutes adequate relief and the 46 The number o f women who were doing no work was not reported fo r this period. 40 The amount o f pension that can be granted is strictly limited by law , and the limits have not been changed since 1915, so that the court is unable in many cases to grant pensions large enough to keep women in their own homes or to bring their incomes up to the budget with part-tim e earnings o f the mother. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 82 CHILDREN OF W AGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. methods o f paying that relief. The social agencies o f Chicago have agreed upon a schedule, the Chicago standard budget, to which reference has been made in this report, by which the needs o f any family are to be estimated and below which the income o f a family should not be allowed to fall. The adoption of a budget system for estimating the relief needed by a family marks a distinct step in advance over the old haphazard methods o f determining the amount o f relief. While the budget for a mother with two or three children is, as a rule, higher than the amount she could earn if she worked for wages, there are a number o f reasons, aside from a desire to maintain the economic independence o f the family, which make some women prefer to rely upon their own efforts to support the family. In the first place, and possibly most important, the fact that the budget estimate o f the family’s needs is greater than the amount the mother can earn at full-time employment does not mean that the money income given as relief w ill be greater than the wages she could earn. It is the standard practice o f good case-work agencies to secure as much as possible of the income from relatives or from the church or other agencies to which the family is bound by so-called natural ties, and also to secure relief in kind from the county agent. For the latter, the mother or some member o f the family must call at the district office o f the county agent. The family income pro vided by a relief agency is derived from different sources and is sub ject to all the irregularities inherent in such a system. In the second place, relief determined by a budget bears no relation whatever to the wages the mother might earn, which means that the woman skilled in some trade would naturally be more reluctant to give up her work than an unskilled worker o f low earning capacity. It means, too, that at a time when wages advance more rapidly than the cost o f living as estimated by the case-work agencies there is a tendency for women to take gainful employment, as the relief is not adjusted to changes in the general wage rates any more than to the individual’s earning capacity. This happened in Chicago during the period of this investigation and just preceding. Most o f the social workers interviewed in the course o f the inquiry told o f women who had voluntarily given up their allowances and taken employment in the stockyards, in the steel industries, with the railroads, or in tailor shops. In all cases the reason given was the possibility o f receiving a larger income in this way. Attention has already been called to the fact that the character of the mother and her willingness to carry out the agency’s plans for the family are considered in deciding whether or not she is to be given relief to enable her to stay at home and care for her children. “ Mothers’ pensions ” are limited by law to mothers who are “ physi- https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL CONTROL. 83 cally, mentally, and morally fit to have the care and custody o f their children.” 47 The private agencies in Chicago are likewise agreed that regular relief is not the best treatment for families in which the mother is unfit to maintain a home for her children, though there is naturally some latitude in determining what constitutes unfitness in this connection and the tendency is for the private agencies to be somewhat more liberal than the aid-to-mothers division o f the juve nile court in their interpretation o f this term. On the other hand, the policy o f the court is opposed to breaking up families except as a last resort. There is then a considerable gap between the lowest standard o f fitness that is deemed to justify an agency in keeping up a home and the standard o f unfitness that is considered to justify it in separating the children from their mothers. This means that certain mothers are left with the triple duty o f maintaining a home, earning a living, and pulling themselves together. The question may well be raised whether this method o f treatment is adopted because it is thought that gainful employment of these mothers will help them to improve the home or whether it merely registers a failure to work out an appropriate treatment.48 This discussion o f the policies and practices o f the case-work agencies in Chicago in giving relief to mothers whose husbands are dead or no longer able to support the family has indicated that some what radical modifications of those policies are necessary if they are to accomplish the end o f making it possible for all such mothers to provide their children with the things needed for their physical, mental, and moral development, without the gainful employment of the mothers. Whether it is at the present time possible for the agencies to make the necessary modifications is a question outside the limits of this inquiry.. It is evident, however, that the adoption o f any policy which meant that more women stayed in their homes with out engaging in gainful employment would involve an increased expenditure o f considerable proportions. The juvenile court, as already pointed out, is limited by the terms o f the law in the amount it can give to any one family. It is also limited in the total amount it can spend on pensions in any one year to the sum obtained from a tax levy o f four-fifteenths of a mill on all taxable property in the county. This amounts to approximately $484,000 on the basis o f the 1919 valuation, while the expenditure for pensions in 1920 was $438,523.49 This means that a decrease in the number of mothers to I l l i n o i s : H u rd ’ s R evised S ta tu te s, 1 9 1 9 , ch. 2 3 , sec. 3 0 8 . « T h e m other m a y , o f course, be p u t on pro bation to th e ju v e n ile cou rt, in w hich case she has th e services an d the frie n d ly su p ervision o f th e pro bation officer. T h is , how ever, does n o t a lte r the fa c t th a t she h a s a double burden t o carry, in m a in ta in in g the hom e an d earn in g th e fa m ily support. F igu res fu rn ish ed by Cook C ou n ty com p troller. 48 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 84 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. with children who are gainfully employed by an extension of the benefits o f the aid-to-mothers law and by the withdrawal from in dustry o f pensioned women can be accomplished only by and with the consent o f the legislature o f the State of Illionois. It seems prob able that if sufficient funds were available to give adequate relief to all classes o f women now eligible for pensions, the private agencies might be able to change their policies so as to enable them to provide equally well for mothers not eligible under the aid-to-mothers. law. That, however, is a question with regard to which further study is needed, and possibly it would ultimately be found desirable to widen the scope o f the present law so as to include some groups o f mothers who are now ineligible.50 There will always be the widow as well as the wife who dislikes housework and prefers industrial employment, or who has ambitions which reach beyond an income that is adequate for physical mainte nance. From the evidence secured in this study as well as from other testimony to the same effect it appears that such women form at present a very small minority o f the gainfully employed widows and women who are in the position o f widows. The fact that they are few in number does not mean, however, that their problems should be overlooked. It is evident that industry as at present organized does not assure these women o f wages sufficient for the support o f their families. The question then that the case-work agency has to face is: Shall it supplement the family income with relief when the mother chooses to work full time but does not earn enough to support her family ? The frequently cited English poor-law experience of the early nineteenth century with the “ rate in aid of wages; ” showed clearly the dangers o f such a practice when it was used under a system of unregulated wages such as prevails in Illinois at the present time. While supplementing full-time earnings as at present practiced in Chicago may affect and undoubtedly does affect the wages o f indi vidual workers from time to time, it is probable that it is not so widespread as to have much effect on the general level o f women's wages. That, however, is no reason for ignoring the possible danger o f such a system. 50 T o receive aid under the law the follow in g conditions are necessary (I llin o is : H urd’ s Revised Statutes, 1919, ch. 23, secs. 299, 308, and 309a) : (a ) The m other’ s husband must be dead or perm anently incapacitated fo r work and his death or incapacity must have occurred while he was a resident o f the State o f Illinois. (6 ) T he m other must have resided in the county three years next before making application, (c ) The m other must be a person physically, m entally, and m orally fit to have the care and custody o f her children. ( d ) The m other m ust not be the owner o f real or personal property other than her household goods, except that she may hold a homestead under the exemption laws o f the State, and may have a dower interest in real estate with a cash value o f $1,000. (e) The m other must be a citizen o f the United States except that aid w ill be granted fo r children born in this country i f the m other has filed her application fo r citizenship. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL CONTROL. S P E C IA L P R O T E C T IO N FOR C H IL D R E N OF 85 W A G E -E A R N IN G M O TH ERS. The special protection that is needed by the children o f wage earning mothers may be considered under two aspects: The protec tion that should be afforded them during the mother’s working hours and the measures that should be adopted to see that they are not deprived o f proper care and attention by the mother during the hours she is at home. The first problem is perhaps more immediate and less likely to be overlooked, but it is not for that reason more important. The children for whom care is to be provided fall into two groups, those who are in school and hence provided for during school hours and those who are below school age. At the present time the only provision made by agencies other than schools for the care of the group o f older children is that afforded by the day nurseries, most o f which take children at least up to 10 years of age after school hours. As pointed out by Mrs. Brenton,51 however, in her study o f the nurseries, very little attention is, in fact, paid to the older children. Furthermore, very few of the school children who were studied in this inquiry went to the nurseries after school, even when' their younger brothers and sisters were left in nurseries during the day. The question is, therefore, raised whether the day nursery should be expected -to provide for the school child as well as for the child o f pre-school age. I f the nursery, is to make such provision it is evident that special attention will have to be paid to the problems o f the older child. I f the nursery is not to provide for this group o f children, some other organization must, and the most natural agency seems to be the school. Whether the nursery or the school makes provision for the child after school hours, it seems obvious that the school could, by an extension o f the “ penny-lunch” system already in operation in some schools, provide for the lunch of the child in school. The present lunch system, however, should be studied to determine wherein it fails to meet the needs o f this group of children, for a number o f children included in the present inquiry who attended schools where penny lunches were provided were not taking advan tage o f this opportunity but were lunching in more or less hap hazard fashion at home. The care o f the children by the school after school hours involves the provision o f a place for the children tos play in winter as well as when the weather permits play outdoors, suitable equipment, and trained play supervisors. 81 Brenton, Helen M cK e e : Supra cit. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 86 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. The care o f children below school age who can not be provided for at home belongs clearly to the nursery. The nursery should afford an opportunity for constructive work in the training o f children at an age when their habits are forming, and also for the correction o f minor physical defects before they have become serious. The benefits o f nursery care, however, can be obtained only from nurser ies that maintain high standards o f sanitation and care intelligently for the physical welfare o f the children intrusted to them, and in addition, have some conception o f the wider usefulness o f the nurs ery. It has been pointed out in an earlier chapter that this was by no means true o f all the nurseries in Chicago. Stricter enforcement o f the law requiring minimum standards o f sanitation appears to be needed, and further action is desirable to se cure nurseries that are prepared to do constructive work in child training. The activities o f voluntary organizations such as the Chi cago Association of Day Nurseries undoubtedly present interesting possibilities in connection with work of this kind. Attention may also be called to the system in use in England.52 Under the educa tion act o f 1918 the local education authorities are given power to establish nursery schools and the central authority, the board o f education, is given power to pay grants in aid to these and other nursery schools which are subject to the supervision o f the local edu cation authorities. That the term “ nursery school ” means an educa tional institution in England is indicated by the following paragraph taken from the Regulations for Nursery Schools, 1919, made by the board o f education (Cmd 87): A nursery school or class is an institution providing for the care and train ing o f young children aged from 2 to 5 years, whose attendance at such a day school is necessary or desirable for their healthy physical and mental development. It has* therefore a twofold function: First, the close personal care and medical supervision o f the individual child, involving provision for its comfort, rest, and suitable nourishment; and second, definite training— bodily, mental, and social— involving the cultivation of good habits in the widest sense, under the guidance and oversight o f a skilled and intelligent teacher, and the orderly association of children of various ages in common games and occupations. The need for special protection o f the mother as a means o f pro tecting the* children whose mothers work has been mentioned. The present study has insisted that the welfare of the children is not separable from the welfare o f the mother but is in general de pendent upon it. Attention has been called to the fact that the children o f a perpetually tired and wornout mother are deprived o f something supplied them from no other source. This means that 52 M cM illan, M a rg a re t: The Nursery School. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis E. P. Dutton & Co., New York, 1919. PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL CONTROL. 87 if the community is to see to it that its children do not lose by their mothers’ gainful employment, it must take steps to prevent over fatigue on the part of the mother. This is in part a problem o f regu lating industry so that its operations are not unduly and unneces sarily fatiguing. In this field there is still room for improvement along well-established lines. The standards of even the more pro gressive communities are still far from satisfactory, and the need is apparent for careful scientific research into questions o f the fatigue incident to different occupations and methods by which it can be reduced, to the end that employment shall not endanger the health and welfare o f women, and through them, the welfare o f children. The fatigue experienced by any worker is only in part determined by the nature o f his occupation and the conditions under which it is carried on. Perhaps o f equal importance are his or her duties outside working hours. The present report has sought to make clear the nature o f these other duties in the case o f the group o f women wage earners selected for special study. It has shown that while some o f them were able to work out arrangements by which they were relieved o f the responsibility for housekeeping, and more had been able to secure some help with thè work, a large proportion o f them were carrying the whole burden o f the family housekeeping in addition to their outside employment and many o f those who did not carry the full burden had help only with the less onerous duties. It is evident that the gainfully employed mother must be relieved o f most o f her housekeeping duties if she is to have strength and energy to enter into any companionship with her children. Various sug gestions have been made for reducing the burden of housework for the woman o f small income, among which some o f the more interest ing are houses built around a central kitchen, provision o f cooked food at a reasonable price, and “ community kitchens ” for serving meals. These plans are not mutually exclusive and there is no rea son why experiment should not be made with several o f them simul taneously. Case-work agencies which include in their plans for certain fam ilies under care the gainful employment of the mother clearly have the responsibility for making such arrangements that the mother will not have to carry in addition to full-time employment all the burden o f household management. The facts brought out in this report point clearly to the conclusion already arrived at in similar studies—that industrial employment o f mothers of young children has many undesirable features. Chief among these may be mentioned the mother’s absence from home, and the fatigue and ill health consequent to overwork which inevi- https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 83 CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO. tablv occur when a woman shoulders two jobs. The connection o f these factors with the interests of the children is only too obvious, an , calls for measures which will reduce the necessity for mothers wor ins outside their homes. Such measures will operate for the benefit o f both mothers and children, but it is primarily for the sake o f the latter, in whose welfare the Nation is so vitally concerned, that they should be undertaken. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis A PP EN D IX TABLES, T able 1.— Marital condition of mother by class o f case; working mothers with dependent children. Working mothers with dependent children. United-chari ties group. Total. Marital condition. Day-nurseries group. Colored group. Num Per cent Num Per cent Num Per cent Num Per cent ber. distribu ber. distribu ber. distribu ber. distribu tion. tion. tion. tion. Total....................................... 843 100.0 463 100.0 168 100.0 212 100.0 Total with broken families.............. 481 57.1 319 68.9 64 38.1 98 46.2 255 151 66 9 30.3 17.9 7.8 1.1 180 110 24 5 38.9 23.8 5.2 • 1.1 34 18 11 1 20.2 10.7 6.5 0.6 41 23 31 3 19.3 10.9 14.6 1.4 362 42.9 144 31.1 104 61.9 114 53.8 W idowed............................. Deserted................................. Divorced or separated................. Unmarried.............................. Married............................................ T able 2.— Age of mother by class of ca se; working mothers toith dependent children. Working mothers with dependent children. United-charities Day-nurseries group. group. Total. Age group. Colored group. Num Per cent Num: Per cent Num Per cent Num Per cent ber. distribu ber. distribu ber. distribu ber. distribu tion. tion. tion. tion. Total........ .................................. 782 100.0 405 100.0 168 Under 20............................................... 20-24...................................................... 25-29.................... ........................... . 30-34...................................................... 35— 39..................................................... 40-44............................................... 45-49.................................................. 50 and over........................................... 6 52 161 227' 185 90 45 16 0.8 6.6 20.6 29.0 23.7 11.5 5.8 2.0 2 13 54 126 107 63 28 12 0.5 3.2 13.3 31.1 26.4 15.6 6.9 3.0 2 17 48 45 43 9 3 1 100.0 1209 1.2 10.1 28.6 26.8 25.6 5.4 1.8 .6 100.0 2 22 59 56 35 18 14 3 1.Ò 10.5 28.2 26.8 16.8 8.6 6.7 1.4 1 Excluding 3 whose ages were not reported. T able 3.-—Number of dependent children in the family by class of ca se; working mothers with dependent children. Working mothers with dependent children. Number of dependent children1 in family. All groups. United-charities Day-nurseries group. group. Colored group. Per cent Num Per cent Num distribu Num Per cent Num Per cent ber. ber. distribu ber. distribu ber. distribu tion. tion. tion. tion. All......... 843 100.0 463 100.0 168 100.0 212 100.0 One child....... Two children.. Three children Four children. Five children.. Six children__ Seven children 261 221 182 109 47 15 8 31.0 26.2 21.6 12.9 5.6 1.8 .9 68 121 127 88 . 39 13 7 14.7 26.1 27.4 19.0 8.4 2.8 1.5 61 54 31 16 36.3 32.1 18.5 9.5 2.4 1.2 132 46 24 5 4 62.3 21.7 11.3 2.3 1.9 1 .5 4 2 1 Children under 14 years of age. 89 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 90 CHILDREN" OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO, T able 4.— Number o f children under 7 in family by class of ca se; working mothers with dependent children. Working mothers with dependent children. United-chari ties group. All groups. Number of children under 7 in family. Day-nurserics group. Colored group. Per cent Num Per cent Num- Per cent Num Per cent Num distribu ‘ ber. distribu ber. distribu ber. ber. distribu tion. tion. tion. tion. All families................................. 843 100.0 463 100.0 168 100.0 212 Total with children under 7 ............... 553 65.6 345 74.5 146 86.9 62 29.2 1 child............................................ 2 children....................................... 3 children....................................... 4 children....................................... 293 201 54 5 34.8 23.8 6.4 0.6 156 143 43 3 33.7 30.9 9.3 0.6 88 49 8 a 52.4 29.2 4.7 0.6 49 9 3 1 23.1 4.2 1.4 0.5 Without children under 7................... 290 34.4 118 25.5 22 13.1 150 70.8 100.0 T able 5.— Total family income by composition of fa m ily; mothers in daynurseries group working full time. Mothers in day-nurseries group working full time. Annual income of family. Composition of family. Total. Un-, $650 der to $650 $849 All families............... 2 adults, 1 child................. 2 adults, 2 children............ 2 adults, 3 children............ 1132 20 19 27 12 24 1 14 1 8 1 1 4 $850 $950 $1,050 $1,150 $1,350 $1,550 $1,650 $1,750 $1,950 to to to to to to to to and $949 $1,049 $1,T49 $1,349 $1,549 $1,649 $1,749 $1,949 oyer. 22 22 10 è 8 2 1 8 — 5" 2 — T 4 6 2 7 1 3 1 10 4 15 1 1 2 1 i 5 2 1 2 2 1 1 18 7 6 6 9 5 1 9 1 2 2 4 2 2 1 2 1 2 1 4 1 4 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 Excluding 9 families in which the mother was working full time and the family income wasunknown. Total below budget, 59, or 44.7 per cent. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis T a b l e 6. — Total family income by composition o f family; mothers in colored group working full time. 79100 Mothers in colored group working full time. Composition of family. Total families............... 1 adult, 3 children.............. 2 adults, 2 children............ 1 adult 4 children.......... 2 adults, 3 children................... 1 adult, 5 children............... 2 adults, 4 children................. 2 adults, 5 children...................... 2 adults, 6 children.......................... 2 adults, 7 children................... Under *800 to *1,000 to *800. *999. *1,199. *1,200 to *1,399. *1,400 to *1,499. 7 9 11 141 47 35 13 34 26 8 29 3 12 11 4 5 11 7 — 2 11 *1,800 *1,900 to to *1,899. *1,999. 5 3 2 2 2 5 1 2 1 1 1 *2,300 to *2,399. *2,400 to *2,499. 6 7 2 4 1 4 2 1 3 2 6 1 3 2 3 i 2 i 1 1 *2,500 and over. . ! I 2 1 *2,000 *2,100 *2,200 to to to *2,099. *2,199. *2,299. * 1 i" 3 2 *1,600 *1,706 to to *1,699. *1,799. 2 r i " " i i *1,500 to $1,599. i 1 i APPENDIX TABLES, 1 adult, 1 child................... 1 adult, 2 children......... 2 adults 1 child............. Annual income. Total. Total below budget, 73, or 51.8 per cent. CO https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis CHILDREN OF WAGE-EARNING MOTHERS, CHICAGO, 92 T able 7.— Number of persons in household by number of rooms in apartment ' and class o f ca se; working mothers with dependent children. Working mothers with dependent children. Number of persons in household. All households. Number of rooms in apartment, and class of case . Per cent distri bution. Num ber. Charities group......................... .......... Three rooms................................................... Five rooms.............................: ..................... Nurseries group................................... Four rooms.................................................... Colored group...................................... Three rooms........................*......................... 4 3 2 5 6 70 56 i 345 10 0 .0 15 53 100 6 2 2 1 31 61 171 60 16 1.7 9.0 17.7 49.6 17.4 4.6 3 14 ii 7 19 53 19 2 163 10 0 .0 18 48 15 24 41 60 13 9.2 14.7 25.2 36.8 4 7 --- 3 8 8 21 2 2 15 6 2 2 43 10 8 .0 6 .1 3 208 100.9 6 3 21 1 4 3 14 8 8 8 5 32 16 1 3 4 19 .4 5 2 9 35 34 1 8 11 4 13 3 3 5 4 1 16 6 4 4, 1 2 1 1 11 9 14 5 2 6 3 6 3 2 1 10 2 1 3 10 24 18 2 15 40 11 6 24 4 9 31 1 10 S 15 1 27 41 3 24 41 35 over. 1 1 ■ 5 8 and 7 3 28 27 26 1 6 1 2 6 3 5 9 6 1 7 9 5 Hi —r 4 1 1 Not including 118 for whom the number of rooms or persons was not reported. 2 Not including 5 who were not housekeeping. 3 Not including 4 for whom facts were unknown. T a b l e 8 .— M onthly rental by class of ca se; working mothers with dependent children.f Working mothers with dependent children. All groups. United-charities Day-nurseries group. group. Colored group. Monthly rental. Num ber. All rentals................: ................ $5-39...................................................... $10-114................................................... $15-119................................................... $20-324 ............................................... $25-129.................................................. $40-$49 Per cent distri bution. Num ber. Per cent distri bution. Num ber. Per cent distri bution. Num ber. Per cent distri bution. 10 0 .0 i 709 10 0 .0 353 10 0 .0 158 10 0 .0 198 17 245 253 2.4 34.6 35.7 12.4 7 181 144 19 1.9 51.3 40.8 5.4 10 20 1 .3 1 6.3 33.6 42.4 12.7 4.4 .6 42 49 41 15 1 .3 88 48 17 21 14 6 6 .8 2.4 2. 9 i. 9 .9 53 67 7 11 21 13 6 5.6 2 1.2 24.7 20.7 7.6 10 .6 6 .6 3.0 1 Not including 134 families, of which 32 owned their homes and 102 were living in apartments whose rental was unknown. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
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