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WASHING MENT PRI 1124 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis U. S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR JAMES J. DAVIS, SECRETARY WOMEN'S BUREAU MARY ANDERSON, Director BULLETIN OF THE WOMEN'S BUREAU, NO. 36 ~ADIO TALKS ON WOMEN IN INDUSTRY WASHINGTON GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1924 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis ADDITIONAL COPIES O}' TIDS PUBLICATION MAY BE PRO URED FROM THE SUPERINTENDENT OF DOCUMENTS GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFJ'ICE WASHINGTON, D. C. AT 10 CE TS PER COPY https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis CONTENTS. Page. Wage-earning women and the Women's Bureau____ ______________ ______ Married women in industry__________________________________________ Women's work in industry________ ___ ___ _____________________________ Women's wages_____________ _____________ ____________________________ Budgets_______________________ ________________________ __________ ___ What women earn__________________________________ _____ ____ ________ Hours of work____________________________ _____ ___________________ Health and hygiene for women at work ---------- ------------------Posture and seating________________ ______ _____________ ____________ ___ Some exploded theories about women in industry______________________ III https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 1 5 8 11 15 19 22 25 29 32 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis LE'J:TER OF TRANSMITTAL. u. S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, WOMEN'S BUREAU, Washington, November 5, 1923. Srn: I am submitting herewith a bulletin on Women in Industry. This bulletin consists of a number of short popular articles on various conditions surrounding the employment of women in industry. The articles were originally prepared and used for a series of talks over the radio, which were broadcast once a week during the winter of 1922-2.3. Because of the many requests which have been received for copies of some of these radio releases, it has seemed advisable to condense them and issue them in bulletin form. The articles were written and broadcast by Mary N. Winslow and Mary V. Robinson, of the editorial staff of the Women's Bureau. MARY ANDERSON, Director. Hon. JAMES J. DAvrs, Secretary of Labor. V https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis -r.- https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis RADIO TALKS ON WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. WAGE-EARNING WOMEN AND THE WOMEN'S BUREAU. Every man, woman, and child in the United States to-day is more or less dependent on the work of some of the more than eight and one-half million wage-earning women in this country. At every turn you can see the products of women's activities. When you get into bed at night you are covered by sheets which have been spun and woven by some of the thousands of women employed in the great textile mills of New England or the South. The clothes you put on in the morning have been stitched and trimmed and buttonholed by the women who make ready-made clothing, and who run sew:. ing machines which take two or three thousand stitches each minute. Your breakfast bacon has been sliced and packed, your coffee ground and labeled, your sugar boxed, your bread wrapped by women employed in :food :factories. Women have helped to make the flivver in which you ride down town, or i:£ you walk you will be marching on shoes which women's hands have had a large share in making. The pages of the books you read have been arranged and 1 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis RADIO TALltS ON WOMEN' tN INDUST"itY. stitched together by women, and the candies that you eat have a nice thick layer of chocolate. because some. woman has taken each piece of cream filling and dipped it carefully in thick warm chocolate, has watch~d it while it cooled and hardened, has made the box in which it is packed, has packed it and labeled it, seen that it was shipped to the store where you bought it, and has probably sold it to you, and made your change. Try as you will y'ou can't get away from the woman in industry to-day. She is everywhere, and everywhere she is doing useful and important work for you. Because they do so many different things, when you hear about women in industry you should have a true picture of the army of working women in all the many occupations in the country, and not see in your mind's eye only women servants, aitd clerical workers, and salesladies, and teachers. You must not think that those are the only occupations employing: many women. When we speak of workingmen we see carpenters and plumbers, coal heavers and electricians, street-car conductors and office workers, farm hands and miners. We know without the shadow of a doubt that all of ,these men work under different conditions and that each occupation has its own problems. But what about the women~ How many people realize that of 572 occupations listed in the census there were only 35 in which no women were employed~ In this country to-day are women who are managers and superintendents of factories, bankers and bank officials, chemists, clergymen, judges and doctors, inventors, engineers, and architects. But there are greater numbers of women in the other ranks, working in factories making clothing, automobiles, shoes, cigarettes. The overalled woman with grimy hands, making guns and shells, was a conspicuous person during the war, but she has been more or less forgotten since, and not everyone knows that she has not given up her factory work but is probably busy now making implements of peace, while she still wears the overalls and works on the same kind of machine that she used for making guns and shells. The reason there are so many women in the :factories and mills is that most of them are doing the work which used to be done by .women in the home before machines were invented and industry was organized to make the things that used to be made by women's hands at home. It is no longer expected that the average mother and housekeeper will rock the baby's cradle with one :foot while with the other she works the treadle of a spinning wheel. Instead her spinning and weaving is done by thousands o:f women and girls who tend great machines holding hundreds of bobbins, and looms making many yards o:f cloth a day. Except as a pastime, we seldom see women with four knitting needles flying as a good serviceable stocking grows be- https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis RADIO TALKS ON WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. 3 neath theirhands. Instead there are knitting_machines in great factory rooms which turn out hundreds of stockings a day, while women and girls tend the machines. In this age industrial processes have become so complicated that one .person is seldom able to complete an entire article. It takes about 150 different operations to make a shoe, which used to be made entirely by one person's hands, ·and many oth~r products of industry are equally subdivided in the process of manufacture. Naturally with this kind of development in industry there have been tremendous changes in the number of women employed in some occupations. There are about 110,000 more women in manufacturing and mechanical industries now than there were in 1910, and there are 297,000 fewer women who are servants. In almost every factory where men work there are some women employed, but in some kinds of factories there are many more women than men. In the clothing industry, where corsets, gloves, shirts, collars and cuffs, and other articles of clothing are made, and in knitting and silk mills, there are nearly twice as many women employed as there are men. But in spite of the large numbers of women they employ, these industries are no_t the places where the greatest number of women work. Over a million women work on farms, more than a million women are servants, over 600,000 are teachers, and over 560,000 are stenographers and typists, so the general impression is correct that teaching, domestic service, and clerical work are the chief occupations for women. There are, however, more than 50,000 women employed in many different occupations manufacturing such things as iron and steel products, shoes, food, cigars and tobacco, clothing, cotton, silk, and woolen goods. Those are big numbers and they mean big things to the countryfor women are in industry to stay and no longer look to domestic and personal service as their only opportunity. Think of these millions of women working at all kinds of jobs, and then think of the homes they come from, the family ties which bind 0 711521;} - 24--2 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 4 RADIO TALKS ON WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. them, the communities of which they form a part. If your vision is keen you will see that the conditions under which those women work will be reflected in the standards of their homes, their communities, and their country. As a Nation we can not afford to let these standa.rds be lowered. We found that out when we were faced with the great needs of the war and it became obvious that the employment of women was a national problem to be met with a nati{Vlal standard. To fill this need the Women's Bureau was established in the United States Department of Labor. This bureau finds out what women are doing in industry ; it studies the conditions under which_women work; and · it recommends certain standards for their most efficient ancl successful employmen_t. If ~n employer wants to know what stand- · ards other employers are establishing and what the best standards are for hours, wages, and working conditions for women, he can get this information from the Women's Bureau. If a woman worker wants to know what she should expect in the industry where she works, the Women's Bureau standards will tell her that; if a State wants to regulate conditions for women, the Women's Bureau will investigate to find out what conditions are most in need of regulation and will show how such conditions are regulated in other States. . Besides investigations to find out what are the wages, hours, and working conditions for women in an entire State or in one or more specific industries, the bureau studies the effect of laws regulating the employment of women to see whether they are helpful or harmful. Its agents interview thousands of women in industry to find out what problems they have to meet, whether they have dependents to support with their earnings, and how they manage to run their homes and to work in industry at the same, time. It publishes reports and prepares exhibit material of all sorts in which are presented both the human and the scientific aspect of the employment of women in industry, so that the information secured may be available and useful for all of the many groups that are interested in the wage-earning women of the United States. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis MARRIED WO'MEN IN INDUSTRY. Most persons think of wage-earning women as youngsters from 18 to 25 years old, who are working for a few brief years in industry until they are fortunate enough to meet some young men who marry them and they live happily ever after. That is just what does happen to a good many young women, as we all know. But it does not happen by any means to all women wage earners. There · are many thousands of women in industry who never _marry but keep ·on working through all their lives. A woman in a factory in Indiana stated that she had been making gingham aprons in that factory for more than 40 years. Besides such wom~n who have worked steadily in industry there are many thousands more who get married, stop work for a while, and then go back to the factory to help out with family expenses, or, in some cases, to take the places of husbands whom sickness or death has removed from the ranks of the breadwinners. Those are the women the bureau wants to tell you about, so that you may get a better idea of who goes to make up the great group of women wage earners, and so that you will know more of the human problems which must often be dealt with by these women who wait on you in stores, who make your clothes, prepare your food, and help to make almost every article you ,use, from a toothbrush to a railroad train. It is an easy matter to find out how many married women are wage earners. In 1920 there were 1,920,281 married women who -were gainfully employed. The census which is taken every 10 years 5 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 6 RADIO TALKS ON WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. tells us that. But the census does not tell us very much about them. The Women's Bureau wanted to find out more details of those women, so the records which the census had taken in 1920 for all the women in one industrial town were studied, and it was found that about half of the women who were breadwinners were married women. There were more than 4,000 married women earning money in this one community. When examined closely the records of these 4,000 married women disclosed something that seems very important. Nearly two-thirds of them were mothers who had children less than 5 years old. The bureau wanted to find out how these mothers managed to take care of the children and do other work at the same time, so the census records were looked at again to .see1whether any light on the subject could be discovered. It was found that about half of these mothers of young children earned money at home by taking in boarders or doing laundry or some other form of work which did not oblige them to leave home-, so they could look out for the children and work at the same time. But the other half went out to work and spent their days in mills making woolen and worsted cloth, and in factories making handkerchiefs and other manufactured articles. Wonder arose as to what became of these little children while their mothers were a'w ay from home all day; and, because there was no other way to find out, agents were sent to visit as many of these families as they could. During these visits, among every five women one was found- who was working at night and looking out for her children during the daytime, and one who just left the children alone at home to look out £or each other. Somet imes the father worked at night and cared for the children in the daytime while their mother was away, and sometimes t he neighbors or the landlady ·or relatives kept an eye 011 the children. Only one woman in twenty had some one who was paid especially -to care for her young children while she was away at work. Does this give you a picture of the pressure under which women are working in industry? Can you see all of these mothers, leaving home at 6.30 or 7 in the morning after they have washed and dressed t~e children and fixed their breakfasts and lunches? Can you see these mothers working all day, and can you imagine their thoughts as they wonder whether the children. are all right and whether some one has seen to all the many things little children need? And at the end of the day's work in factory or mill can you picture the home-coming of these mothers, and the tasks which await them? The mothers who work at night have an even more serious situation confronting them, for if their children and homes are to get the attention they need, sleep must be curtailed and rest ignored, and much of the day which $hould be spent in bed after a night in a https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis RADIO TALKS ON WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. 7 factory, must instead be spent in getting through the many duties of the housewife and mother. Almost every one of the women inter viewed cooked, cleaned, and washed for her family and looked out for the children, besides working for wages outside the home. This seems to be considerably more than a full-time job for any woman, and I imagine you will all agree with me about that. And now, I think that if the radio would let me hear as well as speak, I might get an echo of some voice asking " What's to be done about it?" If you are asking that question, I shall have to confess that the correct answer is rather difficult. to give. Of course, low wages are at the bottom of it-low wages for the fathers which make it necessary for the mothers of young children to work, too, if the family is to be supported. But tliis situation can not be remedied until it is recognized, and until people realize that families, not just persons, depend on the earnings of both men and women, and that if those earnings are not adequate whole families and many children suffer. So this is what you can do: Help to make others realize the important contribution which many married women are making to the actual support of their families. The Women's Bureau feels that this fact must be thoroughly appreciated if women are to be given their right standing · in industry. An<l you need only to look around you to see that the things the bureau is telling you are true. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis WOMEN'S WORK IN INDUSTRY. Do you know what it means to stand before a machine or work table all day, doing one thing over and over again? Just to give you an idea of what it means, in case you do not know, I am going to describe a few of the things women do in industry. . During the war rows of girls sat all day at a high table and looked to see whether they could find any imperfections in shells which rolled before them. Just one shell after another rolled by, 15 or 20 each minute, while the girls looked carefully. That kind of work is called inspecting, and many thousands of women do it not only for shell manufacture in war time but in all branches of industry all the time. When next you use an electric lamp, or a telephone, or any of the other complicated articles· that are made for you every day in industry, -think of the thousands of women who are spending their working hours just inspecting little bits of metal or rubber or wood to see that they will go together properly. That sounds like rather a dull job. It is a dull job, but it has to be done and .done well, or else things would not fit together and would not work properly. There· are many other thousands of women who do what is called assembling. They sit or stand all day before long work benches and fit together a few bits of wood or metal. Then there are the ones who do wrapping and packing. When you buy a new piece of soap or a toothbrush, you generally find it wrapped in paper and packed in a little box or carton. Many women spend 8 or 10 hours a day doing nothing but wrapping these bit.s of soap or toothbrushes and putting them in their boxes. When you· open a package of cigarettes you h' veto tear through a revenue stamp pasted across the p ,h as probably been put there by a girl who sat all end. This s day befor~ a moving belt which carried boxes of cigareUes before her while she hurriedly pasted on the r~venue stamps. In the actual manufacturing processes women do many different kinds of work. Take the making of candy, £or instance. Have you 8 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis RADIO TALKS ON WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. 9 ever wondered how the chocolate coating gets on the outside of a chocolate cream~ The answer to that is simple--"A woman does it." In the big candy :factories the women who do this by hand are called "chocolate dippers." They sit all day at a table with a slab covered with thick sticky chocolate at their right. In front of them is a large tin tray covered with little round dabs of cream filling. The chocolate dipper takes the cream filling in her fingers, rolls it deftly in the chocolate, puts i.t on another tray and lets a bit of the chocolate drip from her fingers into the curlicue pattern which is on the top of almost all chocolates and which shows what kind of cream filling is within. Over and over again she does this u~til she has dipped hundreds and hundreds of chocolates by the, end of the day. And all the time she work~, her right hand, and sometimes her left hand too, is covered with chocolate so ,thick that it looks like a glove. A girl once told me that the chocolate got into her skin until no amount of washing would take it out, and that she always smelled of chocolate so that people knew the kind of work she did even when they only passed her on the street. In textile mills women tend all kinds of machines which are making thread or weaving cloth. Here they have to walk from one machine to another tying up threads which have broken, removing the full spools, and replacing spools from which all the thread ha8 been unwound. The noise of the machines is often terrific. The women seldom have any chairs to sit on, and a.re obliged to stand all day. In garment factories many women operate sewing machines, but not the. kind -of machines you are accustomed to using at home. The,se factory machines run by electricity and take two or three thousand stitches a minute. You can hardly conceive of the rate at which these women work. 'In the first place they sew only one little part of a garment, because it has been found that the work is finished more quickly by having each worker repeat onekshort operation over and over again than by having each do a number of different operations; so the interest of seeing the garment grow under the hands is denied the person who makes garments in a modern factory. Instead she will spend her days doing such work as running up the seam on one sleeve. after another-nothing but running sleeve seams-so. fast that while the right hand is guiding th~ ~le~ve beneath the needle of the machine the left hand is reaching out for another sleeve to feed in as soon as the first one is finished. So fast do they•go that in the machine room is a whirr like a swarm of very angry bees, and the ·women bend over their work with the most intense concentration. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 10 RADIO TALKS ON WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. I could go on for a very long time giving you descriptions of the different jobs women work at in industry, but I think that what has been said will give you a fairly good idea of the monotonous character of many of the activities on which women are engaged in the factories of the country. Of course there are many other jobs for women which are full of variety and interest, but industry is tending to become more and more monotonous, and nowhere does this show more clearly than where women are employed. The chief results of this monotony are fatigue for the body and dullness for the mind. Doing one thing over and over again uses only one set of muscles, but uses them continuously, so that they have no time for rest, and quickly become overtired. When one simple action is repeated many times it becomes automatic, the interest goes, and where there is no interest there can be little mental activity. There is a remedy for this state of affairs, a remedy which the Women's Bureau and many other organizations have been harping on for years. This remedy is reasonably short working hours and a living wage-hours which will not bring over:fatigue to the body and which will allow enough free time so that mental interests and activities can be carried on, and a wage which will make possible an adequate standard of life. When hours are not too long the day in the factory should not bring overfatigue and will allow for outside activities. When wages are not too low there is a margin for the purchase of comforts and facilities :for a broader -life. The 24 hours of a woman's day should be so divided that she has time not only for work but for home duties, for recreation and self-improvement, and for rest; and her earnings should be such that she can get these things in a satisfactory way. With such a division the monotony of industry can be counteracted, and vigorous, intelligent working women can take their place among the JH citizens of the country. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis WOMEN'S WAGES. Everyone is talking about wages to-day, and almost everyone seems to feel competent to set himself up as a judge of whether or not wages should be reduced. Most of those who, pay wages want them reduced, while most of those who get wages want them raised. This is natural and human, but it does not get anyone very far, and it really is important for all to look the wage question squarely in the face and find out what we should think about it. For the past four years .the Women's Bureau has been watching the wage situation as it affects women, and never has it seemed more important than at the present time for everyone to know facts on this subject and to realize that snap judgmeRts and opinions without basis will not change things for the better but may lead into worse conditions than exist at present. The difficulty with which most people are faced when they want to find out about wages is that they have so few sources of information from which they can get both sides of the story. Public opinion is so readily influenced by vociferous declarations that .the person who can declaim the loudest that wages are too high is generally the person who is believed. But when wages are too low the persons who are most supremely interested in telling this are the men or women who are trying to get along on these inadequate wages; and they can not always get their story over to the public. It is to the advantage of all to have an impartial and authoritative statement of facts, and so far as wage-earning women are concerned the Women's Bureau as a Government agency is an impartial investigator of industrial conditions as they affect women. One of the most serious situations that has been disclosed by its investigations is the prevalence of a very low wage for women and a public opinion which does not recognize nor appreciate the significance of this fact. When we speak of low wages we must remember that this is a comparative term. The important thing to think of when you are talking about the wages So-and-so gets, or the•amount that So-and-so earned last week, is what he or she must buy out of that amount. Because a woman in one establishment makes $16 or $17 a week, while a plant around the corner is getting women for $10 does not mean that the $16 or $17 women are overpaid. Don't judge wages by comparing them with wages of other people or of other days. When 79529°-24-3 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 11 12 RADIO TALKS ON WOMEN IN INDU STRY. I Jas a little girl my mother used to buy a whole chicken for fifty cents. But when I go to market now I don't expect to get a chicken for that. I know that the value of mo'ney as well as the cost of c h i c k e n s has changed, and I try to adjust myself to the new standard. It is the same with wages. New standards and new values exist now, and they can not be compared with those of former times. Nor can you comp a r e one person's wages with another person's unless you t I 1 know much more about them than the average man does j\\ about his neighbor. When you see two articles for sale in a store and one is more expensive than the other, do you immediately say that the higher priced _article is outrageously expensive and th at nothing but Bolshevism and anarchism will result from such prices ~ I don't think you do. I think if you are a sensible person you look carefully at the two articles and find out whether the more expensive one is made of better material, so that it will last longer, and whether it is better cut and finished more carefully, so that it will be more fit for the use for which it is intended. If this is so, then the higher price is justified, and the m.ore expensive article may be the cheaper in the end. It is the same with wages. A well-paid workman may be worth much more than one who is underpaid and can not, therefore, put so much interest, initiative, and vitality into his job. Sometimes, of course•, there are bargain sales of labor just as there are of surplus goods in a store, and at these times .good labor can f'/'!Jfo.l1 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis RADIO TALKS ON WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. 13 be bought cheap, just as an article with which a store is overstocked can sometimes be bought at less than its real value. But bargain sales should not be allowed to set a. standard for all prices. The owner of a store is the man who loses from a bargain sale, and he is the one who decides how far he will let such losses go on. The person who has only his work to sell can not do this. He is the one who loses when there is a bargain sale of his only commodity, and often he is powerless to control the prices at which he sells. For he must sell to live, and too often he must make the decision that half a loaf is bettBr than none. H you are going to have opinions on wages, then, look out for the bargain sales-the periods of industrial depression-and don't let yourself be misled into thinking that they represent the whole story. For wages mean more than the price of a certain number 0£ hours 0£ work. They mean life and a chance to enjoy and advance the civilization of the day. H you think that it is all right to pay a woman $9 a week, simply because you can get her to work for $9 a week, .then you think that it is all right for you to take from that woman not only the hours of work you have bargained £or, but also her health, her comfort, her chances for pleasure and education, and provision for her old age or sickness. You will take all these things, because a $9 a week wage can supply none of them. You will also be taking from the community a healthy, happy, interested citizen and leaving in her place a woman who will have neither time nor energy to make a contribution to any social progress, a woman whose standard 0£ living must be too low £or safety; in fact, a woman who is a liability instead 0£ an asset in the community life. This is too large a contribution for any one person to take from another, yet those who pay less than a living wage are taking such a toll from every person they employ, and from every community in which these persons live•. In recent years there has been much discussion 0£ the way the cost of living and wages have risen together. In this connection there are two things to remember: First, and most important of all, although wages have risen with the cost of living, for many peoplewomen especially-they never have caught up with the cost of living. Second, when both wages and the cost of living start to come down, wages come first and the cost o:f living makes a more leisurely descent. Thus it is that wages may often rise a long way without catching up, and though the cost of living may fall wages are generally falling faster. The discrepancy between wages and the cost of living is often particularly great for women, w_h o in the main are employed in the low-paid occupations and must stretch every penny to make the proverbial two ends meet. We do not see men making the e:fforts https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 14 RADIO TALKS ON WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. that women do to eke out a low wage: and keep up a certa in st andard of living. No matter h ow small his pay, after his day's work • the average man does not come home to wash and press his clothes, so that he may look clean and fresh when he goes to work the next day; he does not often cook his supper over a gas plate to save the price of a meal in a restaurant; nor does he make over his clothes and trim his own hats. Yet this is the usual thing for women to do, and they do it not for fun but because they can not a:ff ord to do anything else. Their margin is too close. When you have such a narrow margin a rise in the price of food and rooms, clothes, and car fare, or a decrease in earnings is nothing short of a disaster ; and it is a disaster which occurs all too frequently for many wage-earning women. Many investigations have shown that wage-earning women as a ' rule are not only supporting themselves entirely but are also contributing to the support of others. Thousands of young women leave shops and factories at the end of the day's work and go home to cook, and scrub, and mend, and to contrive how the family budget can be adjusted so that little brothers and si~ters can have shoes and dresses to wear to school and so that landlord and grocer may be settled with. Yet, in spite of the many demands on their earnings, women have not yet been able to secure for themselves adequate recognition in industry. They are still employed in large numbers in ·1ow-paid occupations without much fu ture. For this reason it is particularly important that wag~s for women _ __ should be standardized -.,_____________ and stabilized in some way. . https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis -........!. ~ ' BUDGETS. For a good many years people h ave spent a lot 0£ t ime outlining what they think are the absolute necessities for an adequate American standard o:f li£e. We hear 0£ all kinds 0£ standards which will be brought about by various wages, such as a " saving " wage, a " health and decency " wage, a " £amily " wage, or a " subsistence " wage. No one o:f these standards has yet been generally adopted, but there are certain fundamental needs which form a part 0£ every estimate and which constitute in a way the minimum requirements :for the basis of any acceptable standard. This is particularly true in the case 0£ women's wages, and there have been many outlines made 0£ the items which should be covered by a minimum wage for women. Do you know what the items are which a woman's wage must buy? Make out a budget for yoursel£ some day and see what the result is. Make it out carefully, thinking 0£ the things you need all your li£e through, not just for one year or one month. . You will be sur prised at the result.. You will find that a budget must cover the cost 0£ many things besides food and lodging. In a number 0£ States it is illegal to pay women in certain industries less than a wage fixed by law . . These wages are decided on a£ter a careful study 0£ budgets and the cost 0£ living, and sometimes bitter controversies arise over the amounts estimated for certain expenses. One winter not long ago in Kansas when the owner 0£ a department store proposed . a budget in which he allowed only $96 a year for a woman's clothes there was a great outcry among the women wage earners. They flocked to his shop and demanded to see the articles 0£ clothing he thought they could buy so cheaply, will 15 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 16 RADIO TALKS ON WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. and they scorned the cheap clothes they would have had to wear if they had followed his recommendations. The Women's Bureau has studied many budgets. It has made studies of t he cost of certain necessities for wage-earning women and has outlined those things which are accepted by almost every authority as minimum requirements for a woman's budget. H you want to be a :fair judge of wages take out your pencil and put down the items. First write down in big black letters the word "Food." That means 21 meals a week; for whether meals are eaten at home or in a rest aurant they cost money. Then comes another big item," Rent"; for most women either have a rent bill to pay directly or else help their families to pay one. Next comes" Clothing," and if you are a man you h ad better tread carefully here, and get your wife to help you out in making up your mind as to what clothing a woman must have and how much it should cost. H you haven't a wife ask your friends to help you, because you can't do it alone; some woman must help you. When you are through with the clothing the next item is easier. It is " Car fare," and all you must know to estimate for that is the price of a fare in your town and whether you think a working woman should have a wage which allows her to ride to and from work, or whether she should have to add to the fatigue of the day by walking to save car fare. Then comes" Laundry." Are you going to allow a certain amount for laundry, or do you think it is all right for a woman to finish her day's work in the factory and then come home to do her own washing and ironing? Now, what about" Recreation "? Don't forget to allow something for that, for it costs money even to go out in the park on Sunday. "Sickness," doctor, dentist, and oculist must not be forgotten either, and they all are costly items. A " Vacation " must be included, for few women are given a vacation with pay. Other necessities are "Insurance" and "Savings" for old age and incapacity, contributions to "Church" and "Charity," and a certain allowance for "Self-improvement," such as buying newspapers, joining the library, going to an occasional lecture, or to a night school. That seems to be enough items to begin with. Have you got them all? Food, rent, clothing, car :fare, laundry, recreation, sickness, vacation, insurance and savings, church and charity, self-improvement? Which ones do you think should be left in, and which taken out? Estimate how much should be spent each week for each item. Then add up your estimates, and the result will give you some idoo;. of the problem which the average woman wage earner has to meet. Think over the items carefully. Measure them by yo_u r own standards. Don't measure them by standards which you think are good enough for some one else, but not good enough for yourself. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis RADIO TALKS ON WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. 17 And a:£ter you have made up your budget look around you, see what the women of your community are earning, and make up your mind whether you think the women who work in stores, factories, and laundries are receiving .enough to get the necessities of life. You know what jt costs to live. Keep that in mind when you try to estimate the smallest amount of money which an individual person can get along on weekly. In States where minimum wage rulings have been made this amount varies greatly. In California and Arizona the weekly rate is $16; in North Dakota it is from $14 to $14.90; in Massachusetts from $11 to $15.40; in the State o:£ Washington from $13.20 to $14.50; in Minnesota from $10.25 to $12; in Kansas from $10.50 to $11, with as little as $7 and $9 a week for telephone operators; in Arkansas from $7.50 to $11 ~ and in Utah the minimum is only $6 a week. In comparison with those last figures the $16.50 wage which was in force for women in retail stores in the District of Columbia before the Supreme Court declared the minimum wage law unconstitutional may seem high, but it seems smaller when we analyze what it must buy. As this is the largest budget which has been accepted by any commission, it seems worth while to look at the details and see how the money was allocated. Of the $16.50 it has been estimated that $9.30 a week goes for food and lodging. Remember, this means that $9.30 must pay for 21 meals a week and a place to live in. I:£ $3 is paid for a room, there is left an I T001'11P~TE I average of 30 cents for each J~1tir. I meal. Immediately comes the idea that if a working girl lives with her family she can get along on less; but we know that a working girl must contribute her share for the upkeep of the home, and that frequently she must give•more than her share to support members of her family who are too old, too young, or too ill to earn their own living. Because of these facts we realize that a working girl does not save much money by living at home. The next item in the $16.50 budget is $4 a week for clothes. This means $208 a year which a woman must stretch to buy all the necessary wearing apparel-suit, coat, waists, skirts, dresses, hats, shoes, s t o c k i n g s, underclothes, handkerchiefs, https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 18 RADIO TALKS ON WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. aprons, kimono, purse, umbrella, rubbers, toilet articles; and to pay for the repairing o:f shoes and clothes. Food, rent, and clothing take $13.30 o:f the $16.50, leaving a remainder o:f $3.20 a week to cover all other items. This sum must provide for car fare, laundry, doctor's and dentist's and oculist's care, for amusements, vacations, savings, insurance, sel:f-improvement, church, charity, and incidentals. This is a long but necessary list. Few people can get along without most o:f the items on it, and the difficulty o:f procuring all these essentials o:f li:fe even for $16.50 a week is apparent. The thousands of working women who are struggling along on :from $6 to $12 a week are a challenge both to those employers who would assure themselves o:f a supply of alert) efficient workers, and to those communities which appreciate the social possibilities o:f a. citizenship whose standard of living is not below the safety line. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis WHAT WOMEN EARN. ~ ~ ~~~ ......_ ~ •r~-J\ '9, (\ Each one of you knows how important your wage, or salary, or income is to you. Whether you get a pay en- ('ft velope once a week, or a check once a month, or cut coupons twice a year ' the money that comes 1-.-..a..1.-'III in stands for the same thing. It determines whether you have enough to eat, and whether you have a comfortable place to live in. It determines how well you can dress, whether you can keep in good health by having proper medical att~ntion and vacations; and finally, whether you will have time and energy enough to take an intelligent interest in community affairs and to raise the standards of community life. The size of the weekly pay envelope is responsible for a lot of things, but unfortunately it can not always carry all of its responsibilities. This is true especially among women, for women work, as a rule, in lowpaid occupations, and the sums they earn are apt to be pitifully small. The Women's Bureau of the United States Department of Labor makes many studies of women's earnings, and it very seldom finds the majority of women to be earning anything like a wage which is adequate to maintain a satisfactory standard. Much publicity has been given to the expensive dresses and fur coats of the working girl, and people are too ready to accept this publicity and to be convinced that women wage earners are really earning much more than they need. But if you study the facts you will find that women's earnings do not agree with the publicity which has been given to some of their purchases. ~~ ~- ') I )l ' 19 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 20 RADIO TALKS ON WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. If you want to know those facts, listen to a few figures which show real conditions as we have found them in 10 different States. Let us take three Southern States first-Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama-which employ large numbers of women, chiefly in mills making cotton cloth. vVe found out about the earnings of more than 6,000 women in Georgia, and we discovered that half of these women made less than $12.95 during one week. In South Carolina the record was even poorer, for of more than 8,000 women, half made less than $9.50; and in Alabama half 0£ nearly 5,000 women earned less than $8.80 in one week. In Arkansas the median wage for nearly 1,800 women was $11.60. Now, come a little farther north and see how conditions are there. In Kentucky we studied the earnings of more than 7,000 women, and we found that half of those women made less than $10. 75 in one week. In Missouri the record was better, with a median wage of $12.65 for 15,000 women; and in Ohio tlie median was $13.80 for 30,000 women. In the Middle West, Kansas was the State investigated. We found that half of more than 4,000 women earned le~s than $11.80 in that State. Going farther north we found that Rhode Island had the best record of all, with half of nearly 8,000 women earning as much as $16.85. But the figures in Rhode Island were taken at at a time when wages were unusually high and everyone had work, so that they do not represent present-day conditions. In New Jersey half of about 35,000 women earned less than $14.95 in one week. Now, think what it means to have half of the women who work in the industries of a State earning less than nine, ten, eleven, or· twelve dollars; think what it means in lowered standards of health, of efficiency, of education, of family welfare. For these women are . parts of families. They are not isolated cases that have no relation to any one else. The effect of the health and happiness and general standards of these groups of women reaches out to1 the farthest limits of community life and to the life of the next generation, and the menace of low wa.ges for them is a serious cine. I suppose most of you who are listening-in to-night will agree with us about this, and I suppose also that most of you will say, But what have I got to do with it~ I have a hard enough time holding down my job. I can't even get my own wages raised." That may be true, but you must remember one thing-the force of public opinion. A good many years ago no one thought it particularly awful to let women ·drag cars in a mine, era wling on their hands- J:..i and knees, harnesssed up like horses. Nor was it unusual to have u little boys and girls 5 and 6 years old sorting coal in a mine for lOv·,v 1 " https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis RADIO TALKS ON WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. 21 hours a day or spending their little stunted lives in dusty cotton mills. That does not happen any more. It has stopped because · public opinion will not stand :for it. Every one knows now the horror of that kind of industrial exploitation. The next step is to realize the menace of wages which are too low to secure the necessities of life. If we are to do this, we must refuse to accept without question statements that wages are too high. We must instead find out the true conditions, tell them to our neighbors, and make our opinions for ourselves. Anyone who wants definite information on wage conditions £or women should go to the authorities in his own State or study the Women·'s Bureau reports, where are given det'ailed figures £or wages of women in many different localities. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis HOURS OF WORK. Next to wages, the length of the working hours is perhaps the most important factor in the life of a working woman, and I am now going to tell you the story of two working girls who led very different lives, because I want you to see what it was that made one so happy . and efficient while the other was dreary and careless and tired. These two girls ~ere friends; they were named Betty and Nell; they did the same kind of wor:k, but they worked in different :factories, and their lives were not at all alike. Nell was a big strong girl, but she had a thin face, with hollow cheeks and circles under her eyes, and she slouched when she stood up. Betty was not so big, but she was bright and vivacious, with two deep dimples in her cheeks and with igor in her step. You will understand why there was such a great difference between these two when you hear the details of their Ii ves. Nell started her long day's work by rushing from home at 6 in the morning, because she lived on the edge of town and had to get to work by 7 o'clock. Betty did not have to do this. She always slept until half past 6, and got to work comfortably at 8, and so she wasn't tired the way Nell was almost before the day had started. As a result, Betty, cheerful and rested, could work faster and better and actually 22 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis RADIO TALKS ON WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. 28 turned out more than Nell did. At the end of the day, Nell, who had started tired and had worked for 10 hours, came home with a headache and went to bed. But Betty, who had started fresh and had worked 8 hours, still had some energy left. She went out after supper and played a good game of basket ball, got her circulation stirred up, and her muscles exercised, and went to bed normally tired but not dull with fatigue. The next day Nell, who had not slept well because of her headache, did not pay much attention to her work, her hand slipped on the machine, and she mashed her finger so badly that she had to stop work for a while, which of course meant loss of pay. Betty was almost never sick because she did not get overtired in the factory and because she had time and energy to keep herself in good shape by fun and exercise. Nell did not even get Saturday afternoons off, while Betty got through at 12 on Saturdays and was able to do some shopping and sewing for herself. Nell kept on at work through the long afternoon and wished she had some time during the week which she could call her own. When Sunday came-the one whole day of rest either of them had-can you picture .what the two girls did with it? Nell rested some of the day and worked hard the rest of the time mending and washing her clothes and tidying up her room. Often on Sundays she worked so long over these things for which she had had neither time nor energy during the week, that she did not get out at all. But Betty had had her Saturday afternoon free, and some evenings during the week she had been able to catch up with those personal needs, so Sunday could be used for a real holiday. She could take a hike in the woods or join her friends in some expedition without feeling that she was neglecting things which should be done at home. And when Monday morning came around again the two girls found themselves very much as they had been before--Nell, tired and discouraged, Betty with energy and enthusiasm enough to make her a real asset to her employer. It will not take you long to discover that girls like Betty can make" more money than girls like Nell. Plenty of energy and enthusiasm, good health and interest make for a large pay envelope. But do you realize what is back of Nell's weariness, lack of interest, low production and small pay? The long hours she works are chiefly responsible for all of this. No woman can be like Betty if she works such long hours that she has no time :for recreation or outside interests, and not enough time for rest. An eight-hour day and a half holiday on Saturday make it po~ible for a woman to escape over-fatigue and to keep up outside interests and activities. In other words they make it possible for women to become responsible, valuable citizens. This is wh~t all wage-earning women ~hould be, but in many Stat~~ https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 24 RADIO TALKS ON WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. the prevailing working hours for women are so long that there is left very little time for outside activities or for rest. In 23 States women may work legally 10 hours a day or longer, and in 42 States it is legal for them to work 50 hours a week or longer. In five States-Iowa, Indiana, West Virginia, Alabama, and Florida-there is no limit to the number of hours a woman may work during the week or during the day. Fortunately, however, in many of these States the standards in the manufacturing establishments are better than the laws themselves. Nevertheless, the Women's Bureau has found -through its investigations that many thousands of women are working longer hours than are recommended by modern, progressive standards. In South Carolina, for instance, 95 per cent of the women investigated by the Women's Bureau were scheduled to work more than 48 hours a week; in Alabama 87 per cent; in Arkansas 88 per cent; in Georgia 89 per cent; and in Virginia 80 per cent. Even in the more northern States were found a considerable group of women whose normal working hours were more than 48 a week-67 per cent in Missouri, 62 per cent in Ohio, 46 per cent in Rhode Island, 44 per cent in New Jersey, and 42 per cent in Maryland. Figures such as these s~ow that there must be many Nells working in the industries of this country, and draw a.ttention to the need for higher standards in regard to hours, if the health of women and the welfare of the community are to be safeguarded. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis HEALTH AND HYGIENE FOR WOMEN AT WORK. Many women do not know much more about a :factory than the sound of the shrill early morning whistle which punctures their sleep for a few minutes and the noon whistle by which they set their clocks, and the sight of thick black smoke belching out of big stacks and showering soot upon their white lace curtains. It may be that some time in your lives some of you have visited a cotton mill to see how cloth was made. Probably you were bewildered by the terrific noise and movement of the machinery and sometimes oppressed by the heat and humidity of the atmosphere. It was an interesting sight, of course; but it is likely that if you went into some establishments you felt you could not stay for more than a few minutes. You probably wondered how anybody could ever stand it, but as apparently they did not seem to mind, that ended the matter so far as you were concerned. Or you may have gone into a :factory where a food product was being made and marveled at the speed with which the work was done. The pla.ce looked fairly clean, perhaps not quite so clean and shining as your own kitchen, but you shrugged your shoulders and guessed everything was all right. Yet because a place looks clean superficially, conditions are not necessarily satisfactory. For instance, sometimes the girls who handle food in factories have almost no washing facilities--only cold water, no soap, and a common towel in 25 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 26 RADIO TALKS ON WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. their wash room. Things like this escape the notice of the average visitor to a factory, yet they are an important item -in the manufacture of many products. When stores are mentioned, if you are an average woman you probably feel that you know all about them, because you h ave shopped in hundreds of them. You know that you never go jnto a certain store in your town if you can possibly help it, because it is so stuffy and smelly and· crowded. Of course, if you want to get a bargain there you will venture in and hurry out as fast as possible. You probably never think of the sales girls who spend eight hours or more a day in that place. You prefer to shop at a store across the street because the aisles are so wide, and the girls so pleasant when they wait on you. You do not notice that the girl at the glove counter who gets up to show you the latest thing in gauntlets may have been sitting on an uncomfortable little flap seat. Nor do you notice whether the girl who is selling hair nets at a table in the aisle stands there all day, with no seat available even when she has a lull in her sales. Yet in some stores these conditions exist. Ventilation, cleaning, seating, lighting, and service facilities are all important factors in the organization of any plant. Industrial experts decree that an excellent investment for any plant is money spent on good lighting and good ventilation, on scjentific and comfortable seats for us~ whenever possible, on safety devices for the prevention of accidents, on service facilities such as sanitary drinking and washing arrangements; on a satisfactory lunch room, rest room, cloak room, and first-aid equipment. 'What do these things mean in human lives and health and happiness ~ You have to know the stories of individual working women if you are to appreciate their full significance. You have to know in terms of human experience what it means to a woman to work in a factory where the workroom is not clean; the floor caked with dirt; the corners cluttered with debris and papers; the walls festooned with cobwebs; and the windows speckled with dirt; where the men who chew tobacco spit on the floor; and where the workroom is never systematically cleaned, but instead a porter sweeps when he "gets around to it," and the workers help when they have time. You have to know in terms of headaches and eye-strain what it means to face the window as you sit at work, and on dark days to have an unshaded electric light glaring in your eyes. These condition~ are not unusual, but they are not by any means inevitable, and in many factories a very different situation exists. I once saw a plant where everything was so neat and clean and shining that I felt ~mre the employees· in it felt better and cou,ld work https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis - RADIO TALKS ON WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. 27 better. The foreman said it was not a hard job to keep the place so nice. "We just have a couple of men come in each evening after work hours. They clean thoroughly, scrub the floors twice a week, and use a vacuum cleaner ever so often. I don't think there's a cleaner place in town." And I agreed with him. Another thing of interest was the ventilating system. The air in the workroom seemed fresh, and yet there were not any drafts. By the system used, stale air was carried off and washed air brought into the workroom through ventilators. Although there was a s1'eaming process going on in one end of the room there was a hood over the machine to catch the steam and an exhaust fan to carry it off. The workroom was bright and cheery, and yet' there was no glare. There was frosted glass in the large factory windows, and on the sunny side of the room the top sections of the windows were of a restful shade of green glass. There were adjustable shades at all the windows ; none of the girls faced a glare. The artificial lighting was excellent too. There was an indirect lighting system·throughout, and for close work at machines, individual bulbs with cuplike shades attaches to machines by adjustable brackets. The means for attaining such conditions are usually very simple; the methods are not a secret process. All who run may read, that is, all who run industrial plants may read the ways and means of securing satisfactory working conditions therein. Despite the general knowledge about these matters, some managers linger either from indifference or from ignorance in the rear guard of the movement for maintaining health and efficiency. Since women have become such a definite and necessary fa~tor in the industrial world the social consciousness of the Nation is becoming aroused to the necessity for establishing and enforcing high standards for them. Working women themselves are learning to expect comfortable conditions https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 28 RADIO TALRS ON WOMEN l'.N INDU~T'.RY. for their hours of industrial labor. Progressive employers, realizing the importance of such condition·s, maintain them in their plants. There is still a long way to go, however, before working women will be guaranteed an ideal working environment everywhere. In general, many groups of women have adopted an industrial platform one plank of which is the furtherance of good standards :for working conditions for women in industry. O:f course, no such reforms can be effected easily, but public opinion is a great :force, and when enlightened public opinion gets behind education it can be a mighty :force :for reformation. Remember that public opinion is made up of the opinions of individuals and that you as an individual can help to make public opinion. But remember, also, that you must definitely inform yoursel:f about the kind o:f working conditions necessary for the health o:f wage-earning women if you are to help, through educational methods, to guarantee satisfactory conditions :for them. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis POSTURE AND SEATING. Do you stand, sit, or stoop at your work? And whichever you do, how do you like it and how do you feel after the day's work is over? Wha,t do you think about factory chairs? Perhaps you agree with the Army officer who said during the war, "The average factory chair reminds one of the description of a coffin-the man who made it didn't want it; the man who bought it didn't use it; and the man who used it didn't have anything to say about it." How many of the women who are listening-in to-night have ever got a backache from bending over the kitchen sink? Did you ever think that you could prevent this backache by having the sink built higher or by having some sort of a seat made so that you could adjust your height to the height of the sink and not have to bend over? It is the same way in an industrial establishment, only the standing or stooping caused by failur~ to provide chairs or by badly arranged worktables goes on for eight or nine hours a day, and the backaches and fatigue are that much more severe. Listen to some of the stories which have been told to the bureau by women working at various jobs and see if their testimony does not give you a pretty good idea of what posture at work means to women in industry. · The first to give her experience is an 18-year-old girl who stands all day in a store. without a seat available. She say~: "I sure do 29 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis ao RADIO TALKS ON WOMEN !N' :INDUSTRY. get tired of standing all day. My first two weeks of it were awful; my feet ached so badly that I could hardly wait to reach home at night to take off my shoes." ,Whereupon a woman who stands all day in a factory speaks up: "Of course," she says, "standing all day is tiresome, but the thing I mind most is that I have to stand on a concrete floor. It wears my shoes out so fast, and the flo01,.- is so cold and damp in winter that I have to put newspapers under my feet." There are two points here. It is not only hard to stand all day, but it makes a lot of difference what you have to stand on. Of course for some jobs women must stand; for example, when they are waiting on customers in a store or when they are tending spindles or looms in a mill. Nevertheless, comfortable seats with backs should be provided for use whenever there is a -lull in the work. A lull is likely to come now and then in every kind of work. 'There are certain times of the day in most stores when the stream of customers slackens. There are periods in a mill when the machines are running well and operatives can sit and watch. There are intervals in factories when machines get out of order. At such times women in some plants lean against counters or window sills, sit on cans, boxes, or trucks, for lack of seats. In other establishments when women have no work they rest on the seats provided; sometimes they are comfortable and sometimes not. To be sure any kind of seat is better than no seat at all. Women sometimes work in plants for 8, 9, or 10 hours a day with no seats of any sort in sight. The other side of the story is given by a girl who sits steadily all day long on an uncomfortable seat. "Well," she remarks, "it's awfully hard sitting all day even when you take along a couple of towels to sit on." That is another point, constant sitting is also very taxing. Of course, there are certain jobs at which women must sit all the time. In such cases their chairs should. be carefully adjusted, so that the workers may be in just the right position. Some manufacturing establishments have already forged ahead in this respect. The type of chair recommended is one with a supporting back, a slightly saddle shaped seat rounded in front, and a foot rest when necessary. Such seats greatly reduce the sum total of backaches. An occasional rest period for women who sit constantly has been found advisable. Some authorities recommend 10 minutes in the middle of the morning and 10 minutes in the middle of the afternoon, while others recommend more frequent rest periods. Short rests such as these give the women who sit all day a chance to get up, relax, and shake the twists out of their muscles; and the relaxation acts like a tonic in restoring flagging energies. Now listen to the .testimony of a bright-faced girl who works in a progressive plant in which the girls can do their work either sitting or standing. Comfortable seats are provided, and the girls are urged https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 31 RADIO TALKS ON WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. to sit as much as possible in order to save their energies. The testimony of this one girl indicates that a consideration of the comfort of employees is a paying policy. "You couldn't find a better place to work than mine," she exclaims with enthusiam. "I never worked at a place before where the boss wanted you to sit and save yourself. And we have chairs with backs. I sure _ l•. \ would recommend , this place to my best friend. There is such a homey feeling, and they make you ~ interested in the business, and you want to work." A girl at work in a knitting mill has something of the same story to tell. "I like my job~ too, 1 because I can change about from sitting to stand•. ing. I sit to transfer and walk about to tend the machine. So I get some exercise.'" In contrast ~ · to these glowing accounts is the experience of an . older woman who stands at her work, although apparently she could just as well sit if a seat were 1• _. ' · .,pl provided. "Well," she says, "we have no seats, but I just have to sit sometimes, so I get an empty box and stand it on end." It is important to realize that arrangements can often be made for workers to sit or stand at work, according to preference, also that when seats are furnished, they must be comfortable. Fortunately, there are many establishments in which satisfactory seats are provided for women with standing jobs to use for an occasional rest. Even so, there is sometimes trouble, as is illustrated by the following comments of several other girls. " Well," says one, " it takes nerve to sit in our plant, even when we have time. The foreman doesn't like it." A girl who works in a factory where there are also plenty of seats in view has not had a much happier experience. "Nothing is said if you sit, but the boss sort of makes a face at you, if you do," is her version of the situation. Still another worker testifies in similar fashion, " I£ they see a girl has time to sit, they give her more to do. You don't dare lean against a. window sill if you see the boss coming." It seems hardly necessary that such comments as these should be needed to convince anyone that seats should not only be supplied for w9men who stand at work, but that their use should be encouraged. It is a mistake to think that seats in such cases are a liability, that they destroy plant discipline by encouraging laziness. On the contrary, seats are ::.in asset, since they restore the energies of the workers and serve as ounces of prevention against weary bodies and aching feet. 1 /,a. ! https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 2=: SOME EXPLODED THEORIES ABOUT WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. The time has come when facts not fancies · must regulate the posi• tion of wage-earning women. Women are in industry to stay1 for industry needs women to produce the world's goods, and women need industry to enable them to earn a living. It is the Women's Bureau's job to present the truth about these wage-earning women, so that they will get a fair and square deal in the busy, bustling, industrial world. And you can help! Among the first great troubles to be fought a!'e the false ideas and old prejudices about women in industry that are firmly rooted in the minds of many people. These old-fashioned ideas are a hangover from several scores of years ago when a few scattered women first ventured to work outside the home. Now, when there are more than eight and a half million working women, when onefifth of the wa.ge earners in the United States are women, these old theories are fast being exploded, for antiquated traditions about women in industry are as much out of place as hoop skirts, and_ are just as useless and cumbersome. If these prejudices are cluttering up your minds like cobwebs, there is no better time than the present for a good mental housecleaning. The first prejudice to d i s c a r d · is the "pin-money theory." What mischief it has wrought in keeping women's wages low ! Are you g u i 1 t y ~ H a V e you believed that women work in J.11,. order to get money 32 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis RAD10 TALKS ON WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. 38 for feminine fripperies 1 Or have you realized that the great bulk 0£ women who work in stores, factories, mills, laundries, and r~staurants must earn money for .the bare essentials of life 1 Cold, hard :fach! and statistics collected by the Women's Bureau and by many other organizations prove that women have to work to buy food tlfiti pay rent and frequently to support dependents as well, and that the size of their earnings is of real social significance. Following closely on the heels of the. pin-money theory is the, idea that girls who live at home can get along on very low wages, since their families will help to support them. This idea is not only wrong-it is vicious. When unscrupulous employers offer it as an excuse for low pay the public is satisfied and the girls themselves suffer. Frequently, instead of the family income serving to supplement the girl's wage, it is the girl's wage that must supplement the family income to make ends meet. Daughters living at home must often support invalid or old parents or younger brothers and sisters. Another theory to be discarded-the sooner the better- is that all women are transients in the industrial world. Are you one of the many people who believe that girls go into stores and factories only until they marry 1 The truth is a number of women never marry, but work 40 or 50 years in industry. Furthermore, many married women must continue to work after marriage to keep the wolf from the door. As one married worker said, "We have five children and find trouble making ends meet; it takes all my husband makes to feed us and what I earn clothes us." Also, in the ranks of industrial toilers are many widows- who must be fathers as well as mothers to their children, who must be breadwinners as well as home-makers. One wrong theory leads to another wrong one. Thus the idea that women are in industry for a few short years before marriage is largely responsible for their lack of vocational training. Such a lack is naturally a drawback in their industrial progress. Thousands of girls go into blind-alley jobs. They must begin to work for H. living. Because they have no training they must take the first thing that offers, even though it is a deadly monotonous job with no future. The fact that women do stick at a. trade, often for years, is a plea for preliminary training for such a trade, so that women can get ahead. There is another mistaken theory that glibly falls from the lips of those who don't know. · Those folks who call themselves oldfashioned and are alway$. harping on the idea that woman's place is in the home, believe that women go into stores, factories, and mills because they prefer that kind of labor to housework. If these same old-fashioned theorists could take a peep into the homes of most wage-earning women they would discover these sa.m~ women, after https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 34 RADIO TALKS ON WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. 8 or 10 hours of industrial work, toiling in the home, at the stove, dish-pan, wash-tub, or sewing machine. Housework must be done before and after factory work each day, even though women get up at 4 a. m. and go to bed at midnight. There are many more fallacies about women in industry, enough to fill a volume or two-they can not ~11 be given in a short radio talk. Instead, everyone must be constantly on the lookout for themselves, to be sur~· that they are not encouraging theories: based on prejudices rather than on facts. There is one other error, however, which is so general that attention must be called to it now. This is that women are only able to do a few types of work. The war showed us that women could do things well which no one had dreamed they would be able to do at all. Don't forget the experiences of those years, remember the women you know, or know of, who to-day are filling responsible positions of all sorts, and discard forever the well-exploded theory that women should be relegated to any limited types of occupation. Opportunity for individual development is a great need for all persons, and there is little chance that women will be given this opportunity unless they are also given recognition of their actual and potential ability. ' 0 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis PUBLICATIONS OF THE WOMEN'S BUREAU. ~ · BULLETINS. No. 1, Proposed Employment of Women During the War in the Industries ol · . Niagara Falls, N. Y. 16 pp. 1918. .No. 2. Labor Laws for Women in .Industries in Indiana. 29 pp. 1918. No . . 3. Standards for the Employment of Women in Industry. 7 pp. 1919. No. 4. Wages of Candy Makers in Philadelphia in 1919. 46 pp. 1919. No. 6. The Eight-Hour Day in Federal and State Legislation. 19 pp. 1919. No. 6. The Employment of Women in . Hazardous Industries in the United States. 8 pp. 1919. No. 7, Night-Work Laws in the United States. 4 pp, 1919. No. 8. Women in the Government Service. 37 pp. 1920. No. 9. Home Work in Bridgeport, Con.necti<:ut. 35 pp. 1920. No.10. Hours and Conditions of Work for Women in Industry 'in 82 pp. 1920. No. 11. Women Street Car Conductors and Ticket :Agents. 90 pp. 19'~0. No. 12. The New Position of Women in American Industry. 158 pp. 1920. , No.13. Industrial Opportunities and Training for Women and Girls. 48 pp. " 1920. No.14. A Physiological Basis for the Shorter Working Day for Women. 20 pp. 1921. No.15. Some Effects of Legislation Limiting Hours of Work for Women. 26 pp. 1921. No.16. S_tate Laws Affecting Working Women. 51 pp. 1921. (Supplement, 1923.) No.17. Women's Wages in Kansas. 104 pp. 1921. No.18. Health Problems of Women in Industry. (Repdnt of paper published in the Nation's Health, May, 1921.) 11 pp. 1921. No.19. Iowa Women in Industry. 73 pp. 1922. No. 20. Negro Women in Industry, 65 pp. 1922. No. 21. Women in Rhode Island Industries. 73 pp. 1922. No. 22. Women in Georgia Industries. 89 pp. 1922. 'No. 23. The Family Status of Breadwlnning Women. 43 pp. 1922. 96 pp. 1922. ..1. .,.o_ 24. Women in Maryland Industries. No. 25. Women in the Candy Industry in Chicago and St. Louis. 72 pp. 1923. .,.o, 26. Women in Arkansas Industries. 1922. No. 27. The Occupational Progress of Women. 37 pp. 1922. No. 28. Women's Contributions in the Field of Invention. 51 pp. 1923. No. 29. Women in Kentucky Industries. 114 pp. 1923. No. 80. The Share of Wage-Earning Women in Family Support. 170 pp. 1928. No. 31. What Industry Means to Women Workers. 10 pp. 1928. No. 82. Women in South Carolina Industries. 128 pp. 1923. No. 33. Proceedings of the Women's Industrial Conference. 100 pp. 1928. No. 34. Women in Alabama Industries. 86 pp. 1924. No. 35. Women in Missouri Industries. No. 36. Radio Talks on Women in Industry. 34 pp. 1924. No. 87. Women in New Jersey Industries. No. 88. Married Women ln Industry. 8 pp. 1924. No. 89, Domestic Workers and Their Employment Relations. First Annual Report of the Director. 1919. (Out of print.) Second Annual Report of the Director. 1920. (Out of print.) Third Annual Report of the Director. 1921. Fourth Annual Report of the Director. 1922. Fifth Annual Report of the Director. 1928. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis