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Women in the
Federal Service

U.S. CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION
WASHINGTON, D. C.

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•

Women 1n the
Federal Service

By LuCILLE FosTER M cMrLLIN
U . S . Civil Service Commissioner

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FIRST EDITION MAY 1938
SECOND EDITION JULY 1938
THIRD EDITION MAY 1941

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FOREWORD
Many inquiries are received at the United
States Civil Service Commission concerning

the history of women in the Federal service.
This booklet has been prepared to answer such
questions.

It is hoped that it will also serve to show
the increasingly vital part that women are
taking in the varied Federal activities. The
progress made by women in government during
the last century, and particularly since the
World War, represents an interesting and important chapter in American social and economic life.

LUCILLE FOSTER MCMILLIN,

U. S. Civil Service Commissioner.
Ill

,.....

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CONTENTS
Paee

Foreword___________ ____________________________________

111

History of Women in the Federal Service___________________
The Employment of Married Women______________________

1
24
33

The Present Position of Women in the Federal Service_______
Training Opportunities for Women Who Wish to Enter the
Federal Service_ __ ____________________________________
Notes__________________________________________________
Bibliography _______________________________ ··-- _____ ·_____

45
50
51

ILLUSTRATIONS
Gen. Francis E. Spinner__________________________________

Women Workers in the Treasury ___ ~---------------------Wars Increase, Depressions Decrease, Women's Chances of
Employment (graph)__ ________________________________

8
13

Mary Katherine Goddard's Certificate of Appointment as
Postmistress of Baltimore __ ---------------------------Helen Hamilton Gardener____ ____________________________
Clara Barton___________________________________________

27
28

Modern Betsy Ross, Quartermaster's Depot, Philadelphia___
Women Munitions Workers, Government Arsenal, Watertown,
Mass., 186L __________________________________________
V

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37
38

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History of Women in the Federal
Service
believed that the employment of women outside
the home is a recent development, part of the system of modern
ideas which has appeared with the twentieth century. Yet women
have been working for wages, in employments outside their homes,
for the past century and a half-since the beginning of that social and
economic movement lrnown as the Industrial Revolution, which commenced at about the same period as did the Government of the United
States.
While the Government service has been much slower than private
industry in making any widespread or general employment of women,
there were isolated instances of their employment by the Federal Government before the adoption of the Constitution itself. However,
there have been so many periods when there were no women working
for the Government, and women as a class have been so long in gaining
recognition of their ability from the Government, that several women
who entered the service many years later than 1789 have been designated at various times as "the first woman Government employee."
The varied character of Government work may be one reason for
the number of claimants to this title. Occupations ranging from
unskilled laborer to highly trained specialist and administrator are
included in the range of Government employment. As women have
gained entry into one after another of the grades of this range, they
have seemed at each step to be making an initial entrance, so that the
pioneer women in these advances have often been given the title of
"first."
Not all the names of the early women employees nor even a full
list of the types of work which they performed can now be discovered
from a search of the records. Too many early records have been
destroyed or lost, and those which have survived are not always very
satisfactory from a research standpoint. Early pay rolls were not
kept according to any one system nor were they filed in any central
place. Even when they have been preserved and are still available,

T IS GENERALLY

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Women in the Federal Service

the anonymity of a surname preceded by one or two initials makes it
impossible to determine whether the employee was a man or a woman.
Personnel records other than pay rolls are very scarce, but they give
more complete information. Such records consist of an occasional
letter to or from a Congressman concerning the welfare of one of his
proteges, or a letter from a field office to its Washington headquarters
about an appointment or dismissal. These letters are scattered
through old files, tucked away in warehouses, basements, and other
storage spaces in Government buildings throughout the Eastern States.
However, there is enough evidence to show that the progress of
women in the public service has roughly paralleled their progress in
private industry. As they have increased in numbers in private
employment, their presence has come to be accepted by public opinion.
They have then increased in numbers in the Government service.
When viewed over a long period of years, it can be seen that the
increase in the numbers of gainfully employed women in the United
States has been both continuous and large. Nevertheless, there have
been periods when recurrent waves of anti-feminist feeling, generally
with an economic basis, have caused minor setbacks, so that the
number and ratio of women in industry and in the Government service have shown some decreases as well as increases.
These fluctuations are more marked in public employment because
it is relatively more responsive to changes in public opinion. Public
offices have always been considered public property, but not always
public trusts. The question of who ought to have offices and upon
what conditions has not always been very clearly decided in the public
consciousness. The eleemosynary view of public employment has
long been a part of American political thought. The question of who
has the "right" to a public job, rather than who can best do the work
involved, has been one of the factors limiting the employment of
women in the Government. Even today this factor still looms large
in the thinking of some persons about public employment. The
periods when it was thought that women had less "right" to work
than men-that is, less need to earn a living and support dependentssaw a corresponding decrease in the percentage of women employed in
the Federal Government. When economic pressure let up, and the
employment situation eased, women were again accepted as workers.
When a labor shortage arose, as during a war period, the Government
even became anxious for their services, so that during the World War
more women than men were appointed to the departmental service.
The story of women's gradual progress, generation by generation,
from their first subordinate, uninteresting, underpaid jobs forms an
important chapter in the economic and social history of the past
century and a half. When, with the advent of the Industrial Revo-

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History of Women in the Service

lution, it became customary to employ women away from their homes,
factories were the first places opened to them. As early as 1769, a
Massachusetts textile factory was established with the avowed purpose
of offering employment to women and children, "many of whom would
otherwise be useless, if not burdensome to society." 1 This sort of
employment, neither lucrative nor interesting, constituted the bulk of
women's employment for many years, in both Europe and America, in
private industry and in public service. The American Industrial
Revolution in its early stages seems not to have used women's labor
to the extent that was practiced in England, but there were notable
exceptions, such as the textile factories, which prospered in the early
1800's by taking advantage of the lower wage scale of women.
In the Federal Government, also, women entered the lower-grade
work long before they were admitted to the higher ranks. The factorytype occupations at the Philadelphia mint were opened to women at an
early date. Later, the arsenals, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and the Government Printing Office employed women in certain
types of light shop work. Women exclusively were recruited as
printer's assistants in the early days of the Civil Service Commission,
and even as late as 1910 these formed by far the bulk of the jobs to
which women were appointed. In the case of clerical work, the lower
grades, such as copyist positions, were opened to women about 1850,
at a lower salary than that paid to men.
An exception to this general rule of lower-grade jobs, however, may
be found in the two women who were probably the first women ever
employed by the Federal Government. They were Mrs. Elizabeth
Cresswell, postmaster at Charlestown, Md., under the Continental
Congress in 1786--87, and Miss Mary K. Goddard, postmaster at
Baltimore, Md., who had been holding that office for 14 years when the
Constitution was signed. Miss Goddard, who was also editor of the
Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser during this period, was
placed in charge of the Baltimore Post Office in 1775 and continued to
hold the position until late in 1789, some months after the adoption
of the Constitution.
Other women in the early years of the nation also worked for the
Postal Service, including Mrs. Rebecca Morton, postmaster at Warwick, Md., from 1798 to 1799, and Mrs. Ann Blount, post rider between Edenton and Indiantown, N. C., from 1794 to 1796. Mrs.
Blount may not have actually performed the duties of post rider,
however, but may have contracted for a substitute to do this work, a
practice not uncommon in all sorts of Federal positions, as civil service
reform investigations later disclosed.
But these few women were exceptional, and as a rule women did
not receive either titles, responsibility, or salaries of this sort. One
311840°-41-2

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Women in the Federal Service

of the arguments most used by the advocates of the employment of
women by the Federal Government was their lower wage scale and
the resulting economy to taxpayers. No thought of the abstract
justice of equal pay for equal work disturbed the minds of the officials
who praised this practice. Neither did the male workers in those
days realize the danger to their own salaries from the underbidding
by the women's scale.
The first statutory recognition of the employment of women by the
Federal Government, March 14, 1864, established a maximum salary
of $600 a year for women clerks. Until the beginning of the present
century, the term "clerk" was limited to the higher-paid positions.
Lower-salaried personnel were known as "employes." By an act of
1854, salaries for the four clerk classes had been set at $1,200 to $1,800.
In June 1864, women clerks received a raise to $720, and in 1866 to
$900. The latter figure remained the legal maximum for women for
many years, as is shown by the following provision in the Revised
Statutes of 1878:
To the women employed in duties of a clerical character, subordinate to those assigned to clerks of the first class, including
copyists and counters, or temporarily employed to perform the
duties of a clerk, nine hundred dollars. 2
The duties outlined in this clause correspond more nearly with the
popular conception of government employment as white collar jobs
than do the factory occupations at the mint and the printing establishments. Therefore this act represents another stage in the progress of
women. The copyist work was a forerunner of the stenographic and
typing work which today forms the largest occupation for women in
the Government service. These clerk-copyists were employed before
the invention of the typewriter to make "fair copies" of letters and
official documents.
It is known that in 1854 there were three women among the clerkcopyists in the Patent Office. They were Clara Barton, later founder
of the Red Cross, a Mrs. Thompson, and a Mrs. Cook. At a congressional investigation of charges against the Commissioner of Patents
in 1863 this testimony, which affords an interesting glimpse of public
personnel practices before the passage of the Civil Service Act, was
offered:
These ladies were employed as temporary clerks, and copied
the papers of the office at their respective places of residence .
. . . There is a lady, Miss Barton, whose name stands at the
head of the list. Mrs. Thompson comes next.
Mrs. Cook's work is done by another person at half price. It
is divided; she receives one-half and the other party receives the

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History of Women in the Service

other half. . . • Mrs. Cook and Mrs. Thompson were appointed
without reference to their political opinions or sympathies and
simply from their destitute and necessitous situation.3
The "ladies in the Patent Office" had rather a stormy time of it,
with at least one departmental order (in 1855) for their dismissal.
But they somehow managed to cling to their places, though forced at
times to perform their duties in a rather secret and clandestine
manner.
Clara Barton is said by her biographers to have been promoted
from copyist to a position of considerable trust and responsibility in
the Patent Office and to have been given charge of one of the confidential desks. She herself wrote that she believed she was the first
woman ·ever to be appointed to a full clerkship on the same terms
with men and at a salary of $1,400. However, no record has been
preserved of such an appointment. The only remaining evidence of
Clara Barton's employment possessed by the Department of the
Interior consists of vouchers for payments to "Miss C. H. Barton"
for copying services during 1855-57 and 1860-65. Clara Barton held
her copyist position throughout the War between the States, paying
for a substitute to perform her Patent Office duties while she served
as nurse at the battle front. The Patent Office salary, however, was
the only one she drew from the Government during this period.
To Gen. Francis E. Spinner, Treasurer of the United States, has
often been given the credit for employing the first woman in the
Government service. According to this story, the first woman was
Jennie Douglas, whom Spinner hired in 1862 to cut and trim paper
currency. This work, which was then a hand operation, had hitherto
been done entirely by men. Spinner was so pleased with his experiment that he remarked that the first day Miss Douglas spent on her
job "settled the matter in her behalf and in woman's favor." Subsequently, Spinner appointed many other women to various positions
in the Treasury.
His belief that he had been the first Government official to employ
women is quite inexplicable, in view of the fact that we know other
officials had adopted the practice many years before. However, he
was probably the first official to solve the Government's usual wartime problem of greatly increased work and shortage of labor by
employing women. About 1907 the women of the Treasury erected
a statue of him which is now in Myer Park, Herkimer, N. Y. On
the pedestal is a quotation from General Spinner:
The fact that I was instrumental in introducing women to
employment in the offices of the Government gives me more real
satisfaction than all the other deeds of my life.
FRANCIS E. SPINNER.

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In the same year in which Jennie Douglas entered the employ of
the Treasury, the Dead Letter Office of the Post Office Department,
authorized to hire 25 additional clerks, gave 8 of these positions to
women. A production sheet for the month of February 1863 shows
. that the average output of the women was as great as that of the
men, although a number of the women were much newer at the work
than were the men and had not yet gained much experience in the
task of deciphering illegible handwriting and redirecting wrongly
addressed letters.
In a little more than a year the Post Office Department had doubled
the number of women employed, yet the salaries of the 16 "ladies of
the Dead Letter Office," who are carried on a separate roll in the
Register of Post Office Employees for 1863, were much below those
of the men clerks. The women received from $400 to $700 (only one
woman had the latter salary), while the men received from $600 to
$900, with most of the men receiving $800.
That allowing women to have minor and underpaid clerkships
might some day enable them to make real careers of Government
service apparently never occurred to the people of the midnineteenth
century. They looked upon a self-supporting woman as a "decayed"
fem ale, who toiled away her days in that poverty of which she perforce made a virtue. The periodicals of the day echo this attitude,
in such articles as this survey of Washington working women printed
in the November 9, 1867, issue of the New York Round Table:
The profession of teaching is sympathetic to womanhood, and
gives a worthy occupation to the mind. But the task of the
female copyists in the departments, and the quasi-factory duties
of the girls in the printing bureau, are of a far less elevating
character, and produce rather a bad than a good influence.
However, if women are overtaken by poverty in Washington,
there is little choice between keeping a boarding-house or going
to the Treasury or poorhouse.
The attitude of public officials of the period is given in a report
made by Representative Thomas A. Jenckes of Rhode Island to Congress on May 14, 1868, on his survey of the possibilities of retrenchment in the executive service and of the economies which could
be effected by introducing a merit systEm.
J enckes included in his report the answers to a questionnaire sent to
officials stationed both in Washington and in other cities. Question
No. 36 read thus:
Are there any females among your subordinates? If so, state
what proportion their compensation bears to that of males for the
same service, and whether they compare favorably or not with
males for diligence, attention, and efficiency.

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Gen. Francis E. Spinner

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History of Women in the Service

The replies to this question show much about the employment conditions of women and the varying attitudes of their supervisors. The

report gives only extracts from the replies and so cannot be taken as
a complete picture of the Federal service at the time, but we do learn
that there were 20 women clerks in the Treasury, at salaries of $900, as
compared with a minimum of $1,200 for men performing the same
work; that there were 4 women working for the Superintendent of the
Coast Survey; and that there were 3 women employed by the Boston
Post Office and 8 by the postmaster at Detroit.
Attitudes of supervisors varied from extremely pro-feminist to just
as extremely anti-feminist. Isaac W. Smith, assessor of internal
revenue at Manchester, N. H., is recorded thus:
Female clerks are more attentive, diligent, and efficient than
males, and make better clerks, and I intend very soon to have
none but female clerks in my office.
Of the opposite opinion was the assessor in the twenty-ninth New
York district, evidently a man of many troubles:
. . . if the nerves and firmness of a man can rarely be found to
withstand the wily exactions of dishonest taxpayers, I doubt the
experiment of filling their places with females.
The collector of internal revenue at Kalamazoo, Mich., concurred
in this opinion:
I do not think that the service of females could be made
efficient in the collecting department or brought within the range
of propriety.
Many of the officials stressed the point that the Government could
save money by hiring women because they could be paid lower salaries.
No one raised any question about the fairness of this procedure. Only
the Division of Printing of the Treasury claimed to subscribe to the
equal pay principle. The chief of this division, asked whether there
were any women in his office, answered:
There are; compensation half that of males, but they do not
perform same class of work. But where service is same, pay is
equal.
The opposite attitude was taken by the Librarian of Congress:
No females as yet employed. Under competitive tests, I
think half the number here employed might usefully be women,
and that the resulting economy to the government would be great.
For example, I know of educated and practically industrious
women, who could do all that assistant librarians receiving $1,200
to $1,800 now do, and who would think themselves well paid at
$1,000 per year.

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Yet, only 2 years after the publication of the Jenckes Report, the
principle of equal pay for equal work was written into the statute
books. This principle was not always, nor even often, carried into
practice, for the law was permissive, not mandatory, but at least the
principle was thus given formal official approval. The law read:
Women may, in the discretion of the head of any department,
be appointed to any of the clerkships therein authorized by law,
upon the same requisites and conditions, and with the same compensation, as are prescribed for men. 4
The wording of this statute leaves the adoption of the principle of
equal pay to the decision of the individual department. That the
principle was not usually accepted may be discerned by reading
between the lines of this statute of 1876:
. . . Whenever, in the judgment of the head of any department, the duties assigned to a clerk of one class can be as well
performed by a clerk of a lower class or by a female clerk, it shall
be lawful for him to diminish the number of clerks of the higher
grade and increase the number of clerks of the lower grade within
the limit of the total appropriation for such clerk service.5
Apparently, the lawmakers still considered women capable of
holding only minor positions, so that "female clerk" was to them
synonymous with ''lower class." While the formal establishment of
special low-salaried clerkships for women gradually ceased, the
practice of paying women lower rates continued in many departments
until the passage of the Classification Act of 1923.
Their lower wage scale gained for women their first Government
clerkships, but a more creditable factor has been the cause of their
permanent retention in these positions. When mechanical office
devices began to be introduced into clerical work in the last years
of the nineteenth century, it was found that women were especially
skillful in the operation of these machines. So many women entered
the occupations created by the new inventions that in the United
States the 2,000 women in clerical occupations in 1870 had increased
to 2,000,000 by 1930.
Chief among the new office appliances was the typewriter, which
has become so nearly the exclusive property of women that the 1930
Census found that over 95 percent of all stenographers and typists
in the United States were women. The Census of 1870 listed only
seven women stenographers, and their number was not much augmented for nearly a decade.
The first widely used typewriter was invented by Christopher L.
Sholes in 1866. It was manufactured by Remington, the gun makers,
and was first sold about 1873. By 1883, when the Civil Service
Commission was established, the typewriter was in fairly common

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History of Women in the Service

use in the Government departments. From its earliest months, the
Commission gave tests for both men and women for typist positions.
By 1894, women were receiving about 14 percent of such appointments;
in 1904, 21 percent; and in 1914, about 25 percent. In 1936, women
received 77 percent of all appointments to the four grades of stenoggrapher and typist positions. By 1940, however, this had dropped to
56 percent; women received 79 percent of the stenographer positions
and 44 percent of the typist positions.
With the establishment of the Civil Service Commission and its
introduction of a system of competitive examinations into all departments, women gained a chance to demonstrate their proficiency in a
concrete and easily measured fashion, by taking the same tests as
men in order to qualify for the same positions.
These advantages of the merit system were set forth in the Commission's First Annual Report, which also, with commendable frankness, pointed out the difficulties in the way of the appointment of
women to places in the departments:
Nowhere on the part of the Commission or its subordinates is
there any favor or disadvantage allowed by reason of sex. Only
under free, open, competitive examinations have the worthiest
women the opportunities, and the Government the protection,
which arise from allowing character and capacity to win the
precedence and the places their due. The need for political
influence or for importunate solicitation, especially disagreeable
to women, for securing appointments in the classified service
exists no longer.
Rule 16, Clause 3, controls the certification of women for
appointment so completely that the Commission has no discretion
on the subject. The law in force before the passage of the Civil
Service Act gave the heads of Departments authority to decide
when women are required or can be accepted. Both the Civil
Service Act and the Rules leave that authority unimpaired.
In order to prevent disappointment we ought to add that,
perhaps because the examinations naturally appeal to the hopes
and ambitions of women, a greater number of them, in proportion
to the places treated by the Departments as open to their sex,
have been examined, and hence the number of women waiting
to be certified is large in like ratio.
It may be that, despite the warning in the last paragraph, these
words aroused too much ambition in the women candidates, for in its
next annual report the Civil Service Commission noted that "the
female appointees thus far have been less than one-sixth the number
of males." Its section on women in the service was written with
more condescension and considerably more caution:
It is now generally recognized that women can successfully
perform the duties of many of the subordinate places under the
Government. In many cases they have shown eminent fitness
311840°-41-3

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Women in the Federal Service

for the places they have held and high qualities in their work.
There is simple justice in allowing them to compete for the public
service, and to receive appointments when, in fair competition,
they have shown superior merit.
Even with this moderate encouragement, women had made their
way into the Federal service in the first 10 years of the operation of
the Civil Service Act so far that in 1893 there were 3,770 women
employed in the departments at Washington, as compared with 8,377
men. In 1892, one in every four appointments throughout the service
was given to a woman. Enough women had won promotions to cause
the Civil Service Commission to comment on the fact and point out
that these promotions had been made on the basis of efficiency records
kept by the departments.
In the next year, however, began one of those temporary outbreaks
of anti-feminist feeling which every so often in the history of women's
progress have caused them to lose ground. These occurrences were
apt to happen in the days before woman suffrage when policy-making
offices came into the hands of men who used them to carry out their
own personal prejudices. Sometimes, as during periods of economic
depression, when there is extra pressure on the part of men to gain
places in the Government service, these anti-feminist prejudices
become particularly strong, although the person who is exhibiting

them may not be aware of the economic basis which underlies his
feeling.
Contemporary accounts do not mention the "hard times" of Cleveland's second administration as the reason for the sudden drop in the
number of women appointed and for the cessation of women's promotions. Instead the writers blame an anonymous "appointment clerk,"
who is said to have declared that no woman could be worth more than
$1,200 a year; sometimes they blame the Secretaries of the Interior
and Treasury under Cleveland, to whom they attribute the same
remark. At any rate, the Department of the Interior employed 1,500
women and 2,100 men in 1893, and by the next year had decreased the
number of women to 800, at the same time increasing the number of
men to 2,600. In the departmental service as a whole, the number
of women decreased about 500, while the number of men increased 200.
Similar decreases in the ratio of women to men may be seen during
the depression periods of 1897, 1903, 1922, and 1929. The depression
just before the World War was of so short duration and was immediately followed by so great an increase in Governmental activity, even
before the actual entry of the United States into the war, that no
apparent decrease occurred. These depression decreases may be seen
in the accompanying chart, based on the annual reports of the United
States Civil Service Commission, which shows the ratio of men to

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Wars Increase, Depressions Decrease, Women's Chances of
Employment
PERCENT

PERCENT

APPOINTMENTS

WORLD WAR

NEW DEAL- 65

rs
50

SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR

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1891

DEPRESSION

1897

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AV\

DEPRESSION

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1883 1885

DEPRESSION

1929-1931

DEPRESSION

1922

DEPRESSION

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1903-04
15

DEPRESSION

1888

1890

1895

1900

1905

1910

1915

1920

1925

1930

1935

1940

Durirur war or other emergencies, the proportion of appointments given women tends to lncreue.
During depressions a sharp decrease may be seen.
Thie chart, which shows the percent of the total appointments received by women to the dep11rtmental
service at Washington, is based on the Annual Reports of the United States Civil Service Co1nmlsaion.

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History of Women in the Service

women appointed each year to the departmental service at
Washington.
In spite of these temporary setbacks, women always immediately
resumed their gains, even after the early depression of 1894, not only
in their numbers in the Government service, but also in the responsibility and importance of the positions to which they were appointed.
Some of the lower-grade professional and scientific positions were
being held by women by 1897. An article on the subject in one of the
newspapers of the day tells of the appointment of a woman "agrostologist" or grass expert to the Department of Ai;;riculture at $900 per
year. The article also lists:
. . . women botanists, women ethnologists, and women experts
in crabs and lobsters (attached to the Smithsonian Institution),
while the most accurate living artist in the representation of
insects is attached to the Bureau of Entomology at Washington.
Women were also being employed as translators, as librarians, and
as teachers in the Indian Service.
Although the Bureau of Education believed women could endure
the hardships of the frozen North, amid the hectic violence of the
Klondike gold rush, and appointed four women as teachers to go to
Alaska at $80 a month, other departments were at this time using the
excuse of women's physical frailty to keep from appointing them in
Washington. Both the War and Navy Departments refused to
appoint women who seem to have been otherwise well qualified for
positions as translators because the ladies could not climb ladders for
books. One intrepid young woman is said to have offered to wear
bloomers, but this bold remark must have shocked the appointing
official. She did not get the job.
In the summer of 1899 a story was copied from paper to paper
across the country, beginning with the Boston Herald and spreading
gradually to San Francisco and Texas~ that the Government would
henceforth bar women from its service. Officials were quoted as
saying that women were not adaptable and that they were "inclined
to insist on having all the privileges in the way of vacations and sick
leave to which they are entitled." However, as the newspaper editorials pointed out, another reason for the discrimination at this time
may have been the pressure to provide for those Spanish War veterans
who had been unable to resume their usual civilian occupations.
By 1902 the Civil Service Commission was finding itself unable to
supply the departments with qualified men stenographers, while at
the same time it had on its lists the names of many women stenographers who had passed the tests with high marks, but who could not be
certified, since the departments requested men. A memorandum
made up by the certification section of the Commission analyzed the

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Women in the Federal Service

situation and called the attention of the departments to the very
good material available from the female lists. There was some change
in the personnel policy of the departments, bringing the Government
practice more in accordance with that of private business, where
women already constituted 75 percent of all stenographers. In the
Federal service they were not to gain a comparable monopoly for
another 20 years.
.
When the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in 1910 announced it would
hire no more women stenographers, clerks, or telegraph operators,
there was rejoicing among those who believed women's place was in
the home. The railroad supported its action by declaring that its
statisticians had discovered women stenographers did 30 percent less
work than men. At the same time the Civil Service Commission
announced a stenography examination for men only. The New York
Press devoted a half-page spread in its Sunday section to the two
stories and prophesied:
No doubt there are tens of thousands of good women clerks,
just as there are tens of thousands of good men clerks. Women
could not have made such tremendous inroads into the realm of
business if as a class they were not fitted for some branches of the
work. But the action of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and the
ukase of the Government makes one fact plain. That is:
Women do not measure up to the men in capability or in business
value, even at the present difference in compensation. Woman
will continue to be a big factor in the business field, but the limit
of her expansion has been reached. There probably will be a
radical readjustment.
Man is likely to regain some of the ground he lost. If he regains a good deal, America may in time have some native cooks.
A similar manifestation of this attitude may be found in the wide
publicity given in the next year to a statement attributed to the
President of the Civil Service Commission, Gen. John C. Black, that
the Government would no longer hire women stenographers because
blondes were "too frivolous" and brunettes "too chatty."
These movements to oust women are in themselves evidence that
by 1910 women had made so much real progress in both private business and Government service that they were beginning to attract
attention. While the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was proving by
mathematics that women were 30 percent less efficient than men,
individual women were proving by performance that they were quite
as efficient, and that in some cases, when they had specialized training
and abilities, they could not be replaced advantageously by men.
While the Civil Service Commission was finding it difficult to persuade
departments to hire women stenographers, one woman, Mrs. Leona
M. Wells of Wyoming, had made herself so valuable as assistant clerk

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History of Women in the Service

of the very important Senate Committee on Appropriations that she
was receiving $4,500 a year, which was in 1911 the highest salary paid
any woman by the Federal Government.
In war or in peace time, the largest amount of any government's
budget is spent for military activities and for those activities made
necessary indirectly by military operations, such as veterans' care and
pensions. The first effects of· the increase in governmental activity
caused by a modern war were noticed by the Civil Service Commission in June 1916, when the Mexican campaign made it necessary to
fill many new positions in the field service of the War Department
and to replace in all departments those members of the National Guard
who had left their jobs to go to Mexico.
In the next year the Commission felt the effect of the huge preparations for the entrance of the United States into the World War. In
addition to the many vacancies left by the men who resigned to enlist
in the Army, there were created about 100,000 new positions which
also had to be filled, and as rapidly as possible. The Commission
gave examinations not only in the daytime, but also at night. Everyone who could meet Civil Service standards and pass the Civil Service
tests was almost certain of finding a job.
Under such conditions, women who could do the work found themselves readily accepted even by those departments which had been
traditionally loath to employ them. In the 1918 Annual Report of
the Civil Service Commission, the Chief Examiner, George R. Wales,
later Civil Service Commissioner, writes of the effect of the World
War:
The most notable change in Government personnel brought
about by the war is in the employment of women. They are
everywhere, and offices which formerly insisted on men employees
are now acceding to the Commission's recommendation that their
examinations be open to women applicants. . . .
Many of the examinations for technical and scientific positions
which in past years have been limited to men may now be taken
by women; and the departments are appointing women to these
positions. Among the general examinations which war conditions have opened to women are elevator conductor, messenger,
junior chemist, computer, bookkeeper, and minor positions in
the Ordnance Service at Large.
The encouragement the first half of the Chief Examiner's statement
gave to feminists is contradicted by an analysis of the last half.
Elevator operator and messenger are lower-grade occupations in which
private industry had hired women for many years prior to 1918. To
put women inspectors in munitions factories of the Ordnance Service
was only an adaptation to war needs of a long-established industrial
practice. Women bookkeepers in commercial offices were no novelty

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even before the World War. It may also be noted that only one
professional examination is specifically mentioned as being opened to
women because of the scarcity of men.
Such facts more accurately indicate the progress of women in the
Government service up to 1918 than does the picture of the immense
numbers of women who were brought into Washington to work at
clerical tasks in the long rows of beaverboard temporary buildings.
In the two years of the war period, more than 40,000 women were
appointed to the departmental service at Washington. The problem
of housing them in decency and safety became so acute that the
Government Hotels for women covered all the grassy spaces of the
huge Union Plaza. But this condition was temporary and passed
rapidly away. Presently there were no more girl clerks living in these
refined barracks, which were torn down after the disbanding of the
army of women who had been recruited for the paper work necessitated
by a modern war.
The gains of women in the clerical field were consolidated and
publicized by the war. In almost no work of this type was their
ability again questioned. But in the higher paid and more desirable
occupations, the war had given them few real or permanent footholds.
For reasons of economy and convenience, there had grown up a
practice among State and Federal civil service commissions of limiting
an examination to applicants of one sex if the department requesting
the examination had indicated it would appoint only persons of that
sex to the position. When an examination was once held, however,
the resulting register of eligibles had to be used to fill similar positions in other departments, some of which might have been willing
to take men or women, as the case might be, if they had not been
barred from the examination.
The early practice of barring women from the "general education"
or clerical test when there were already more women on the list than
could possibly be appointed was discussed frequently in the years
immediately after 1883 by the Civil Service Commission in its Annual
Reports and in the Minutes of its proceedings. In order to spread the
Commission's funds a little thinner and not to raise hopes that could
not be fulfilled, it was often decided not to examine women applicants.
This was fair enough in the days when there were only a few kinds
of examinations and these were given at frequent intervals. The
number of positions under the jurisdiction of the Commission was so
small, and they were so similar in character, that it was easy to predict
what the probable needs of the service would be for a considerable
period in the future.
But with the expansion of the jurisdiction of the Civil Service
Commission, the increase in the variety and scope of the Government's

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History of Women in the Service

activities, and their ever-changing character to meet the exigencies of
modern times, there has been a great increase in the number of
examinations for specialized positions. It is not, therefore, possible
to hold each examination so frequently as was done 50 years ago.
Sometimes a register, for which the normal life is 1 year, is renewed for
2 years, 3 years, or even longer.
Difficulties arose from this old practice of limiting examinations and
registers to one sex. When the Department of Agriculture asked for
a man to collect statistics on market conditions, it automatically
barred women from entering such positions in other departments until
a new examination should be held, perhaps several years later. When
the newly established Women's Bureau asked for a woman investigator
of labor conditions, it thereby barred men from occupying labor
investigation positions in other bureaus.
That this was the practice of nearly every State and municipal civil
service commission, as well as of the Federal commission, was brought
out in a survey conducted by a member of the staff of the New York
City commission, who said in her paper read before the Assembly of
Civil Service Commissions of the United States and Canada at
Rochester, N. Y., in June 1919:
It would seem that the privilege of examination granted by a
state to its citizens should not be abridged or denied except for
certain valid reasons which should be carefully and impartially
considered and set forth by the Commission in its minutes, and
that a like procedure should govern the division of lists for the
purpose of certification by sex.
But this is not the case. Even in equal suffrage states where
women are citizens and voters, with the privilege of nomination to
the highest offices of the state, they have been denied, on account
of their sex, the privilege of examination for positions for which
they possessed all other preliminary requirements, in fields in
which they have proved their eminent fitness. This has been
true even in time of war, when the dearth of male applicants was
such that the lists would close with a totally inadequate number of
applicants, sometimes with none.
The Assembly without a dissentingvote passed a resolution recommending that the civil service commissions adopt the procedure
advocated in the first paragraph of the above quotation.
In September 1919 the Women's Bureau began a survey of the
Federal service to discover the status of women employed therein.
The Bureau reported that during the preceding 6 months women had
been excluded from 60 percent of all examinations announced and from
64 percent of all examinations in the professional and scientific service.
All but seven of the numerous clerical examinations had been open to
women.
311840°-41-4

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Women in the Federal Service

On November 5, 1919, the Civil Service Commission in its Minutes
prescribed the following regulation, which is still in force:
Admission of Women to Examinations .-The following will be
inserted in all announcements of examinations:
"Both men and women, if qualified, may enter this examination,
but appointing officers have the legal right to specify the sex
desired in requesting certification of eligibles."
Wherever the appointing officer indicates, however, that only
men or women, or only men and military preference women, or
only women and military preference men, will be appointed, then
a statement to that effect shall be added to the above announcement.
This minute does not apply to a case where there is an ample
register of one sex, but eligibles are needed of the other sex; in
which case an examination may be confined to applicants of the
sex for which eligibles are needed, the announcement to contain
the statement that there is an ample register of the sex not
admitted.
Further evidence of the Civil Service Commission's favorable
attitude toward women is shown by its encouraging them to enter the
examinations for scientific and professional positions which the Minute
had opened to them. In a circular letter for general distribution
prepared in January 1921 the Commission pointed out the opportunities for women who have adequate training in professional work and
urged them to acquire that training:
The purpose of this communication is to suggest the advisability
of recommending to women students in preparatory schools
and in colleges the advantage of pursuing technical and scientific courses rather than the purely academic courses. The
Commission believes that the changing conditions are not
peculiar to the Government service, but are found in private
employ as well; that the war experience of employers generally
has had the effect of removing in considerable measure any
prejudice which may have existed against the employment of
women for technical and scientific work.
When the facts of discrimination were brought out, it was comparatively easy to remove the bars which prevented women from
entering any place in the Federal service for which they could qualify
by competitive examination. It was more difficult, however, for
them to gain the right to adequate salary for those positions. The
irregularities and inequalities of the Federal pay scales, with all their
complications caused by differing departmental traditions and widely
varying appropriations provisions, are detailed in the reports of the
committee appointed by Congress in 1919 to study the problem of
installing a uniform system of classification and wage scales for
Federal positions.·

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History of Women in the Service

Legislation resulting from this survey, known as the Classification
Act of 1923, provides such a system for the departmental service in
Washington. Application of the system in the field service was
not under any one central jurisdiction, but by law the departments individually were directed to apply the system to their employees stationed outside Washington. Departments have varying
ideas about the administration of the Classification Act, so that some
inequalities remained in the field service, but the situation was far
better than before the enactment of legislation.
The clause in the act which was of greatest importance to women
was that which made mandatory the exercise of the permissive power
to pay equal wages granted the departments by the Statute of 1870.
The clause reads:
In determining the rate of compensation which an employee
shall receive the principle of equal compensation for equal work
irrespective of sex shall be followed.
In 1925 a second survey by the Women's Bureau of the status of
women in the Federal service found their position much improved,
both as a result of the Civil Service Commission's opening all examinations to them, and as a result of the equalizing of salaries which
followed the installing of the Classification system in 1924. It was
claimed, however, that there was a tendency toward lower allocations
in those professions in which women predominate, such as the library
service. The report also declared that there was a tendency not to
grant women chiefs as high a salary as men within the range permitted
by the grade to which the position was allocated.
But for the rank and file of women Government workers, the Classification Act meant a genuine improvement. The philosophy of the
officials quoted by the Jenckes Report of 1868, that women were
valuable chiefly for their low wage scale, was no longer, officially at
least, in operation. Saving money for the Government by displacing
men with equally qualified but lower-paid women was a practice
unfair to both sexes and harmful to the wage standards of both. The
Classification Act definitely forbade the practice. Thereafter, women
advanced in the Federal service by reason of their abilities and not
because they were a cheaper labor commodity than men.
Technically speaking, there are today no provisions discriminating
against women in the laws and rules governing the Federal service.
However, until July 26, 1937, there remained in force Section 213 of
the Economy Act of June 30, 1932, which, although the Section did
not specifically discriminate against women, caused the dismissal of
three times as many women as men. The Section provided that in
reductions of force those persons should be dismissed first whose

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Women in the Federal Service

spouses were also in the Federal service, whether as employees, pensioners, or enlisted men or officers. It also forbade the hiring of any
person whose husband or wife was already receiving money, no
matter how smal1 an amount, from the Federal pay rolls. Urged by
women's organizations and organizations interested in the welfare of
the merit system, Congress repealed the "marital clause," almost the
last part of the Economy Act to remain in force. in the final days of
the 1937 session.
What then seemed a forward step in removing legal disabilities of
women in the Federal service was taken on December 23, 1932, when
President Hoover issued an Executive order amending the civil- ·
service rule on certification to read:
Certifications shall be made without regard to sex unless the
nature of the duties of the position to be filled is such as, in the
opinion of the Commission, can be performed only by men or
women, as the case may be.
In practice, however, this amendment did not work out well, and
both the Government departments and the majority of women's
organizations urged its repeal. For each position for which a department felt that only men, or only women, were suitable, it was necessary
to obtain specific approval from the Civil Service Commission. In
some of these cases the Commission had solemnly to decide that a
department need not be compelled to hire women for pick and shovel
work nor men as matrons.
The establishment of a single list for both men and women meant,
moreover, that there was a preponderance of men at the top of the
register. With the exception of yeomanettes (Navy Yard clerks during the World War), Army and Navy nurses, and the widows of
veterans and wives of disabled veterans, those entitled to veteran
preference are men. By Executive order, these persons are given
precedence on the civil service lists. Hence, when the lists were made
up without regard to sex, the appointments were nearly sure to be
given to men, since certifications are taken in order from the lists.
On October 5, 1934, President Roosevelt reversed the Hoover order,
so that the appointing officer, rather than the Civil Service Commission, is allowed to decide whether a man or a woman shall fill each
position. The rule on certification now reads:
Certification shall be made without regard to sex unless sex is
specified in the request.
Statistics compiled by the Civil Service Commission show that there
was a decrease in the ratio of women to men appointed to the service
after the Executive order of 1932, but that an increase in the ratio
took place after 1934. Whether this increase may not have been due

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History of Women in the Service

in part to other factors, such as the larger number of clerical workers
made necessary by the increase of Government activity under the New
Deal, is difficult to ascertain. It is certain, however, that rescinding
the certification order has not hurt the cause of women.

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The Employment of Married
Women
fruitful sources of debate is the question of the
married woman and her career. Sometimes this becomes in
actuality merely the question of the married woman and her paid
position, or, even, job. Within a generation the number of gainfully
employed married women has doubled, and the public interest in their
problem has increased at least as much. The Census of 1890 found
that 13.9 percent of all gainfully employed women had husbands. In
1930, this percentage had increased to 28.9.
With one exception, every census since 1890 has shown an increase
over the.preceding decade in the number of gainfully employed married women. In 1890, one out of every 22 married women worked for
wages. In 1910, one in every 9 married women was employed. In
1920, the ratio dropped to one in every 11, but by 1930 it had
increased to one in every 8.
The prevalence of the married woman who works has led to a number of studies and articles, ranging from the popular Sunday supplement type to the serious sociological work, which undertakes by actual
case study to find out the effects of this change in American domestic
customs. The May 1929 number of the Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science includes an article by Mrs.
Chase Going Woodhouse on "Married College Women in Business
and the Professions." This study sums up evidence obtained from a
detailed survey conducted among some 300 average-type college
graduates in 36 States. In over 58 percent of the cases, these women
gave economic reasons as the cause of their working. Such reasons
were cited by 65 percent of the women with children and by 49 percent of those without children. The survey was made in 1927, a year
of comparative prosperity, and among a group whose husbands were
engaged in what is considered high-paid business and professional
work. 1
Whatever may be the reason married women work, there is a considerable body of public opinion antagonistic to their employment.
This ranges from the belief of some single women that "married women

NE OF THE MOST

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Employment of Married Women

should get out and give girls a chance who need jobs," to those who
question the effect on the future of the race, because of an alleged
tendency among women working outside their homes to have fewer
children or none. This tendency, which is observable in many countries of the world today, is not, however, so far as can be shown by
available statistics, necessarily connected with the fact of outside
employment.
On the whole, the strongest antagonisms to the job-holding married
woman, and those which are most prevalent, are based on economic
grounds. Like the prejudices against the employment of women in
general, such antagonisms tend to increase in times of depression, and
to abate when jobs are easier to find and competition is not so great.
In the earlier history of women's employment, the greatest number of
married working women were engaged in industrial. occupations.
There have been very few drives to take married women out of factories. As late as 1910, only 5.6 percent of those women engaged in
clerical pursuits were married, as compared with 10.4 percent in professional work, and 18.6 percent in manufacturing and mechanical
pursuits. By 1920, however, the percentage of married women in
clerical groups had doubled, and the first evidence of agitation against
them is found in the 1910-20 decade. 2
The concentration of clerical workers at Washington, with the large
number of women found in this occupation and the proportionately
large number of married women, early led to administrative discrimination, although formal legislative discrimination did not occur until
the Economy Act of 1932. Peculiar local economic conditions at
Washington have caused numbers of married women to work outside
their homes. These conditions include the highest cost of living of
any city in the United States, the small size of available living quarters, and the relatively low salary received by many Federal employees.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics in August 1919 made up a "minimum
of health and decency" budget for a family of five in Washington,
D. C., of $2,262.47, or, by strict economy and good luck, $2,015.56.
This figure was computed by the Personnel Classification Board to be
worth, in terms of the lower prices of June 1930, $1,948.3
Figures published in the Budget of the United States Government
show that in 1937, of the 71,912 employees in the departmental service
at Washington, 25,449, or 35 percent, receive less than $1,600. Desire
to augment the husband's salary is therefore probably more important
as a reason for married women's working than is the lack of full-time
occupation in housekeeping in the usual Washington apartment of
one or two rooms, in a city where most of the population are strangers
to one another.

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Women in the Federal Service

A Civil Service Commission official described the situation in a
letter on the subject in June 1935:
It is doubtless true that women are seeking employment moru
than in past years due to economic necessity. In Washington,
for example, it was formerly true that women who married and
began to raise a family usually resigned from the service. In
recent years, economic necessity has compelled many women to
remain away from their jobs for comparatively brief periods,
thereafter returning to work as quickly as possible, leaving their
children to be cared for by nurse-maids or other members of the
family. There has been a diminution of cases of women who
upon marriage have resigned from employment. This has been
true, due not so much to a desire to continue work, as because
of the necessity of doing so.
The earliest instance of administrative discrimination against
married women is perhaps an order from the Postmaster General on
November 19, 1913, amending the regulations of the department:
Section 157, Postal Laws and Regulations of 1913, is hereby
amended to read as follows:
SEC. 157. No married woman will be appointed to a classified
position in the postal service, nor will any woman occupying a
classified position in the postal service be reappointed to such
position when she shall marry, provided that these prohibitions
shall not affect the appointment or reappointment of postmasters
at fourth-class offices.
2. Whenever any woman employed in the postal service marries,
she shall, if retained in the service, take the oath of office anew.
This rule was amended in October 1918 to allow women whose
husbands or sons were in the military or naval service to retain their
jobs. The entire section, however, was revoked on November 28, 1921.
Another instance of using marital status as a criterion for employment occurred during the large reduction of force which took place
in Washington after the World War. Secretary of War Newton D.
Baker, in directing the separations in the War Department, ordered:
In the reduction of the additional force of temporary employees
that will be necessary in order to keep within the appropriations
therefor, the following general rule will be observed with respect
to married female employees, where married and unmarried
female employees are of equal or nearly equal efficiency, preference
for retention in the service shall be given to the unmarried female
employees, except in cases of a married employee whose husband
is dependent on her for support. In cases in which the question
of the retention of a married female employee arises, because of
the comparison of her efficiency with that of an unmarried employee, and it develops that the wife and her husband are both
employed in the government service, such married female employee shall not be retained in service, provided that in any case

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Helen Hamilton Gardener

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Clara Barton

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Employment of Married Women

in which both husband and wife are employed in the War Department the less efficient shall not be retained.
It will be noted that this departmental order, which is a forerunner
of the famous Section 213 of the Economy Act of 1932, is unlike that
act in that it specifies that it shall be the married woman who will
be dismissed, except in those cases in which the husband is so inferior
as to be unable to support his wife, or is less efficient than she. It is
a difficult task to draw such comparisons, especially if the married
couple are engaged in work of different types or of different grades·
the effect on personnel morale is also undesirable.
Secretary Baker's policy was confirmed by his successor, Secretary
John W. Weeks, in this communication to his department:
I interpret this order to mean that in order to be retained a
married female employee must have either manifestly superior
qualifications, or have a husband dependent upon her for support,
in which latter case she must, of course, have a satisfactory efficiency record; subject, however, to the further conditions that if
the married woman's husband is also employed in the War Department and is less efficient than she, in which event she may
be retained, provided she has a satisfactory efficiency record; but
he shall be separated if an emergency employee. In case the
married employee is the wife of an army officer I think the spirit
of the order requires that she be discharged in preference to an
unmarried female emergency employee.
Secretary Weeks was under the necessity of reducing his department
by 1,900 employees, to a size of 6,600. Under such circumstances it
is a temptation to an official to use an arbitrary criterion, such as
marital status, which the employee can neither appeal nor deny, rather
than the more difficult basis of efficiency ratings, where the matter
of dismissal or retention may have to be decided by a fractional
percentage.
Some discrimination against married women in the Government
service occurred in various departments of the Government during the
next decade, and was described in addresses by Mrs. Helen Hamilton
Gardener, the first woman Civil Service Commissioner. Action by
Congress, however, was not taken until 1932. During that decade,
discrimination against married women occurred in many private in- •
dustries, notably in several of the telephone companies, which required
their operators to leave their service upon marriage. The boards of
education in many cities also found they did not desire married teachers, if female. In a survey of 1,500 city school systems conducted by
the National Education Association in 1930-31, it was found that 77
percent of these cities refused to hire married women as new teachers
and only 37 percent allowed women teachers to continue work if they
married after receiving an appointment. 4

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Women in the Federal Service

When a reduction in force was undertaken by the Economy Act of
June 30, 1932, the language of the act did not specify that married
women should be dismissed, but in the actual working out of the provisions of the act, the majority of those dismissed were women. The
act stated:
SEC. 213. In any reduction of personnel in any branch of service of the United States Government or the District of Columbia,
married _persons (living with husband or wife) employed in the
class to be reduced, shall be dismissed before any other persons
employed in such classes are dismissed, if such husband or wife is
also in the service of the United States or the District of Columbia.
In the appointment of persons to the classified civil service, preference shall be given to persons other than married persons living
with husband or wife, such husband or wife being in the service of
the United States or the District of Columbia.6
It was decided by various Minutes of the Civil Service Commission
and Opinions of the Attorney General that this law applied to retired
Army officers and pensioned soldiers, taking precedence over veteran
preference statutes. It also applied to the wives of enlisted men,
although some of these men receive as little as $21 a month. The
Section was held to apply to dismissals of the N. R. A. force, but not
to appointments. It was required that persons claiming to be separated from their spouses and so exempt from the provisions of the
Section should present proof that the separation was actual and was
not brought about for purposes of evading the provisions of the Section. It will be noted that in this last point the rulings made it
necessary to go into very intimate details of Government employees'
lives.
·
A study by the Women's Bureau of the effects of this Section, issued
in mimeograph form in March 1936, showed that up to December 1,
1934, 1,603 persons had been dismissed or had resigned from the
Federal service under these provisions. Questionnaires sent these
persons brought replies from all sections of the United States proper
and the Canal Zone. Although the majority of those dismissed were
women, in the group of older persons with long records of service in
lower-grade positions, the larger proportion of those dismissed were
men. Half of the persons included in the survey had earned from
$1,000 to $1,800 a year. Many had been supporting one or more
dependents; the 697 persons who answered the questionnaire had 2,230
dependents. More than four-fifths of those who replied to the question whether their jobs had been filled declared that the vacancies had
been filled, or additional personnel taken on, often shortly after the
dismissal of the married person.6
Throughout the 5 years that Section 213 was in operation, repeal
of the moo.sure· was urged in every session of Congress. Groups de-

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Employment of Married Women

voted to women's interests, such as women's bar associations, medical
associations, and similar business and professional societies, as well as
organized women's groups of more general membership, opposed the
measure. They feared that the discrimination against married
women might be the entering wedge in a movement to drive all women
from gainful employment, just as had been done in certain European
countries.
Groups interested in the improvement and extension of the merit
system opposed Section 213 on the ground that it introduced factors
into appointment and dismissal which had nothing to do with the
qualifications and efficiency of the employee. The League of Women
Voters was particularly interested in the repeal of the "marital
clause."
The recommendation of the Commission of Inquiry on Public Service. Personnel, in its pamphlet, Better Government Personnel, published in 1935, is typical of the opinions expressed by such groups.
This Commission held hearings on matters concerning public employees in Washington and many other American cities, as well as in
London, at which it invited experts in legislation and administration
to testify. The finding of the Commission was:
The Commission is opposed as a matter of principle to legislation requiring the discharge of a married person from public
position because the other member of the married couple is also a
public employee. While in emergencies such laws may be apparently justified, they disregard the merit principle and rest
upon the eleemosynary concept of the public pay roll, a concept
which cannot be accepted or applied in public service without
doing irreparable damage in the long run. The Commission
therefore recommends the repeal of Section 213 of the Federal
Economy Act of 1932.7
In the summer of 1937 Congress repealed Section 213, almost the
last of the provisions of the Economy Act still in force. President
Roosevelt signed the repeal measure on July 26, 1937. The most
immediate result was a simplification of personnel procedure in every
department. During the debate in the House of Representatives, it
was pointed out by Representative Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts that the cost of personnel administration in the Government
departments had been increased by the added investigations and other
procedure necessary in carrying out the provisions of this supposed
economy measure. Mrs. Rogers declared:

It has cost a good deal to investigate these cases and has
taken the time of the Civil Service people away from other work
that we all want to have done. Also, it has taken up a great
deal of the time of the chiefs of sections in the various departments, which has proved costly. 8

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Women in the Federal Service

It would be a difficult undertaking to estimate in dollars and cents
the exact amount saved in administration costs by the repeal of Section 213, but even more important is the fact that its repeal removed
from the statute books a measure which discriminated against one
class of American citizens, and which introduced into the selection of
public employees considerations other than those of efficiency and
fitness for the work to be performed.

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III

The Present Position of Women
in the Federal Service
HERE ARE ONLY 30 of the 534 occupations in the 1930 Census
list by which some woman in the United States did not earn
her.living. Not quite so sweeping a statement may be made about
the occupations in the Federal service, but it is true that in theory
and in law there is nothing to prevent a woman from occupying any
position for which she has the necessary training and qualifications.
In fact, the Federal service has enough women holding unusual
positions to keep a Sunday feature writer supplied with material
indefinitely. Among these positions are: sailmaker, lighthouse keeper,
associate color technologist, messenger "boy", civil engineering aid,
and junior park archaeologist. There are over 250 women rural
carriers who travel many miles each day by automobile or horse
through sparsely settled regions. Two of these women, one in Kansas and one in South Dakota, spent 30 years of service on their routes.
If, however, there are some "men's" jobs which are occupied by
women, there are also a number of "women's" jobs which are occupied by men in the Federal service. Particularly is this true in the
clerical field, which has been so largely taken over in recent years
by women. While it is true that women in the Federal service maintain an overwhelming numerical superiority in this work, yet this
is not quite so great as in employment at large. This may be due in
part to the higher pay and higher standards which are a characteristic
of most clerical work in the Government and which render it more
attractive to men. About 15 percent of the positions in the various
classes of stenographer and typist are held by men, as compared with
5 percent in the occupation as a whole, according to the 1930 Census.
On the other hand, beginning in 1935 the Railway Mail Service,
which formerly used men stenographers exclusively, inaugurated a
policy of employing women in the chief clerks' and district superintendents' offices. About 200 of a total of 23,000 positions in the
Railway Mail Service were thus opened to women.

Women in the Federal Service

In library work, which is usually thought of as a profession occupied
almost entirely by women, there are about 200 men of professional
grade, as compared with 300 women. Occupational therapy, a new
field of work introduced after the World War, was at first dominated
by women, although the majority of the positions were in hospitals
under the Veterans' Administration. Today there are more men than
women employed by the Government in this work.
There are, however, many professional and semiprofessional occupations in the Federal service which women have taken over as completely as they have those same occupations in private employment.
The dietitians offer one example of such an occupation. Social and
welfare work is another field which has been largely occupied by
women, although it now has more men than formerly. It is estimated
that 38 percent of Federal social and welfare workers in 1938 were
men. Dental hygiene is another semiprofession in which women
predominate. In nursing, which, along with teaching, was one of the
first professions opened to women in the nineteenth century, about 3
percent of the registered nurses in the Federal civil service are men.
There are three Government bureaus which are concerned with
the traditional interests of women, the Home Economics Bureau of
the Department of Agriculture, established in 1923, and, in the Department of Labor, the Children's Bureau, established in 1912, and
the Women's Bureau, established in 1918. These bureaus have
generally pursued a policy of appointing women for their research
and investigational work.
Besides those professions in which women have been accepted by
a long tradition of social approval, there are a number of other occupations in the Government service in which women are advancing
both in the number and importance of the positions occupied.
Scientific work was one of the first professional-type occupations
into which women were admitted in the Federal service, and it is
still one that offers them many opportunities. Some of the work,
just as in research laboratories and educational institutions under
private auspices, is the routine, blind-alley sort, and the girl who
feeds mice by a clock, or makes routine chemical analyses, is not
likely to find her work permanently interesting. Nevertheless, the
women are in the laboratories and experiment stations, where, with
ability and training, they may be able to gain promotion to some of
the interesting and significant positions. While there may be only
from one to five persons employed in some of the many specialized
branches of science in the Federal service, yet, from senior agriculturist down the list to junior xylotomist and associate zoologist, there
is scarcely one in which some woman is not working.

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Present Position of Women

In the two traditional professions, law and medicine, there .are some
women working for the Federal Government, although their number
is by no means large. About 3 percent of the medical and dental
scientists in the Federal service are women, several of whom hold
positions as medical directors of Federal institutions. In 1930, women
constituted about 4 percent of the students enrolled in medical colleges
of the United States. In 1936 this proportion had increased to 5.5
percent. It is probable that as the number of women with the necessary training increases, so will the proportion of Federal medical
positions held by women increase.
Both numerically and proportionately, there are more women in
legal than in medical work in the Federal service. Perhaps one reason
is the large number of women as well as men Government clerks who
attend Washington law schools after office hours. Practical knowledge
of a department's functions and a general legal training make a particularly valuable combination. Whether by promotion or original
appointment, women are holding many responsible legal positions
with such titles as attorney, legal assistant, law clerk, and legal
counsel.
More than a score of women illustrators and photographers are
employed by the Government. While some of this work is connected
with illustrations and diagrams for reports and other publications of a
more general nature, much of it is concerned with scientific subjects.
About 150 women in the departmental service are engaged in editorial work, bulletin writing, or other informational work. Their
salaries range from $1,620 to $5,600. Men, however, far outnumber
women in the higher grades.
Although translators form a relatively small group among Federal
employees, several women are among their number. Some of these
positions require highly specialized qualifications, such as that held by
a woman physician in the United States Public Health Service, who is
translator and abstractor of foreign medical literature for the Division
of Venereal Diseases.
Personnel work is a new field both in private industry and in the
public service, but it has been introduced more recently in public
employment. Women are gaining places for themselves in this work,
perhaps because of their traditional interest in social work, and also
because it appears to be easier for women to enter a newly established
profession, where there is no inherited prejudice built up against them.
Another new field, and one in which women with the requisite training are entering the Federal service, is that of economic and statistical
research. The numerous fact-finding services of the departments
offer much variety and opportunity for persons interested in the

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Women in the Federal Service

many branches of these subjects. The largest number of women
economic analysts are employed by the Department of Labor, in the
Women's and Children's Bureaus, and in general research on labor
problems, but there are also women agricultural economists and
industrial economists, as well as marketing specialists. There has
been noted in recent years an increase in the interest of women college
students in the fields of economics and statistics. As the supply of
trained women increases, so, it is probable, will the number of positions
of this sort which they will hold in the Federal service. 1
It has been easier for women to gain initial entry into the Federal
service than it has been for them to attain the more desirable positions.
With the exception of Clara Barton, founder of the American Red
Cross, who organized a grave-identification service in 1867, women
executives and administrators were almost unknown in the Federal
service before the 1910 decade. That this decade was the most active
period of the woman suffrage movement is significant. It was while
the States were ratifying the Nineteenth Amendment that the first
appointment of a woman to a major office was made, when Mrs.
Helen Hamilton Gardener was appointed first woman Civil Service
Commissioner by President Wilson in 1920.
Slowly but surely women have raised the level of the position that
could be called "the highest-salaried position held by any woman in

the Federal Government." In 1855, Clara Barton's position as
confidential clerk in the Patent Office at $1,400 a year was the highest
salary. By 1911, there was one woman receiving as much as $4,500
a year. In 1925, when the Women's Bureau made its second survey
of women in the Federal employ, the highest paid woman was the
Civil Service Commissioner, who received $6,500. There were 10
women with salaries of $5,200 or more, eight of them in administrative
work, and only 35 women in the entire service who received more
than $3,600.
Less than a decade later, the highest salary paid a woman had
increased to $15,000, the salary of the first woman Cabinet officer.
The Official Register of the United States, which contains the names
of persons who are heads of divisions and bureaus, or who hold other
responsible positions, lists over 200 women in the executive branch of
the Government. More than 50 of these women receive salaries of
$5,000 or higher. As many more receive from $3,600 to $4,800 a year.
Nevertheless, the number of women executives in the Government
service is still negligible, compared with the number of men.
Many of the positions listed in the Official Register are appointivethat is, the incumbent is selected by the President and his appointment
is confirmed by the Senate. Sometimes the candidate is outstanding

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Present Position of Women

in his field though he has gained his experience outside the Government; sometimes he has become prominent in public office as a legislator or as one of the elective administrative officers; sometimes he
has shown ability in the conduct of the affairs of a political party.
Occasionally, he has entered the department in which the position is
located by a civil-service examination, and has worked up through
the lower grades, which are under the jurisdiction of the Civil Service
Act and rules, to the higher appointive offices. Persons who have
followed this route may be continued in their offices through successive
changes of political parties, so that the office becomes in effect, if not
in law, a part of a career service, becoming an ultimate reward of a
civil-service career, though not a part of the competitive civil service.
The women in the Official Register have attained their positions
by the same methods as the men. Their numbers may with reason
be attributed to the effects of the Nineteenth Amendment, by which
women gained the right to take a more active part in party affairs and
in public life. Many have shown marked ability in politics and in
public office.
Some brief sketch of the careers of a few representative women who
have achieved prominence in the Government may illustrate how
women have gained such positions. This enumeration does not by
any means exhaust the list of outstanding women who might be
selected, nor are those chosen necessarily the most eminent in their
fields. The method has been merely to select a few names at random,
endeavoring to include a representative variety of types.
Before she became a member of President Roosevelt's Cabinet,
Miss Frances Perkins had over 30 years' experience in dealing with
the problems of labor and social reform legislation, beginning in 1910
as executive secretary of the Consumers' League of New York. In
this capacity she inaugurated amendments to the State labor law for
the protection of women and children and the regulation of tenement
homework manufacture and of sanitary conditions in cellar bakeries.
Gov. Alfred E. Smith appointed her Commissioner of the New York
State Industrial Commission, to which position she was reappointed
by Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt. When he became President, Roosevelt appointed Miss Perkins to fill the position in the Federal administration similar to that which she had occupied in the State
government.
Other positions which women have filled by Presidential appointment within recent years include: Ministers to Norway and to Denmark; Director of the United States Public Health Service; Director
of the Mint; Federal judges and assistants to the Attorney General;
members of many boards and commissions; and collectors of customs.

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Women in the Federal Service

The woman who has attained eminence in a specialized field outside
the Government often finds her services in demand by some one of
the departments dealing with the subject in which she has made herself an expert. Occasionally, when it can be shown that there is
only one available applicant who can meet the requirements of a
highly specialized position, the Civil Service Commission may,
under the provisions of the Civil Service Act and rules, authorize that
a competitive examination be dispensed with. These appointments,
however, are made only under very unusual circumstances, and a full
report of the reasons for each such appointment is included in the
Annual Report of the Civil Service Commission. On the average,
about 10 appointments are made in this manner each year, as compared with about 40,000 appointments of persons selected by competitive examinations, but several women have in recent years been
included in this list. The duties of the positions to which they receive
appointment and the qualifications they bring to those positions make
interesting reading and show something of the variety of fields in
which women have won recognition.
Dr. Sophie D. Aberle and Dr. Alice Hamilton received appointments in this manner. Dr. Aberle was appointed General Superintendent of the United Pueblo Jurisdiction, under the Indian Service
of the Department of the Interior. With headquarters at Albuquerque, the Jurisdiction is responsible for the health and welfare of
some 10,000 Pueblo Indians. The only anthropologist in the country
to make a study of the living Indian, Dr. Aberle's academic training
included a Ph. D. from Stanford University and an M. D. from the
Yale Medical School. The report of her appointment states:
She met the peculiar requirements of the position because of
her work for more than 8 years among the Pueblo Indians, and
because of administrative experience in directing an extensive
practical study regarding their health. No other person was
known to the Department who possessed such experience.2
Also appointed under the same rule was Dr. Alice Hamilton, as
industrial economist in the Division of Labor Standards of the Department of Labor. Dr. Hamilton has been prominent for many years
as a specialist in occupational diseases. She was one of the first
women physicians in the country, receiving her M. D. from the
University of Michigan in 1893, after which she did post-graduate
work at Munich, Leipzig, and the Institut Pasteur at Paris, as well
as at Johns Hopkins and the University of Chicago. She taught at
several medical schools and was made assistant professor of industrial
medicine at Harvard University, the only woman ever appointed to
the faculty of the Harvard Medical School, an institution which
does not even admit women as students.

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Present Position of Women

The 1936 Annual Report of the Civil Service Commission states:
Dr. Hamilton's services are to be utilized· in studying and
analyzing health hazards in industries and in developing practical
standards for prevention of occupational diseases. Dr. Hamilton
is recognized as having a national reputation as a teacher and
writer in these subjects.3
Other women who within recent years received appointment as
experts without competitive examination include Mrs. Isabelle A.
O'Neill and Mrs. Phoebe F. Omlie. Mrs. O'Neill was chosen as
legislative contact official for the Bureau of Narcotics of the Treasury
Department to aid in the drafting and passage of uniform State
antinarcotic laws to enable the various States to cooperate with the
Federal antinarcotic activities. She began her career as a member
of the General Assembly of Rhode Island, to which she was elected
in 1923. In 1926 she introduced a resolution creating a commission
to investigate the drug traffic and compiled a report on the subject.
In 1930 she was elected to the State senate. Her appointment to
the Bureau of Narcotics occurred in 1933.
Mrs. Phoebe F. Omlie, special assistant for air intelligence of the
National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, was one of the first
women aviators. She began as a parachute jumper in 1920 and did
exhibition flying for several years. She received the first pilot's
license and the first engine and airplane mechanic's license granted
to a woman, in 1927. During the Mississippi flood of 1927 she flew
one of the rescue planes. She has won a number of prizes in air
derbies and other races.
Her duties with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics,
for which she worked for 3 years, were described thus:
Her services are to be utilized in connection with a program
to encourage the use of airplanes by making known the results
of research to improve safety and efficiency in civil aviation.
The incumbent was required to use and act as pilot of an airplane
in the performance of the work. She had had experience as an
instructor in flying, meteorology, and aerial navigation, as a
racing test pilot, and in the development, design, manufacture,
and testing of aircraft with various organizations. It was not
believed that an eligible as well qualified could be secured

through open competition.4
The story of Miss Mary Anderson, chief of the Women's Bureau,
seems at first glance like a novel by Horatio Alger. Unlike his
heroes, however, her rise from immigrant girl to Federal bureau chief
was not concerned with mercantile success, but with rendering
eminently successful service to the movement of workers for alleviating
and improving their own labor conditions.

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Women in the Federal Service

Miss Anderson was the youngest of the 10 children of a Swedish
farmer. At the age of 16 she came to America with two older sisters
and went to live in Ludington, Mich. During her first year in the
new country she taught herself to read English from the daily newspapers. The next year she moved with her sisters to Chicago where
she became an apprentice on a shoe stitching machine. For 18 years
she worked at this trade, at the same time taking an ever more active
part in the shoe and bootmakers' unions.
In 1910 she left factory work to travel as national organizer for the
National Woman's Trade Union League. She was called to Washington during the World War by the Woman in Industry Section of
the Council of National Defense., When the Women's Bureau was
established in 1918 in the Department of Labor, Miss Mary Van
Kleeck was appointed chief and Miss Anderson assistant chief.
Upon Miss Van Kleeck'sresignation in 1919, Miss Anderson succeeded
her.
Although there is all too little formal provision for career advancement in the Federal civil service as it is at present constituted, there
are many men and women who have entered the service in the lower
ranks and have achieved high positions. Perhaps this is a more
usual story in the case of men than of women, for we have an American tradition that accepts the executive who began as messenger

boy, but we retain the "secretary complex" in the case of women.
That is to say, we commonly expect that the executive in an office
shall be a man, and his assistant a woman, and we are surprised
when the situation is reversed. Because the public service must by
its nature be responsive to public opinion, and because the public
does not yet accept with the same readiness a woman in authority,
it is not astonishing that the proportion of women executives is small
as compared with the total number of women in the Federal service,
nor that a department hesitates to give such positions to any but
very outstanding women of proven ability.
However, there are women who have risen within their departments
to important positions. Some of them illustrate the commonly
accepted theory of women's vocational counselors that stenography
makes a good "entering wedge" for an ambitious girl. Others have
come into the lower professional ranks with some specialized training
and then have risen to the higher grades of professional work and to
administrative positions.
It is difficult to evaluate the relative effectiveness of these two
avenues of approach, but a statement made by the Women's Bureau
in its report on women in the Government service in 1925 may be of
interest. The Bureau concluded that, measured by the number of

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Present Position of Women

women who got beyond a certain salary level, stenography was the
best method. However, of those women who entered the service
with professional training, a larger proportion attained the higher
salary levels than did those who entered the service as stenographers.
An example of a woman who achieved success through secretarial
work may be found in the case of Miss Margaret M. Hanna, who
entered the Department of State as a private secretary in 1895 and
advanced through the various grades until in 1924 she became chief
of the Office of Coordination and Review. Her assignments to
accompany American delegations to conferences in South America
and Europe were particularly interesting and valuable. In July 1937
she was appointed as consul at Geneva, Switzerland. She was the
first woman to be appointed to the foreign service from the home office
of the Department of State, and the seventh woman to receive an
appointment in the consular service. Miss Hanna retired in 1939.
In 1935 the Civil Service Commission made its first appointment of
a woman to the office of district manager, when it selected Miss
Rena B. Smith to head the Eighth Civil Service District, with headquarters at St. Paul. Since the district offices are in effect miniature
Civil Service Commissions for the regions in which they operate, the
position of district manager involves much responsibility and a
thorough knowledge of all phases of civil service work. Miss Smith
began her service with the Commission as a stenographer. She
then became private secretary to Mrs. Helen Hamilton Gardener, the
first woman Civil Service Commissioner. Later she was sent as
assistant district manager to the First District at Boston, where she
was stationed when she received her appointment to head the Eighth
District.
Still another woman who began her career in the Federal service as
a stenographer is Miss Isabelle Story, who entered the service of the
Department of the Interior as a typist in 1910. Gradually she developed her own job, that of answering inquiries about the National
parks, until she was made editor-in-chief in the National Park Service.
Miss Katharine Lenroot, chief of the Children's Bureau of the
Department of Labor, spent a number of years in the service of this
organization before becoming its head.

After graduating from normal

school, she received a B. A. from the University of Wisconsin in 1912
and the next year was appointed woman deputy of the Industrial
Commission of Wisconsin. In 1915, she came to the Children's
Bureau as special agent. Later she became assistant director of the
social service division of the Bureau. In 1921, she was made director
of the editorial division, and, in 1924, assistant chief of the Bureau.
In 1934, she succeeded Miss Grace Abbott as head of the Bureau.

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Women in the Federal Service

Miss Claribel Ruth Barnett, head of the Library of the Department
of Agriculture, brought professional training with her into the Federal
service, and then made good in her profession. Miss Barnett entered
the Department of Agriculture as a cataloguer in 1895, just 6 years
after it had been established as one of the executive departments.
She took one of the first library examinations which were opened to
women. In 1901, she became assistant librarian and was promoted
to head librarian in 1907. She served in this position until her retirement in 1940. Under her leadership the library increased greatly in
size and scope, with numerous branches in the bureaus of the department and a collection of over 250,000 books and pamphlets.
Nearly every department of the Federal Government could furnish
similar examples of women who are occupying positions of significance
and responsibility. It is not possible to recount in detail all of the
interesting histories of the rise to important positions of women in the
Government service. It should be remembered, however, that these
accounts are frequently publicized and thus give a perhaps too optimistic impression that such examples are commonplace. It is true
and probably will be for many years to come that the number of
women officials is small in comparison with the number of men of
similar rank. Nevertheless, the record already made is one which
may well gratify and encourage women who look forward to a career

in the Government service.

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Training Opportunities
For Women Who Wish to Enter
the Federal Service
to take advantage of the opportunities open to
them in the Federal Government today will do well to consider
W
their own special abilities and talents and how they may best develop
OMEN WHO WISH

them to make their services of value in Government work. No one
can plan a career for them with blueprint exactness, since it is never
possible to predict with accuracy what the needs and requirements of
the Government will be at any period in the future, but some general
statements may be made, based on the experience of women already
in the Government service, about the qualifications essential to
success.
There is a growing consciousness that, as the Government takes on
more and more responsibilities, there should be a corresponding
increase in the specialized techniques and the amount of training
required of public employees in order that their work may be per. formed effectively. Sometimes this training may be acquired on the
job; but a good educational background is an undoubted asset for
such training, although the great majority of Government positions
do not require a college degree. Rather, the emphasis is on the
applicant's ability to pass tests of his intelligence, knowledge, and
adaptability. It is of course true that persons who have had higher
education should pass these examinations with higher marks, but they
are not given special preference.
Of the 68,000 appointments for entrance to the Federal ·classified
service during the fiscal year 1940, only 5 percent required college
graduation. The great preponderance of appointments are to clerical
or to skilled trades positions. The procedure in preparing for such
positions is the same as for similar work in private industry. One
must learn to operate a switchboard, an elevator, a card-punch
machine, a tabulator, adding machine, computer, or whatever type
of machine is used in the position she desires. It should be remem45

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Women in the Federal Service

bered that the requirements for stenographer and typist are high,
although not so high as those of a very few private commercial schools
which prescribe that their stenography students must take dictation
as fast as 140 words a minute before they can be graduated.
But measured by the average standard in private business, Government standards are high, and approximately 50 percent of those
who take the Federal typist examination fail to qualify even for the
lowest grade, that of junior typist. Although it is a requirement of
the test that a minimum speed be attained, accuracy is even more
important, since it counts twice as much as speed in the computation
of the mark. To be certified as junior stenographer, one must be
able to take dictation at the rate of 96 words per minute; senior
stenographers must have a speed of 120 words per minute. A knowledge of grammar and spelling is essential.
For those who desire to work in some profession or science on the
pay roll of the Federal Government, the same general advice may be
given as to clerical workers. They must perfect themselves in their
specialty and watch for the announcement of suitable examinations.
Usually they enter at the lowest professional grade and advance as
opportunities open.
Those who are ambitious of advancement find, besides the training
and experience gained on the job, opportunity to add to their professional equipment by further study. Training courses in Federal
agencies have increased both in number and scope; in Washington,
especially, evening courses leading to advanced degrees are available
at private institutions.
The courses given by the various Federal agencies are tied in with
the work of the agencies. Most of them are designed for employees
engaged in clerical or administrative work. However, courses in
professional work are also given by a number of agencies, such as the
Bureau of Standards and the Department of Agriculture, which were
among the pioneers in establishing training courses. The Graduate
School of the Department of Agriculture is open to employees of other
agencies.
The Weather Bureau and the Maritime Commission have been
authorized by act of Congress to send personnel to college for study of
subjects pertaining to their functions. Teachers in the Indian Field
Service have been granted by legislation a period of educational leave
in addition to annual and sick leave.
Besides persons employed in the traditional professions of law and
medicine, the Federal Government has long employed men and women
as research workers in the physical sciences, such as chemistry, biology,
and geology. With the increase in the number of functions of the
Government, a demand has arisen for persons trained in the various

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Training Opportunities

social sciences or the professions. The Civil Service Commission
holds numerous examinations for economists, statisticians, psychologists, and persons trained in various phases of labor-law administration, in social work, in educational research, and in child-welfare work.
Other examples of new types of examinations, offering opportunity
to qualified women as well as men, are those for administrative officers
and personnel officers of various grades. The first examinations for
these positions were held by the Civil Service Commission in 1936.
In the rating of applicants, emphasis was placed on both quality and
length of experience. The administrative officers were recruited to
manage district or branch offices of the Social Security Board, or to
fill positions of equivalent importance in Washington or in the regional
offices of the Board. Personnel officers are assigned to such personnel work as recruiting, the classification of positions, training of
employees, employees' progress and morale, placement work, and
similar work, requiring both experience and personal qualifications of
a high caliber.
In addition to studies of government in general, there has been a
new development by American colleges of courses designed specifically
to prepare students for junior administrative positions in the Federal,
State, and municipal services. Classes in public administration were
almost unknown in 1920, when the University of Chicago offered what
were probably the pioneer courses in the subject. Among the instructors was Dr. Leonard D. White, later United States Civil Service
Commissioner from 1934 to 1937. In 1936, the Social Science Research Council listed 75 American colleges and universities offering
courses in public administration, varying in difficulty from elementary undergraduate work to studies leading to the Ph. D. degree.
Included among the 75 colleges were many which admit women.
Somewhat similar to these public administration courses, but more
vocational in its curriculum, is the post-college course offered by the
National Institute of Public Affairs in Washington, D. C. This
privately endowed institution has since 1935 offered scholarships,
called "internships," to selected college graduates to enable them to
defray part of the expenses of a year in Washington as unofficial
assistants to cooperating administrative officials. After office hours
the "interns" attend classes at the School of Public Affairs of American
University. The experimental first class of interns numbered 40
students, of whom 11 were women. About the same proportion of the
sexes has prevailed since.
In the summer of 1937, Radcliffe College inaugurated an experimental post-college course for women in personnel administration.
Harvard University instruction is combined with practice personnel

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Women in the Federal Service

work in a course designed to train personnel administrators both for
the public service and for private organizations and industries. This
was probably the first such course offered to women exclusively.
A number of examinations have been held for recent college graduates, which are also open to students in their senior year, on condition
of later submitting proof of graduation. The examination for Junior
Civil Service Examiner was given at intervals from 1923 to 1937. This
examination was intended primarily to recruit junior examiners for the
clerical examining section of the Civil Service Commission. The
registers, however, have been used by many other departments.
Many, both men and women, appointed from this examination have
since advanced to very interesting and responsible positions.
Beginning in 1939, examinations have been held annually for Junior
Professional Assistant. Unlike the junior examiner, the junior professional assistant examination requires that applicants shall have had
certain specified major courses of study. Optional examination subjects, each one related to some major course of study, are set forth in
the examination announcement-all under the general title "Junior
Professional Assistant." The list of optional subjects changes from
year to year, according to the supply of eligibles still on the registers
and the estimated needs of the service.
While the proportion of women eligibles has been smaller in the
Junior Professional Assistant than in the Junior Civil Service Examiner examination, this may be attributed to the inclusion in the former
of several majors in which there are few women students, such as engineering, forestry, agronomy, and veterinary medicine. Formerly,
separate announcements were issued for each of these examinations,
but they have been included in the Junior Professional Assistant for
economy and ease of administration.
No studies have as yet been made of the results of the Junior Professional Assistant appointments. Dr. Leonard D. White, former
Civil Service Commissioner, has published a very interesting study of
the educational background of those who took the 1934 and 1936
Junior Civil Service Examiner examinations, of the experiences in the
Federal service of those who were appointed from the 1934 register.
In· discussing the opportunities given the women appointees, Dr.
White remarked:
The type of work to which women have been assigned shows no
marked variation from that assigned to men, except in special
instances such as the Bureau of lnvestigation. 1
A similar statement could be made about many types of positions
in the Federal service today, with the obvious exception of such jobs
as laborers and railway mail clerks, for which the physical require-

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Training Opportunities

ments are such as to render them unsuitable to women. In fact, it is
little wonder that, attracted by the prospect of fair and equal opportunity, many ambitious young women are undertaking specific and in
some cases extended preparations equivalent to those made by men
for the same positions, to fit themselves for the services of the Federal,
State, and local governments.
The untrained women of 50 years ago, content perforce with the
routine low-paid work allotted them in the Federal service, would look
with amazement upon the aspirations of the women of today and on
the preparations so many of them are making to fit themselves to
fulfill their ambitions. The fact that it is possible for women now to
hope for recognition by the same standards and with the same rewards
as are given men is the best measure of the long way that women have
come in the Government service since their first humble beginnings.

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Notes
History of Women in the Federal Service
1. Abbott, Edith, Women in industry: A study in American economic history.
New York, D. Appleton Co., 1910.
2. Rev. Stat. 167. See also 13 Stat. 28, Mar. 14, 1864; 13 Stat. 160, June 25,
1864; 14 Stat. 207, July 23, 1866. Rev. Stat. 167 was repealed in 46 Stat. 1028,
Dec. 16, 1930, "An act to repeal obsolete statutes and to improve the United
States Code."
3. H. R. 48, 37th Congress, 3d sess.
4. Rev. Stat., Sec. 165, July 12, 1870.
5. 19 Stat. 169, Aug. 15, 1876. (Italics inserted.)

The Employment of Married Women
1. American Academy of Political and Social Science, The Annals, May 1929,
vol. cxliii, no. 232, p. 325---338.
A later study by Cecile Tipton La Follette, entitled A atudy of the problems of 65/! gainfully emplo1ied
married women homemakers (New York, Columbia University Press, 1934) reached the same conclusion,
showing that 67 percent of these women gave economic necessity as the reason for their working. Other
reasons, such as "Educate children" (32 women) and "Support personal dependents" (179 women) were
economic in character.

2. The Annals, May 1929, p. 183, 352.
3. "Minimum of health and decency" budgets, with their allowances for such
items as recreation, church contributions, and small insurance and savings, should
not be confused with the lower "subsistence" budgets, or the still lower "relief"
budgets.

4. National Education Association, Administrative practises affecting classroom
teachers, Washington, January 1932.
5. U. S. Civil Service Commission, Civil Service Act and rules, statutes, executive
orders, and regulations, amended to June 30, 1936, p. 147.
6. U. S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, Effects of dismissing married
persons from the civil service, March 1936. (Mimeographed.)
7. Commission of Inquiry on Public Service Personnel, Better government personnel, New York, McGraw Hill Co., 1935, p. 72-73.
8. Congressional record, July 8, 1937, p. 8967.

The Present Position of Women in the Federal Service
1. Figures on occupations of women in the Federal service are based on estimates as of December 31, 1938, prepared by the Statistical Division of the U. S.
Civil Service Commission.
2. U. S. Civil Service Commission, 53d annual report for the fiscal year ended
June 30, 1936, p. 30.
3. U. S. Civil Service Commission, 53d annual report, p. 31.
4. U. S. Civil Service Commission, 51st annual report, p. 41.

Training Opportunities for Women Who Wish to Enter
the Federal Service
1. White, Leonard D., Government careers for college graduates, Chicago, Civil
Service Assembly of the United States and Canada, Pamphlet No. 8, June 1937.
50

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Bibliography
The Employment of Women
Books and Pamphlets
American Academy of Political and Social Science. The annals, volume cxliii,
number 292: Women in the modern world. Philadelphia, May 1929.
American Woman's Association. Women workers through the depression: A study
of white collar employment. Lorine Pruette and Iva Lowthers Peters. New
York, MacMillan Co., 1934.
Banning, Margaret Culkin. "Politics and the college woman," in College women
and the social sciences, essays by Herbert Elmer Mills and his former students.
New York, John Day Co., 1934.
Branch, Mary Sidney. Women and wealth: A .study of the economic status of
women. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1934. Esp. Chapter IV,
"Women as gainfully employed workers."
Breckenridge, Sophonisba P. "The activities of women outside the home," in
Recent social trends in the United States, President's Research Committee on
Social Trends, New York, McGraw Hill Co., 1934.
Women in the twentieth century. New York, McGraw Hill Co., 1934.
Foster, Grace R. Social change in relation to curricular development in collegiate
education for women. Waterville, Me., 1934.
Woodhouse, Mrs. Chase Going. After college--1JJhat'I Greensboro, N. C., North
Carolina College for Women, May 1932.

Periodicals
Fortune, July, August, September 1935.

"Women in business."

Government Bulletins
U. S. Department of Labor. Women's Bureau. Washington. Bulletins as
follows:
50. Ejfects of applied research upon the employment opportunities of women.
1926.
104. The occupational progress of women, 1910-1990, by Mary V. Dempsey.
1933.
115. Women at work: A century of industrial change. 1934.
164. Women in industry. 1938.

Gainfully Employed Married Women
Books and Pamphlets
La Follette, Cecile Tipton. A study of the problems of 652 gainfully employed
married women homemakers. New York, Columbia University Press, 1934.
National League of Women Voters. The married woman and her job, by Edith
Valet Cook. Washington, 1936.
Public Affairs Committee. Should married women work? New York, 1940.
51

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Women in the Federal Service

Government Bulletins
U.S. Department of Labor. Women's Bureau. Washington. Bulletin No. 148.
The employed woman 1wmemaker in the United States: Her responsibility for
family support. 1936.
Effects of dismissing married persons from the civil serl!ice. March 1936.
(Mimeographed.)

Women in the Government Service
Books and Pamphlets
Adams, Elizabeth Kemper. Women professional workers: A study made for the
Women's Educational and Industrial Union. New York, Chatauqua Press,
1921.
Institute of Women's Professional Relations. Opportunities in public service.
Connecticut College, New London, Conn., 1940. (Mimeographed.)
Institute for Government Research. The Women's Bureau: Its history, actil!ities,
and organization, by Gustavus A. Weber. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press,
1923.
National League of Women Voters. A survey of women in public office. Washington, revised 1937. (Mimeographed.)
Upshaw, May B.
Woman's place in civil service: Read before the Assembly of
Civil Service Commissions of the United States and Canada. New York,
Federation of Women's Civil Service Organizations, 1919.
Barton, William E. Life of Clara Barton. 2 volumes. New York, Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1922.
Epler, Percy H. Life of Clara Barton. 2 volumes. New York, MacMillan Co.,
1926.

Periodicals
Public Personnel Studies, April, July, August, September, 1930; January, February 1931. Vol. 8, no. 4, 7, 8; vol. 9, no. 1. Saint, Marion Avis. "Women
in the public service."

Government Bulletins
U.S. Department of Labor. Women's Bureau. Washington. Bulletins as follows:
8. Women in the government service, by Bertha M. Neinburg. 1919. (Out
of print.)
53. The status of women in the gol!ernment service in 1925, by Bertha M.
Neinburg. 1926.
86. Activities of the Women's Bureau of the United States. 1931.

Government Personnel and Government Service
Books and Pamphlets
Commission of Inquiry on Public Service Personnel. Better government personnel.
New York, McGraw Hill Co., 1935.
Minutes of evidence. New York, McGraw Hill Co., 1935.
Lambie, Morris Bryan. Training for the public serl!ice. Chicago, Public Administration Service, 1935.

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Bibliography

Meriam, Lewis. Public service and special training. Chicago, University of
Chicago Press, 1936.
National Civil Service Reform League. The civil service in modern government.
New York, 1936.
National League of Women Voters. Trained personnel for public service, by
Katherine A. Frederic. Washington, 1935.
White, Leonard D. Government careers for college graduates. Chicago, Civil
Service Assembly of the United States and Canada, Pamphlet No. 8, June 1937.

Government Bulletins
U. S. Civil Service Commission. Federal employment under the merit system.
Form 2346, Washington, 1940. Opportunities and work of nurses in the
Federal civil service. Form 3524, Washington, 1941.
U. S. Department of the Interior. Office of Education. Guidance leaflets..
Series of 19 pamphlets, numbered 5 to 23, Washington, 1931-36. Included
are pamphlets on law, medicine, art, chemistry and chemical engineering, and
other professions. Figures are given on the number of schools, students,
tuition, maximum and average salaries; opportunities in the Federal service
are listed in several pamphlets.
U. S. Personnel Classification Board. A personnel program for the Federal civil
service, by Herman Feldman. Washington, 1931. (Out of print.)

Official Reports and Records
U.S. Civil Service Commission, Washington.
Annual reports. 1883 to date.
Civil Service Act and rules, statutes, executive orders, and regulations. Revised
annually.
Minutes. 1883 to date.
Official register of the United States. Revised annually.
U. S. Department of Justice. Opinions of the Attorney General. June 24, 1933.
U. S. Post Office Department. Postal rules and regulations. 1936 edition.
Section 157.
U. S. Congress. Congressional record, May 30, 1936, p. 8373. Reprint of radio
speech of Senator Joseph F. Guffey of Pennsylvania on women in the Federal
service.
House Report 48, 37th Congress, 3d session, 1863. Charges against the Commissioner of Patents.
House Report 47, 40th Congress, 2d session, May 14, 1868. Civil service of the
United States: Report of Mr. Jenckes of Rhode Island, from the joint select
committee on retrenchment.

Statistical Data
U. S. Department of Commerce. Bureau of the Census. Occupation statistics.
Fifteenth Census of the U. S., 1930.
Women in gainful occupations, 1870-1920. Monograph IX.

IJ, S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE; 1941

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