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P5W6MEN
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II
WOMEN'S
S

BUREAU

U.S. D E P A R T M E N T

LABOR

WOMEN

WORK

A CENTURY
OF INDUSTRIAL CHANGE

UNITED STATES
DEPARTMENT
OF LABOR
WOMEN'S
BUREAU

U N I T E D STATES
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON : 1933
For ule by tha Sup*rlnt«nti«nt of Docum«nti, Washington, D.C.

Pric* 5 ccnts

This review of women's progress
in American industry has been
written by Eleanor Nelson, of the
division of public information of
the Women's Bureau.

The cover

and illustrations are the work of
Jean W. Hill

CONTENTS
Page

Introduction

The coming of the machine

Low wages for women

Women workers in wartime

The opening of opportunities

Fight for better conditions

Labor legislation

The Negro woman worker . *

The immigrant woman worker

The woman worker today

III

INTRODUCTION
OMEN were at work one hundred years ago. Women
have always worked. But when this century opened
it was within the home that most of them carried on the tasks
of providing food, shelter, and clothing. From dawn to dark,
women spun, wove, and sewed, cooked, and made butter,
cheese, candles, and countless other everyday articles.
Nowadays more than 10 million women in the United States
leave their homes daily to work for pay. Wherever there is
work to be done in our vast industrial system the hands and
brains of women aid in doing it.
To tell the story of the changes that have taken place in
women's work during the past one hundred years is to tell
the story of the industrial expansion of a nation. That women
today are contributing their share to the economic maintenance of themselves or their families is not new. But the fact
that women in increasing numbers have entered factory or
store to work for pay is new. And it is new and characteristic of this century that the individuality of women's work,
once expressed in delicately fashioned quilts, smoothly
woven clothes, and well-baked food, is lost in industry in
the machine labor of making standardized products.
The invention of machines, the growth of a huge industrial
system, the development of a vast frontier land, the duration
of a Civil and a World War—an economic history of two centuries—all these are part of the story of working women.
Running through it all, however, two factors in women's employment have been consistent—an oversupply of women for
the jobs available, and lower wages for women than for men.

THE COMING OF THE MACHINE
NTO a world of gardening and raising sheep in the back
yard, of grinding flour, of weaving cloth in the 1'front
room", the first machines appeared during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Manufacturers with
enough capital to buy machines that were too expensive for
individual workers to own began machine production for
profit. This system was to revolutionize our whole manner
of life.
Many of the earlier machines did work that had always
been done by women at home—spinning, weaving, and sewing. Naturally, manufacturers looking for factory operatives
turned to women. The change from home to factory work
was neither sudden nor complete. While some women were
at work in the early textile mills, in many industries only one
or two jobs were done in factories at first. The rest of
the product was made by the old hand processes at home.

T H E C O M I N G OF T H E

MACHINE

Indeed, women often combined their household duties with
working for pay at home.
As the invention of machines went on, as factories grew in
size and completeness, work became more and more concentrated. Instead of doing part-time work at home with their
own makeshift equipment, women spent the entire day in the
factories for wages.
Though the first women to enter factory employment were
simply following their work from home to shop, this was only
a small factor among the forces that were driving women into
industrial employment.
The factory soon showed that it was able to turn out goods
more rapidly, more cheaply, and more efficiently than they
had ever been produced before. Steam and electricity succeeded water as the source of power. New machines were
invented that took over the production of an ever-increasing
variety of goods, and new products were created. Meanwhile, women turned to factory employment in growing
numbers as it became possible to have a greater variety
of possessions by working for wages than by producing
articles on a handicraft basis.
The factories, located with a view to available power and
future marketing, soon developed communities, and these
attracted other workers in various lines of activity. As
towns grey/ in size, many of the older household occupations became impossible. Sheep could not be raised, dairying could not be carried on; even large vegetable gardens
could not be planted. But in factories there was a growing
demand for labor to turn out increasing quantities of food,
clothing, shoes, soap, and other articles. The housewife
found it cheaper and easier to buy these things from the
stores than to spend many hours making them at home. The
work necessary to carry on household activities decreased.

W O M E N AT W O R K

As a result, many women became surplus labor as far as
their relation to the family was concerned. To these women
factory work offered the means of supporting themselves
and of continuing their contribution to the family income.
The movement was hastened by the fact that men's
wages were not high enough to meet the needs and demands
of the family. To secure a living for the family the earnings
of women were in many cases an actual necessity.
But the place taken by women in factories has been
mainly in the unskilled and lower-paid jobs; the skilled and
better-paid occupations have remained largely the property
of men. As the use of machines has progressed, the dividing
of operations has increased tremendously the number of
unskilled and low-paid jobs, and these have fallen to women
much more than to men.
Although today there are still about 3K times as many
men as women in factories, the women employed there are
over m millions. It is true that more than half of the
women are in two of their traditional industries—textiles
and clothing—but there are few factories in which no
women work. They have made a spectacular advance in
the past 20 years in slaughtering and meat-packing houses,
in automobile factories and the rubber industry, in chemical
plants, and in electrical machinery and supply factories.
The machine has meant still more to women workers.
With mass production of goods, mass distribution is necessary, Goods must be sold to wholesalers and then to
retailers. They must be transported from factory to warehouse, to store. Thus the need of clerical workers and
salespeople has grown. Today, as a result, about as many
women as men are clerical workers. Indeed, more women
do clerical work than are employed in factories, and over
half a million women are working as saleswomen in stores.

T H E C O M I N G OF T H E

MACHINE

Throughout our growth as a great industrial nation
women have played their part. As machine production has
progressed, as railroads have opened up all parts of the
continent, as the low-roofed village with its clustered
houses and shops has been transformed into today's city
with its towering skyscrapers, huge department stores,
tenement dwellings, and factories, women have turned
in increasing numbers to work for wages. In 1870 less
than 15 percent of all women 16 years of age and over were
breadwinners. Today 25.3 percent of such women—1 in
every 4—work for their living. But in too many thousands
of cases, at all times, that living has been pitifully inadequate.

179202°—33 2

LOW WAGES FOR

WOMEN

HE history of women in industry has been darkened by
the low wages they have been paid. In an industrial system
where the profits of the manufacturer depend on low production costs, the temptation has been to pay the lowest
wages for which it is possible to obtain workers. Because
there have been many thousands more women ready and
eager to work than there have been jobs available, the
woman worker has accepted jobs at almost any wage rather
than be unemployed. This competition has been made
keener and her bargaining power has been made weaker
by the fact that the work she has been given to do could be
done equally well by thousands of other untrained women.
Moreover, when woman first went into factories to work
she was still thought of as part of a family group whose main
support came from the men of the household—father, husband, or brother. Her wages were looked upon as extra

LOW WAGES FOR

WOMEN

spending money, not as earnings on which she had to depend
for her support. This idea still prevails with many employers
and has had much to do with keeping women's wages at a
low level.
Whatever excuse there may have been for this idea in the
past, today the wages of most women are as necessary as
the wages of most men. If the woman worker is single,
she is likely to have not only herself but other people to support—aged parents, young sisters or brothers. As sons leave
home more than daughters do, it falls to the daughters to take
over the financial responsibility of the family.
If a married woman is working in a factory, a laundry, or a
restaurant kitchen, one may be pretty sure that her husband
or sons are unemployed, or their wages are too low to properly
shelter, feed, and clothe the family. The earnings of unskilled
laboring men in general are not large enough to support a
family at the American level of health and decency, and the
earnings of skilled laborers are so reduced by unemployment
and part time that they, too, fall below a decent family standard of living.
The married woman has always played an important part
in feeding and clothing the family. In the old days, by caring
for a large household by the old hand methods and raising
children, she not only was kept busy from sunrise to sunset
but she made an indispensable contribution to the economic
life of the family.
Today many women still do some manufacturing within
their homes—canning and preserving, baking, making clothing and house furnishings. But for many others a system that
has taken their work from the home demands that they make
their contribution by working for wages. More and more
married women are being forced into the ranks of wage
earners. In 1890 only 13.9 percent of all women workers were

W O M E N AT W O R K

married, but by 1930 this proportion had risen to 28,9 percent,
though marriage had increased only slightly, in the general
population,
A hundred years ago it was estimated that women's wages
in every branch of business averaged less than ZlVi cents a
day, and at that time a day's work averaged 12 or more hours.
Men's earnings were about four times as much as women's.
As late as 1863 women in New York had weekly wages of only
$2, while their hours ranged from 11 to 16 a day. In 1932 the
best available State figures, those of New York and Illinois,
showed women's average weekly earnings in manufacturing
to be $13.75 and $12.15, respectively. The National Industrial Conference Board gives an even lower estimate of the
average weekly wage of women throughout the country—
$11.72.
Naturally, the course of women's wages fluctuates, rising
in times of prosperity and falling in times of depression.
Figures show that the actual money wages of women have
risen as the century has progressed, but the cost of living has
done the same thing. Some idea of what the wages of today
mean in the lives of working women may be had by comparing the New York average wage of $13.75 with the estimate
of the lowest amount at which a girl in New York City could
get board and lodging only. This estimate was made by the
State Department of Labor and was based on the barest and
most meager standards. Adjusted to the 1932 cost-of-living
figures, the amount required for board and lodging would be
$11.63, leaving the average working girl in New York the pitifully small sum of $2.12 a week for clothing, carfare, laundry,
recreation, and all other expenses. Other figures have shown
conclusively that throughout the Nation hundreds of thousands of working women are paid far below what it costs to
live decently and happily.

L O W W A G E S FOR

WOMEN

Women's wages lag far behind those of men. For the years
from 1922 to 1932 figures from the United States Bureau
of Labor Statistics show that women's average earnings
in 9 important woman-employing industries were only from
45 to 84 percent as much as men's. In over three fourths
of the cases women's earnings were less than 70 percent of
men's.
In New York women's wages in manufacturing were only
54 percent of men's in 1932; in Illinois they were only 58
percent. Although the difference between men's and women's wages is largely due to women's work being unskilled,
even when they work at the same jobs women as a rule
receive less pay than men.
That there are many thousands more women anxious to
work than there are jobs open for them to fill has been an
important factor in keeping women's wages down. When the
factory gate shows crowds of women seeking work, those
employed are forced by competition to accept low wages.
The exploitation of women who have done industrial home
work has been especially appalling. In squalid tenement
homes that are badly heated and lighted, women driven by
family need, and having little or no industrial experience,
make or finish garments, string tags, card buttons, hooks
and eyes, or safety pins, make garters, knit or embroider,
and work on cheap jewelry, lamp shades, flowers, powder
puffs, paper boxes and bags, carpet rags, and toys for distressingly low wages. While 14 States have laws that limit
the evils of industrial home work, the practice has increased
with the general breaking down of employment standards in
the recent years of depression. More and more employers,
unable or unwilling to meet the overhead expenses necessary
in operating a factory, are giving the work out to be done in
homes at shockingly low wages.

W O M E N AT W O R K

To the hardships of the industrial home worker have been
added the hardships of the girls and women who work in the
sweatshops of our clothing trades. These shops, frequently
working on contract for larger firms and competing unfairly
with the many employers who treat their workers justly,
evade labor laws or "run away" to small communities where
regulations are less strict or do not exist. The $2.98, $3.98,
and $4.98 dresses that fill store windows today are due to the
fact that poverty is forcing large numbers of girls to work for
inhumanly long hours and at starvation wages rather than
have no work at all.
The terrible consequences of hundreds of thousands of
women struggling along on wages that are too low to support
them in health or even decency cannot be disputed. The
privation and suffering endured by them and their dependents are serious enough, but other grave consequences follow.
It is impossible for men to obtain high wages for work that
can be done more cheaply by women, and because they are
competitors in the labor market women's low wages tend to
drag down those of men. As industry becomes more and
more machine tending, and skilled jobs become fewer, the
wage level of the mass of workers is likely to adjust itself to
the low level set for women.
Low wages, moreover, are disastrous to the industrial system itself. As long as the workers, who largely make up the
buying power of the Nation, are not paid sufficient wages to
buy back the goods they produce, our industrial system based
on production for profit cannot operate successfully.

W O M E N W O R K E R S IN W A R

TIME

HE entrance of women into wage-earning occupations
was tremendously speeded up by the Civil War and the
World War. With the departure of men for the front, women
moved into their places in factories and offices. The Nation's
work and the new industries created by the war had to be
carried on, and women were given the chance to enter trades
and occupations never before open to them.
Of the role that women played during the World War we
have a dramatic picture. The war itself wrenched the whole
industrial machine. In the quick shift from peace to war
status women as well as men were rapidly absorbed by the
iron and steel mills, metal factories and foundries; they were
practically drafted to make munitions and other war supplies.
Aerial warfare created a new industry in which women were
indispensable, and it expanded the industries that made the
materials necessary for aircraft manufacture.

W O M E N AT W O R K

Meanwhile the army of 4,000,000 men had to be fed and
clothed, and in addition the Nation's industries had to continue to supply the needs of the people at home.
In the war-time crisis women's industrial employment took
two new and definite paths: First, into the war-munitions
industries, where high wages were being paid and where a
greater degree of skill was required, went large numbers of
women already trained in industry; throughout the war
employers testified to the greater value of the women already
experienced. Second, as the drafts took more men to the
front, another class of women went into the old womanemploying manufactures, of these, many had previously been
at work in agriculture, in domestic or personal service, or had
never before worked for pay.
As a special emergency measure, under the war-labor
administration in Washington, there was set up in 1918 a
Woman in Industry Service, whose duty it was to set standards for the employment of women in war work. Such an
agency had long been the desire of progressive people interested in women workers, but not until the war focused th6
attention of the public on the importance of women's work
was it achieved.
The labor shortage created by the war gave more women
than ever before in the history of the country the opportunity
to enter factory work. By throwing open to them the iron and
steel mills, sheet-metal plants, chemical and lumber mills,
automobile and electrical-supply factories, it broadened their
industrial horizon.
Many of these war jobs for women, it is true, were of a
monotonous, unskilled type, such as tending automatic machines, or turning out, assembling, or inspecting duplicated
parts, hundreds of thousands a day, at great speed. But the
shortage of labor also cleared their way to many of the skilled

WOMEN WORKERS

IN W A R

TIME

occupations and key positions in industry. In the iron and
steel mills and other metal industries, for example, it opened
to them the machine shop and the tool room. In other industries, too, women were given work requiring judgment, skill,
and precision.
Moreover, the experience of women even in the war-supply
industries was to be of peace-time value to them. For in factories making shells, guns, and other munitions women were
handling the same kinds of machines and tools as were used
by the women who made automobiles, motorcycles, electrical
apparatus, and agricultural implements. In the furniture and
veneer factories the same kind of work went into peace
products as went into airplane parts, munition and tool boxes,
or wheels for artillery trucks.
The war-time increase among women workers was not
limited to the factories. Thousands more women than ever
before became nurses, both at home and overseas. From
1910 to 1920 women school teachers increased in numbers
by one third. The number of women telegraph operators
doubled. The entrance of women into office work as stenographers and typists, clerks, and bookkeepers and cashiers
was spectacular, their numbers increasing by over 800,000.
With the surge of women into the newer occupations during
the war period came a large decrease in two of their old lines
of work—agriculture and domestic and personal service.
Would women remain as workers when the war ended?
Many people thought this question would be answered by
the return of women to their homes or their old occupations.
And large numbers must have returned to their old occupations. But today we know that there are 2% million more
women at work than in 1920, immediately after the war.
While some of the most dramatic features of women's war
work have disappeared, the field of their employment has
179202°—33 3

W O M E N AT W O R K

been permanently and widely expanded. The woman streetcar conductor has practically vanished. Women in overalls
turning out shells and guns are, happily, a thing of the past,
but from 1920 to 1930 the number of women operatives in
plants making electrical machinery, apparatus,and supplies
increased by 18,000, the number in plants making chemicals
and allied products by 9,700, and the number in automobile
factories by more than 6,000.
The war proved that women could do work that no one had
ever believed they could do. But it did more. Their substitution for men in carrying through a national emergency broke
down many prejudices against their working and changed
ideas as to the types of work they should do. What women
could do properly and do well in war time became easier
for them to do in a time of peace.
Among the permanent war-time gains made by women
workers is the Women's Bureau of the United States Department of Labor, which grew out of the Woman in Industry
Service of the war labor administration. The function of the
Women's Bureau is to "formulate standards and policies
which shall promote the welfare of wage-earning women,
improve their working conditions, increase their efficiency,
and advance their opportunities for profitable employment."
The Bureau investigates and reports to the Department all
matters relating to the employment of women in industry.
It is a fact-finding agency whose duty it is to study the
problems and conditions of women workers, to decide by
scientific research and investigation the best standards for
their employment, and to make public its findings and conclusions. During the 15 years since the war the Bureau has
published 110 bulletins. These are used by students, economists, legislators, labor unions, and employers as a guide
in obtaining better standards of employment for women.

T H E O P E N I N G OF

OPPORTUNITIES

HE change from hand to machine manufacture not only
revolutionized woman's economic place in society but
made profound changes in her social status. Many customs
and prejudices were based on the fact that, in the old days,
women's work was that of providing food, shelter, and clothing for the family within the home. Social standards for the
behavior of women in regard to work were limited to the
household duties of wife and mother. For these duties education was not considered necessary, and a century ago only a
single college, Oberlin, opened its doors to women. Affairs
outside their homes were not considered the concern of
women. They were not allowed to vote and could take no
part in legislative matters.
Against this social code came the impact of the machine. As
soon as women entered factory employment their social horizon was immeasurably broadened. Now they must work long

W O M E N AT W O R K

hours and under conditions over which they had no control.
If these were too long or arduous, their only remedy lay in
organizing for collective bargaining and strikes, or in attemptingtogain corrective labor legislation. But both these courses
involved meetings, speaking on platforms and parading—activities that were not only unusual but absolutely scandalous
for women of their day.
Meanwhile, as the wage-earning woman became an accepted part of our industrial life, it was natural that the more
intelligent and ambitious women should turn toward the professions and the opportunities of education. Many of these
women were not wage earners but had been freed by machine
production from long hours of work within the home, and
with more leisure were becoming actively interested in the
events of the day.
But even here tradition and prejudice stood in women's
way—insisting that women's place was the home, and not the
lecture platform, the streets, in public life, in college, or competing with men.
During the century women have carried on a struggle to
break down these prejudices. The scenes and issues of the
feminist movement have varied, but the driving force behind
the movement has been unaltered. It has been an effort on
the part of women to adjust public opinion to their changed
economic status; an effortto share equal opportunities with men
in making a contribution to society outside the home, whether
in industry, in the professions, or in public life. Though
aided in their fight by the economic forces that were driving
them, and by social changes that did much to break down old
traditions, the gains that women have made have been the result of hard-won battles against hostileandbitterpublicopinion.
The struggle began simply with an attempt to organize, hold
meetings, and speak on the lecture platform for whatever

T H E O P E N I N G OF

OPPORTUNITIES

cause they were interested in. But that women should speak
or appear on a platform, whether to improve working conditions, to protest against slavery, or to fight for temperance
was a cause of extreme public indignation. In 1837 Independence Hall was set on fire while Angelina Grimke was
speaking, the mob incensed partly because a woman was
speaking and partly because she spoke against slavery. Persisting in the face of this hostile public opinion, the early
women speakers were shamed and ridiculed not only by men
but by their sisters.
But the fight of women went on, soon centering around the
struggle to obtain the vote, since this would help in the adjusting of other wrongs. The first public meeting to discuss the
political rights of women was held in Seneca Falls, N.Y., in
1848, but the suffrage fight began in earnest with the forming
of the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869, which
elected Elizabeth Cady Stanton as president and Susan B.
Anthony as chairman of the executive committee. In 1878
the first suffrage amendment was introduced into the United
States House of Representatives and its wording was never
changed from that time until it was passed and made into a
law that enfranchised women in 1920. The closing scenes
of the fight for suffrage were dramatic. Mass meetings were
held throughout the country, accompanied by spectacular
street parades and outdoor speeches. A pilgrimage was
made to Washington, and women suffragists picketing with
banners in the Nation's capital were arrested and carried off
in the "Black Maria" to the police station.
But the success of the feminist movement can be measured in more terms than the obtaining of the vote, important
as was that step. It can be measured in the opening of educational opportunities to women and in their occupational
advancement.

W O M E N AT W O R K

When Oberlin College was established in 1833 on a coeducational plan it was the first school in the world to offer a
college education to women. In 1848 Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell graduated in medicine at Geneva, N.Y., the first woman
physician in the world. During her three years of study there
the women at her boarding house refused to speak to her, and
meeting her on the streets drew aside their skirts in contempt.
Today many women's colleges of the highest standing
have been established. State universities and law and medical schools have opened their doors to women. During the
decade 1920 to 1930 the number of professional women
increased by 48 percent, until today they comprise more than
1,400,000, only 50,000 short of the number of professional
men. Three fifths of these women are school teachers and
another fifth are trained nurses, the latter an occupation
entered by many women in the World War. But the numbers
of women college presidents and professors, librarians;
authors, editors, and reporters; and lawyers, judges,and justices—professions more recently opened to women—practically doubled during the past 10 years and represent real
occupational gains for women.
Nowhere perhaps has the advancement of women been
better shown than in the service of the United States Government. Here the only woman employed before the Civil War
was Clara Barton, who in the late fifties worked in the Patent
Office. She was dismissed because of her outspokenness in
denouncing slavery, and for some years there was no woman
in the Federal employ. Then in 1862 the barred door was
opened just wide enough to admit one woman. The Secretary of the Treasury of that period, Francis E. Spinner,
appointed Jennie Douglas to cut and trim paper currency,
work done by hand and until then entirely by men. Secretary Spinner remarked that Miss Douglas' first day's work

T H E O P E N I N G OF

OPPORTUNITIES

"settled the matter in her behalf and in woman's favor."
Shortly after, women were introduced into the dead-letter
office of the Postal Service, where they opened and returned
letters, soon doubling men's output. But many years passed
and much legislation had to be enacted sanctioning women's
employment, and not until 1919 was it made compulsory that
all competitive examinations should be open to women and
men alike. From then on women became a really important
factor in the Government service.
Today men still outnumber women on Uncle Sam's pay roll,
and prejudice still stands in the way of appointments and promotions being made solely on the basis of fitness for the job.
However, in December of 1932 an Executive order of President Hoover stipulated that appointing officers may no longer
specify either sex as preferred, and that appointments must go
to the persons highest on the register unless the work actually
is unsuited to their sex.
In June 1932 less than 88,000 women, in contrast to 492,000
men, were on the Federal pay roll. Stenographers and clerks
made up the great majority of these women, but many held
professional and scientific positions, such as librarian, scientist, economist, business or medical specialist, and legal
assistant, and many others held important administrative and
executive positions.
The change in public attitude toward women's abilities is
reflected in the number of women in public life today. With
the appointment of Frances Perkins as Secretary of Labor,
for the first time in history a woman is serving as a member
of the Cabinet; and with Ruth Bryan Owen as minister to
Denmark, for the first time a woman is representing the
United States at a foreign court. Another historic landmark
was passed in November 1932, when Hattie Caraway was
elected to the United States Senate by the State of Arkansas.

W O M E N AT W O R K

While woman today still has far from an equal footing with
man, whether in industry, in the professions, or in government, intelligent and well-directed effort has advanced her a
long way toward her goal of standing side by side with him in
making the laws and doing the work of the new economic
order in which she, as well as he, must work and live.

F I G H T FOR B E T T E R

CONDITIONS

H R O U G H O U T our industrial history low wages and long
hours have been used too frequently by employers in their
efforts to increase profits. For this reason workers have been
forced into labor unions to protect themselves. United by
their mutual desire to improve their laboring conditions,
workers in a trade or industry have joined together in organizations, and through collective bargaining and the strike have
fought for higher wages, shorter hours, and better working
conditions.
Women early became active in the labor movement. In
1825 the tailoresses of New York formed a union, but the
first strike of women occurred in 1828, at Dover, N.H., where
three or four hundred women marched out in protest against
certain obnoxious regulations. Throughout the thirties there
were strikes of tailoresses, seamstresses, cotton-mill workers,
and other groups, in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts,

179202°—33-

W O M E N AT W O R K

and elsewhere. The most dramatic of these early strikes was
that of the Lowell cotton-mill women in 1834, when at the
signal of a waved poke bonnet they marched out 2,000 strong
in protest against a wage cut of from 12 to 25 percent. On
the second day of the strike they issued a proclamation
closing with these elaborate lines:
Let oppression shrug her shoulders,
And a haughty tyrant frown,
And little upstart Ignorance
In mockery look down.
Yet I value not the feeble threats
Of Tories in disguise,
While the flag of Independence
O'er our noble Nation flies.

During the forties and fifties, women's organization was
most effective in labor-reform associations of Lowell, Manchester, Dover, Fall River, New York, and Philadelphia.
Although somewhat humanitarian in spirit and laying special
stress on educational activities, these associations, composed
chiefly of textile-mill girls, included capmakers, shoemakers,
tailoresses, and seamstresses. Through strikes they were
able to raise wages and shorten the workday, and successful
agitation was carried on for protective legislation. Outstanding here was the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association,
which under the leadership of Sarah Bagley secured the signatures of thousands of factory operatives, petitioning the
legislature for a 10-hour day. In the first Government labor
investigation in this country it sent delegates to urge the
question before a legislative committee in the statehouse at
Boston in 1845.
The main strength of unionism among women during the
next 20 years was in local unions of the various trades.
Laundresses, capmakers, printers, burnishers, textile work-

F I G H T FOR B E T T E R

CONDITIONS

ers, umbrella sewers, seamstresses, tailoresses, shoe workers,
and cigar makers were so organized. I n 1869 women boasted
their first national organization—the Daughters of St. Crispin, a union of women shoe workers comprising two or three
dozen local lodges scattered across the country from Maine
to California.
Not until the organization of the Knights of Labor, however,
which dominated the trade-union scene through the eighties
and nineties, was any real effort made to encourage the organization of women on an equal footing and with equal power
with men. By then the necessity of organizing women
workers had come to be recognized by men unionists. With
division of labor, women who traditionally worked for low
wages were coming into industry in growing numbers. Men
unionists were forced to realize that as long as manufacturers
could turn to a cheap supply of women laborers, who could be
used to displace them or to break strikes, their own security
was threatened. Even more complicating was the fact that
recent invaders were their own wives, sisters, and daughters.
Clearly, an injury to one was the concern of all. In the preamble to its constitution, adopted in January 1878, one of the
principal objects of the Knights was stated to be, ' T o secure
for both sexes equal pay for equal work." It was not until
1881 that women definitely were admitted to the union. By
1886 the number of women members was estimated as about
50,000, but from then on a steady decline occurred.
Since the disruption of the Knights of Labor about 1890 the
history of women in trade unions in the United States has
been largely the history of women in the various national
organizations or local unions affiliated with the American
Federation of Labor. This body early put itself on record as
recognizing the advisability—in fact, the necessity—of organizing women, and in 1890 the first woman delegate was

W O M E N AT W O R K

sent to the national convention of the Federation from the
clerks' union in Findlay, Ohio.
Active work in organizing women has been done by the
National Women's Trade Union League, which came into
existence in 1903. Patterned on the Women's Trade Union
League of Great Britain, its purpose has been to unite in one
national organization working women, whether already in
unions or not, together with sympathizers of the movement
outside the actual labor ranks.
The first large strike in which the league took part was that
of the Ladies Waist Makers Union in New York City in 1909,
involving 30,000 or more women. From every waist-making
factory in New York and Brooklyn girls poured forth, until 75
percent of all workers in the trade had answered the call.
During the first 2 weeks from 1,000 to 1,500 women a day
joined the strikers. Since that time, the National Women's
Trade Union League has sent in organizers wherever it believed them necessary and could do so, the last major effort
being in the recent textile strikes in the South.
Besides taking part in specific labor struggles, the league,
because its membership has included many influential
women outside the actual labor ranks, has been able to publicize trade-union fights and to draw on the active support and
cooperation of women's organizations. When organization
has seemed too slow to free women from intolerable working
conditions, the league has fought for legislation for their
protection. It has aided much in bringing to women workers
the realization that the suffrage movement was part of their
struggle and that in the vote they had a valuable tool with
which to better their condition.
Outstanding accomplishments of the league outside the
field of organizing have been the following: To ask for the
Federal inquiry, authorized by Congress in 1907, into the con-

F I G H T FOR BETTER

CONDITIONS

dition of woman and child wage earners; to lead in the
endeavor to establish within the Department of Labor a
women's division under a woman chief; to urge the importance of declaring standards for women's work in wartime; to
send two of its members to the Peace Conference at Versailles
to present its reconstruction program; backed by the working
women of Great Britain and France, to call the first International Congress of Working Women; and to support strongly
the movement for workers' education and training.
In spite of a definite attempt to include women in the labor
movement, their organization has been slow. Today no complete figures exist for the number of women in unions. Probably the most complete figures are those for 1920, at which
time only 6.6 percent of all wage-earning women outside of
agriculture were said to be organized. Only in the manufacturing industries had the organization of women assumed any
substantial proportions (18.3 percent). The clothing industries were most highly organized, with 46 percent of all organized women, and unions of the shoe, textile, and electrical
workers were strong, as were the railway clerks, these comprising 35 percent of the total.
There are many reasons for the poor degree of organization
attained by women. In the first place, women are concentrated in'the greatest proportions in those occupational divisions that are notoriously badly organized even among m e n —
domestic and personal service, clerical occupations, professional service, and trade. Moreover, women play practically
no part in mining and building, two strongholds of unionism
among men.
In industry women are largely engaged in unskilled occupations that are difficult to organize because in cases of strike
or lockout manufacturers can turn to thousands of other
workers equally capable of doing the work.

W O M E N AT W O R K

The psychology of the working woman herself has been one
of the major factors in making organization difficult. Until
fairly recently, women have not generally recognized themselves as permanent industrial workers, and they have borne
many hardships in industry in the expectation that some day
they would marry and leave the ranks of working women.
But while it is true that the working lives of women will always
be interrupted by child-bearing, it has become increasingly
clear that women, whether married or single, are a permanent
part of our industrial machinery.

LABOR

LEGISLATION

HILE in the past men have improved their status in the
industrial world largely by means of union organization
and have preferred this method, women, who have been unable to achieve strong unions, have turned to legislation as a
method of protection from long hours, low wages, and bad
working conditions.

In this fight for protective legislation many groups have
taken part. Women's unions have been backed by the entire
organized labor movement. Men trade-unionists have favored shorter hours for women by legislation, in some instances to obtain them for themselves, and, in general, to
standardize the shorter hours that the more strongly organized trades have secured by bargaining. The Women's Trade
Union League has strongly urged the passage of labor legislation for women and has secured the backing of women's
organizations throughout the country. Social, civic, philan-

W O M E N AT W O R K

thropic, and church groups, realizing the social evil of low
wages and long hours for women, have backed the passage of
such laws. Factory inspectors, State departments of labor,
governors, and special legislative committees or commissions
for the study of labor conditions, from their familiarity with
the hardships and problems of women workers, have urged
that their work conditions be regulated by law.
The movement has been greatly aided by the fact that many
pioneer and progressive employers, by running their plants
shorter hours than those allowed by law, by paying higher
wages than those paid by their competitors, and by maintaining high standards of safety and sanitation, have proved that
with proper management these steps are profitable rather
than a handicap to industry.
In general, special labor laws for women have dealt with
hours of work, night work, seating, minimum wage, and the
regulation—in some cases the prohibition—of women's work
in certain occupations or industries.
The first hour law was passed by New Hampshire in 1847.
it applied to both sexes, but it originated with factory girls
who were in sympathy with women on strike in Pittsburgh
against an attempted increase in their working hours. The
first hour law applying to women only was passed in Ohio in
1852, but it was repealed in 1879. Neither of these laws was
enforceable, but, once started, the movement gained momentum. The first enforceable hour law for women was passed by
Massachusetts in 1879. Today only five States—Alabama,
Florida, Indiana, Iowa, and West Virginia—have placed no
limits on the daily or weekly hours that women may work.
In 20 States workdays as long as 10 to 12 hours still are
permitted by law for women workers in one or more industries. But in 11 States the legal workday for women has been
shortened to 8 hours. In 34 States there are no laws specifi-

LABOR

LEGISLATION

cally applying to women that limit the number of consecutive
days that may be worked, and the laws in 36 States do not
require that the working period be broken by time off for
meals or rest.
The number of industries or occupations covered in the
laws varies greatly among the 43 States where they have been
enacted. In some cases they are so limited as to affect only
a small part of the wage-earning women. In others they are
wide in scope, bringing thousands of women under their protection. Women workers in manufacturing and mechanical
industries and mercantile establishments are the groups most
commonly covered by the law. Women in the professions, in
agriculture, and in private domestic service have rarely been
included.
In 32 States and the District of Columbia women still are
allowed to work at night, but 16 States have prohibited night
work for women—in certain occupations at least. The hours
from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. are those in which night work is most
commonly prohibited.
The first prohibitory legislation for women dates from 1872,
when Illinois forbade women to work in any mine. Today 26
States have regulated or prohibited women's employment in
one or more industries or occupations. The most common
prohibition is mining as an occupation for women, which
exists in 17 States. In 5 States women are not allowed to lift
or carry heavy weights. In 5 States regulation of the work of
women in core rooms has been set up. Six States have laws
prohibiting the employment of women for various periods
immediately before and after childbirth.
Forty-seven Statesand the District of Columbia haveenacted
laws requiringseatingaccommodationsforwomen workers.
Home-work legislation, which affects women much more
than men, dates from 1855, when New York sought to end

W O M E N AT W O R K

the sweating or tenement-workshop system by prohibiting the
manufacture of cigars and other tobacco products in tenement
houses in large cities. This law was declared unconstitutional. Later efforts were directed toward regulation and the
imposing of minor restrictions through a licensing system.
Today 14 States have laws either regulating home work by
requiring cleanliness, adequate lighting and ventilation, and
freedom from infectious or contagious disease, or prohibiting
it entirely.
The purpose of the minimum-wage movement in the United
States during the past 20 years has been to secure for women
workers by law a wage that will at least insure for them the
essentials of living. In the past the course of minimum-wage
legislation has been stormy.
Following the Federal investigation into the condition of
woman and child wage earners, Massachusetts in 1912 pioneered in enacting a minimum-wage law. Once started, the
movement gained momentum, and within 11 years as many
as 14 States and the District of Columbia had followed suit
and enacted such legislation.
In 1923, however, a serious barrier was placed in the path of
the minimum-wage movement: The United States Supreme
Court declared the District of Columbia law unconstitutional
in its application to adult women. The court held that the law
violated the constitutional right "to contract about one's
affairs." Although many students of the subject have agreed
with the opinion of the three dissenting justices that the law
came well within the police powers of the State, the fact that
the highest tribunal in the country found the law unconstitutional seriously crippled for some time efforts for further
legislation.
As a direct result of the District of Columbia decision, five
States declared their laws unconstitutional. In 1931 only

LABOR

LEGISLATION

eight States—California, Colorado, Massachusetts, North
Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington, and Wisconsin—had minimum-wage laws for women on their statute
books.
The success of these laws in maintaining wage levels varies
greatly, from Colorado where the law has never functioned,
to California which has been the most progressive in establishing and enforcing wage rates. The Massachusetts law is
not mandatory; the names of firms violating the law are made
public and enforcement is entirely dependent on public
opinion.
With the deep depression of the past three years, minimumwage legislation has again become a matter of vital public
concern. Employers competing for a diminishing market have
been forced to cut wages as a means of reducing their production costs. Low-paid home work and sweatshop work have
increased.
Driven by a recognition of the undesirable social and economic consequences of wages at starvation levels, several
States within the past year have turned to minimum-wage
legislation. In Connecticut, Illinois, New York, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, and Utah minimum-wage bills have
been enacted. Today every indication points to a renewed and
vigorous effort to maintain by law a living wage for women
workers.
But the effort to prevent the devastating effects of wage
slashing and sweatshop employment in the lives of workers
has gone beyond the passage of minimum-wage legislation
for women. On June 16 President Roosevelt signed the
National Industrial Recovery Bill—perhaps the most significant piece of labor legislation in the history of our country.
Although a temporary and emergency measure, born of the
depression, this act puts into the hands of the Federal Govern-

W O M E N AT W O R K

ment for 2 years the power to maintain, on a Nation-wide
scale, hour and wage standards for the vast majority of
workers, both men and women.
In its broad outlines the act declares that each industry,
through its trade associations or otherwise, shall establish a
"code of fair competition." In this code minimum wage
and maximum hours and production schedules may be
fixed and standards set for trade practices. The code then
is to be submitted to the President for his approval, and
when approved it becomes enforceable by law, with penalties
for its violation. If any industry fails to adopt a code satisfactory to the President, he may establish a code for it, and if
necessary he may require plants to secure a license to operate.
The act expressly guards the right of labor to organize and
bargain collectively and prohibits yellow-dog contracts and
compulsory company union membership. By setting standards on a Nation-wide scale, employers are freed for the
first time from the undercutting of competitors in States
with labor laws less advanced than their own.

THE NEGRO WOMAN

WORKER

HILE women workers in general have been restricted
by lack of opportunities for employment, by long hours,
low wages, and harmful working conditions, there are
groups—the latest comers into industry—upon whom these
hardships have fallen with doubled severity. As the members of a new and inexperienced race arrive at the doors of
industry the jobs that open up to them ordinarily are those
vacated by an earlier stratum of workers who move on to
more highly paid occupations. Negro women constitute such
a new and inexperienced group among women workers.
Added to the fact that they came late into the job market,
they have borne the handicap of race discrimination. Slavery
placed a stigma on their capabilities and they were considered
unfit for factory or skilled work. White men and women,
partly because of this and partly because they resented
the competition of cheap Negro labor, were unwilling to be

W O M E N AT W O R K

engaged on the same work processes with them. To the Negro
woman have fallen the more menial, the lower paid, the
heavier and more hazardous jobs. Her story has been one of
meeting, enduring, and in part overcoming these difficulties.
Previous to the Civil War few Negroes were employed in
manufacturing and mechanical pursuits. As slaves in the
South, where more than nine tenths of the Negro population
of the United States was to be found, they had worked on
plantations—raising cotton, tobacco, sugar, rice, and hemp;
or had done the household service of maids, cooks, washerwomen, and seamstresses. Some Negroes had gained industrial experience as slave labor in cotton, tobacco, and
bagging factories, in iron furnaces and charcoal plants, but
their numbers were small, as the industrial development of
the South was almost negligible at that time.
With the close of the Civil War and the freeing of the slaves,
the majority settled down as farmers or share-croppers.
Others turned to domestic and personal service. Both these
types of work they had done formerly as slaves.
White men and women were entering industry in increasing numbers, and because of their priority and because of
race consciousness, factory opportunities were restricted to
the whites. Thus, manufacturing was closed to Negro women,
whose employment was almost entirely limited to farm work
and domestic and personal service—a condition that continued down through the years. As late as 1910, 95 percent
of all Negro women workers were in these occupations. Up
to the time of the World War the only manufacturing industry
to employ any large number of Negro women was the making
of cigars and cigarettes.
With the shortage of labor created by the World War, the
opportunity came for Negro women to join the growing army
of American women in industry. They entered in large

THE NEGRO WOMAN

WORKER

numbers those occupations that white women were leaving as
new opportunities opened. In other cases Negro women filled
the places of men who had gone to the front. The greatest
gains were made in textile and clothing factories, the food
industries, tobacco factories, and wood-products manufacture. The war industries, too, recruited Negro women in the
making of shells, gas masks, and parts of airplanes. The
census of 1920, taken immediately after the war period,
showed that Negro women in the manufacturing and mechanical industries had increased by over one half. In the
professions (as teachers), in office work, and as salesgirls,
Negro women also found new work opportunities during
the war.
With the return of men from the front and the end of the
labor shortage, many of these gains were lost. According to
the census of 1930, however, Negro women have increased
their war gains in trade, professional service, and clerical
occupations. While small numerically, these large proportional increases represent real achievement in the occupational progress of Negro women. That they are finding a
place in the growing laundry business is shown by the fact
that about 30 percent of the women laundry operatives are
Negroes.
The wages of Negro women workers have been on even
lower levels than those of white women. A study of Negro
women in 15 States, published by the Women's Bureau in
1929, shows that in only 2 of 11 States was the median of the
week's earnings—that is, one half of the women receiving
more and one half receiving less—as high as $9. In 4 of these
States the median of the earnings was below the pitifully
small sum of $6.
Scattered wage figures of a more recent date are found in
Women's Bureau studies of women in slaughtering and meat

W O M E N AT W O R K

packing and in the cigar and cigarette industries. In the first,
the wages of Negro women compare favorably with those of
white women, but in the second the median earnings of Negro
women, most of whom stripped the leaf, were $10.10 in cigars
and $8 in cigarettes. For white women, most of whom were
makers and packers, the corresponding medians were $16.30
and $17.05.
In the fight to improve their working conditions through
organization, Negro women workers have met with even
greater failure than have women workers as a whole. To an
even greater extent than all women workers, they are concentrated in the unorganizable and unskilled occupations,
and few unions have made any attempt to include them as
organized workers,
In the garment trades the influx of women workers began
in Chicago in 1917 when Negro girls were brought in as strike
breakers, and some 500 remained in the trade when the
strike was finally broken. Negro women were also used as
strike breakers in New York and in Philadelphia, as well as in
the less important garment centers. On entering the needle
trades the overwhelming majority of the Negro women
worked at the unskilled jobs. But in spite of this, both the
International Ladies Garment Workers and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers have made every effort to include
them in the unions. However, none of the unions that are
open to Negroes have made much progress in organizing
Negro women workers.
Today almost 2,000,000 Negro women are wage earners.
Their employment is so general that 39 are at work in every
100 who are as much as 10 years old. This is practically
double the percentage of white women. Nine tenths of the
employed Negro women are in agriculture or domestic and
personal service. The majority of the others are in the manu-

THE NEGRO WOMAN

WORKER

facturing and mechanical industries. The industrial depression that has devastated the lives of millions of workers has
fallen with particular severity on the Negro workers. Although not giving figures by sex, a recent study made by the
National Urban League has shown that the proportion of
Negroes is much greater among the unemployed than among
the employed. One result of the depression, according to reports from various cities, is that Negro waitresses and other
domestics are being displaced by white workers. Not only
has the Negro worker taken the ragged edges of employment in times of prosperity, but in times of depression her
unemployment is the most acute.

THE I M M I G R A N T WOMAN

WORKER

HE immigrant woman at Ellis Island, looking beyond the
Statue of Liberty to America—the land of promise—has become an epic figure. During the past century many thousands
of workers yearly havecometothe United States. Thetideof immigration has been full in times of prosperity "and has ebbed in
times of depression or war, butthroughout the century the work
of the immigrant has gone into the building of our national life.
Always the numbers of women immigrants have been appreciably smallerthan the numbers of men, but much immigration
has been by families. Then, too, women left in the old country
have joined their families or friends after these have settled
and found work in the United States. Today, of our nearly 11
million women workers, a million and aquarterareforeign born.
The history of immigration in this country divides itself into
two definite periods, popularly called that of the " o l d " and
that of the " n e w " immigration.

THE I M M I G R A N T WOMAN

WORKER

Until 1896 the majority of the immigrants were from northern and western Europe—chiefly the United Kingdom, Germany, Scandinavia, and Switzerland. Dissatisfied with economic, religious, or political conditions at home, these people
turned to America as a place of opportunity. Here in the West
land could be had free and in the industries of the growing
cities there was a demand for foreign labor
In 1896 the new immigration from southern and eastern
Europe overtook and passed the old. In 1910 the new constituted 70 percent (practically 71) and the old—that had been
well over 90 percent of the total—now was less than 20
percent.
The adjustment of the earlier immigrants was not difficult.
Largely from rural communities in Europe, the majority
turned to farming in the United States, settling in colonies
and living much as they had done in Europe. Many of them
speaking English, and the others the more familiar of the
continental languages, they were culturally closely allied to
the American people and easily assimilated.
As the United States changed from a country characterized
by a simple rural environment to a .complex industrial and
urban society, fewer advantages were offered the immigrant
workers. There was no longer a great frontier to be reached
by the construction of railways, canals, and highways, and
offering free or cheap lands. The factory smokestacks of our
great industrial cities were beginning to blacken the skies,
and into the foundries, the factories, the sweatshops, and
mines went the immigrant workers.
The northern and western Europeans, in whose countries
opportunities had become almost as favorable as those in the
United States, were less tempted to emigrate. But from
southern and eastern Europe, chiefly Italy, Austria-Hungary,
and Russia, came the unsuccessful and the oppressed, to

W O M E N AT W O R K

whom America offered a "way out." These more recent
arrivals were largely unskilled peasants with a rural social
heritage. From the outset their adjustment to a complex
urban environment was filled with hardship and difficulties.
At first our welcome to the immigrants was almost unlimited. We were in a period of national building and expansion.
But by the time the new immigration had set in immigrant
labor had begun to be felt as competitive in the American
labor market. The conviction grew that the labor market was
already overstocked. In 1882 the Federal Government assumed control of immigrant regulation. The first law excluding large groups of immigrants on the basis of being physically, mentally, or morally unfit was passed.
In the process of legislation there was created by an act of
Congress in 1907 a commission to make "full inquiry, examination, and investigation * * * into the subject of
immigration." The report of this commission, comprising 42
volumes and not completed until 1911, furnished an exhaustive study of the immigration question. Beginning with
conditions in Europe, the survey followed every phase of
the subject. Original information, excluding existing data,
was secured for more than 3,200,000 individuals.
For many years our national immigration problem has been
one of exclusion, selection, and deportation. In 1917, after a
25-year struggle, when sentiments of nationalism and selfprotection had been aroused by the World War, a severe
limitation was set up with the passage of the immigration law
embodying the literacy test, over President Wilson's veto,
From this time on many Americans wanted to exclude all further immigration, but this plan was abandoned for the quota
acts of 1921 and later years, which limited the immigration
of aliens of any nationality in one fiscal year to certain percentages of those already in the United States. The cutting

THE I M M I G R A N T WOMAN

WORKER

down of this large supply of cheap labor did much to make
permanent the war-time employment gains of women and
encouraged their further employment.
That manufacturers could turn to a continuous supply of
immigrant labor throughout our period of greatest industrial
development did much to accelerate that expansion. A very
large percentage of the new immigration has been common
labor, having no definite occupation or skill. As factories have
developed, these men and women have fitted into the unskilled work of industry at low wages. Ignorant of American
ways and lacking factory experience, in each case the most
recent arrivals in the country have entered industry at the
very lowest level, doing the least desirable work. Like the
Negro worker, the immigrant has fallen heir to only the ragged
edges of employment opportunities.
In the life of the immigrant woman the problems of the
immigrant in industry are combined with the problems of the
woman in industry. In 1930 there were in the United States
6,139,000 foreign-born white women 10 years of age and
over, of whom 1,156,000 (19 percent) were gainfully occupied.
Largely concentrated in the Middle Atlantic States, the greatest proportion (two fifths) of the foreign-born white women
were in domestic and personal service. The next largest proportion, well over one fourth, were in the manufacturing and
mechanical industries. Of the latter, clothing and textiles
had the largest proportions, 26 percent and 23 percent,
respectively.
An interesting picture of what these women are doing and
how they have found their place in American life has been
given us by the Women's Bureau in a study of over 2,000
foreign-born women wage earners in Philadelphia and the
Lehigh Valley, Pa. These two regions were considered
typical communities from the standpoint of the foreign born

W O M E N AT W O R K

and their problems—Philadelphia a big city with many
diversified industries and a large proportion of immigrants,
and the Lehigh Valley a locality with a few predominating
industries for women, chiefly cigars and textiles, and with
concentrated groups of foreign-born labor.
Less than one tenth of the women studied were of the old
immigration, the vast majority having come from the countries south and east of Germany. Poland had been the homeland of the largest number, but Austria, Hungary, Italy, Yugoslavia, Russia, and Czechoslovakia were well represented. In
Philadelphia the leading foreign nationality was Polish, but
in the Lehigh Valley most of the women were German. The
importance of economic dissatisfaction as a motive for
immigration was shown by the fact that "better living"
was the reason given by so many of these women for leaving
the old country. The longing for " a nice home" was mentioned frequently. With high hopes and expectations, they
had come to America to seek good jobs. A country of better
opportunity, higher standards, less militarism, more freedom,
was their goal.
The speed with which they had found jobs on arrival was
astonishing. The majority were young, nearly three fifths
being 18 or under when they arrived, and only about one
tenth had had any real industrial experience in their native
lands. The great majority of the women who reported having worked in the old country had toiled on farms or in private homes. After their arrival here jobs were more often
procured through the efforts of friends or the blind workings
of chance (three fourths having secured their jobs in these
ways) than through qualifications of skill and experience.
Into cigar, clothing, and textile factories large numbers of
them had been drawn, not through special aptitude for such
types of work but through the need to get a start in the new

THE I M M I G R A N T

WOMAN

WORKER

life, to make sure of a pay envelope, and to earn a bare livelihood forthemselves and their families. Only 11 percent gave
as a reason for choice of job, "trade or work I knew."
Over half of them had remained in the same job and occupation for years. For these it was a case of once a spinner,
weaver, cigar roller, power-machine operator, always such a
worker.
The slight degree to which real assimilation had taken place
was reflected by the fact that 37 percent of the women in the
study who had been in this country at least 10 years were unable to speak English. The illiteracy rate was high. About
one sixth were unable to read or write in any language.
Only 18 had become naturalized citizens by their own
efforts. One of them, a silk weaver of 48 years who had
recently received her citizenship papers, boasted she was
"the first lady to get them in Berks County; it was in the
papers about me."
A large proportion of the women (74 percent) were or
had been married, and usually the husband and wife were
both working. Many of the husbands were unskilled wage
earners.
When a girl tells how she left one factory for another because she could earn 2 cents more per hundred for the cigars
she rolled, the importance of the pay envelope in the lives of
these women is realized. Wages were very low and hours
were long; 37 percent of the women in the Lehigh Valley
worked more than 10 hours a day, and in both sections long
hours and overtime varied with part time and half-filled pay
envelopes was the story of the immigrant women.
" H a v e to like it, it's daily bread," was the attitude of the
majority of the women toward their jobs. That the women
fortunate enough to have secured jobs with good working
conditions appreciated them was indicated by such comments

W O M E N AT W O R K

as, "They treat the women nice, no boss holler, no boss yell" ;
' There is a bench for each loom and a chance to sit.''
Despite the failure of these immigrants to find riches or
even the "nice home" of their dreams, and notwithstanding
their struggle to keep a firm foothold in the wage-earning
arena, most of them were glad to be in America.

THE WOMAN WORKER

TODAY

S THE hundred years of our survey have closed, women
) workers have been caught in the deep industrial depression of the past Zyi years. Problems that they have faced
through the century have been intensified. Many gains obtained in good working conditions have been lost. Unemployment, which has always been present to some degree, has
been devastating the lives of millions of workers for the last
few years. In April 1930 over half a million women were
either unemployed and looking for work or on payless lay-off,
and at that time we had undergone only half a year of the
depression. Today the number of jobless women has swelled
to 2,000,000, according to a conservative estimate made by
the Federal Women's Bureau.
This is not our first depression. Our industrial history
throughout the century includes a number of similar but less
acute periods. One fundamental cause has been the same in

W O M E N AT W O R K

all such crises: The fact that the mass of workers cannot buy
back the goods manufactured, and production and consumption are thrown out of balance. Since people who earn little
can spend only what they do earn, periodically the goods
already on hand cannot be sold. Factories close down. More
workers are without wages, less and less goods can be sold,
and the vicious round of overproduction, underconsumption,
and unemployment sets in. Today's depression has been
deeper, more undermining to our whole economic structure,
and more destructive to workers than any that has gone
before.
Widespread unemployment and the suffering it means to
workers is the most serious aspect of the depression. But
even those women who have held their jobs have undergone
severe hardships. As facts and figures become available
showing us what has actually been taking place during these
last years, it is clear that this business depression has seriously lowered standards of employment, which at best were
never high enough. The general tendency on the part of
many manufacturers is to cut wages, lengthen hours, and fail
to meet such employment requirements for industrial safety
and sanitation as their State laws may specify. Even the
large number of employers who have struggled desperately
to maintain their own high standards are finding that they
cannot withstand the cut-throat competition with sweatshop
manufacturers for today's diminishing market
A breaking down in wage standards is particularly serious
for women, since, as we have seen, their wages have always
been lower than men's. That this is taking place, however,
is shown by the decided drop in women's wages from 1929 to
1932 recorded by figures from New York and Illinois and
others collected by the National Industrial Conference Board.
Recent figures from studies by the Women's Bureau show

THE WOMAN WORKER

TODAY

that not only have the medians—one half receiving more, one
half less—of women's wages fallen, but the low extremes that
these figures represent are pitifully inadequate. In a recent
study of the Connecticut sewingtrades many young girls were
receiving such meager sums as $2 and $1 a week, although
the median of all the wages paid was $12.35.
Unemployment, part-time work, and low wages mean that
the workers are being driven to increasingly lower standards
of living. A realistic picture of what this means in the everyday lives of women workers is shown in a study made by the
Bryn Mawr summer school workers and published by the
Women's Bureau in 1933. Out of the experiences of these
women, stories are told of less food, of inadequate clothing,
of searching for lower rents and cheaper living quarters, of
taking in lodgers, and of falling behind in rent and mortgage
payments. These have become common in the lives of women
workers.
In spite of lowered earnings, slack work, lay-offs, and shutdowns, we have the illogical situation of women working long
daily hours during the time when they are employed. The
United States Bureau of Labor Statistics has shown that in
cotton mills women actually worked, on an average, an hour
a week longer in 1932 than in 1930, though they earned much
less. In its study of the sewing trades of Connecticut just
referred to, the Women's Bureau found that about 14 percent
of the women reported had worked 52 hours or more.
For further evidence of the breakdown in industrial standards which has taken place during the past few years we have
only to turn to recent statements of State departments of
labor. Here are reported a greater demand for their services
during the depression and increased difficulty in keeping up
the standards in hours, wages, and industrial safety and
sanitation that their laws may require.

W O M E N AT W O R K

Something of the job experiences of many women during
the depression is typified in the case of Mary Smith, recorded
by the Bryn Mawr summer school workers. In the automobile shop where she made dashboard equipment, work
became slack, then partial employment was followed by layoffs, and in 1931 Mary Smith became one of the thousands of
unemployed workers. For months she went from factory to
factory looking for work, but everywhere came the same
answer," No help wanted.'1 I n desperation, she went home to
her family in the country. But here, too, she found a struggle
for livelihood, for farm crops could not be sold at prices that
would decently support the family. Mary Smith's solution
finally came, as has that of many other workers, in obtaining
a job doing housework. But even opportunities in this field
now have become hopelessly scarce and wages are low.
During the decade 1920 to 1930 the number of women in
domestic and personal service has swelled by practically a
million. Trained or untrained for the work, women thrown
out of other employment turn to housework. Here standards
of employment havealwaysbeen low. Domestic workers have
never been able to gain standardized working conditions
through organization, nor are they protected by legislation.
With the onrush of women into this occupation, competition
forces the conditions of work even lower. Such a story is
told in reports from employment agencies. Employers are
found to be offering gradually diminishing wages though
expecting as much or even more of their domestic workers
than before, while the applicants for work feel the futility of
making a firm stand for wages such as they have received in
the past.
Among the applicants at employment offices, today finds an
almost unprecedented proportion of "white-collar workers."
Going from one employment office to another in search of

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TODAY

work are women who have successfully carried on business
organizations of their own, teachers, personnel managers,
translators, correspondents, junior executives, and office
workers of all types. The extent to which this group of
workers is being forced into the ranks of the unemployed in
New York is shown by the fact that at the State employment
office in September 1932 there were 21 women clerical workers
registered for every job available.
With a scarcity of jobs, an attack has been made on the
married woman and her right to work has been challenged.
Sometimes wholesale dismissal of married women workers
has taken place. When unemployment is widespread this is
particularly devastating to the lives of many of these women.
At this time the burdens of family support, which many of
them bear, become greater and their wages become even
more necessary to themselves and to their families.
The older woman, too, suffers in the increased competition
for diminishing jobs. Many factories will not hire women
over 30, and when lay-offs occur they fall most heavily on the
older workers. In the professions the older woman is more
secure. Here her value is increased with work experience
and she is not worn out like a piece of machinery. But even
in the professions it is practically impossible for the older
woman who is out of work to again find a job.
Less tragic than that of the older worker who has lost out
without the possibility of ever getting back into employment,
but discouraging and demoralizing, is the prospect of the
young girl seeking work for the first time. Each year thousands of girls leave school to become wage earners. When
unemployment is acute their position is nearly hopeless, for
while shrinking family incomes drive them to look for work
in increasing numbers, as forces are reduced any openings that
exist can be filled with more experienced workers. Even

W O M E N AT W O R K

those who are fortunate enough to finish college face a dreary
prospect when they enter the market for jobs.
The fight for better working conditions has been as long
as our industrial system itself. For decades labor unions,
political parties, and many independent organizations have cooperated in the difficult struggle to insure for workers hours,
wages, and standards of employment that will make possible
healthy and happy living. Since for millions of workers this
goal has never been achieved, our present breakdown in what
standards did exist is doubly serious.
During the present period of unemployment no standards
have been secure. Even when upheld through legislation or
by strong trade union organization, serious breakdowns have
occurred. I n few instances have the workers themselves been
able to organize against today's lowering of working and
living standards. Employers forced by competition to seek
economies in production know that thousands of unemployed workers, outside factory gates and eager for jobs, bring
down the cost of labor. Thus they too often have been able to
slash wages and lengthen hours without arousing effective
resistance.
But against the conditions of the depression an increasing
volume of protest has arisen from workers' organizations.
They have received marked assistance through the activities
of progressive women's organizations. Strength to the movement to safeguard the interests of wage earners has been
added by the growing popular recognition of the fact that
the purchasing power of the great mass of people must be
maintained if our industrial system is to function.
Legislation has been passed on a Nation-wide scale in an
attempt to restore both industry and workers from the
ravages of the depression. The National Industrial Recovery Act is an effort directed toward taking wages and

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TODAY

hours of work out of the competitive field. If through this
legislation workers can be assured of living wages and a short
work week, we shall have made progress toward guaranteeing
them some security. In a number of State legislatures efforts
have been made to pass more adequate labor legislation.
Bills have been enacted or are being considered dealing
with unemployment insurance, old age pensions, minimum
wages for women and minors, shorter hours for women or
for both men and women.
While the century has definitely established the fact that
women as well as men must work outside their homes for
pay, while the greater part of the battle to open occupational
and educational opportunities to women has been won, there
remains to be accomplished for both sexes ji readjustment
within the economic world that will allow every willing
worker a job and security.

Full text of Women at Work: A Century of Industrial Change : Women's Bureau Bulletin, No. 115

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