FEMALES TEN YEARS OF AGE AND OVER, ENGAGED IN GAINFUL OCCUPATIONS IN NEW YORK ============================================================ | | | Number to | Total | Negro | every 1000 | | | workers ----------------------------+---------+--------+------------ Professional service | 22,422 | 281 | 12 | | | Domestic and personal | | | service | 146,722 | 14,586 | 100 Laundresses | 16,102 | 3,224 | 200 Servants and waitresses | 103,963 | 10,297 | 99 All others | 24,657 | 1,065 | 43 | | | Trade and transportation | 65,318 | 106 | Between one | | | and two Manufacturing and | | | mechanical pursuits | 132,535 | 1,138 | 7 Dressmakers | 37,514 | 813 | 22 Seamstresses | 18,108 | 249 | 14 All others | 76,913 | 76 | 1 | | | Total including some | | | occupations not specified | 367,437 | 16,114 | 44 ============================================================ Federal Census 1900: Occupations, Table 43, p. 638 Ninety per cent of all the Negro women workers of New York are in domestic and personal service. This includes a variety of positions. Some Negro girls work in stores, dusting stock, taking charge of cloak or toilet rooms, scrubbing floors. Their hours are regular, but the pay, five or six, or very occasionally eight dollars a week, means a scanty livelihood without hope of advancement. The position of maid in a theatre where perquisites are larger is prized, and a new and pleasant place is that of a maid on a limited train. But the bulk of the girls are servants in boarding-houses, or are with private families as nurses, waitresses, cooks, laundresses, maids-of-all-work, earning from sixteen and eighteen to twenty-five and even thirty dollars a month. Occasionally a very skilful cook can command as high a monthly wage as fifty dollars.