The economic position of womenAcademy of Political Science in the City of New York
History
The economic position of women
Academy of Political Science in the City of New York
Women -- Employment -- United States; Women -- United States -- Economic conditions
Specialization shows itself in another way, namely, in an inability to
turn from one kind of product to another. There is a large bindery in
New York where several periodicals are bound. A girl employed there
complained of the irregularity of her work. “It seems pretty hard on
a girl,” she said, “to have to stay home two days in the week and
then have to work so hard the other days.” Her employment was due to
the different methods of binding different periodicals. Two weekly
magazines were brought to the bindery on Tuesday and must be mailed
on Thursday. Hand folders and wirestitchers were needed to bind them.
An engineer’s magazine must be bound between Tuesday and Friday. The
work on this was hand folding, gathering by machine, and sewing by
machine, instead of wirestitching. Another publication was brought from
the printer on Friday and issued on Monday. It was folded by machine
and wirestitched. On Friday evening and Saturday there was no work
for a hand folder or an operator of the sewing machine. Wednesday was
the busiest day in the bindery; two magazines must be completed for
the mailers on Thursday. Overtime was usual on that day. This girl
could fold by hand, fill the gathering machine and operate the sewing
machine. She worked from Tuesday to Friday. The issues of the magazine
had been smaller than usual and her earnings were reduced. She reported
that at hand folding, if there were plenty of work, she could earn
seventy-five cents or a dollar a day. For filling the gathering machine
the rate was eighteen cents an hour or one dollar fifty-three cents a
day. But there had been so little work that her earnings in the past
three weeks had been:
January 4th-10th, $3.19;
January 11th-17th, $7.75;
January 18th-26th, $3.21.
If she had been steadily employed, she could have earned five or six
dollars a week as a hand folder, or nine dollars and nine cents for
filling the gathering machine. “There isn’t much chance for a sewer
any more in magazine binderies,” she said; “you know nearly all the
magazines used to be sewed, but now they are wirestitched.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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