Women Wage-Earners: Their Past, Their Present, and Their FutureCampbell, Helen
History
Women Wage-Earners: Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future
Campbell, Helen
Women -- Employment -- United States
Rent, food, and clothing cost more in California than in the Eastern
States. The wage-tables show that the tendency is to limit a woman's
wage to a dollar a day, even in the best paid trades, and as much below
this as labor can be obtained.
In shirt-making, Commissioner Tobin states that she is worse off than in
any of the Eastern States. Clothing of all orders pays as little as
possible, the best workwomen often making not over $2.87 per week. Even
at these starvation rates, girls prefer factory work to domestic
service; and as this phase was also investigated, we have another
chapter of most valuable and suggestive information. In spite of low
wages and all the hardship resulting, working women and girls as a whole
are found to be precisely what the reports state them to
be,--hard-working, honest, and moral members of the community. General
conditions are much the same as those of Colorado, the summary for all
the States from which reports have come being that the average wage is
insufficient to allow of much more than mere subsistence.
The labor reports for the State of Missouri for 1889 and 1890 do not
deal directly with the question of women wage-earners; but indirectly
much light is thrown by the investigation, in that for 1889, into the
cost of living and the home conditions of many miners and workers in
general trades; while that for 1890 covers a wider field, and gives,
with general conditions for all workers, detailed information as to many
frauds practised upon them. The commissioner, Lee Merriweather, is so
identified with the interests of the worker, whether man or woman, that
a formal report from him on women wage-earners would have had especial
value.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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