Making Both Ends Meet | Page 3

these multitudes of women
gainfully employed? What do they give in their work? What do they
get from it? Clearly ascertained information on those points has been
meagre.
About two years ago the National Consumers' League, through the
initiative of its Secretary, Mrs. Florence Kelley, started an inquiry on
the subject of the standard of living among self-supporting women
workers in many fields, away from home in New York. Among these
workers were saleswomen, waist-makers, hat makers, cloak finishers,
textile workers in silk, hosiery, and carpets, tobacco workers, machine

tenders, packers of candy, drugs, biscuits, and olives, laundry workers,
hand embroiderers, milliners, and dressmakers.
The Consumers' League had printed for this purpose a series of
questions arranged in two parts. The first part covered the character of
each girl's work--the nature of her occupation, wages, hours, overtime
work, overtime compensation, fines, and idleness. The second part of
the questions dealt with the worker's expenses--her outlay for shelter,
food, clothing, rest and recreation, and her effort to maintain her
strength and energy. In this way the League's inquiry on income and
outlay was so arranged as to ascertain, not only the worker's gain and
expense in money, but, as far as possible, her gain and expense in
health and vitality. The inquiry was conducted for a year and a half by
Mrs. Sue Ainslie Clark.[1]
The account of the income and outlay of self-supporting women away
from home in New York may be divided, for purposes of record, into
the chronicles of saleswomen, shirt-waist makers, women workers
whose industry involves tension, such as machine operatives, and
women workers whose industry involves a considerable outlay of
muscular strength, such as laundry workers.
Among these the narrative of the trade fortunes of some New York
saleswomen is placed first. Mrs. Clark's inquiry concerning the income
and outlay of saleswomen has been supplemented by portions of the
records of another investigator for the League, Miss Marjorie Johnson,
who worked in one of the department stores during the Christmas rush
of 1909-1910.
Further informal reports made by the shop-girls in the early summer of
1910 proved that the income and expenditures of women workers in the
stores had remained practically unchanged since the winter of Mrs.
Clark's report.
So that it would seem that the budgets, records of the investigator, and
statements given by the young women interviewed last June may be
reasonably regarded as the most truthful composite photograph
obtainable of the trade fortunes of the army of the New York

department-store girls to-day.[2]
The limitations of such an inquiry are clear. The thousands of women
employed in the New York department stores are of many kinds. From
the point of view of describing personality and character, one might as
intelligently make an inquiry among wives, with the intent of
ascertaining typical wives. The trade and living conditions accurately
stated in the industrial records obtained have undoubtedly, however,
certain common features.
Among the fifty saleswomen's histories collected at random in stores of
various grades, those that follow, with the statements modifying them,
seem to express most clearly and fairly, in the order followed, these
common features--low wages, casual employment, heavy required
expense in laundry and dress, semidependence, uneven promotion, lack
of training, absence of normal pleasure, long hours of standing, and an
excess of seasonal work.
One of the first saleswomen who told the League her experience in her
work was Lucy Cleaver, a young American woman of twenty-five, who
had entered one of the New York department stores at the age of twenty,
at a salary of $4.50 a week.
II
In the course of the five years of her employment her salary had been
raised one dollar. She stood for nine hours every day. If, in dull
moments of trade, when no customers were near, she made use of the
seats lawfully provided for employees, she was at once ordered by a
floor-walker to do something that required standing.
During the week before Christmas, she worked standing over fourteen
hours every day, from eight to twelve-fifteen in the morning, one to six
in the afternoon, and half past six in the evening till half past eleven at
night. So painful to the feet becomes the act of standing for these long
periods that some of the girls forego eating at noon in order to give
themselves the temporary relief of a foot-bath. For this overtime the
store gave her $20, presented to her, not as payment, but as a Christmas

gift.
The management also allowed a week's vacation with pay in the
summer-time and presented a gift of $10.
After five years in this position she had a disagreement with the
floor-walker and was summarily dismissed.
She then spent over a month in futile searching for employment, and
finally obtained a position as a stock