Making Both Ends Meet by Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt

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MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET

The Income and Outlay of New York Working Girls

by

SUE AINSLIE CLARK and EDITH WYATT

New York
The Macmillan Company

1911

[Illustration: Photograph by Lewis Hine]

TO
FLORENCE KELLEY
THIS BOOK
IS DEDICATED

PREFACE

This book is composed of the economic records of self-supporting women
living away from home in New York. Their chronicles were given to the
National Consumers' League simply as a testimony to truth; and it is
simply as a testimony to truth that these narratives are reprinted here.

The League's inquiry was initiated because, three years ago in the study
of the establishment of a minimum wage, only very little information was
obtainable as to the relation between the income and the outlay of
self-supporting women workers. The inquiry was conducted for a year and a
half by Mrs. Sue Ainslie Clark, who obtained the workers' budgets as they
were available from young women interviewed in their rooms, boarding
places, and hotels, and at night schools and clubs. After Mrs. Clark had
collected and written these accounts, I supplemented them further in the
same manner; and rearranged them in a series of articles for Mr. S.S.
McClure. The budgets fell naturally into certain industrial divisions;
but, as will be seen from the nature of the inquiry, the records were not
exhaustive trade-studies of the several trades in which the workers were
engaged. They constituted rather an accurate kinetoscope view of the
yearly lives of chance passing workers in those trades. Wherever the
facts ascertained seemed to warrant it, however, they were so focussed as
to express definitely and clearly the wisdom of some industrial change.

In two instances in the course of the serial publication of the budgets
such industrial changes were undertaken and are now in progress. The firm
of Macy & Co. in New York has inaugurated a monthly day of rest, with
pay, for all permanent women-employees who wish this privilege. The
change was made first in one department and then extended through a plan
supplied by the National Civic Federation to all the departments of the
store.

The Manhattan Laundrymen's Association, the Brooklyn Laundrymen's
Association, and the Laundrymen's Association of New York State held a
conference with the Consumers' League after the publication of the
Laundry report, and asked to cooperate with the League in obtaining the
establishment of a ten-hour day in the trade, additional factory
inspection, and the placing of hotels and hospital laundries under the
jurisdiction of the Department of Labor. Largely through the efforts of
the Laundrymen's Association of New York State, a bill defining as a
factory any place where laundry work is done by mechanical power passed
both houses of the last legislature at Albany. A standard for a fair
house was discussed and agreed upon at the conference. It is the
intention of the League to publish within the year a white list of the
New York steam laundries conforming to this standard in wages, hours, and
sanitation.

The New York of the workers is not the New York best known to the country
at large. The New York of Broadway, the New York of Fifth Avenue, of
Central Park, of Wall Street, of Tammany Hall,--these are by-words of
common reference; and when two years ago the daily press printed the news
of the strike of thirty thousand shirt-waist makers in the metropolis,
many persons realized, perhaps for the first time, the presence of a new
and different New York--the New York of the city's great working
population. The scene of these budgets is a corner of this New York.

The authors of the book are many more than its writers whose names appear
upon the title-page. The second chapter is chiefly the word-of-mouth tale
of Natalya Perovskaya, one of the shirt-waist workers, a household tale
of adventure repeated just as it was told to the present writer and to
her hostess' family and other visitors during a call on the East Side on
a warm summer evening. The sixth chapter is almost entirely the
contribution of Miss Carola Woerishofer, Miss Elizabeth Howard Westwood,
and Miss Mary Alden Hopkins, three young college-bred women from Bryn
Mawr, Smith, and Wellesley, respectively, who made an inquiry for the
National Consumers' League in the hospital, hotel, and commercial steam
laundries of New York. The fifth chapter is composed largely from a
chronicle of the New York cloak makers' strike written by Dr. Henry
Moskowitz, one of the most efficient leaders in attaining the final
settlement last fall between the employers and the seventy thousand
members of the Cloak Makers' Union. Mr. Frederick Winston Taylor gave the
definition of "Scientific Management" which prefaces the last chapter. It
is a pleasure to acknowledge help of several kinds received from Mrs.
Florence Kelley, Miss Perkins, and Miss Johnson of the Consumers' League;
from Miss Neumann, of the Woman's Trade-Union League; from Miss Pauline
and Josephine Goldmark, and Mr. Louis p. Brandeis; from Miss Willa
Siebert Cather of _McClure's Magazine_; and from Mr. S.S. McClure.

To record rightly any little corner of contemporary history is a communal
rather than an individual piece of work. While no title so pompous as
that of a cathedral could possibly be applied except with great absurdity
to any magazine article, least of all to these quiet, journalistic
records, yet the writing of any sincere journalistic article is more
comparable, perhaps, to cathedral work than to any sort of craft in
expression. If the account is to have any genuine social value as a
narrative of contemporary truth, it will be evolved as the product of
numerous human intelligences and responsibilities. Especially is this
true of any synthesis of facts which must be derived, so to speak, from
many authors, from many authentic sources.

Unstandardized conditions in women's work are so frequently mentioned in
the first six chapters that their connection with the last chapter will
be sufficiently clear. What is the way out of the unstandardized and
unsatisfactory conditions obtaining for multitudes of women workers?
Legislation is undoubtedly one way out. Trade organization is undoubtedly
one way out. But legislation is ineffectual unless it is strongly backed
by conscientious inspection and powerful enforcement. In the great
garment-trade strikes in New York, in spite of their victories, the trade
orders have gone in such numbers to other cities that neither the spirit
of the shirt-waist makers' strike nor the wisdom of the Cloak Makers'
Preferential Union Agreement have since availed to provide sufficient
employment for the workers. Further, neither legislation nor trade
organization are permanently valuable unless they are informed by justice
and understanding. In the same manner, unless it is informed by these
qualities, the new plan of management outlined in the last chapter is
incapable of any lasting and far-reaching industrial deliverance. But it
provides a way out, hitherto untried. With an account of this way as it
appears to-day our book ends, as a testimony to living facts can only
end, not with the hard-and-fast wall of dogma, but with an open door.

EDITH WYATT.

CHICAGO, March 19, 1911.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK SALESWOMEN

CHAPTER II
THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS' STRIKE

CHAPTER III
THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK FACTORY WORKERS.
(UNSKILLED AND SEASONAL WORK)

CHAPTER IV
THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK FACTORY WORKERS.
(MONOTONY AND FATIGUE IN SPEEDING)

CHAPTER V
THE CLOAK MAKERS' STRIKE AND THE PREFERENTIAL UNION SHOP

CHAPTER VI
WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK

CHAPTER VII
SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT AS APPLIED TO WOMEN'S WORK

CHAPTER I

THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK SALESWOMEN

I

One of the most significant features of the common history of this
generation is the fact that nearly six million women are now gainfully
employed in this country. From time immemorial, women have, indeed,
worked, so that it is not quite as if an entire sex, living at ease at
home heretofore, had suddenly been thrown into an unwonted activity, as
many quoters of the census seem to believe. For the domestic labor in
which women have always engaged may be as severe and prolonged as
commercial labor. But not until recently have women been employed in
multitudes for wages, under many of the same conditions as men,
irrespective of the fact that their powers are different by nature from
those of men, and should, in reason, for themselves, for their children,
and for every one, indeed, be conserved by different industrial
regulations.

What, then, are the fortunes of some of 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 girl in a Sixth Avenue suit store
at $4 a week, a sum less than the wage for which she had begun work five
years before. Within a few weeks, dullness of trade had caused her
dismissal. She was again facing indefinite unemployment.

Her income for the year had been $281. She lived in a large, pleasant
home for girls, where she paid only $2.50 a week for board and a room
shared with her sister. Without the philanthropy of the home, she could
not have made both ends meet. It was fifteen minutes' walk from the
store, and by taking this walk twice a day she saved carfare and the
price of luncheon. She did her own washing, and as she could not spend
any further energy in sewing, she bought cheap ready-made clothes. This
she found a great expense. Cheap waists wear out very rapidly. In the
year she had bought 24 at 98 cents each. Here is her account, as nearly
as she had kept it and recalled it for a year: a coat, $10; 4 hats, $17;
2 pairs of shoes, $5; 24 waists at 98 cents, $23.52; 2 skirts, $4.98;
underwear, $2; board, $130; doctor, $2; total, $194.50. This leaves a
balance of $86.50. This money had paid for necessaries not
itemized,--stockings, heavy winter underwear, petticoats, carfare,
vacation expenses, every little gift she had made, and all recreation.

She belonged to no benefit societies, and she had not been able to save
money in any way, even with the assistance given by the home. So much for
her financial income and outlay.

After giving practically all her time and force to her work, she had not
received a return sufficient to conserve her health in the future, or
even to support her in the present without the help of philanthropy. She
was ill, anaemic, nervous, and broken in health.

Before adding the next budget, two points in Lucy Cleaver's outlay
should, perhaps, be emphasized in the interest of common sense. The first
is the remarkable folly of purchasing 24 waists at 98 cents each. In an
estimate of the cost of clothing, made by one of the working girls' clubs
of St. George's last year,[3] the girls agreed that comfort and a
presentable appearance could be maintained, so far as expenditure for
waists was concerned, on $8.50 a year. This amount allowed for five
shirt-waists at $1.20 apiece, and one net waist at $2.50.

In extenuation of Lucy Cleaver's weak judgment as a waist purchaser, and
the poor child's one absurd excess, it must, however, be said that the
habit of buying many articles of poor quality, instead of fewer articles
of better quality, is frequently a matter, not of choice, but of
necessity. The cheap, hand-to-mouth buying which proves paradoxically so
expensive in the end is no doubt often caused by the simple fact that
the purchaser has not, at the time the purchase is made, any more money
to offer. Whatever your wisdom, you cannot buy a waist for $1.20 if you
possess at the moment only 98 cents. The St. George's girls made their
accounts on a basis of an income of $8 a week. Lucy Cleaver never had an
income of more than $5.50 a week, and sometimes had less. The fact that
she spent nearly three times as much as they did on this one item of
expenditure, and yet never could have "one net waist at $2.50" for festal
occasions, is worthy of notice.

The other point that should be emphasized is the fact that she did her
own washing. The more accurate statement would be that she did her own
laundry, including the processes, not only of rubbing the clothes clean,
but of boiling, starching, bluing, and ironing. This, after a day of
standing in other employment, is a vital strain more severe than may
perhaps be readily realized. Saleswomen and shop-girls have not the
powerful wrists and muscular waists of accustomed washerwomen, and are in
most instances no better fitted to perform laundry work than washerwomen
would be to make sales and invoice stock. But custom requires exactly the
same freshness in a saleswoman's shirt-waist, ties, and collars as in
those of women of the largest income. The amount the girls of the St.
George's Working Club found it absolutely necessary to spend in a year
for laundering clothes was almost half as much as the amount spent for
lodging and nearly two-thirds as much as the amount originally spent for
clothing.

Where this large expense of laundry cannot be met financially by
saleswomen, it has to be met by sheer personal strength. One
department-store girl, who needed to be especially neat because her
position was in the shirt-waist department, told us that sometimes, after
a day's standing in the store, she worked over tubs and ironing-boards at
home till twelve at night.

It is worth noting, as one cause of the numerous helpless shifts of the
younger salesgirls, that, living, as most of them do, in a
semidependence, on either relatives or charitable homes, it is almost
impossible for them to learn any domestic economy, or the value of money
for living purposes. It seems significant that quite the most practical
spender encountered among the saleswomen was a widow, Mrs. Green, whose
accounts will be given below, who was for years the manager of her own
household and resources, and not a wage-earner until fairly late in life.

This helplessness of a semidependent and uneducated girl may be further
illustrated by the chronicle of Alice Anderson, a girl of seventeen, who
had been working in the department stores for three years and a half.

She was at first employed as a check girl in a Fourteenth Street store,
at a wage of $2.62-1/2 a week; that is to say, she was paid $5.25 twice a
month. Her working day was nine and a half hours long through most of the
year. But during two weeks before Christmas it was lengthened to from
twelve to thirteen and a half hours, without any extra payment in any
form. She was promoted to the position of saleswoman, but her wages still
remained $2.62-1/2 a week. She lived with her grandmother of eighty,
working occasionally as a seamstress, and to her Alice gave all her
earnings for three years.

It was then considered better that she should go to live with an aunt, to
whom she paid the nominal board of $1.15 a week. As her home was in West
Hoboken, she spent two and a half hours every day on the journey in the
cars and on the ferry. During the weeks of overtime Alice could not reach
home until nearly half past eleven o'clock; and she would be obliged to
rise while it was still dark, at six o'clock, after five hours and a half
of sleep, in order to be at her counter punctually at eight. By walking
from the store to the ferry she saved 30 cents a week. Still, fares cost
her $1.26 a week. This $1.26 a week carfare (which was still not enough
to convey her the whole distance from her aunt's to the store) and the
$1.15 a week for board (which still did not really pay the aunt for her
niece's food and lodging) consumed all her earnings except 20 cents a
week.

Alice was eager to become more genuinely self-dependent. She left the
establishment of her first employment and entered another store on
Fourteenth Street, as cash girl, at $4 a week. The hours in the second
store were very long, from eight to twelve in the morning and from a
quarter to one till a quarter past six in the afternoon on all days
except Saturday, when the closing hour was half past nine.

After she had $4 a week instead of $2.62-1/2, Alice abandoned her daily
trip to West Hoboken and came to live in New York.

Here she paid 6 cents a night in a dormitory of a charitably supported
home for girls. She ate no breakfast. Her luncheon consisted of coffee
and rolls for 10 cents. Her dinner at night was a repetition of coffee
and rolls for 10 cents. As she had no convenient place for doing her own
laundry, she paid 21 cents a week to have it done. Her regular weekly
expenditure was as follows: lodging, 42 cents; board, $1.40; washing, 21
cents; clothing and all other expenses, $1.97; total, $4.

Of course, living in this manner was quite beyond her strength. She was
pale, ill, and making the severest inroads upon her present and future
health. Her experience illustrates the narrow prospect of promotion in
some of the department stores.

III

It is significant in this point to compare the annals of this growing
girl with those of a saleswoman of thirty-five, Grace Carr, who had been
at work for twelve years. In her first employment in a knitting mill she
had remained for five years, and had been promoted rapidly to a weekly
wage of $12. The hours, however, were very long, from ten to thirteen
hours a day. The lint in the air she breathed so filled her lungs that
she was unable, in her short daily leisure, to counteract its effect. At
the end of five years, as she was coughing and raising particles of lint,
she was obliged to rest for a year.

Not strong enough to undertake factory work again, she obtained a
position in the shoe department in one of the large stores, where she was
not "speeded up," and her daily working time of nine hours was less
severe than that of the knitting mill. In summer she had a Saturday
half-holiday. There was a system of fines for lateness; but on the rare
occasions of her own tardiness it had not been enforced. The company was
also generous in grafting five-o'clock passes, which permitted a girl to
leave at five in the afternoon, with no deduction from her wage for the
free hour. She had been with this establishment for six years, earning $6
a week; and she had given up hope of advancing.

Miss Carr said that her work in the shoe department was exhausting,
because of the stooping, the frequent sitting down and rising, and the
effort of pulling shoes on and off. In the summer preceding the fall when
she told of her experience in the store, she had, in reaching for a box
of shoes, strained her heart in some way, so that she lost consciousness
immediately, and was ill for seven weeks. She failed to recuperate as
rapidly as she should have done, because she was so completely
devitalized by overwork.

The firm was very good to her at this time, sending a doctor daily until
she was in condition to go to the country. It then paid her expenses for
two weeks in a country home of the Young Women's Christian Association,
and during the three remaining weeks of her stay paid her full wage. Miss
Carr praised this company's general care of the employees. A doctor and
nurse were available without charge if a girl were ill in the store. A
social secretary was employed.

Miss Carr lived in a furnished room with two other women, each paying a
dollar a week rent. She cared nothing for her fellow-lodgers; her only
reason for spending her time with them in such close quarters was her
need of living cheaply. She cooked her breakfast and supper in the
crowded room, at an expense of $1.95 a week. She said that her "hearty"
meal was a noon dinner, for which she paid in a restaurant 15 cents a
day.

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