Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1903-12-05
THE PIN MONEY WORKER
SHE GUSTS WOMEN WHO MUST
EARN A LIVING WAGE
Girls With Home and Food Make Shirt
Waists and Other
Apparel.

for pin money and the effect upon the labor
market of the employment of women are
discussed helpfully by Priscilla Leonard in
Harper's Bazaar. In common with a great
many women and most men, she deprecates
the manner in which women who have a
home and maintenance guaranteed to them
insist on pushing themselves into the in
dustrial held for the sake of the few extra
luxuries their work will give them. She
shows how the influence of women on wages
Is always to lower them. and she quotes
an English authority to the effect that
wages in any trade are sent downward
steadily In proportion to the number of
women employed
This deplorable state of things comes
about Miss Leonard conclud s because
while all men united on insisting on a
living wage, women have no scruples about
working for anything they can get. The
woman breadwinner wants the living wage,
too. and left to herself she might get II;
but she has the women to compete with who
live in families where a father or brother
pay the rent and provide the food. Such
women do not need a living wage. On the
contrary. they can afford to work for an
exceedingly low wage and yet get plenty
OF spending money out of it. Because Of
these pin-money workers manufacturers
offer what is practically a starvation wage
Men Will not accept it. no self-supporting
woman can live on it; the only class who
Will take 1t is the class of supported and
II W III,
living wage is lost to that special industry
forever. The pin-money worker has de-
stroyed all other chances but her own;
driven men out of that branch partially or
entirely and cheapened her own labor. But
she is quite satisfied, for her $3.50 a week
buys all the feathers she needs.
Miss Leonard cites the case of the shop
girl as one Illustration of the fatal influence
of the pin-money worker and that the gar
ment maker the other. In large cities
the shopgirl has driven out the male and
DESTROYED the living wage, except in a few
frst-claSs houses. AS for the girl who has
to live on her own wages, the big stores
will not take her any more. and if they
would she could not live on her pay. That
line of industry has practically been closed
TO her by the worker for pin money.
Garment Workers.
In the garment workers line the situa-
ton is quite as bad, or worse, Miss Leon
ard declares. What renders the tremen-,
dous bargains in white sales" possible IL
the fact that country girls with homes and
food make these garments for wages so
small that the city sweatshop is driven
into yet fiercer competition to hold any
part OF the trade at all. Every woman in
a big city who makes her living by sewing
on white goods is pushed down, relentless
Iy and inevitably to starvation wages. The
women who stitch in cellars, in attics f1f-
teen hours n day, with only bread and tea
to keep soul and body together, are paying
lot the country girl feather ribbon.
They need living wage; she makes il i'm
possible for them to get it.
That this holds in other trades besides
the two cited seems to be the opinion OF
the authors of The Woman Who Tolls
who are quoted by Miss Leonard as say
ing:
In the factory where I worked men and
women were employed for ten hours a day.
The womenS highest wages were lower
than the mems lowest. Both were working
as hard as they possibly could. Why was
this? l can only relate the conclusions
drew from what / saw myself In the
masculine category L met but one class Of
comprehensive breadwinner. In the fem
mime category l found variety of classes
the breadwinner, the Semi-breadwinner,
the woman who works for luXuries. This
inevitably drags the wage level down. The
seIf-supporting girl is in competition with
the girl who lives at home and makes a
small contribution to the household ex-
penses and with the girl who is supported
and spends all her money on clothes 1t Is
this division of purpose which takes the
spirit out of them as class
Sense of Sisterhood Needed.
THE men formed united class. They
had a purpose in common. They worked
because they needed the money to live.
The women had nothing in common but
their physical inferiority to men. The
children in the factory were working from
necessity; the boys were working from
ceSSity. The only Industrial unit compli-
eating the problem was the girls who
worked without being obliged 'to-the girls
who had all the money they needed. bat
not all the money they wanted To them
the question of wages was not vital. They
could afford to accept what the breadwin-
ner found insufficient. They were better
fed, better equipped, than the self-sup-~
porting hand. They were independent
about staying away from the factory when
they were tired or i'll, and they alone de-
termined the reputation for irregularity
in which the breadwinners were included.
Miss Leonard's conclusion is that until
supporting women develop a sense of
sisterhood akin to that recognized in and
fostered by the trade union among men
rola ~, In,