The Daily Missoulian. [volume] (Missoula, Mont.) 1904-1961, 1913-04-05

fix the minimum wage for that state
In other cities, including Chicago, in
vestigators fix the minimum wage for
women at from 81 to 50 per week.
The establishment of a minimum
a & for women nay have a tendency
to displace a large number of women
and give their work to men, according
to the opinion of some OF the employ
ers who recently have testified upon
the subject. 1t is claimed that a man
at $12 a week would be cheaper in
most positions than a woman at SO or
SO, because women can only perform
certain services. This phase of the
question has not as yet received much
consideration, but will undoubtedly
have much bearing upon the subject.
The advent of the 100000 women n
the industrial world could not fail to
produce some changes in industrial
conditions in this country. One effect
was an increase of production and a
business expansion made possible only
by the additional supply of available
help. Another was the tendency to
lower wages in whatever industries
Women were employed. This last eff
IV't J. III , NY ~
work for wages insufficient to support
their families or in throwing them out
of employment altogether. In this way
the entrance of some women into the
industrial world, by depriving men of
positions they formerly held, has
driven other women having home
duties to seek some way of adding to
the leSsened family income, often with
an enforced neglect of the welfare of
the home which should have had all of
their time. Yet the women are not
to be blamed for taking the work when
they need it. The employers are not
always to be blamed for securing their
help at the lowest possible expendi-
ture, but the wage earning woman has
brought about many complex problems
yet to be solved.
The invention of l~abor-saving ma
chinery has had a great influence in
the substitution Of feminine for mas
women employed at half the wages
paid to men a generation ago by the
aid of new machines are bic to pro-
duce several times the amount of
work. After the first installmcnt the
cost of running the machinery is small.
saving to the manufacturer in the
difference between Women'S wage
and the wagc he formerly paid to men
is so much clear profit, but it should
not all be credited to Women's readi-
ness to work for low wages. In a
small town in Pennsylvania there is d
factory which 20 years ago employed
over 100 men, who lived with their
families in comfortable cottages near
their work. Now that factory has less
than so men upon it's payroll, but has
a force of nearly 200 women and girls,
who, with the aid of new machinery,
are turning out fully 10 times as much
work as did the hundred men 90 wears
ago. Yet the present payroll for men
and women amounts to little more
than did the former one consisting of
mems names only.
The great hardship of such a condi-
ton is that h large number of men.
thrown out of their expected employ
ment. have been forced to leave their
naive towns and seek work else
where. Some of them have found it,
nut a large number have drifted into
the hobo class, although by natural
inclination they would be regularly
employed. The increasingly large
army of unemployed men which gives
''e soclal workers SO many difficulties