Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1915-08-29

F1HE activities of the women's
division of labor statistics of
the Department of Labor have
& been kept somewhat in the back
ground of public attention, and few
people know that such a division exists,
much less of the splendid work which
it has done in bringing about the
amelioration of conditions which a
woman must face who goes out into
the world of industry to fight for a liv-
ing.
OF necessity the pioneers of the divi
sion had to work silently and unob
trusively. for they met considerable
opposition. But now the work has
justified itself Employers use its re-
not authentic reference. The
p7E NJ o. its Investigators are
TX Without question as the basis
Tor E=" dial legislation, and Miss NJ.
T. Co yngton, who has just succeeded
F.iss N9rie Obenauer as the head of the
vision, discusses each phase of this
unique activity.
Back in 1885, which was the birth
year of the Department of Labor. the
organic act which created it stipulated
that of the twenty special agents pro-
vided to do field work two of them
should be women. In fact. Carroll D.
Wright, the first commissioner of la Dor,
was called to that post from an in
vestigation of work by women and
children in Massachusetts,. and he
merely translated this interest to the
broader federal field.
Miss NJ. C. de Graffenreid was one of
HI vt@
one of the first bulletins written on
the woman worker was her Working
Women in Large Cities" This was
followed by another pioneer report in
1895, Work and Wages of Men, Wom-
en- and Children" There was period
when interest in the women Of indus
try seemed to slump completely out of
sight, due in all proba bility to the ex-
tensive Investigations which were un-
dertaken by the bureau into the cost of
living, which drew upon the entire
force of the bureau, robbing the wom-
ems field of the investigators sent out
by the first commissioner. When Flor
fnce Kelly and women of her kind
stirred up facts about conditions in
women's Industries in 1903 and 1904
there was a revival of interest in the
bureau personnel. followed by the get
ting out of nineteen-volume report a
number of years later on the condition
of woman and child wage-earners in
the United States.
From this extended report grew the
division which now relates specifically
to the woman in industry. and which
carries on Investigations with an eye
10 the relations which any industry or
aspect of an industry may bear to an
individual woman. Miss Conyngton
explains this follows:
Between seven and eight million
women have followed the work once
done in the home into shop and fac
tory. Instead of knitting her socks
at home the woman today does
it behind machines in large mills: in
stead of spinning and weaving in front
of her own fireside, she keeps the shut
tie whirring on big, noisy machines,
along with dozens of other women who
are doing the same thing. She bakes,
cans and preserves not in her own
kitchen, but in huge factories where
these housewifely, old-fashioned things
are done in a wholesale way.
TT isn't because women do more
work nowadays than they did formerly
that there has arisen this need for
government bureau dealing with their
labor. but because they work under
radically different conditions from
those of the past. The industrial revo-
luton has brought with il the need
for the trained and impartial investi-
gator, who will keep, in a way,
check upon the employer. and counter
Ion a