New-York tribune., 1919-08-06
Tens of Thousands of
Places Open and ~ Y.
Has. Greatest Demand
i'm All of Its History
Increase i'm Brides
Is One Big Reason
Growth of Trade at Home
and Abroad and War
Prosperity Are Others

New York is in the grip of an un
PARALLEL shortage Of women workers
Tens Of thousands Of Jobs await trained
and unframed girls in every conceiv
able line of industry, wages are sky
rocketing and all sorts of inducements
in the way Of working conditions are
being offered by employers. Yet fac
tories and large commercial concern.
almost without exception report thai
sufficient help is not to be had.
Several explanations for this condi
tion were suggested yesterday b,
students of the employment problem
but it was admitted they were hardly
adequate to account for the tota
shortage. Chief among them are:
!. The resumption of non-essen-
tial industries suspended during the
war.
2. Speeding up of businesses seek
ing to secure foreign trade
3: Retention By women Of Jobs, they.
TOOK to replace men who went to
war
q. Return from industry to domes
NiSiCv vi SOlUleIS wives.
3. Big earnings during the last
year. enabling an unprecedented
number of women to take summer
vacations.
Demand Increasing
The first two suggested reasons 70,
the shortage indicate, of course, that
the trouble is due to an increased de.
mand for feminine labor as we'll as tc
a decrease in the available sunnlv
But whatever the cause, EMPLOYERS
heads OF the women's divisions of Fed
eral, state and volunteer bureaus. large
employment agencies and business
schools agree that the condition ex.
lists and that it is serious.
Yesterdays issue of morning news.
paper that specializes in classified ad.
vert'sements carried fifty-three solo
columns of "Help Wanted
ads. In one of last Sundays papers
there were five columns of advertise
ments for stenographers alone.
In no branch of work that can he
performed by women and girls docs
there appear to be a surplus, except in
the garment trade, which is a season
al occupation. Cooks and clerks and
corset makers, drapers, designers and
dishwashers. models and milliners
bookkeepers and buttonhole makers
halrdressers and hemstitchers. every
imaginable sort of job is included in
the employment managers cry for
Girls, Girls, Girls!"
Prizes Are Offered
Some firms are offering cash prizes
to every employe who brings another
girl to work in the shop. Free medi-
cal attendance is held out as an induce-
ment by good many. Numerous con-
Germs have gone over to the forty-four-
hour week and in certain lines workers
are given both Saturday and SUNDAY
off. Vacations with full pay are COM
mon, and IN some instances factories
have followed the example of the movie
houses and advertised "temperature
twenty degrees below that Of the
street." One company insists it wants
girls who are accustomed to good
pay"
Some Of the wages paid girls would
have made a skilled man mechanic feel
like millionaire decade ago. Opera
tors on bonnaz embroidery machines
made from $50 to SIS a week, from
$50 to $40 for a tive-day week is the
prevailing scale for corset boners and
crochet beaders. absolutely untrained
girls are paid SIG and SIS week in
some instances while learning to run
machines in certain trades. Yet this
bait does not lure New York's elusive
woman worker
Cause Is Sought
Miss Beatrice Harron, Of the Bureau
OF Vocational Information, West
Forty.third Street, canvassed a mum
Der OF business schools and employment
agencies yesterday in quest of the un-
derlying cause of the shortage.
Increased business calling for
more labor was the first answer of
most of them," she said. "The build
ing up of our after the-war export
business has opened an immense new
field to women clerks, stenographers
and others qualified for commercial
pursuits
Another factor those talked
with emphasized was that many thou
sands of women and girls ara financial
ly able to rest from work this summer
Continued on NINA &h..an