Great Falls tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1921-current, 1922-12-27

Washington, Dec. PA ray OF
light has just been shed on some widely
discussed questions about the woman
worker. 1t is often asserted that a
large proportion of married women
now work in stores and offices and that
many of them do so merely in order to
buy Injuries. The criticism is made
that these women, whose husbands
could support them, are holding posi-
tons needed by men and single girls.
The person making a statement OF
this sort always glibly quotes at least
one case of a wife who works SO that
she can spend her vacation at an ex-
pensiye resort and who is brought to
work by her husband in a palatial mo-
tor car. But these outstanding cases
what percentage of married women
do they really represent?
And, to take another controversy,
DO the majority of working women
spend their money on themselves. or do
they have dependents and responsible
ties, as it is assumed that the majority
Of men workers have?
The minimum wage is supposed to
give a.woman a living wage for herself
alone. No thought is given to the pos-
sibility of the working girls having
dependents. And yet, is it economical
iy just as matters are today to assume
that she has no one but herself to
take care Of. and that therefore her
thin pay envelope really equals q mans
fat one?
These questions are argued back and
forth, but facts have always been hard
to locate. There has never been a ma
tional table showing the personal and
family liabilities and assets of men
workers, and no such table of women
workers has been made in the past 20
years, so that the controversies about
women workers cannot be finally set
tied at present.
But just to show what the tendency
is. the women's bureau of the depart
ment Of labor has made study of the
family status of women b~readwinners
in one representative city, Passaic,
N. J.
Census Data Used
The women's bureau went to the
census bureau and obtained permission
TO use the punch cards of Passaic
working women for statistical study.
This was a departure. Ordinarily the
census records are used only by the
census bureau. The bureau collects ar
enormous mass of valuable informa-
ton, and from all of this information
it sits out certain statistical facts and
makes up tables that will be of most
Importance to the country. Funds are
limited and time is limited. The EN-
ployes work at high speed to make up
tables of manufactures. population,
crime. occupations, and so on. Then
the bulk of the material is left in the
census files.
These files contain data on the ECO
nomic status of families that would be
of great value to all sorts of social
welfare organizations, to city boards
and local governments. But the census
fishing the statistics. The women's
bureau. however. being a section of the
labor department, made an arrange
ment to have access to the records of
one city. with interesting results. ,
Passaic was chosen because it was
large enough for statistics to be illum-
mating, and yet it was not too large
for the bureau to study with the funds
available.
Nearly 10000 m work for
wages in Passaic. This means that
nearly half of the women in that city.
and probably in many other cities, are
wage earners What is more sig
nificant of the trend of the times,
four-fifths of the women work outside
of the home.
If you think back only a few gen
erations TO the time when both father
and mother worked about the home,
doing the work of the butcher. baker,
tailor, carpenter, farmer and cook,
you can realize that women are only !
a few decades behind men in leaving |
the home TO make a living. A more
civilization soon tookathe men
out of the home to run machinery and
to sit at office desks. The exact
causes that are taking the women away
from kitchens and nurseries are less
obvious. That they are being drawn
away, however, in larger and larger