The Topeka state journal., 1922-12-27
TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL
Information Bureau
FREDERIC ,. HAsKLN. DireOcDr.
Washington. ID. @
THE WOMAN WORKER PROBLEM.

of light has just been sned on sumo
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 luXuries- The crlu-
cism is made that these women whose
husbands could support them are
holding positions needed by men and
single girls
The person making a statement of
this sort always glibly quotes at least
one case of n wife who works SO that
she can spend her vacation at an ex-
pensive resort and who is brought to
work by her husband in a palatial
motor car. But these outstanding
csees-what percentage of married
wbmen 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 respon-
sib:lities as it is assumed that the ma
jority of,men workers have=
The minimum wage Is supposed to
give a woman living wage Tor her-
self alone. No thought is given to the
possibility of the working girls nav
ing dependents. And yet, is 1t eco
nomically just as matters are today TO
assume that she has no one but her
self to take care of, and that there
fore her thin pay envelope reany
equals n mans fat one?
These questions are argued back
and forth, but facts have always been
hard to locate. There has never been
a national table showing the personal
and family liabilities and assets of
men workers, and no such table sot
women workers has been made in the
past twenty yGarS, so that the contro-
versies about women workers cannot
be finally settled at present.
But Just to show what the tendency
is, the women's bureau of the depart
nent of labor has mace a study of the
Family status of women breadwinners
in one representative city, Passaic,
CELSIUS Data Used.
Tho women's bureau went to the
census bureau and obtained permis-
sion to use the punch cards, of Pas
sale working women for statistica!
study. This was a departure Ordi-
nariIy the census records are used
only by the census bureau The bu-
reau collects an enormous mass OF
valuable information, 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 employees work at
high speed to make up tables of man
ufactures. population, crime, occupa-
tions. 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 So
cial welfare organizations, to city
boards and local governments. But
the census bureau has no funds al
lotted for publishing the statistics.
The women's bureau. however, being
a section of the labor department,
made an arrangement TO nave access
to the records Of one CITY, with inter-
esting results.
Passaic was chosen because it was
large enough for statistics to be il
Illuminating, and yet it was not too
large for the bureau to study with the
funds available
Nearly 10000 women 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-hfths 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 living A more
complex civilization soon took the 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 -obvi-
Gus. That they are being drawn away,
is indicated by the statistics.
Thus it is shown that one-half of
the women workers in PasSaic are or
have been married. The report fur
4,013 married women workers have
husbands who are employed. What
is more, nearly three-fourths- of the
women who are or have been married
have children to care for. and while
jim most cases the families are small,
me children are young. More than
half of the working mothers of Pas
sale leave children under five years of
age at home every day or carry them
along to work.
The women's bureau calls attention
to hts discovery that cit was not the
widowed mothers nor other women
with disrupted marital relations who
were winning bread apparently at the
expense of the care of young children.
but the married women living with
bread-winnin. husbands" The reve>l
lation. the report says. makes a strong
urge for further information.
Question Why Unanswered.
The lSssSeau report says further: at
is of Ialahifest importance to know
why so 'Nrge a group of women with
home responsibilities should be at
work whexa the usual family providers
are in evidence. Rarely are the wages
of fathers sufficient to keep grown
unmarried daughters from going into
industry as breadwinners, but that the
wife and mother should go out to
work while the husband and father is
a breadwinner challenges attention.
Is it because she must, or because she
wants to'?"
But after raising Snteresting
question the bureau report calmly
concludes that without information
on family income, which it is not pos
sible to secure from census schedules,
n definite answer to this question
cannot be given"
The work done by the women
would indicate that necessity rather
than a desire for career guides the
woman workers of Passaic. 1t is a
manufacturing town and the majority
of the women are employed at spin
ming and weaving in the textile mills.