“HIRING A SHEET FROM A MISSUS”
In a recent strike Miss Perkins found that many of the girls in factories lived away from home, many coming from rural districts, and that most of them lived by “hiring a sheet from a missus.” That means that two or three of the girls slept in one bed, with a cup of coffee thrown in with the “hiring” in the morning. Many of these girls had coffee and rolls for breakfast, lunch and dinner, with an occasional extravagance, such as a fifteen-cent dinner. Their wages ran from $4 to $5 a week. Other girls, according to Miss Perkins, buy bread and bananas for meals, the bananas being great fillers.
Another speaker on this subject was Paul U. Kellogg, editor of The Survey, who talked on the Wage Scale and Immigration. He outlined the proposal of transferring the economic regulation of immigration from the seaboard to the centers of congested industry by applying the minimum wage to unnaturalized citizens after the manner of child labor legislation. It would go far, he argued, toward bringing the common labor market to normal.
Margaret F. Byington, associate director of the Charity Organization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation, pointed out at the session on Waste and Extravagance, that scientific ratios of nourishment, while probably accurate quantitatively, in the number of calories to be supplied to the different age groups, might justly be criticised on the side of cost, as various elements tend to make assimilative power different in different cases. The sedentary worker cannot, for instance, digest the heavy, cheap food of the manual worker, and the infant’s modified milk makes its food not cheaper, as scientific ratios would make it, but dearer than the older child’s.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of The Home: Its Work and Influence, in a paper on Waste of Private Housekeeping, stated that:
“Industrial progress follows lines of specialization, organization and interchange. Domestic service is unspecialized, unorganized and self-supplied. For all men and women to perform their own house-service separately would be the lowest line of industrial efficiency; for each man to require one whole woman, with more if he can afford it; to perform his house-service is next to the lowest.
“The waste of labor involved is over 40 per cent of the world’s full output; fifty women doing work for fifty men, which could be done by ten women if specialized, organized and interchanging their products. The ‘waste of plant,’ the kitchen space, cooking apparatus, dishes and utensils, fuel, with breakage, etc., is at least 90 per cent. The waste in purchasing is the difference between the cost of a steady supply at wholesale and the entire expense of all retail service and delivery equal to at least 60 per cent. The waste in efficiency is the difference between highly specialized professional work, and the grade of labor possible to the lowest average—practically all women, under conditions of overwork, if it is done by the housewife, or, of eternal apprenticeship, if done by servants.”
Mrs. Julian Heath, founder and president of the National Housewives League, explained the work of the league. H. W. Hess of the University of Pennsylvania raised active discussion by his paper on Advertising: Waste or Necessity, Which? He claimed that advertising was a necessity and socially advantageous. Samuel H. Barker, financial editor of the Philadelphia North American, discussed the effects of false capitalization.
At the session on the Minimum Wage, Henry R. Seager, professor of political economy, Columbia University, pointed out the social factors involved in the introduction of a minimum wage, showing that we must be prepared for the elimination from industry of certain groups now employed and their maintenance in some fashion. The minimum wage to Professor Seager is only part of a general scheme including social insurance.
H. La Rue Brown and Mathew B. Hammond discussed the minimum wage from the experience of Massachusetts, of Australia and New Zealand. Scott Nearing, instructor in economics, University of Pennsylvania, discussed the existing wage scale and pointed out that to a large extent the wages paid in the United States are not up to the necessary minimum.
The first address at the closing session on How Can the Cost of Living be Reduced? given by Dr. Shaw, editor of the Review of Reviews, traced the development of the co-operative movement in this country and abroad and indicated the role that productive co-operation might well play in the development of our industrial institutions. He maintained that poverty is decreasing, while wants increase.
Martha Van Rensselaer, chief of the Department of Home Economics of Cornell University, who told wittily of the difficulty of securing women’s interest in household affairs, they frequently failing to recognize as do their husbands their own importance in our economic institutions.
The last paper was by Amos R. E. Pinchot, a lawyer of New York, who pointed out the relationship which exists between overcapitalization and the cost of living and the necessity for regulating monopolies.