PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
ACADEMY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK

THE ECONOMIC POSITION OF WOMEN

The Academy of Political Science
Columbia University, New York
1910

Copyright, 1910
BY
The Academy of Political Science

CONTENTS

PAGE
[Introduction][5]
The Editor
I HISTORICAL
[The Historical Development of Women’s Work in the United States][11]
Helen L. Sumner
II PROBLEMS OF WOMEN IN INDUSTRY
[Changes in Women’s Work in Binderies][27]
Mary Van Kleeck
[The Training of Millinery Workers][40]
Alice P. Barrows
[Training for Salesmanship][52]
Elizabeth B. Butler
[The Education and Efficiency of Women][61]
Emily Greene Balch
[Standards of Living and the Self-Dependent Woman][72]
Susan M. Kingsbury
[A New Social Adjustment][81]
Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch
[Industrial Work of Married Women][90]
Florence Kelley
[The Economics of “Equal Pay for Equal Work” in the Schools of New York City][97]
John Martin
III SOCIAL ACTION
[Women and the Trade-Union Movement in the United States][109]
Alice Henry
[A Woman’s Strike—An Appreciation of the Shirt-waist Makers of New York][119]
Helen Marot
[Vocational Training for Women][129]
Sarah Louise Arnold
[Training the Youngest Girls for Wage Earning][140]
Mary Schenck Woolman
[Employment Bureaus for Women][151]
M. Edith Campbell
[The Constitutional Aspect of the Protection of Women in Industry][162]
Ernst Freund
[The Illinois Ten-Hour Decision][185]
Josephine Goldmark
IV BIBLIOGRAPHICAL
[A Select List of Books in the English Language on Women in Industry][188]
Carola Woerishoffer

INTRODUCTION

Of all the problems that have come in the train of the industrial revolution none are more perplexing than those that concern women. It is a wearisome commonplace that the factory has taken over much of the industrial work of the home, and that women have followed their work into the factory; but the fundamental change thus introduced into their life has not always been clearly seen. Formerly home and industry were synonymous terms for them; training for industry was training in household management. To-day industrial work is sharply separated from the management of the home, and there has come into the occupation of women a dualism that finds no parallel in the life of men. Most of the difficulties of women in industry relate themselves in some way to this fact.

An unregulated competitive system is good only for the strong. Women, by virtue of their double relation as industrial producers and as homemakers and mothers, are industrially weak. Most women are fundamentally interested in the home rather than the factory, and industrial occupation is only an interlude in their real business. Working women so-called are mostly mere girls under twenty-five who go to work with no thought of industry as a permanent career. Uninterested, untrained, unskilled, they are on a low level of efficiency, and they have little motive for climbing to a higher level. In industry a few years, then out of it into the home, they lack the discipline and solidity that come with a permanent life task. Small wonder that they crowd the unskilled labor market, and that their work commands a mere pittance.

Inefficient in their industrial work, they tend to become quite as inefficient in their function of homekeepers: for during the very years when they might otherwise be acquiring the household arts, they are busy in shop or factory, subject to a discipline requiring obedience to mechanical routine rather than that power of thoughtful initiative which marks the skilful homemaker. Moreover, they become accustomed to the stimulus and excitement of the crowd, so that they do not want to be alone, and home life they too often find monotonous and uninteresting. The untrained, unskilled factory hand becomes the untrained, unskilled wife and mother.