These difficulties make intensive investigation the more essential, in order to discover the actual present cost of living of self-dependent women and to find out the significance of variations in this cost. Modern tendencies to reduce wages to the minimum cost of living or to force them up to meet the demands of increasing luxury may mean too serious results to permit of continued ignorance. The danger of setting the standard according to the needs of one group, thus working injury to another, must be averted.
The studies upon which this paper is based fall into two groups. One, of college graduates, members of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, mostly teachers (317 in number), is easiest to interpret, because it is the result of study by persons of the same class or thoroughly conversant with the needs of that class.[37] The material for this study was secured from schedules filled out by 413 women, who are graduates of about forty colleges, and who are at present residing in almost every state in the union. It is furthermore representative in that it includes women whose homes are in large, medium and small towns, and whose experience ranges from one to forty-one years of service.
The other two studies are of women engaged in industrial and commercial pursuits. One of these is the result of a year’s experience in preaching the gospel of saving to thirteen hundred women through savings bank insurance.[38] The women are engaged in unskilled industries such as laundering, in the semi-skilled industry of making knitted underwear, and in the skilled industry of straw-hat manufacture. Naturally in this study the cost of living is approached through a consideration of ability or inability to save. Savings should of course be included as a necessary part of living expenses, and where pay is insufficient to make saving possible, the wage received is certainly not a living wage. The general responsibility for the support of the family, whether the girl is living at home or boarding, the tendency to give all earnings to the mother, the effort to save and its success or failure—all these conditions are portrayed in this study.
The most important contribution, however, is that which comes from the research department of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, through its fellow, Miss Louise Marion Bosworth,—a study commenced under Miss Mabel Parton, director.[39] This study by Miss Bosworth contains a discussion of the general economic history, the income, and the expenditures for rent, food, clothing, health, savings, and other purposes, of four hundred fifty working women, thirty of whom kept account books for Miss Bosworth for a year or more, and two hundred twenty of whom Miss Bosworth interviewed personally. One hundred fifty were interviewed by Miss Jane Barclay, a fellow of the department, and fifty by other research fellows. Miss Bosworth’s study deals with three hundred fifty women living independently, and presents also the standards of one hundred living at home. The Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, working for the betterment of industrial conditions among self-supporting women by both direct and indirect educational methods, has unusual opportunities for continuous study of the actual expenses and the standards of living of such women, together with the effect of those standards on their efficiency.
A study of the budgets of self-dependent women has a twofold object: first, to enable the public to know in how far women are self-supporting; and second, to discover what income is required to make a woman self-supporting. In other words, such study should show what income is necessary for each group in order to maintain and increase its efficiency. Merely to state that a certain number actually live on a certain income is to neglect the essential question of how they live. The less educated woman cannot be expected to use the same ability in spending as her more highly trained sister; nor can the latter be satisfied with the taste of the less educated woman. The average demands of the average woman in each group must always be kept in mind.
It may be well first to present briefly the more pertinent conclusions of the study of professional women, since the general standards are more familiar to us. The expenditures reported by college women are arranged in three groups, minimum, medium and maximum. The total expenditures of the first group range from $550 to $725, in which an allowance of $200 to $350 is made for “living expenses,” and $150 to $175 for clothing. A woman whose income is at this minimum cannot save; it represents the cost of living of an apprentice. The medium expenditures are from $785 to $1,075 exclusive of savings, and the maximum $1,225 to $1,750 exclusive of savings. The medium figures include $300 to $450 for living, and $200 to $250 for clothing; the maximum, $500 to $700 for living, and $275 to $350 for clothing.
A woman of experience voices the general opinion that the medium range of expenditure in the teaching profession today is too low for thorough efficiency; for in such a budget no account can be made of many of the essentials of life. Thus it omits:
1. Any peculiar demands upon one’s purse through obligations to one’s family.
2. Expenses of the vacation season like extra board, extra laundry bills, railroad fares and extra sundries.
3. Expenses which come from social convention and social relations, such as Christmas, birthday and wedding gifts, even small ones, occasional lunching with friends, possible college class reunions, and the like.