4. Expression of one’s esthetic tastes in concerts and pictures.
5. Recreation of any sort during the working year.
6. Miscellaneous trifling but accumulating expenses which are sure to occur.
At the present time 72% of the women prepared for teaching by college training are earning the medium salary or less. Grouping this class by years of experience, salaries do not reach the medium figure until a woman has been at work ten to fifteen years. If we accept these expenditures as a standard, then we find only a small proportion of college women able to attain it. The unfortunate method of determining necessary expenditure by estimate is well illustrated by the returns from these college women. The cost of actual living and clothing is often accepted as covering the essentials; but in fact the items for incidentals, carfares, professional expenses and sundries sum up to almost the same amount as the cost of sustenance, especially in the smaller budgets. Such an allowance would usually be considered excessive, but a careful review of the items indicates that this proportion of expenditure for sundries is legitimate.
In addition to this general but important conclusion that the standard of living based on the returns quoted above is too low in most cases to secure efficiency, and hence promotion and advancement, the following significant conditions must be faced by those concerned with the problem of salaries:
1. To maintain and increase efficiency and earning capacity in the teaching profession, women must be prepared to give from two to five years to graduate study.
2. Independent income ought not to be counted on to supplement earned income.
3. The relation of cost of living to efficiency should be better understood in order to lead teachers to insist upon advancement, even at sacrifice of personal preference for locality and conditions of living.
4. Although there is no prevailing standard of living, and the relation between expenditure and income or between the various phases of expenditure does not seem to be set, college women should try to set a standard as quickly as possible.
In the study of wage-earning girls made by the research department of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, the cost of living of girls who reside with their families is considered separately. Since the aim is primarily to discover the cost of living of the self-dependent girl, the number of the other class studied is small, consisting chiefly of immigrant girls and girls in the suburbs earning a good salary and living at home or with relatives.