“There are unfortunately no reliable statistics as to the average wages earned by women workers, but, speaking from a large experience, I estimate that the average wage of the manual woman worker, taking into account slackness, sickness, &c., is certainly not more than 7s. 6d. all the year round.”—“Trade Unions,” by Mary Macarthur, in “Women in Industry from Seven Points of View,” p. 66.
Stephen Reynolds in “A Poor Man’s House” paints this situation with great psychological insight.
Compare Salmon, “Domestic Service,” pp. 145-6.
Compare “Englishwomen’s Year-book for 1910,” p. 69.
e.g. Rowntree, “Poverty: a Study of Town Life”; Liverpool Economic and Statistical Society, “How the Casual Labourer Lives”; “Study of the Diet of the Labouring Classes in Edinburgh” (published by Otto Schulze & Co., now out of print); Recent Blue-books on the Cost of Living, &c.