Fascinating book...

[telophase]

Published in 1911, Making Both Ends Meet: The Income and Outlay of New York Working Girls by Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt. (Project Gutenberg link)

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According to one inflation calculator, $1 in 1910 equals about $23 in 2010.

Lucy Cleaver, 25, a stock girl in a clothing store.

Income: $4/week
Room and board: $2.50/week

"She did her own washing, and as she could not spend any further energy in sewing, she bought cheap ready-made clothes. This she found a great expense. Cheap waists wear out very rapidly. In the year she had bought 24 at 98 cents each. Here is her account, as nearly as she had kept it and recalled it for a year: a coat, $10; 4 hats, $17; 2 pairs of shoes, $5; 24 waists at 98 cents, $23.52; 2 skirts, $4.98; underwear, $2; board, $130; doctor, $2; total, $194.50. This leaves a balance of $86.50. This money had paid for necessaries not itemized,—stockings, heavy winter underwear, petticoats, carfare, vacation expenses, every little gift she had made, and all recreation."

The authors make a point of saying that many of the young women who worked in shops (I haven't read farther than the first chapter yet) hadn't had a chance to learn many principles of economy, and often didn't have any savings. The most budget-savvy of the women they mentioned was a widow of 35 who, it must be mentioned, had an excellent wardrobe from before her widowhood that she carefully maintained. The authors do acknowledge that investing $1.20 in a better shirtwaist would result in it lasting longer than a $ .98 shirtwaist, but point out that you can't buy one for $1.20 when all you have is $ .98. Also, shop clerk clothing has to be fresh and meticulously maintained because of their jobs.

Lucy, above, had previously had a department store job paying $5.50/week, but she'd gotten in an argument with a floor-walker and was dismissed. On her hours there:

In the course of the five years of her employment her salary had been raised one dollar. She stood for nine hours every day. If, in dull moments of trade, when no customers were near, she made use of the seats lawfully provided for employees, she was at once ordered by a floor-walker to do something that required standing.

During the week before Christmas, she worked standing over fourteen hours every day, from eight to twelve-fifteen in the morning, one to six in the afternoon, and half past six in the evening till half past eleven at night. So painful to the feet becomes the act of standing for these long periods that some of the girls forego eating at noon in order to give themselves the temporary relief of a foot-bath. For this overtime the store gave her $20, presented to her, not as payment, but as a Christmas gift.

The management also allowed a week's vacation with pay in the summer-time and presented a gift of $10.

Comments

[movingfinger]

Looks absolutely riveting. Thank you for posting this!

[telophase]

They even go a bit into the biographies of a few of the women profiled - their histories, how they came to New York and where they worked previously.

[tool_of_satan]

It's also interesting to note how relatively expensive clothing was (or alternatively how low wages and room and board were). The inflation ratio of 23:1 looks reasonable enough for the clothes, but for her wages it's more like 81:1 (assuming minimum wage and a 45-hour work week). Housing has changed enough that it's hard to make a comparison (not many places in NYC you could get room and board, I don't think).

[telophase]

I've read further now - many of the young women and girls profiled are working 56 hours a week for their wages. When the unions got some of them a half-holiday on Saturday, it was big news. (Or employers would raise their wages, but start requiring the workers to pay for their needles and thread in the shirt and corset factories, for example. I wish to reach back though time and punch people.)

Although lots of those industries were seasonal, so you'd work 56 hours a week for 3 or 4 months, then might be stuck working 4 or 5 hours a week if you couldn't find a better job. And because your working conditions were so horrible, you'd get sick and have to take 9 or 10 weeks off. There was a lot of stuff about working in that era I didn't know.

[tool_of_satan]

I don't know that much about working conditions back then, either, but I generally just assume they were horrible. I mean, minimum-wage jobs are no picnic now, but a century of unions and union-driven changes has made a considerable difference.

Using a 56-hour work week, someone working that for minimum wage now would make at least 101.5 times what Lucy Cleaver made - "at least" because mandated overtime pay would kick in at some point, but I'm not sure of the exact rules. Even with clothes (and other necessities) going up in price by a factor of approximately 23, that's at least quadruple the buying power, and with better working conditions.

Of course, housing has gone up by more than clothing has. Cleaver's "room and board" - which was probably a small room in a young women's boarding house - would be about $250/month today if we use the 23:1 inflation. If boarding houses like that existed in NYC today it MIGHT be possible to get room and board for that much, but I very much doubt it. How little you can spend for actually available housing in NYC right now, I don't know, but probably a bare minimum of triple that (in the less trendy parts of the outer boroughs).