The number of women working outside the home dramatically increased between 1870 and 1900. Textile factories were among the largest employers of females, but women also found work in the expanding food-preparation, garment, and shoe industries, among others. More respectable nonmanufacturing employment opportunities also increased. The introduction of the typewriter created more than 400,000 office jobs for women. The number of females in retail sales increased nearly 20 times (from 7,462 to 142,265) between 1880 and 1900. Young single females filled most of the jobs, but after 1880 an increasing number of women either entered or remained in the labor market after marriage.
Several factors explain the trend of married women working for an income. One was the increase of jobs in retail clerking, office work, and communications (telegraph and telephone) that appealed to middle-class women. But economic necessity was the primary motive. Most working-class and lower middle-class families could not subsist on one income. The declining birth rate, particularly in nonimmigrant families, left fewer children to provide that income while freeing women from years of child-rearing responsibilities.
The working woman’s contribution to her family’s income was not substantial, since women suffered from wage discrimination. In 1900 male factory workers’ average earnings were 75 percent more than those paid to women. The so-called respectable occupations paid even less; a female factory worker could earn two to three times as much as a retail clerk. Low wages tempted many into the nation’s flourishing sex industry. In 1894 the Chicago Vice Commission investigation found that a prostitute could earn at least four times as much as a woman working in a factory.
Women attempted to improve their conditions by joining labor unions. Perhaps the best-known female trade union was the Daughters of Saint Crispin (shoemakers), founded in 1871, which conducted several successful strikes. But most trade unions ignored women. Male shoemakers, for example, belonged to the Knights of Saint Crispin. The Knights of Labor (Knights), however, encouraged female membership. More than 200 local assemblies were exclusively female, with the largest one, located in Cincinnati, having at least 1,000 members. Many local assemblies were gender diversified. In 1887 the Knights hired Leonora Marie Barry as its general instructor and director of women’s work. Barry’s investigation of working conditions of women helped shape the Pennsylvania Factory Inspection Act of 1899.
Middle-class reform groups also took an interest in improving the conditions for working women. Many reformers desired to protect them from evil influences that might tempt them into prostitution, but several addressed economic needs. The Working Women’s Protective Union of New York, for example, collected unpaid wages for thousands of cheated women. Reform societies also lent their support to the passage of a variety of laws that limited the hours per week a woman could work and setting sanitation standards. But the laws were rarely enforced strictly.
Further reading: Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Wo-men in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).
—Harold W. Aurand
World History
