Five women, 4 buyers and 1 assistant buyer, from whom personal data were secured, were not included in the general report on store employees. The age of these women ranged from 29 to 42 years— averaging 32.8 years; their experience from 9 to 16-averaging 13 years; their weekly earnings from $10.29 (assistant buyer) to $40— averaging $21.91; their weekly cost of shelter, food, heat, light, and laundry, $7.20 to $17-averaging $10.29. All of these women lived in lodging houses, four in the South End and one in the Back Bay under good or excellent conditions. In the 11 stores in Boston which furnished figures, 45 women buyers and 35 assistant buyers were employed. The average weekly wages of the buyers were $31.18, of the assistant buyers, $21.27. One of these stores was employing 12 buyers and 15 assistant buyers. A woman buyer from this store, who was interviewed, had gone to work in a department store 10 years before at $3.50 a week. She is now getting $40 a week. She thought that the opportunities for advancement for women in the stores were rapidly increasing; that women's clothes and furnishings were coming more and more into the domain of women buyers, and that for a woman of pluck, perseverance, and business sense the department store offered an opening to a successful career. CHAPTER V. LIVING CONDITIONS OF WAGE-EARNING WOMEN IN CHICAGO, ILL. The investigation into the living conditions of self-supporting women in Chicago who are practically without homes covered a period of nine months, the main investigation continuing from January 20 to October 3, 1908. A brief supplementary investigation for data from women with homes was made during the period from March 24 to April 15, 1909. Working lists for the investigation were secured at first from employers' pay rolls and by an individual canvass and were selected with special reference to women "adrift" (i. e., entirely dependent upon themselves for support and practically without homes in the city), (") the living conditions surrounding such women, and the chief industrial factors entering into these conditions. For the supplemental work a list of almost 700 women employed in the same or similar industries was secured from a canvassing company, not only for the purpose of comparison with the data from the other lists but also to determine what proportion of women of this industrial group were without homes and how nearly the level of earnings and expenditures for the women with homes approached the level of those adrift. Of necessity, therefore, the percentages of home and of adrift women appearing in the table on page 15 are determined only from the canvassing company's list. The figures on industrial and living conditions, however, are based upon data derived from all the lists. The chief industrial and economic factors entering into the living conditions of each woman appear in the tables at the end of the report. The state factory inspector's report of Illinois, 1906, shows a total of 108,078 women employed in stores and in manufacturing and similar industries in Chicago and Cook County. Of these, approximately 70,000 were employed in the industries represented in this investigation, distributed among the industries as shown in the following table. Employees in department stores and other retail establishments are treated separately from those in factories and similar establishments. Waitresses make a third group and are treated alone • For full explanation of word "adrift" as used in this report, see page 10. |