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The experience is also more, being 4.8 years. This includes all experience in the same line of work, the experience in present place of employment averaging 1.6 years.

It is much more difficult to arrive at the average cost of living throughout the year than the average earnings, because present rather than average expenditures are likely to color the result. Many girls were found whose income was more than sufficient when the work was normal, but when the season was over their savings, if there were any, went quickly for current necessaries. Rebecca C., a Russian Jewess, said that during the dull season she had lived many an entire day on a penny's worth of bread, and the landlady added that she had known the girl to go without even that much sustenance for the day.

With a wage of $6.34 and a weekly expenditure for food, shelter, heat, light, and laundry of $3.30, with clothes, car fare, emergencies, and, in many cases, contributions to needy relatives coming out of this balance of $3.04, there is not much left for a "rainy day."

Many of these girls live with families who are willing to trust for lodging until the girls can get work again, so that when the season reopens there is a debt of $40 or $50. The seasonal industries gather the women in, work them at full speed, and then turn them loose for the remainder of the year, the managers knowing full well that the following season will find the same girls or others clamoring for a means of livelihood.

Thirty-five per cent of the factory workers report overtime work during the busy seasons. These workers average 4.1 hours per week extra time and each one averages 50 hours extra during the year. Some firms pay the same as day rates; others pay more for night or Sunday work. At the time of the investigation, although many firms were working overtime, the total reports show that the workers in the entire city were running a little under the full number of hours ordinarily exacted in these industries. The average number of hours per week for the factory women was 54, making a nine-hour day.

Nearly 40 per cent of the adrift miscellaneous workers are contributing to needy relatives. In some cases these are widows taking care of children or a daughter supporting a mother, but more often they are foreigners who send money to the parents in Europe. One girl, who said she had been penniless for weeks because there was no work, had, during the busy season, managed to send $75 to her parents in Russia.

The foregoing table sets forth the details of weekly expenditures for wage-earning women adrift. There is a balance of $3.60 a week for the store women and $3.04 for the factory workers after paying

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for food, shelter, heat, light, and laundry. From this must come clothes, amusements, car fare, incidentals, and emergency demands. Over 40 per cent of the store women pay car fare to and from work, averaging 55 cents a week. Practically the same number are spending an average of 32 cents a week for amusements.

A large per cent of the factory women are spending money for car fare-almost 54 per cent and 2.3 per cent for education. Several are attending free public night schools. A very few have private lessons several nights a week, and one is studying music. A margin of $3.04 leaves little chance for instruction, even if there is still energy enough for it after the long day in the factory.

The voluntary vacation is not so vital with factory women. Most of them are pieceworkers and during the dull season have a chance to rest. Only 26 of the 212 scheduled women took voluntary vacations, and in no case were the expenses borne by the firm.

Nearly 39 per cent of all the women adrift were living in private families and about 41 per cent were keeping house. (a) The other 20 per cent were either in regular boarding and rooming housesdescribed as such if they held more than three boarders or lodgersor in the organized boarding homes. The prices prevailing in these organized homes (most of them subsidized) have exerted an undue influence on the figures representing the cost of food and shelter.

The employees in working girls' homes were found in the course of a special inquiry into the number of such homes and the accommodations offered. The special investigation developed the fact that altogether such institutions could accommodate not more than 700 store, factory, mill, and miscellaneous workers, or about 3 per cent of the total number adrift. It was important to know just how many girls of the group investigated were affected by such institutions, but to get the information in the time allotted it was necessary to digress in this particular from the general plan of following a list of addresses without preference or prejudice.

Seventeen of the working girls' boarding homes-to all of which store or factory workers were eligible--were visited. In 10 of these homes there was a total of 300 girls and women employed in the occupations falling within the scope of this investigation. In the remaining 7 few of the class of girls included in this investigation were found. Three of these under one management maintained prohibitive prices, 3 were designed especially for servants, not included in this investigation, and 1 was a Salvation Army home and maintained primarily for women in training. All of the homes are subsidized to some extent, none being entirely self-supporting. In only 1 is a girl required to be of a certain religious belief in order to enter.

a. A woman was said to be housekeeping when she was getting her own meals and living independently, whether in one room or in five rooms.

The lowest price asked for board and room is $2 per week. For this price a woman has to share a room with six roommates. Six homes offer board and room at $3 or less a week on condition that two girls, and sometimes three or four, occupy one room. To obtain a single room a girl must pay at least $4.50, and usually $6, a week. Four homes have no rooms at less than $3.50 a week, each room to be occupied by from two to six girls.

The wage limit varies from $7 to $12 weekly. In six homes it is $10 and under, so that the patrons are practically limited to the grade of occupations considered in this report.

In nearly all the homes the age limit is between 16 and 35 years, although in one girls as young as 15 are admitted. One home has no age limitations; in the others the rule in regard to age is not strictly observed.

Five of these homes aim to give the girls independence and freedom and are managed as hotels. In these there is no daily or weekly religious service. The others are more or less denominational and lay stress on some form of worship every evening or two or three times a week. Two homes which formerly held these regular services have discontinued them.

All of these homes have strict regulations as to late hours. The usual hour of closing is 10 or 10.30, although some of the matrons grant special permission to remain out later. Three furnish keys to girls who are going to return late if arrangements are made beforehand. Two give permission to all girls to remain out until 12 o'clock one or two nights a week.

In no case was the housing of an organized boarding home rated "bad." Three were rated "excellent" and the others were considered "fair" or "good." The food was rated "good" for all except one, which was rated "excellent." The women in organized boarding homes and those in boarding and rooming houses are similarly environed in that they are without the personal or family element common to those living in private families or keeping house.

Living in a private family in New York on an average income of $6.34-which is the average earnings of the factory and mill worker entirely dependent upon herself is not an unmixed blessing, however. It usually means sharing a room in a five or six story tenement with at least one person. The entire flat often has but three rooms and the bedroom rented to lodgers is generally an inside room with but little light or air. The food that goes with this grade of shelter may be "sufficient and sustaining" (which for the purposes of this investigation has been called "fair"), but it is rarely stimulating to the appetite.

Since a much larger percentage of women visited in New York than in any other of the cities investigated are keeping house, a special analysis of this class has been made.. They represent the large class of widowed, divorced, and deserted women who are left without support and usually have to earn not only their own living but also that of their children. For them boarding is impossible. With the mother earning from $5 to $8 a week there is only one way to live and keep her family together, and that is to rent one or more rooms and reduce her food cost to whatever her wage affords, be it ever so little.

In all but nine cases these housekeeping schedules show a struggle for the barest necessaries of life. In two of the excepted nine cases the women had just failed in the fight.

The schedules show that cost of living can be reduced very greatly by keeping house, the average weekly expenditure for the adrift women keeping house being 21 cents lower than that of women living in organized boarding houses and 46 and 68 cents lower, respectively, than those in private families or in boarding or lodging houses. The number of rooms rented varies from two to six, with the majority occupying three-room flats in tenements.

In every part of the city "these self-supporting householders" can be found. They are in the tenements of the lower east side, in the Bronx, on the lower west side, south of Fourteenth street, in Brooklyn, in fact wherever a few rooms can be secured for a small rental.

In three cases the housekeeping group consists of two women who have been friends for years. They make a home and reduce expenses by this method. One group consists of an elderly brother and sister. There are four single women and two widows who keep house alone with no one dependent upon them. All the remaining groups are broken families sisters keeping house to support a mother and sometimes her younger children; widows and divorcees with one or more dependents.

The housing in no case is rated "excellent," and in over 17 per cent of the cases it is rated "bad." These are cases where families of from five to ten were found to be living in two rooms. The food in nearly 21 per cent of the housekeeping cases was rated "bad," 79 per cent ranging from "fair" to "good," but rarely to "excellent."

The apparent incongruity between the expenditures of those whose food and housing are rated "fair or good" and of those whose accommodations were rated "excellent" is due to the fact that nearly all of the latter live in organized boarding homes where prices are low.

A special study of living conditions among different nationalities was made in connection with the New York City investigation. The tabulated results follow and are worthy of close scrutiny:

PER CENT OF WOMEN WORKERS ADRIFT IN GREATER NEW YORK, AVERAGE AMOUNT PAID BY THEM FOR FOOD AND HOUSING, AND THE PER CENT OF THE WOMEN IN EACH CLASS OF LIVING CONDITIONS, BY NATIONALITY.

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The majority of American, Irish, German, and Austrian are living under conditions rated "fair" or "good," the range of which has been previously explained. Of the Russian Hebrews, the 42.63 per cent living under excellent conditions are without exception living in organized boarding homes, which have been spoken of more at length, and where very good housing and food are offered at moderate rates. The lowest cost of living rated by nationality is that of Bohemians, 58.33 per cent of whom are living under "bad" conditions of housing or food.

"All others" include Scotch, English, Russian, Spanish, Roumanian, Hungarian, Swedish, and some others, who were present in such small numbers as not to warrant separate discussion.

Dividing the entire group of adrift into the three divisions of "bad," "fair or good," and "excellent," it developed that the Russian Hebrews furnished 22.7 per cent-the largest group-of those whose conditions were rated "bad." Of those rated "fair or good," the Americans form nearly 22 per cent.

Many women adrift were scattered more or less throughout the city, but the great majority are massed about the retail districts and along the rivers. There is an unbroken district from Fourteenth street north to Fortieth street on the West Side and to One hundred and twenty-fifth street on the East Side, where over 25 per cent of the women workers found were adrift. There is also another section-ward 5, bounded by Canal and Reade streets, Broadway, and the North River-which has over 25 per cent of women workers adrift. The largest per cent of those adrift is found in ward 9 on the lower West Side from Fourteenth street south to Houston street

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