rooms, and sometimes here it was apparently used in preference to the kitchen, as being more suitable.

In the cases where one or two girls are keeping house in a small flat, they are perhaps subject to less surveillance than under any other circumstances and live in a freedom which knows no restraint save their own moral standards. Although there were a few "housekeeping groups" of a decidedly suspicious character (such as the woman who had one man lodger, sleeping, she said "in a part of my room, curtained off"), most of them appeared to be above criticism.

WOMEN LIVING IN PRIVATE FAMILIES.

The women living as boarders in private families were more numerous than any others, 636, or 39.6 per cent, being found in this group. The tables following present for them the facts as to average weekly earnings, cost of living, and the number of dependents in the same form used for women keeping house in the preceding pages:

NUMBER OF WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS LIVING IN PRIVATE FAMILIES, CLASSIFIED BY COST OF LIVING AND WAGE GROUPS.

Average weekly earnings.

Number of women with average weekly cost of living (food, shelter, heat, light, and

laundry)-

• Not including 57 waitresses whose cost of living is not comparable, as food is paid for in service.

NUMBER OF WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS LIVING IN PRIVATE FAMILIES WHO HAVE SPECIFIED NUMBER OF PERSONS WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY DEPENDENT ON THEM FOR SUPPORT, BY WAGE GROUPS.

These women may be roughly divided into two classes: Those who lived in poor families and homes at a very little cost, and those who sought pleasant families and comfortable homes, paying as much if not more than they would in a regular boarding or lodging house.

The former were principally foreign-born women living in families of their own nationality, who were often friends or relatives. Generally, their standard of living was very low. In the first of the two tables immediately preceding there will be seen three cases where the cost of living was less than $1 a week. An examination of these instances shows one girl paying $2 a month, or 46 cents a week, for her room in a miserable shack. She lived here with an unmarried man, to whom she had been sent by her parents in Russia. She did the cooking for this man and two men lodgers, in return for which she got her board free. The other was a girl paying only $2 a month, or 46 cents a week, for room and board. She and her landlady were Galicians. On being questioned closely as to how she could afford to board the girl for so little, the landlady replied that the food cost her more than the girl paid, but as the girl couldn't pay what she wanted to charge her she took what she could get.

Thirty-one women paid less than $1.50 for food and shelter, but their manner of living would be scarcely endurable to American women. In one household there were five people in two rooms, the girl lodger, the landlady and her husband sharing one room, and a male lodger sleeping in the kitchen. In another, two women lodgers and the child of one of them shared one small room. The average earnings of the woman with the child was $1.97 a week$1.45 was quite all she could afford to pay for her room and board for herself and child. In all these families there was much crowding and little privacy, men and women mingling freely in any and all of the rooms. Two dollars a month was the usual price of rooms and $1 a week for board.

It is not to be thought that such a standard was taken from choice. One-third of the women in this group earn on an average less than $6 a week and were obliged to live at the lowest possible cost. Many of the foreign-born women, however, live thus more from ignorance of any better way than because it is necessary. The women in the better class of private families oftentimes had the pleasantest sort of surroundings; homes that were comfortable and well kept, and with people of education and refinement. One St. Louis woman, a dressmaker, earning $12 a week in a department store, lived in a three-story brick house, surrounded with lawns and shade trees, in a delightful residential district. The furnishings of the house were of excellent grade; the people refined; but for all this she had to pay $7, which included only room and board.

Such cases were decidedly in the minority, however. The average weekly earnings for the group is but $6.78 and the cost of living $3.43.

Some of these women took their meals with the family, some at restaurants, some cooked part of their meals in their rooms. If the cost of living alone had been made the basis of the group divisions, doubtless some of these women doing light housekeeping would have come more properly in the keeping-house division, but as the social environment has been the chief consideration, the method of getting meals has not been considered of enough importance to change the group.

The number who had the responsibility of dependents, or partial dependents, was much smaller in this group than in the keepinghouse group. Only 30, or 4.7 per cent, had persons totally dependent on them, and there are only 35 such persons, making an average of only 1 dependent per person, while 12.2 per cent, or 78 women, had a total of 91 persons partially dependent on them, an average of 1.2 dependents per person. The partial dependents in this group, while no less a drain on the woman's earnings, were not such a care or responsibility as those in the keeping-house group. For, while

32

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the partial dependents upon the keeping-house group were generally 3) living with and had to be personally "looked after" by the woman wage-earner, the dependents upon those living in private families were frequently living elsewhere. When the woman wage-earner had made her weekly contribution her responsibility ceased.

On the whole, then, so far as their responsibility to other persons is concerned, the women in this group are much freer and more independent than those keeping house. But the extent of their freedom is decidedly restricted by an average wage of $6.78. While this was the average wage for the group, 55.6 per cent got less than that amount. The average cost of living was $3.43, but 50 per cent paid more than that, and the women must shape their lives to fit their incomes.

In private families the girl may or may not mingle in the social life of the family, but the chances are that she does, especially in the poorer homes. Here the close quarters often destroy all privacy, and the lodger or boarder becomes practically a member of the family. She uses all the rooms in common with the family, almost always sharing a room with some member of the family and, in some extreme cases, occupies a room with the landlady and her husband. If there are men lodgers in the house the entrance to their room is sometimes through the girl's room or vice versa. In one house visited the woman received the agent about 9 p. m. in the room of a man lodger, who had already gone to bed. This seemed to be the only available sitting room and disconcerted no one save the agent. While such conditions, through custom and long usage, lose the startling effect which they would have on one unused to them, they can not help but blunt a girl's sense of proper relations with the other sex and foster standards which are not acceptable in this country.

But in these families the girl is, at least, subject to some supervision. Her landlady knows pretty well how and where she spends her time, and feels at liberty to commend or criticise. "I never see such a girl as Annie," was one landlady's comment. "I can't drive her out of the house; she don't go anywhere," while another said, "That Mamie! why she spends all her money on the boys, buys them cigarettes, and I don't know what. I just told her she'd got to spend a little more on her back if she wanted to stay here."

WOMEN LIVING IN BOARDING AND LODGING HOUSES.

The boarding and lodging group is next in size to the private family group. Five hundred and forty-two, or 33.7 per cent, of all the women are living this way. The facts as to average weekly earnings, cost of living, and number of dependents are shown in the tables following. The tables are in form like those relating to the preceding groups.

NUMBER OF WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS LIVING IN BOARDING OR LODGING HOUSES, CLASSIFIED BY COST OF LIVING AND WAGE GROUPS.

Average weekly earnings.

Number of women with average weekly cost of living (food, shelter, heat, light, and

$1 to

$2 to

$3 to

$4 to

$5 to

$6 to

to

to

to

to

to

and Total.

$1.49.

$2.49.

$3.49.

$4.49.

$5.49.

$6.49.

$1.99.

$2.99.

$3.99.

$4.99.

$5.99.

over.

Not including 1 not reporting cost of living and 107 waitresses whose cost of living is not comparable. NUMBER OF WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS LIVING IN BOARDING OR LODGING HOUSES WHO HAVE SPECIFIED NUMBER OF PERSONS WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY DEPENDENT ON THEM FOR SUPPORT, BY WAGE GROUPS.

$1 to $1.49. $1.50 to $1.99. $2 to $2.49.. $2.50 to $2.99. $3 to $3.49.. $3.50 to $3.99. $4 to $4.49. $4.50 to $4.99. $5 to $5.49. $5.50 to $5.99. $6 to $6.49. $6.50 to $6.99. $7 to $7.49. $7.50 to $7.99. $8 to $8.49. $8.50 to $8.99. $9 to $9.49. $9.50 to $9.99. $10 to $10.49.