Making Both Ends Meet | Page 5

the store, she worked over tubs and ironing-boards
at home till twelve at night.
It is worth noting, as one cause of the numerous helpless shifts of the
younger salesgirls, that, living, as most of them do, in a
semidependence, on either relatives or charitable homes, it is almost
impossible for them to learn any domestic economy, or the value of
money for living purposes. It seems significant that quite the most
practical spender encountered among the saleswomen was a widow,
Mrs. Green, whose accounts will be given below, who was for years the
manager of her own household and resources, and not a wage-earner
until fairly late in life.
This helplessness of a semidependent and uneducated girl may be
further illustrated by the chronicle of Alice Anderson, a girl of
seventeen, who had been working in the department stores for three
years and a half.
She was at first employed as a check girl in a Fourteenth Street store, at
a wage of $2.62-1/2 a week; that is to say, she was paid $5.25 twice a
month. Her working day was nine and a half hours long through most
of the year. But during two weeks before Christmas it was lengthened
to from twelve to thirteen and a half hours, without any extra payment
in any form. She was promoted to the position of saleswoman, but her
wages still remained $2.62-1/2 a week. She lived with her grandmother
of eighty, working occasionally as a seamstress, and to her Alice gave
all her earnings for three years.
It was then considered better that she should go to live with an aunt, to
whom she paid the nominal board of $1.15 a week. As her home was in
West Hoboken, she spent two and a half hours every day on the journey

in the cars and on the ferry. During the weeks of overtime Alice could
not reach home until nearly half past eleven o'clock; and she would be
obliged to rise while it was still dark, at six o'clock, after five hours and
a half of sleep, in order to be at her counter punctually at eight. By
walking from the store to the ferry she saved 30 cents a week. Still,
fares cost her $1.26 a week. This $1.26 a week carfare (which was still
not enough to convey her the whole distance from her aunt's to the
store) and the $1.15 a week for board (which still did not really pay the
aunt for her niece's food and lodging) consumed all her earnings except
20 cents a week.
Alice was eager to become more genuinely self-dependent. She left the
establishment of her first employment and entered another store on
Fourteenth Street, as cash girl, at $4 a week. The hours in the second
store were very long, from eight to twelve in the morning and from a
quarter to one till a quarter past six in the afternoon on all days except
Saturday, when the closing hour was half past nine.
After she had $4 a week instead of $2.62-1/2, Alice abandoned her
daily trip to West Hoboken and came to live in New York.
Here she paid 6 cents a night in a dormitory of a charitably supported
home for girls. She ate no breakfast. Her luncheon consisted of coffee
and rolls for 10 cents. Her dinner at night was a repetition of coffee and
rolls for 10 cents. As she had no convenient place for doing her own
laundry, she paid 21 cents a week to have it done. Her regular weekly
expenditure was as follows: lodging, 42 cents; board, $1.40; washing,
21 cents; clothing and all other expenses, $1.97; total, $4.
Of course, living in this manner was quite beyond her strength. She was
pale, ill, and making the severest inroads upon her present and future
health. Her experience illustrates the narrow prospect of promotion in
some of the department stores.
III
It is significant in this point to compare the annals of this growing girl
with those of a saleswoman of thirty-five, Grace Carr, who had been at

work for twelve years. In her first employment in a knitting mill she
had remained for five years, and had been promoted rapidly to a weekly
wage of $12. The hours, however, were very long, from ten to thirteen
hours a day. The lint in the air she breathed so filled her lungs that she
was unable, in her short daily leisure, to counteract its effect. At the end
of five years, as she was coughing and raising particles of lint, she was
obliged to rest for a year.
Not strong enough to undertake factory work again, she obtained a
position in the shoe department in one of the large stores, where she
was not "speeded up," and