The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living/Preface
According to the report issued by the Census Bureau in 1907, entitled "Women at Work," the census enumerators of 1900 found that nearly five million women and girls of the United States were engaged in what are known as gainful occupations, and were therefore either partly or wholly self-supporting. Three-fifths of these workers were found in six occupations, domestic service leading, with farm labor a close second because of the large number of colored women employed on Southern plantations; dressmaking, laundry work, teaching and actual farming followed in the order named. Seventh in point of numbers employed were the textile mill operatives. Saleswomen came tenth in numerical order, and office workers still further down the list.
At the time this census was taken, there were 23,485,559 women in the United States, of whom 20.6 per cent. were engaged in gainful occupations. Students of economics and sociology, who have gathered statistics regarding women wage-earners since that census was taken, announce that on January 1, 1909, the number of women employed on wages or any form of regular pay in the United States had leaped to six millions. At the present rate of increase, when the next census is taken, the number of women workers will have increased out of all proportion to the increase in population.
In other words, the feminine conquest of the industrial world in America is practically complete, and woman's financial independence is practically assured. She has invaded and now occupies firmly all but nine of the 303 fields of wage-earning listed by the United States Census Bureau. Furthermore, her education and interests all tend toward the evacuation of domestic service and farm labor in favor of the various trades and professions, or a distinctly mercantile or commercial career.
Question girls graduating from district village or city schools, and you cannot fail to mark this tendency. Department editors of women's magazines are deluged with letters from country girls all over the United States, begging for information as to gainful operations in manufacturing or business centers.
In a mid-West city, I studied the bent heads of girls in an upper grade grammar class, taking their final examinations.
"How many of these girls will enter the high school?" I asked.
"Ten per cent.," answered the principal. "Fifty per cent. will go into stores as cash-girls and wrappers, or take up the study of stenography. The remaining 40 per cent. will find employment in factories or in dressmaking or millinery shops as apprentices.
The country over, only one girl out of every hundred entering the elementary schools completes the high school course. This means that 99 out of every 100 leave school at the expiration of their last year in the grammar schools, or even sooner.
What becomes of the ninety and nine? For a time, at least, the vast majority pursue some gainful occupation and then marry. During the period of wage-earning, the ninety and nine want to secure the highest possible pay.
In the last sentence lies the excuse for this book. It has been written to meet the needs of the American girls graduating from grammar or high school and facing the problem of self-support. It has been written to answer the question: "How shall I earn my living?" a question which is hurled at every school-teacher, every writer for women, every editor of a magazine or newspaper in the United States to-day.
For the past five years I have been answering that question in personal letters written to more than ten thousand girls. These answers, and the result of five years of investigation, I am giving in this book. The chapters are not arranged in the order of occupation named by the United States Census, but according to the number of questions received concerning the gainful occupations which ambitious girls desire to enter.
Each chapter has been written with the hope that it may make clear to would-be workers the personal qualifications needed to succeed in a trade, profession or commercial career, the time and the money required for preparation, the best method of securing a position when that preparation is completed, the salaries paid, and the chances for advancement.
If this book shows one girl the folly of entering upon a career for which she is unsuited, and if it helps another girl to find the work for which she is best qualified by temperament and training, it will have accomplished its object.
In conclusion, I desire to express to the editors of the Woman's Home Companion and the Philadelphia Press, my appreciation for permission to use material published in their columns, where an unusual amount of space is allotted to the problems of the self-supporting woman.