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THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

the opportunity offered for saving money. This is greater among household employes because they do not pay board, the clothing required is simpler, and the temptation to spend money in recreation is less frequent. The minimum wages paid an adult in household labor may be fairly put at two dollars and a half a week; the maximum at six dollars, this excluding the comparatively rare opportunities for women to cook at forty dollars a month, and the housekeeper's position at fifty dollars a month. The factory wages, viewed from the savings bank standpoint, may be smaller in the average, but this I believe to be counterbalanced in the minds of the employes by the greater chance which the factory offers for increased wages. A girl over sixteen seldom works in a factory for less than four dollars a week, and she always cherishes the hope of at last being a forewoman with a permanent salary of fifteen or twenty-five dollars a week. Whether she attains this or not, she runs a fair chance of earning ten dollars a week as a skilled worker. A girl finds it easier to be content with four dollars a week, when she pays for board, in a scale of wages rising towards ten dollars, than to be content with four dollars a week and pay no board in a scale of wages rising towards six dollars, and the girl well knows that there are scores of forewomen at sixty dollars a month for one forty-dollar cook or fifty-dollar housekeeper. In many cases this position is well taken economically for, although the opportunity for saving may be better for the employes in the household than in the factory, her family saves more when she works in a factory and lives with them. The rent is no more when she is at home. The two dollars and fifty cents a week which she pays into the family fund more than covers the cost of her actual food, and at night she can often contribute towards the family labor by helping her mother wash and sew.

This brings us easily to the fourth point of comparison, that of the possibilities afforded for family life. It is well to remember that women, as a rule, are devoted to their families; that they want to live with their parents, their brothers and