738 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
less. While it is impossible to improve matters at once, or perhaps ever, it is yet certainly worthy of an attempt. That women in other vocations may be in dire straits does not pre- clude the legitimacy of centering public efforts on one occupa- tion.
In the two weeks I was employed I worked one hundred and seventy-five hours and received eleven dollars and eighty-eight cents, or a little more than six cents an hour. Under normal conditions the hours would be about one hundred and twenty for the same length of time. This, of course, would be exclusive of Sunday work, which is required all the year, at least in some stores. A certain number of clerks are needed for two or more hours during the day. In my first place no remuneration of any kind was given for this; in the second, car fare was always given, and lunch if the duties did not end before noon. The cash children in those two stores earned three and one-third cents an hour. When kept overtime, as they were in the first store in which I worked, they earned not quite two and one- third cents an hour. It must be said, however, that the managers did not insist upon children who worked at night being there promptly at eight in the morning. Sometimes they did not go until nine.
I am g'oing to present just here in tabulated form some information I gathered from my fellow-workers regarding them- selves. The statements are made for the month of December, and refer only to employes in the big down-town stores. In some cases I have had a dozen or more names followed by identical information, so I have inserted in the table but one to serve as a type. As a rule the working-women object to telling the wages they receive, particularly if they are low. They like to give the impression that they receive much more than they do, and this, I suppose, is not characteristic of any one particular class in society. Any figures based on a canvass made from the outside are almost sure to be misleading. The cases here cited have been carefully examined, and from intimate acquaintance with the individuals I believe them to be correct :
