PREFACE


This book is composed of the economic records of self-supporting women
living away from home in New York. Their chronicles were given to the
National Consumers' League simply as a testimony to truth; and it is
simply as a testimony to truth that these narratives are reprinted here.

The League's inquiry was initiated because, three years ago in the study
of the establishment of a minimum wage, only very little information was
obtainable as to the relation between the income and the outlay of
self-supporting women workers. The inquiry was conducted for a year and a
half by Mrs. Sue Ainslie Clark, who obtained the workers' budgets as they
were available from young women interviewed in their rooms, boarding
places, and hotels, and at night schools and clubs. After Mrs. Clark had
collected and written these accounts, I supplemented them further in the
same manner; and rearranged them in a series of articles for Mr. S.S.
McClure. The budgets fell naturally into certain industrial divisions;
but, as will be seen from the nature of the inquiry, the records were not
exhaustive trade-studies of the several trades in which the workers were
engaged. They constituted rather an accurate kinetoscope view of the
yearly lives of chance passing workers in those trades. Wherever the
facts ascertained seemed to warrant it, however, they were so focussed as
to express definitely and clearly the wisdom of some industrial change.

In two instances in the course of the serial publication of the budgets
such industrial changes were undertaken and are now in progress. The firm
of Macy & Co. in New York has inaugurated a monthly day of rest, with
pay, for all permanent women-employees who wish this privilege. The