keep saying, "Why don't the women go home?" Why they don't is clear from every recent study of why women work. They work for the same reasons men do-because they must.

Economic responsibilities fall on the shoulders of women of all ages and in all marital-status groups. It is widely conceded that single, widowed, and divorced women must generally be selfsupporting. Not equally well recognized are the needs of married women. Well over half of the married women interviewed in a recent Women's Bureau study pointed to their need for selfsupport (many had dependents as well) as the reason for desiring continued employment. A New York State survey found this need among married women workers even more prevalent-over four-fifths referred to economic need as their reason for working.

Telling evidence of the drain which family expenses make on women's carnings is the growing mass of information showing the large share of women's earnings turned over to their families. Interviews by the Women's Bureau have disclosed that 92 percent of employed women who lived with their families contributed regularly toward family expenses, and well over half of them turned over 50 to 100 percent of their earnings to the family purse. The New York State survey referred to revealed even more widespread contributions. Practically without exception, women living with their families regularly contributed to the family's support. Almost three-fourths of them contributed half or more of their pay.

Other surveys attempt to determine what proportion of the total contributions to the family exchequer is derived from the earnings of its women members. A 1939 survey of Cleveland's women workers showed that in over half the families it was the earnings of women members that accounted for 50 percent or more of the total contributions received by the family from all its earners. A comparable survey in Utah disclosed that in three-fifths of the families, women's contributions made up half or more of the family's receipts from earners.

In the face of these facts there would seem to be no doubt that women are entitled to the widest opportunities for training in order to make the most of themselves as employed persons and to discharge their financial obligations to their dependents.

Equal in importance to expanding their occupational opportunities is the question of the adequacy of women's earnings. It is a matter of common knowledge that the general wage levels of women are lower than those of men, and that the predominantly woman-employing industries are the low-wage industries. This is still true even though, for decades, women have been an important factor in the labor force. In part, this is a continuance of the traditional idea about the value of women's work prevalent in the early days of our industrialization.

At that time, when women were first entering industry as a new part of the labor force, they carried over into the factory household skills that did not have a high money value. They were paid in the factories at lower scales of wages than those usually paid to men. This was the same type of wage exploitation that ordinarily occurs with the entrance into industry of any new group, like migrant workers or workers of different nationalities or races.

Long after women had demonstrated their efficiency in various skilled occupations, these low wage scales have continued even though industry has come to depend on women's work to an increasing degree. Data reported monthly by the National Industrial Conference Board continue to show, as they have for years, that women's average earnings in selected manufacturing industries not only are far below men's, but women's averages even continue to be below those of unskilled men. In December 1947, earnings of all workers averaged $57.54 a week, earnings of unskilled men averaged $49.79 a week, but women's earnings averaged only $41.39 a week.

These differences which in part reflect the return that industry gives to women for the same or similar work not only constitute an injustice to women but are a matter of serious import to the economy as a whole. It is an axiom of wage theory that when large numbers of workers can be hired at lower rates of pay than those prevailing at any given time, the competition of such persons for jobs results either in the displacement of the higher paid workers or in the acceptance of lower rates by those workers. Over a period of time this pressure tends to depress all wage levels, and unless this normal course is averted by direct action it results eventually in lower levels of earnings for all, with a resulting 1eduction in purchasing power and in standards of living. Because of their new war-born training and skills, women are, as never before, in a position to be used by unscrupulous employers as wage cutters. This they resent, both on their own account and on the men's account. Women have a deep, natural interest in the welfare of families and they know that every time a workingman's income is reduced, his family's standard of living is inevitably lowered. In consideration of our national objective of high living standards and full employment, I submit that we cannot afford to risk the threat to general wage levels that unequal pay to women involves.

Nine States now have equal-pay laws, but there is a long way to go before administrative and enforcement procedures can be organized to produce optimum effects. Moreover, there is still no Federal law. Last week both the Secretary and I testified in favor of a Federal bill but we discovered that, between 1945 and the present, opposition has become manifest. Industry representatives testified against the bill, not on "general principle," mind you, but on the ground that such legislation is not necessary. The representative of the National Asso

said, in part, "The issue of equal pay for women is today a rapidly disappearing problem in industry. employers generally have accepted and applied the principle of equal pay for equal work." I refer you to the testimony of the proponents, both at the 1945 hearings and at those recently concluded, for the more familiar picture.

As the conference proceeds you will be reviewing these facts in the light of still other related developments. I can see no prospective dearth of work to be done, no chance that we may be tempted to slip into complacency. But the resolution of current complexities must be in terms of today and tomorrow. There is no use in our seeking an answer to the economic problems of the American woman in 1948 by looking backward to those "good old days” when women in large numbers neither sought nor needed to seek paid employment outside the home. The women who met in Seneca Falls in 1848 were the adventurous women of their time; they were the seekers after new answers to their current difficulties and dissatisfactions. But all their unconventionality of thought and ambition could not have brought women to where they are today, either economically or politically, unless the world itself had conspired with them. In 1848 times were already changing and the industrial era that was opening up was going to need women. The acceleration in the development of an industrial and money economy, in contrast to an agricultural economy, meant less and less production in the home and more and more in the factory. Cash that women could earn outside the home was to become more important to them and to their families than continuation of the older home-making arts through which they had made their economic contribution in an earlier society.

As far as we can now see there is no reversal of this process in store. Hitler tried to turn back the clock for women, but he failed. Others who seek to take that path will also fail. It is our job in 1948, then, to take stock of where we are, to set our sights on where we want to go, and to conspire with the future, as those women did whose work we are here to honor, to help coming generations of women make equal progress and as great a contribution as did their predecessors in terms of the world of the next century.

February 17 Afternoon Session

CONFERENCE ADDRESSES American Women on the Job

Gains and Goals of Women Workers, Gladys Dickason

The Role of Legislation in Meeting Basic Problems of Working Conditions, Elizabeth S. Magee

Commentary, Irma Rittenhouse

GAINS AND GOALS OF WOMEN WORKERS

M

Gladys Dickason, Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America

ADAM Chairman, members of the conference, I am quite delighted that it is Miss Miller who is the chairman of this conference which commemorates that convention of 1848 in which the women's rights movement got well under way. I don't think that there is a woman in public life today who exemplifies more fully the contribution which women could make to our economic, social, and political life that was envisioned by that conference in 1848 than Miss Miller does.

This is a very important conference. We sometimes take for granted the gains that women have made. Our natural point of view that the world just automatically gets better has been somewhat shaken by two world wars, but none the less, quite unconsciously we keep on thinking, believing, "Well, if we let it alone, it will just go along; things will do all right by themselves."

I think with reference to women's role in society that what happened in Germany and Italy should teach us a lesson. Women were thrown backward in the fascist countries, as women's place, women's status is always made inferior in periods of reaction. We have made very great gains in the last hundred years, perhaps in our clothes as much as anything else. And despite the "new look" which has added those inches to our dresses and so forth, the yards we wear today are nothing as compared with what they were even 20 years ago or 30 years ago, let alone a hundred years ago, so that our clothing is such that we can move about freely. It is a great gain and one, I think, that we will hold to.

That we have a Women's Bureau is something I think the women. of 1848 didn't really think would be possible, and we need a Women's

I only hope that we can make as much progress for women in our society during the next hundred years as we have made in the past hundred years-perhaps one of our goals should be that women be accepted fully in the labor force, in politics, and in other aspects of public life as individuals, as human beings, as people, not as a supply of cheap labor nor as a group to be tolerated but not welcomed. I have no doubt that even then we will still need a Women's Bureau, because the problems of women working and maintaining a home will always be with us.

But today when the number of women in the labor force is increasing so rapidly, and when conditions under which working women work so seriously affect general wage levels and thus affect the prosperity of the country, a Women's Bureau is an indispensable agency of good government.

We take for granted now the right to vote. It was hard fought for and won with great difficulty. We complain sometimes today that women don't have their full place in political parties or exercise their full influence at the polls. But in the nearly 30 years of suffrage the progress that has been made in that direction is quite remarkable. I remember when I was in college shortly after the suffrage amendment was passed; apparently the political parties had been advised that now that women had the vote it would be a good idea to have a woman on most of the congressional committees, and so on, just to make it look good; I remember attending a meeting where there were almost no women present, very few. I remember the discussion that took place as to the woman who should be on the committee for the congressional district of that particular party. The discussion had nothing to do, really, with the capabilities of the women who were interested and could help, nor had it anything to do with the contributions that a woman could make on that committee. Being on the committee was something that would be handed out to whatever woman happened to be available and happened to have some friends around; her name would be listed, and that would be all.

I am sure that we have gone far beyond that stage now-not as far as we should like, but nonetheless far.

While I am confining myself chiefly to discussion of women in jobs, I can't refrain from mentioning also that when I went to Columbia University to enter the graduate school to work in political science, I wanted to take a course in constitutional law that was given in the law school. It was against the rules for women to take courses in the law school. The Dean finally suggested that perhaps they would put a curtain in the corner of the room and let me sit behind that. Then I could take the law course that I wanted to take.