1893 - State Library Information Center

WOMAN'S WORK AND WAGES. 85employments reported, it is believed that the returns are representativeones and reliable. These returns come from all overthe State, principally from urban localities, and comprise a farlarger number of workers of this class than ever before has beencollated by the Bureau.The difficulty of obtaining information from our female operatives,especially, has resulted that this field of inqury has beenbut little exploited. In 1888, the Bureau succeeded in getting buta few hundred replies to a similar investigation as was conductedthis year. During the same year the U. S. Commissioner of Laborinvestigated the condition of 17,427 working women in 22 citiesof the country, including Newark, in this State, from which 625women, engaged in 34 distinct industries, were reported. Thereport, the fourth annual, had f>r its special object to discoverwhat cities had to offer to working women in the way of manuallabor—women who work upon light manual or mechanical laborani in stores. It contains a most thorough presentation of allthe facts bearing on the subject of inqury, which, to a certain ex*tent, was limited. So far as this State is concerned, territoriallyand industrially, the present investigation has been more extended,but confined, primarily, as stated, to work and wages and expenditures,although taking in other incidental items, as will be seenby the summary tables following, which are supplemented inTable 3, by data relating to piece workers—the quantity of workproduced in a given period of time, and prices received by thepiece; and in Table 4, by returns from 47 establishments, employing8,533 women, showing the hours of daily work time,period of wage payments, and the weekly wages by classes ofemployes.The main facts el.cited from the schedules for individual employesare comprised in the six summaries following:Table 1, Summary 1.—Nativity and age. This shows, byindustries, the birthplace of the individuals reporting, their ageat beginning work, their present age, and the number of yearsthey have been at work.Table i, Summary &.—Work time. Under this, by industries,the daily and weekly hours of employment, the daily time of