LABOR: Five & Ten Girls

When millions of U. S. citizens enter thousands of 5 & 10 cent stores throughout the land, they find a girl behind the counter to wait on them. Facts about that girl:

She is 20. She is U. S.-born. She is unmarried. She lives with her family. She makes $12 per week. She works nine hours five days a week, longer on Saturdays. She has held her job less than a year.

Such a composite picture of salesgirls in limited-price chain stores could be drawn from facts and figures presented last week by Miss Mary Elizabeth Pidgeon of the Women’s Bureau of the U. S. Department of Labor. Miss Pidgeon had made a study of women in 5 & 10 cent stores in 18 states, had interviewed over 6,000 clerks to assemble her data.

Chain stores make money by piling up tiny profits. In one year the F. W. Woolworth Co. sold 45 tons of candy, 5,113 miles of curtaining, 54 million handkerchiefs. Miss Pidgeon showed that, though their sales had doubled in a decade, this enormous turnover brought no enormous wages to salesgirls. Labor is a prime item in chain-store operation. Where customers can readily see the entire stock, make their selections unaided, the cheapest, most inexperienced young clerk can perform the simple task of wrapping bundles, ringing up receipts.

Miss Pidgeon found that the average median* wage of girls surveyed was $12 per week. Only 7% earned as high as $18 per week, while 25% earned less than $10. Chain-store girls earn about one-half of what women do in other industries. One girl out of four was under 18, only a very few over 25. Only one girl out of ten lived away from home on her earnings.

The practice of underpaying girls because they live at home Miss Pidgeon found particularly deplorable. Said she: “To the extent that the employed girl is unable to maintain herself entirely she becomes dependent upon her family, and thus contributes materially to any precarious financial condition existing within the family while actually spending her time and energy in work that should afford her a living.”

State medians for 5,610 girls reported by Miss Pidgeon: California, $16; Michigan, $15; Kentucky, $14; Missouri and New Jersey, $13; Ohio, $12; Delaware and Rhode Island, $11; Arkansas, Florida, Oklahoma, $10; Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, $9; Maryland, $8.80.

*One-half of a given number earn more, one-half less, than the median.