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MASSACHUSETTS GIRLS DECIDED ON TWELVE

FIFTY PER WEEK AS A MINIMUM

BY JANE WHITAKER

"I get $9 a week, and I know I have to live awfully stingy to get along

on that, and I buy my cloth at the factory and make all of my own clothes.

It I am laid off for a few weeks I get back so far that it takes me all season

to pay my debts."

She was a little, girl of about nineteen, dark, pretty and very serious.

She had timidly arisen to make this statement after Mrs. Glendower Evans,

a member of the Massachusetts Minimum Wage Board, had asked an au

dience of Working women to tell her how much they thought the girls in

Massachusetts had decided was the lowest wage on which they could live

decently

Mrs. Evans smiled at the little girl sympathetically, then she smiled,

again, as Miss Agnes Nestor, president of the Woman's Trade Union League

suggested $12 a week as the lowest amount.

"It was more than that," Mrs. Evans said. "It was $12.50, and it was

estimated at the lowest possible cost, including education and amusement.

'When the girls gave us this list we took it up with the employers on

the board.

"The girls had allowed for one newspaper a day, a Sunday newspaper

and a Saturday Evening Post for educational purposes. We decided that

they must dispense with the Satur-1

day Evening Post, and that if they

bought a Sunday paper they must do

without the weekly ones.

"Then we found fifty -cents put

aside for a show every two weeks,

and we cut that down to one fifty

cent show a mouth.

The girls had allowed $150 a year

for their clothes.

" 'That is absurd,' an employer

said. 'They do not need to spend $20

for a suit. If they watch the bar

gains at the time ' of the year the

stores have sales they can get a suit

for $12.50 as though working girls,

girls who work in a factory, could go

to the stores whenever "they pleased.

But we cut down the clothes, after

the gentleman had said he was sure

they could supply their year's ward

robe for $74.

"We also eliminated one nickel

show a week and made it ojie nickel

show in two weeks.

"The matter of a room and board

we also curtailed, after we had

thrashed out the fact that it was not

fair to consider rates at places like

the Y. W. C. A., which are run on a

defiicit and supported by public con

tributions. ,

"And after we had done all of this,

the figure we decided upon, and

which I am not at liberty to tell you

until it has been accepted, was more

than 95 per cent of the girls working

at that trade, the "trade of brush

making, were then receiving."

It is appalling to be. confronted

with figures like these, compiled and

given to us by a woman who knows

whereof she speaks, and to realize

that the amount arrived at as the,

minimum wage on which a woman

could live, making no allowances for

medical attendance, for dentistry, for

sickness or idle time, is away beyond

what girls in factories and depart

ment stores right here in Chicago,

where the living cost is as high if not

higher than in Massachusetts, are re

ceiving. It makes so much more appalling

the fight that the shopkeepers and

factory owners put up last spring at

Springfield against the enactment of

a minimum wage law that placed the

minimum wage at $8 a week.

That sum is not a living wage. Yet

the union of employers prevented the.