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MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET
THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF NEW YORK WORKING GIRLS
BY
SUE AINSLIE CLARK
AND
EDITH WYATT
New York
The Macmillan Company
1911
PREFACE
This book is composed of the economic records of self-supporting womenliving away from home in New York. Their chronicles were given to theNational Consumers' League simply as a testimony to truth; and it issimply as a testimony to truth that these narratives are reprinted here.
The League's inquiry was initiated because, three years ago in the studyof the establishment of a minimum wage, only very little information wasobtainable as to the relation between the income and the outlay ofself-supporting women workers. The inquiry was conducted for a year and ahalf by Mrs. Sue Ainslie Clark, who obtained the workers' budgets as theywere available from young women interviewed in their rooms, boardingplaces, and hotels, and at night schools and clubs. After Mrs. Clark hadcollected and written these accounts, I supplemented them further in thesame 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 notexhaustive trade-studies of the several trades in which the workers wereengaged. They constituted rather an accurate kinetoscope view of theyearly lives of chance passing workers in those trades. Wherever thefacts ascertained seemed to warrant it, however, they were so focussed asto express definitely and clearly the wisdom of some industrial change.
In two instances in the course of the serial publication of the budgetssuch industrial changes were undertaken and are now in progress. The firmof Macy & Co. in New York has inaugurated a monthly day of rest, withpay, for all permanent women-employees who wish this privilege. Thechange was made first in one department and then extended through a plansupplied by the National Civic Federat