b'WHAT COULD A WOMAN DO FOR A LIVINGMORE THAN 100 YEARS AGO?By Bill Roberts Reprinted from The TravelerThe pay for women in different jobs 120 years ago will be a shock for todays readers. In large department stores in the East and only in special departments such as housewares, lace, and womens clothing could women find employment. Even store clerk jobs were held mostly by men. Women in retail sales jobs made $6 to $10 a week and couldcould excel if they had the ability. Jobs were open forGovernment Jobs Openreach $12 per week if they accumulated many years ofwomen in journalism but newspaper publishers limitedThe government policy of the day was to hire widows and experience. The head of a department such as lace, gloves,the areas they could cover. Some edited and wrote columnsorphans of those killed while serving in the armed forces of or dressmaking could make between $20 and $30 per week.for women or verse aimed at women readers. Few coveredthe country when possible. This policy opened the doors of These wages compared to the average woman teacher werepolitics, crime, or the meaty stories newspapers publish. government agencies to jobs as clerks which paid, for the not as low as they seemed today. Teachers averaged $15 tomost part, a salary of $900 per year. Some but few of these $16 per week. Women cashiers earned $12 to $15 per week,In the 1880s, there was no school of journalism in theclerical positions paid as much as $1,000 and fewer yet as and bookkeepers $10 to $12 per week with a top bookkeepernation, so a woman aspiring to the newspaper business hadmuch as $1,200. It was hard, tedious work, from 9 a.m. to 4 able to command $20. Of course, this all depended on theto learn as much as she could on her own before she wouldp.m. without a break. The typewriter was not yet in use. The employer and the size of the establishment. On average,be considered for a job. Even then her job was limitedclerks bent all day over their desks, copying papers in round women well trained in business felt fortunate if they couldto such departments as household items, fashion notes,hand, accurately, without erasure. They calculated numbers, get $8 per week at smaller businesses. In industrial jobs,childrens columns, art criticism, book reviews, articles onkept huge ledgers without error permitted, printed, cut, women in jobs requiring some training could earn $8 to $12shopping, markets, social affairs, and weddings. The pay wasfiled, and sorted.per week, but those without training averaged from $3 to $6often less than a teacher and more in line with store clerks.per week in factory jobs. The clerks job was one that women often remained in all of their lives, for in the days of patronage only those who Women hotel clerks in top-rated hotels often made as muchdeveloped some sort of political influence could hope to as women in the professional world. One example was thegain higher positions. Few women managed to become Palmer House in Chicago. Palmer decided to change fromgovernment officials, even with political influence. Miss Ada men to women clerks for several reasons. He noted that theSweet was a notable example. She became a U.S. pension women would not embezzle his money to use in gambling,agent, which was the only agency of the day managed solely not smoke fine cigars, or give them to friends. Palmer foundby a woman. The office was considered one of the most women morally superior to men of the day and said he wasimportant at the agency level in government at the time.well satisfied with his decision to hire women hotel clerks. He must have been. He paid his head clerk $1500 per year,She was in her thirties when she attained the position. including room and board at the hotel, the room and boardA native of Wisconsin, where she grew up, she was the being considered worth $500 per year. He paid anotherdaughter of a general wounded in the Civil War. Her lady clerk $900 per year and a lady bookkeeper $600, boardfather became the U.S. pension agent in Chicago and she included with both. These salaries were far above those ofassisted him in his duties. When, in 1871, her father left the the average teacher who made about $800 per year. position to become the supervisor of Internal Revenue in Catharine Littlefield "Caty" Greene Washington, she took over his position as a pension agent. How many businessmen thought like Palmer and preferredTwo years later she followed him to Washington to become hiring women? One survey made nationally found theLawyers and Doctors his secretary. Knowing President Grant, who appointed her following statistics on the number of women employedThere were only 30 practicing women lawyers in the Unitedas the U.S. pension agent in Chicago, as well as Presidents in various fields. Teachers, 84,047; bankers and brokers,States in 1890. It was so limited to women that few triedHayes and Arthur, kept her in that appointed position for 15; lawyers, 5; clergy, 67; printers, 1,495; physicians andit unless their father or another relative who was a lawyermany years. Ida Sweet was the first woman appointed as a surgeons, 525; dentists, 24; midwives, 1,136; barkeeps, 70;encouraged them. disbursing officer for the United States.hairdressers, 1,170; boat hands, 30; canal-boat workers, 10; pilots, 1; whitewashers, 391; bricklayers, 74; undertakers,The first woman granted a medical diploma in the UnitedWomen in Business20; day drivers and teamsters, 196; carriage trimmers, 32;States was Elizabeth Blackwell who had been practicingSome women in business were exceptional. Mrs. Sarah Ray hostlers, 2; hunters and trappers, 2; scavengers, 2; newspaperat the St. Bartholomew Hospital in London in 1855, thenof Leadville, Colorado, took in washing and made a fortune carriers, 7; bell foundry operators, 4; brass founders, 102;moved to America where she founded the New Yorkof $1 million. Sarah Ray is legendary. She dug in the mines, brewers, 8; fishers, 35; gasworks employees, 4; gun andInfirmary which treated some 6,000 patients a year. Likescoured the plains as a scout, and finally began taking in locksmiths, 32; shingle and lath makers, 84; tinkers, 17;Blackwell, the few women in medicine in the United Stateswashing for miners. There were a lot of miners in Leadville architects, 1; auctioneers, 12; clockmakers, 75; agriculturalin the 1880s had to study medicine in Europe, as they wereand she saved her money, accumulating a fortune of $1 laborers, 373,332; stock herders and stock raisers, 75; cigarnot admitted to medical schools here, with few exceptions.million. At 50 years of age, she was living in the East on makers, 1,844; curriers and tanners, 60; engravers, 29;Boston University was one. It had 79 women, medical$30,000 a year income from her fortune. woodturners and carvers, 44 and distillers, 6. students, out of 198 in the early 1880s and the Cleveland Homeopathic Hospital College was another. The UniversityThen there was Margaret Haighey of New Orleans. Her Outside of this list of occupations women could get intoof Michigan Homeopathic College was yet another. Chicagobusiness was a cheap restaurant where a man could get a in the 1880s, there were the so-called professions. Creativehad 50 women practicing medicine at the same time withcup of coffee and a roll for 5 cents. She parlayed this into writing and poetry were fields where the very determinedsome of them teaching medicine as well. a chain of such restaurants and a fortune that enables her 20 September 2020'