Five Dollars a Week: Tacoma's Women Ask If a Shorter Day Is Worth Anything
As Olympia weighs an eight-hour law for working women, two readers argue that the real question isn't the clock — it's whether the wage will cover rent and groceries.
EIGHT-HOUR DAY FOR WOMEN. Editor Tacoma Times: Dear Sir, — Concerning the eight-hour day for women: The issue is whether women shall have the same right as the men. Women are regarded by many men as being inferior to the negro, who has the right to vote. The plea of the big employers of women and girls, and the threats of the cannery men to employ Chinamen on the grounds of competition, would be the same argument as, we will say, a petition from a group of laundry employers to work their help 13 hours per day because a certain Chinese laundry does. — O. M. S., 2502 South J St.
THIS FROM A SOCIALIST. Editor Times, — Our representatives at Olympia are discussing an eight-hour day law for women. So far, good. But is it an eight-hour day that we need, or are these men on the wrong track? I ask all thoughtful citizens to compare the wages of our girls working in the department stores, the laundries and the factories with the cost of a decent living in any respectable part of Tacoma. Five dollars a week is sufficient for the girl whose expenses are all paid by her father and who has nothing to buy except tickets to the ten-cent shows, but it is a different story with the girl who has no father to pay her bills, no home to go to, and no one to care for her when she is out of work but herself. How can we expect a girl in these circumstances to make a living when her labor at ten hours a day will bring her only about $5 a week? They do it, you say? Now, gentlemen, how would you like to have a sister in Tacoma dependent for her existence upon the wages she might earn; or how would you like to depart from this earth and leave a wife and two or three daughters with no visible means of support except to work for the wages the girls are at present receiving? Friends, if you vote at the next election, do not be guilty of assisting in the election of men who, in discussing the labor question with respect to women, stop at an eight-hour day, but vote for men who will strike deeper than that — that is, vote the socialist ticket. Yours for the social revolution, E. C. W., 324 No. L St.
“How can we expect a girl in these circumstances to make a living when her labor at ten hours a day will bring her only about $5 a week?”
Washington's early fight over limiting women's work hours raised the same question still argued in every minimum-wage debate: a shorter day means little if the pay won't cover rent and food. The letters also show how labor arguments of the era were entangled with racism, as employers wielded Chinese workers as a threat against white women's organizing. Replace the specifics and the cost-of-living math reads like this week's op-ed page.
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