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From Housework to Office Clerk: Utah's Working Women, 1870-1890
Utah Historical Quarterly
Vol. 53, 1985, No. 4
From Housework to Office Clerk: Utah's Working Women, 1870-1900
BY MICHAEL VINSON
WORKING WOMEN IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY America often labored as domestic servants, more often due to compulsion, through lack of other opportunities, rather than choice. One domestic servant summed up her options by citing her situation:
Utah's working women were no exception in the labor force. Although opportunity for work was limited in Utah in 1870, by 1900 expanding business offered another alternative to educated women. In this study, all women over ten years old are considered eligible to work, married or single. The percentages of women in the Utah work force are taken from the published censuses of 1870, 1880, 1890, and 1900. Two random samplings of the manuscript censuses in 1870 and 1900 were conducted for comparison and accuracy. The work force is considered to be those employed at occupations outside of the home.
In 1870 Utah was a small frontier territory, and agriculture was the main enterprise. Not surprisingly, census takers recorded that only 4 percent of women in Utah were employed outside of the home, and of that, 84 percent were employed in domestic service. These figures may be misleading. Ann Lobb and Jill Derr have noted that women made other contributions to the development of the frontier. They cite the example of Christina Oleson Warnick, who helped to build the family home, tilled and planted the fields, channeled irrigation ditches, and gathered wild hay for the cows. This contribution is significant; of the 20,309 men in Utah between sixteen and fifty-nine years old (at least a significant proportion of whom were married, since the U.S. census shows that there were 17,210 families), almost half were farmers or planters.
Utah's three major urban centers, Provo, Ogden, and Salt Lake City, were surveyed in the manuscript census by looking at every third woman over ten years old and seeing if an occupation was listed. The results for the 1870 survey seem to indicate that the percentage of women workers in urban areas was often double the state average.
Provo, in 1870 the most agricultural of the three urban centers, closely approximated the statewide average for working women. This study counted 159 women, and 8 were employed (5 percent). Five of these were domestic servants, and the other three occupations were weaver, soapmaker and milliner.
The influence of the railroad may have made Ogden a slightly more urban center. Of the 180 women counted in Ogden, 14 were employed (8 percent); 86 percent of the working women were domestic servants, and the others were a schoolteacher and a factory hand.
Salt Lake City had a working female population in this sampling of the first, seventh and thirteenth wards of almost three times the state average. Of the 231 women checked, 31 (13 percent) were employed. Although a greater variety of jobs existed, such as a shoe shop keeper, nurse, and hotel steward, the majority of women were engaged in domestic service.
The number of working married women is not shown in the published census, but the manuscript sampling indicates that the percentage was very small. Of the 53 working women found in the sample, only two were married.
There may be several reasons for the lack of women in the work force. If a large number of women worked with their husbands on the family farm, as Lobb and Derr alluded to, then few married women could be expected to be employed. Other reasons may be religious pressure, social disapproval, or a simple lack of opportunities.
The published report of the 1880 census showed that the population of Utah increased from 86,786 to 143,832 and the number of working women more than doubled to 2,887. By comparison, in the rest of the nation Edith Abbot noted that from 1870 to 1880 the number of employed women rose from 353,950 to 631,034, a 78 percent increase.
In Utah the percentage of women in the work force rose from 4 to 7 percent. Although a large number of women were still working in domestic service, the percentage had decreased to 65 percent. One quarter were working as dressmakers or tailors, and 3.3 percent were working in jobs such as clerks and saleswomen.
Even though a majority of working women in Utah labored in domestic service, there seems to be little evidence to show that it was a preferred occupation. W. Elliot Brownlee and Mary M. Brownlee write that "... American women have never accepted domestic service as an attractive form of employment; those who perform such work have always done so largely because they were unable to find other means of securing an income."
Mahalia Dorcas Moor understood the good fortune of those women who found jobs outside of domestic service. In a letter written in 1878 to a granddaughter in Utah, she commented: "You write you had been keeping school that is a good occupation I should think . . . they get good salary there but there are so many that fit themselves for teachers that they cannot find employment in that line."
Helen Campbell, writing in 1891, found it hard to understand why a woman would not prefer to work as a domestic servant. The wages were higher, more money could be saved, no capital outlay for something like a typewriter was required, the work was healthy and varied, and, finally, the work better prepared one for married life. Yet Campbell also reported the results of a survey taken by Eliza S. Turner of the Philadelphia Working-Woman's Guild. When asked, "Why do not intelligent refined girls more frequently choose house service as a support?" the replies varied from a loss of personal freedom to degrading to one's self-respect. One girl replied, "It is all well enough to talk about service being divine, but that is not the way the world looks at it." The Brownlees report that when 562 women were asked why they did not prefer housework, 292 replied that it was because of pride, too much confinement, and not enough independence.
The preference for occupations other than domestic service was seen in the published 1890 census. Utah's population increased by 44.5 percent to 207,905 and the number of employed women rose 145 percent to 7,076. The percentage of working women increased from 7 to 10.5 percent. Significantly, slightly less than half of the working females were now in domestic service. Ten percent were employed as teachers, musicians, and actresses in the expanding labor market. Another 25 percent worked as seamstresses and milliners and dressmakers; almost 8 percent were emerging as clerks, copyists, and saleswomen.
If women all across the country were leaving domestic service for expanded opportunities, their departure was not always viewed favorably. Alice Kessler-Harris noted that opposition to working women was twofold. First, most working women were single and their personal moral laxity was in question. Second, women were seen as a pool of labor that kept wages depressed. The solution to both problems was proposed by the editor oi the Boston Daily Evening Voice: Remove ladies from the work force by finding them husbands in the West, where there was a shortage of women. Kessler-Harris noted that hopes to solve the low wage problem by marriage continued into the twentieth century. A delegate to the Milwaukee Metal Polishers and Brass Workers Association told the convention that workers in one Chicago factory "successfully adopted a new method of preventing women from working in the shop. They marry the women." The delegate proposed that instead of trying to force the women out of the shops, they should either "marry them or find good husbands for them."
Campbell also noted that depressed earnings for women continued because "underbidding from the unemployed is a fruitful source of low wages." She further alluded to the probable outcome of this situation, after noting that most of women's work in industry was seasonal: ". . .in the intervals between . . . the worker waits and starves, or if too desperate, goes upon the streets, driven there by the wretched competitive system, the evils of which increase in direct ratio to the longing for speedy wealth.
Kessler-Harris quoted one young woman, an advocate of domestic service, who claimed that housekeepers made better wives because of practical experience gained in others' homes. But if practical experience was touted as an asset, a certain liability was the danger foretold by Lillie Devereux Blake in 1883: "You have to give women a respectable means of income or you are apt to drive them into vice." Evidence of this is seen in a study done by the United States government in 1910 that showed that 77.5 percent of female criminals in one sampling came from domestic service backgrounds. Perhaps Kessler-Harris has best pointed out the reasoning used by laboring women to find another means of support:
Although published census records for Utah do not show how many working women were driven to the point of prostitution, the 1900 published census indicates that alternative forms of escape were emerging.
Utah's population had a 33 percent gain, to 276,749, while the number of women in the Utah work force rose slightly, from 10.5 to 13.5 percent. 27 In 1900 only 42 percent of working women were involved in domestic service, while other labor opportunities showed an increase in the female work forces. Professional service (usually teachers and musicians) increased 33 percent, to 13 percent of the labor force. Female participation in trade and transportation increased 66 percent, to 13 percent of the work force. Manufacturing showed a 10 percent decline, to 23 percent of the work force. Agriculture also showed a 16 percent increase for women, to more than 9 percent.
The manuscript study of the 1900 U.S. census records for Provo, Ogden, and Salt Lake shows that the percentage of women in the work force approximates the state average. The Provo sample showed 28 women working (12 percent) out of 233 women checked. Only 4 working women were married, less than 2 percent of the total women counted. One of the married women was working as a midwife; another was a miner. Other occupations in Provo included 4 women working as milliners or in the woolen mills. Females in business included 1 saleswoman and 2 capitalists.
In Ogden working women constituted only 24 (10.25 percent) of the 234 females checked. Only 1 married working woman (a music teacher) was found in this sampling. Nine women (37.5 percent) of the 24 employed were working as launderers and servants. Among the other occupations, 1 was a capitalist, 2 were lodging house keepers, 5 were dressmakers, and there was 1 nurse, 1 bookbinder, and 1 schoolteacher.
Salt Lake City's working women constituted 34 (13 percent) of the 260 women checked in this sampling. Married working women formed slightly more than 1 percent of the total checked. Domestic jobs such as house cleaners and servants occupied 23.5 percent of the working women. A greater variety of employment opportunity seems to have been available. In business (18 percent) women were working as clerks, bookkeepers, capitalists, and stenographers. In education another 20.5 percent were schoolteachers. The remainder were dressmakers, nurses, and a binder at the news office.
If working women by the early twentieth century were looking for alternatives to domestic service, the Brownlees pointed out that they were not alone. They note that as early as 1889 the Business Woman's Journal was founded in New York by Mary Seymour. The journal was designed to "reduce the number of women who are crowding into the ranks of unskilled labor, by pointing out new occupations."
Margery W. Davies noted that women first began to enter the business world when Francis Elias Spinner, the U.S. treasurer general, decided to hire female clerks to lessen the labor shortage of men caused by the Civil War. Spinner continued to hire females after the war, declaring that it had been a "complete success." Davies further noted that one of the reasons the treasurer general thought so highly of his female help was that they would work as hard as the male clerks for half the wages.
Another factor in opening opportunities for women outside of domestic service may have been technology. Kessler-Harris wrote that household production declined as baked goods, clothes, and soap could be purchased in the market. The U.S. Department of Agriculture thought that as women acquired "vacuum cleaners, washers, wringers, fireless cookers and cream separators," time spent in the home would be reduced so that they could use their time to develop "cash returns" for the family.
The invention of the typewriter in 1867 may have provided the coup de grace to the masculine business world. Elizabeth Faulkner Baker wrote that the inventor of the typewriter, Christopher Latham Sholes, remarked in 1900, "... I feel I have done something for the women who have always had to work so hard. This will help them earn a living more easily." A Remington advertisement in 1875 listed some of the better qualities of this new technology:
Baker pointed out that by the turn of the century, nearly 19,000 girls were taking courses in typewriting, stenography, and bookkeeping in public high schools, "almost half of all such pupils; and nearly 24,000 or more than half of the commercial and business students were women."
An important liberating factor in Utah was the changing view women had of themselves. This was especially seen in the 1890s meetings of the Beaver County Women's Suffrage Association. Although the association was primarily concerned with obtaining the right to vote, the title of their newsletter was The Equal Rights Banner and the monthly meetings gave local women the opportunity to vent held-back feelings.
The minutes recorded several women, at different times, such as Mrs. White, who complained of restricted opportunity: "All women cannot stick to their sphere in the home." Later Mrs. Murdock, president of the association, suggested that perhaps "... women have allowed themselves to be kept back by their household chores." But Mrs. Jones, when speaking of the miserable conditions of working-class women, placed the blame squarely where it belonged: "The laws made by the men are for the men."
In 1870 Utah certainly did not abound with opportunity for working women, since only 4 percent of females were in the territorial work force, while nationwide, 13.3 percent of women over ten were working — unless the example of Christina Warnick is remembered. While working women in Utah gained a 237 percent increase over thirty years to 13.5 percent of women available, it was still only barely above the 1870 total of 13.3 percent for the nation, well below the nationwide average of 18.8 percent in 1900.
Utah's low percentage of women in employment did not necessarily mean a correspondingly limited opportunity. In 1890 cities such as Nashville and San Francisco, where anywhere from 16 to 22 percent of the female population were employed, only 3.5 to 4 percent of those working had clerical jobs; in Utah only 10.5 percent were working, but 7.6 percent of those working were in clerical jobs.
If domestic service as a form of employment was decreasing, in Utah, twenty years after 1900, it still had not disappeared. The "female help wanted" column of the Deseret News in 1920 listed several ads similar to this one: "General Housework Girl. Apply 1153 Second Avenue. Good wages, small family, no washing." However, opportunities were still expanding. In the same issue a cartoon strip, "Keeping up with the Joneses," appeared. In the first frame a cigar-chomping businessman is interrupted at his desk when his messenger boy announces, "Mr. McGinis, there's a swell lookin' dame outside to see you." In the second frame, an assertive young woman with her hands on her hips is seated opposite Mr. McGinis. She tells him, "Sir, I am a reporter from the Daily Buzz! Since your nomination your opponents have unearthed the fact that years ago you were in the dairy business in West Port, Connecticut!" He replies, "Yep! A long time ago." In the third frame she turns to him, and placing her hands on her knees, says, "Well, your political enemies are now saying that the milk you used to sell was watered, that it was not pure!" He retorts, "Dawgunit! Itwaspure!" In the final frame, Mr. McGinis explains to her, "I only used to use th' purest spring water in that milk! ! !" and she faints backwards. Women were becoming more accepted in traditional male roles, even if they still had typically "feminine" reactions.
Edith Abbot, writing in 1913, saw that the process to integrate women in the work world would be long, slow, and given to setbacks. She noted that seventy-five years earlier, when the mills needed women laborers,
Utah Territory in 1870 offered a masculine work world, and most of the doors to the work world opened for women were those to the kitchen. The new Beehive State in 1900 still kept the kitchen doors open, but those to the business world began to be unlocked.
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