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The Chocolate Dippers’ Strike of 1910
Young women at work in the shipping room of the J. G. McDonald Company, July 1911 (detail).
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The Chocolate Dippers’ Strike of 1910
BY KATHRYN L. MACKAY
In January 1910, “chocolate girls” at the McDonald Candy Company in Salt Lake City went out on strike after officers of that firm refused the workers’ request to increase their wages by five cents per board foot of candy. 1 The striking workers organized the Chocolate Dippers’ Union of Utah No. 1, the first union of women workers in Utah. 2 In contrast to these women, the vast majority of women wage earners in Utah, as in the nation, were neither activists nor overtly political in their concerns for their working conditions. And this union was short-lived; the strikers did not achieve their goal of winning higher wages. In fact, all the strikers lost their jobs. The efforts of these women to improve their work situation in one of Utah’s major industries marked them as exceptional rather than typical. However, to study this group of fourteen courageous women is to deepen our understanding of women’s paid work experiences in Utah in the early twentieth century. 3
TABLE 1. PERCENTAGE OF WOMEN TEN YEARS OF AGE AND OLDER GAINFULLY OCCUPIED *
The three decades between 1900 and the outset of the Great Depression were decades of significant female participation in the labor force in the United States. The Women’s Bureau of the United States Department of Labor reported in 1925 that previous census data showed the proportion of women ten years of age and over who were gainfully employed rose from 17.4 percent in 1890 to 21.1 percent in 1920. During these decades there were also numerous investigations into the nature and conditions of women’s work, which revealed patterns for women’s work: occupational segregation by sex, consistently lower female wages, and broad popular notions about female employment as a temporary stage in the life cycle, as supplemental to households headed by men. 4
Of the forty-eight states, Utah ranked forty-first in percentage of women gainfully employed in 1910. By comparison, in the highest ranked state, South Carolina, more than 33 percent of women worked. Despite the small percentage of women working, national trends were evident in Utah: increasing numbers of female wage workers, investigations into conditions for those workers, and work experiences that reaffirmed rather than challenged socially assigned roles for women as dependent and passive.
In 1910, few national laws prevented women from working at any job. However, arguments for laws protecting women workers from certain occupations and long hours were well entrenched by this time. The state of Utah, for instance, had barred women from working in any mine or smelter since 1907 and in any place that served intoxicating liquors since 1911. 5 Even national woman suffrage leaders argued that protective legislation was necessary to preserve woman’s special attributes of compassion and nurturance. 6 Buoyed by the 1908 Supreme Court decision in Muller v. Oregon, which upheld statutes limiting the workday for women, nineteen states passed such laws between 1909 and 1917. Utah was one of those states. 7
In addition to protective legislation, widespread concerns existed about which paid work was conducive to the morality of women and which was not. As the researcher Helen L. Sumner noted in a 1910 Senate report on conditions for women wage-earners, “the proper sphere of woman has long been a subject of discussion.” 8 In Utah, leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints directed that discussion in such periodicals as the Young Women’s Journal (1889–1929). Through its years of publication, the Journal did feature many articles about female entrepreneurs and successful women in science, education, and general business. However, the editors also warned of negative consequences for women wage earners, which included damaged nerves and the development of a lust for gold. 9
TABLE 2. GROWTH OF THE CANDY INDUSTRY *
Candy making counted among the paid work deemed by Utahns and Americans to be socially acceptable for women. Candy manufacturing was a growth industry in the United States at the turn of the century. By 1910, the national output per year equaled nine pounds of candy at fifteen cents a pound for every man, woman, and child in the country—a total worth of $135,000,000. 10
The Census Bureau reported in 1914 that 2,391 candy factories throughout the country employed 53,658 workers, 60 percent of whom were women. 11 Ironically these candy workers manufactured a product that was then particularly associated with women and children. Advertisements and popular publications depicted the eating of candy as a feminized activity, as even a leisure-time activity for white, middle-class women. 12 However, candy was actually produced by women working long hours in uncomfortable conditions, for low wages.
Candy was also a growth industry in Utah. In 1900, the twelve candy companies in Salt Lake City employed thirty-nine men age sixteen and older, seventy-five women age sixteen and older, and four children. 13 By 1910, the manufacture of confections was the third leading industry in the state. 14 The census reported that the candy industry had shown an increase in all important items. According to the census, “From 1904 to 1909 there was an increase of 251, or 74.5 percent, in average number of wage earners, of 947,000 or 94.2 percent, in value of products, and of $344,000 or 108.4 percent in value added by manufacturing.” By 1920, confectionery had become the principal industry in Salt Lake City in terms of the value of the product. 15 Women made up the majority of workers through these growth years. The Industrial Commission of Utah noted in 1918 that the nine reporting companies employed 310 men and 589 women and paid $694,000 in total wages. 16
A number of factors supported the development of this industry in Utah: a dry climate that was ideal for “ripening” chocolates, the numerous local suppliers of fruits and dairy products, and the many sugar factories in Utah, the result of the promotion of that industry by the LDS church. Church officials urged Mormon farmers to grow sugar beets and Mormon families to consume Utah sugar. 17 The Industrial Commission of Utah explained:
McDonald candy boxes, 1910.
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In fact, promoting the candy industry in Utah became the stuff of boosterism, with candy manufacturers such as W. F. Jensen of Logan declaring: “It is your duty to help build up such an important industry. Why help build candy factories in Milwaukee, Chicago, New York or any other far-away city, when it would be to your own and your neighbors’ personal interest to assist in the up building of the factories in your own community.” 19
TABLE 3: CONFECTIONERY MANUFACTURING IN UTAH *
In territorial Utah most of the candy not made at home was manufactured by small, family operated businesses, often in connection with a grocery. The H. A. Tuckett Co., which incorporated in 1889, became the largest candy maker in the territory, doing an annual business in 1892 of $150,000, with forty-two “experienced” operators. 20 By 1910, however, Tuckett’s had disappeared and five companies dominated the Utah candy industry: the Startup Candy Company of Provo, the Shupe-Williams Candy Company of Ogden, the Murdoch Candy Company of Logan, the Sweet Candy Company of Salt Lake City, and the J. G. McDonald Company, also in the capital city. 21
The McDonald Company was a family business. John Taffe McDonald, a Scots-Irish convert to Mormonism, had come with his parents to Salt Lake City in 1849. Three years later he opened a general mercantile business on Main Street; in about 1862 he started a small candy factory to supply the business. He and his wife, Eleanor A. Crossland, raised their eleven children in living quarters at the back of the store. As the children grew, they worked at night in the family kitchen wrapping salt water taffy. 22
In 1889, McDonald’s son James Gailard (1865–1940) married Edith Cartwright. J. G. took over the family business and the next year sold the building to an employee, J. H. R. Franklin, who set up a candy and fountain business. J. G. McDonald then built a two-story factory a few blocks to the south and west and concentrated production entirely on candy making. In 1909, the company built an even larger plant, planning to double the output of candy and produce chocolates exclusively. The McDonald Company began turning out 20,000 pounds a day. About three hundred men and women were employed during the peak season from October to December. 23
The various jobs at McDonald, as at other candy factories, were gender specific. A few women and a greater number of men were salaried employees, most working as clerks in the office. The company’s sixteen traveling salespersons were all men. The cooking of the candy was done by men and was considered a skilled occupation. Men cooked the creams and fondants in huge kettles and poured them into molds. When the molded centers had hardened, they were placed on large sheets of oiled paper and sent to the dippers. Men also cooked the chocolate used in dipping. The dippers, however, were women.
Chocolate dipping was considered a skilled job. In fact, it was said that a good dipper was born with a certain knack for it. It required quickness and judgment in regard to the condition of the chocolate, which had to be kept at the melting point. Dippers used wire forks and their fingers to dip the fondants and creams into pools of chocolate, providing each piece with a “signature” of ridges and curls. An experienced dipper could dip sixty pounds of chocolates per day. 24 Researchers for a 1913 congressional report suggested that the average dipper worked through about seventy-five to eighty pounds of candies a day, with the fastest accomplishing from 115 to 120 pounds per day. 25
Machinery used in the McDonald mixing room, with three young women in the background, July 1911.
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After workers had dipped the chocolates, they placed the candies on large trays and sent them to cool rooms to ripen. After that, the chocolates went on to the packers, all of whom were women. These workers packed the chocolates in paper cups and then in boxes in certain patterns to make them weigh out correctly. Toppers brushed the top layer of candy to give a sheen, put in a lace paper mat and a layer of cotton, and closed the box. Other packers put the boxed candy into larger boxes for shipping. Packing was not considered skilled work.
Dipping and packing were tedious, monotonous duties. Workers averaged nine hours a day, although during rush season ten and twelve hour days were not uncommon. In the slack summer season, workers were dismissed or employed only part time. Weekly wages varied. Forewomen might earn over twelve dollars a week, while dippers might earn from nine to twelve dollars. Packers, the largest group of female workers, might earn from five to seven dollars. The lowest paid workers were those doing miscellaneous work such as carrying trays and “floor work.” In a 1914 study of “Women at Work in Salt Lake City,” the average wage of the fifteen candy workers who filled out the survey cards was reported to be $5.46 per week. 26 One of the workers listed her cost of living for a year as $251. If she had regular employment, she would have made $234 for the year. 27
McDonald candy machinery, August 1904.
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In addition to paying poorly, the work was messy. Pieces of filling and chocolate dropped on the floors and were trodden in. Starch from the molding trays coated the stairs and floors. Typically the workers did their own cleaning, scrubbing tables and floors daily and weekly. Dippers’ hands were in the melted chocolate, which dirtied their nails and any part of their clothing they touched. Candy companies often provided only inadequate washroom facilities. Although many companies pictured their workers in spotless white aprons and caps, workers could not actually remain so immaculate.
And yet, despite the uncomfortable working conditions, low wages, and long hours, hundreds of women sought employment in the candy factories in Utah and throughout the United States. Why? Most likely because such work was an alternative to domestic service jobs. 28 As W. F. Jensen, the manager of his own candy company in Logan stated, “Other desirable employment for women is scarce.” Jensen also supposed, in a statement probably not based on experience, that “the wholesome and pleasant nature of the work is an incentive to women to enter the industry. Where could one find a line of work with fewer objectionable features than is presented in the positions in these factories or behind the counters in these stores while making and selling dainty, delicious confections?” 29
Through most of the twentieth century, the proportion of women in Utah gainfully occupied remained below the national average. 30 However, thousands of women worked because they supported themselves (as so-called women adrift) or because they contributed to the family income. How many additional thousands might also have taken wage work if more such work had been available in an economy heavily dependent on agriculture and mining jobs—work not considered suitable for women? 31
The fourteen skilled chocolate dippers who struck the McDonald Company in 1910 protested long hours, low wages, and child labor. In the statement issued by the newly formed Chocolate Dippers’ Union, the women asked for an eight-hour day and a flat salary of ten dollars a week. They denied McDonald’s assertion that the dippers earned from nine to fourteen dollars a week, declaring instead that those wages were for the months of October, November, and December, “when the dippers worked from ten to twelve hours a day, and even at that [the dippers] cannot make over $12 a week.” 32
The union officers further noted the incongruity of J. G. McDonald’s protest that he was running his business on “charity.” The officers sneered: “If that is the case, it occurs to us that he would better discontinue the practice of employing mere children in his factory at ridiculously low pay. Some of the little girls are not more than twelve years. . . . All of them ought to be in school.” An officer reported:
The officers confidently stated that they had the “assurance” of dippers in other factories that they would join the union. Further, they appealed to women outside the factory to support their cause. Female consumers of candy were urged to look for and buy only handdipped, rather than machine-coated, chocolates as a way of encouraging the companies to hire experienced hand dippers. However, other dippers did not join the union and the strikers found no solidarity among women consumers.
The McDonald dippers acted bravely. They were all young women under the age of twenty-five, as were 75 percent of female factory workers nationwide. Of the fourteen strikers, only the names of the officers of the Chocolate Dippers’ Union survive in public records: Sarah Rindfleisch, president; Emma Marcroft, vice-president; Lilah Teberg, recording secretary; Ella Roscoe, treasurer; and Lillian Cooper, sergeant-at-arms. These five women were all daughters of working-class parents, English converts to Mormonism who had immigrated to Utah. It is intriguing to speculate what influence their working-class English heritage had on the dippers’ action. Trade union activities, including strikes, were much more prevalent in England than America during the nineteenth century.
In the years from 1895 to 1905, only 8 percent of the strikes ordered by labor organizations in the United States involved union women, and in only 83 of the 1,262 strikes involving women did the women act alone. 34 The chocolate dippers who protested against McDonald had few precedents to guide them. Perhaps the New York City shirtwaist-workers’ strike of 1909 to 1910—the famous Uprising of the 20,000, made up largely of young immigrant women— inspired them. Both the Salt Lake Tribune and the LDS church–owned newspaper, the Deseret News, widely reported on that strike, which was still ongoing at the time of the chocolate dippers’ strike.
The J. G. McDonald shipping room, July 1911.
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The McDonald strike might also have originated in the workroom social life that was part of young women’s employment experience. The historian Leslie Trentler notes that because working-class girls lacked the social opportunities their brothers enjoyed, workrooms provided many of them with a “place of refuge from family and neighborhood surveillance and an opportunity for free sociability with peers.” 35 None of the five union officers lived in the same neighborhood; therefore, they would not have attended the same Mormon ward (or congregation). Instead, the long hours spent sitting at the dippers’ tables offered these women an opportunity to create bonds of friendship out of the connections of class, religion, national origins, and sex they already had.
Though only the names of union officers survive, kinship ties—as well as friendship and shared complaints—might have connected the fourteen women. Several of the officers had coworkers who were also their relatives. Perhaps their relatives were the other strikers. All the officers were working-class daughters who lived in the parental home. These circumstances made them typical of the majority of female wage earners in the United States at the time. In the 1910s, less than half of wage-earning families were solely supported by the paycheck of the husband or father. 36
Likewise, the facts of the union officers’ lives, as well as those of their family members, place them squarely within the working class. Sarah Rindfleisch, president of the Chocolate Dippers’ Union, was 24 years old in 1910. Her father Carl was an engineer at the Salt Lake Brewing Company. The family had migrated from London in 1899. Not only did Sarah work for wages, her sisters did as well: Dorothy as a dressmaker, Margaret at Paris Millinery, and Minnie as a clerk and later, in the 1920s, as a saleswoman at Vogue millinery. Four years after the strike, Sarah married John Cameron Jr., a Utah native, in 1914. Cameron had been married to her sister Amelia, who had died in 1909. Sarah did not work for wages after her marriage.
Emma Marcroft, the union’s vice president, was one of ten children of Robert (described in public records simply as a laborer) and Mary Ann Page Marcroft, also immigrants from England. McDonald Candy also employed Emma’s sister Eleanor. After Emma lost her job as a result of striking, she went to work for J. H. R. Franklin, a competitive candy company. Eleanor became a seamstress. By 1920, Emma was working at a department store and living with Eleanor and her husband Harry D. Morris, a dyer at a cleaning company. Emma never married.
Lilah Teberg, the recording secretary, was the child of August J. Teberg, a teamster. Lilah had worked as a maid before getting the job at McDonald in 1908. Salt Lake City directories make no mention of the Teberg family after 1910. Similarly, Ella Roscoe, treasurer, does not appear in city directories, though other Roscoes are listed as carpenters, teamsters, bartenders, laborers, and laundresses.
Finally, sergeant-at-arms Lillian Cooper—like her fellow officers—came from a working-class family of English immigrants. Her cousins, Ethel and Evelyn, also worked as chocolate dippers. After the strike, Lillian found employment at the Union Paper Box Company; Evelyn married Ren Hansen in 1914; and Ethel went to work for Sweet’s Candy Company, where she remained for the next several decades, never marrying. Eventually, Ethel and her mother lived with the Hansens. 37
This group of strike organizers presented their case to the Salt Lake Federation of Labor on January 28, 1910. Or rather, the strike was reported at the federation’s semi-monthly meeting, since women were not allowed to actually speak at the meeting. The union men endorsed the strike and organized a committee to arrange a dance for the benefit of the chocolate dippers. 38 The dance occurred in late February and was described as a financial success. The strike continued through April, but by June it had failed and the union was dismantled. 39
However, in a rather ironic twist, some conditions at the McDonald Candy Company did change. From 1911 to 1914, J. G. McDonald expanded his factory to five stories and created a garden on the top floor. The roof garden became a showplace for the factory that the company widely publicized, calling its product, thereafter, Roof Garden chocolates. The sheer fantasy nature of the roof garden seemed incongruous with the gritty tedium of the work that went into producing the candies. The Utah Pay Roll Builder noted in 1918 that among “all other factories in the world,” the J. G. McDonald alone could boast of a providing a roof garden for its employees:
A woman and a chimpanzee in the McDonald roof garden, June 1916.
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J. G. McDonald window display, Salt Lake City, November 1913. Notice the use of female images in advertising chocolate.
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The Pay Roll Builder did not report whether or not the employees actually felt “looked after.”
Undoubtedly, they would have been better off if McDonald had spent the money on higher wages rather than on fancier facilities. McDonald’s female candy workers continued to put in long hours for low pay—though they never again struck or organized a union—and the roof garden continued a to be highly promoted feature of the company through the 1920s. The McDonald Company was bankrupted in 1969.
The creation of Chocolate Dippers’ Union seems to have had no direct influence on wage work for women. However, in 1911, the state legislature passed a law limiting the hours of labor for women workers. The measure established the nine-hour day and fifty-four hour week. Domestic service and farm labor were not included. Then in 1919, the state amended the law to provide for an eight-hour day and a forty-eight hour week. 41
In 1913, following the lead of Massachusetts, Utah and eight other states passed a minimum wage law for women. The Utah Federation of Women’s Clubs strongly supported this law, which was sponsored by three female members of the state legislature—Anne Wells Cannon, Ann Holden King, and Edyth E. Read. Advocates of the law declared that “the greatest material service we can render the future woman and girl workers is to rearrange such environment and education as will give them individual independence, self-supporting producing power.” 42
Finally, in 1917 and with the backing of Governor Simon Bamberger, the Utah legislature passed a law that allowed working people to organize labor unions “for the purpose of lessening the hours of labor, increasing wages, [or] bettering the conditions of [their members].” 43 Thus within a decade after the chocolate strike, the State of Utah created laws limiting working hours for women, providing a minimum wage for women, and ensuring the legality of unions. All these laws came too late to be of much use to the members of the Chocolate Dippers’ Union of Utah No. 1. However, these young women raised concerns about decent wages and safe working conditions that remain relevant for today.
— Kathryn L. MacKay is Professor of History at Weber State University and a member of UHQ’s board of editors. — WEB SUPPLEMENT Visit history.utah.gov/uhqextras for historical advertisements using women and their bodies to sell goods and projects.
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Visit history.utah.gov/uhqextras for historical advertisements using women and their bodies to sell goods and projects.
1 Salt Lake Tribune, January 21, 1910, 14.
2 Some women workers had been allowed to join other unions, most notably the Salt Lake Typographical Union, the oldest union in Utah. By 1910 there were sixty-one labor unions in Utah. J. Kenneth Davies, Deseret’s Sons of Toil: A History of the Worker Movements of Territorial Utah (Salt Lake City: Olympus, 1977), 169. Nationally in 1910, only 1.5 percent of women workers belonged to trade unions. By 1920, the percentage had increased to 6.6. Alice Kessler-Harris, Gendering Labor History (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 21.
3 See Miriam B. Murphy, “Women in the Utah Work Force from Statehood to World War II,” Utah Historical Quarterly 50, no. 2 (Spring 1982): 139–59, and “Gainfully Employed Women, 1896–1950,” in Women in Utah History: Paradigm or Paradox?, ed. Patricia Lyn Scott and Linda Thatcher (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2005).
4 Leslie Woodcock Tentler, Wage-Earning Women: Industrial Work and Family Life in the United States, 1900–1930 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979); Martha May, “Bread Before Roses: American Workingmen, Labor Unions and the Family Wage,” in Women, Work and Protest: A Century of U.S. Women’s Labor History, ed. Ruth Milkman (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), 1–21.
5 U.S. Senate, Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United States, Vol. 19, Labor Laws and Factory Conditions, 61st Cong., 2d sess., S. Doc. No. 61-645 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1912), 832–35.
6 Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage- Earning Women in the United States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), chapter 7.
7 Report on Condition, 19:832.
8 Report on Condition, Vol. 9, History of Women in Industry in the United States (1910), 13.
9 Vella Neil Evans, “Mormon Women and the Right to Wage Work,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 23 (Winter 1990): 47–63.
10 U.S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, Wages of Candy Makers in Philadelphia in 1919, Bulletin no. 4 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1919), and Women in the Candy Industry in Chicago and St. Louis, Bulletin no. 25 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1923). In the later bulletin, the researchers noted that “few industries have grown so rapidly and extensively as the candy industry in the United States.” The number of women employed in candy making nearly doubled from 1910 (1,133) to 1920 (2,186). See also Wendy A. Woloson, Refined Tastes: Sugar, Confectionery, and Consumers in Nineteenth- Century America (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).
11 Statistics from the 1914 Census of Manufacturers, as quoted in Wages of Candy Makers, 12, 14.
12 Jane Dusselier, “Bonbons, Lemon Drops, and Oh Henry! Bars: Candy, Consumer Culture, and the Construction of Gender, 1895–1920,” in Kitchen Culture in America: Popular Representations of Food, Gender, and Race, ed. Sherrie A. Inness (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 13–49.
13 U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900, Vol. 8, Manufactures, Reports by States (Washington, D.C.: United States Census Office, 1902), 8:892–93. This report also noted that in the entire state, twenty-four candy companies employed an average of 58 men and 101 women over age sixteen.
14 In order of the total value of products, the leading industries in Utah in 1910 were printing and publishing, steam-railroad repair shops, candy manufacturing, breweries, bakeries, foundries, and machine shops. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910, Vol. 9, Manufactures, Reports by States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office), 9:1226, 1230.
15 U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920, Vol. 9, Manufacturers, Reports by States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1922), 9:1489.
16 “Confectionery and Bakery Products,” in Report of the Industrial Commission of Utah, Public Documents of the State of Utah, 1917–1918, Part 2, 153.
17 In 1907 most of the sugar factories were united under the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, a $13,000,000 combination that was essentially promoted by the LDS church. Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1958), 386–89.
18 “Confectionery and Bakery Products,” 153. See also “Utah Made Candy Has International Reputation,” Utah Payroll Builder, October 1925.
19 W. F. Jensen, “The Candy Industry and What It Means to Cache Valley,” Utah Payroll Builder, April 1920, 24. Jensen was manager of the candy company that bore his name. The Payroll Builder was a publication of the Utah Manufacturers Association.
20 Robert Mitchell, “Candy Industry Makes Big Gains,” Deseret News, December 27, 1965, 22.
21 Biennial Report of the State Dairy and Food Commissioner, Public Documents of the State of Utah, 1909–1910, Part 2, 241.
22 “Half Million Spent in McDonald’s Growth,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 4, 1967, 4.
23 “Great Growth Utah Industry,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 31, 1909, 11. See also “A Train One Mile Long Loaded with Utah Sugar Required to Supply Sweets for this Utah Factory,” Deseret Evening News, May 13, 1916, sec. 3:1, and “101-Year-Old S.L. Landmark Becomes Keeley’s Property,” Deseret News, April 5, 1953, 11.
24 Wages of Candy Makers, 18.
25 Report on Condition, Vol. 18, Employment of Women and Children in Selected Industries (1913), 124.
26 The occupations of the fifteen workers included dipping, gathering stick candy, packing salted peanuts, packing peanut brittle, rushing chocolate trays, running cutting machine, breaking honeycomb, packing, and weighing. Madeline Stauffer Lambert, “Women at Work in Salt Lake City” (master’s thesis, University of Utah, 1914), 40–43.
27 The average hourly pay of manufacturing production workers in 1909, the first measured year, was about $3.80 (in 1999 dollars). In 1900, the average manufacturing work week was fifty-three hours. Donald M. Fisk, “American Labor in the 20th Century,” Compensation and Working Conditions, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, accessed August 29, 2014, http://www.bls.gov/opub/ mlr/cwc/american-labor-in-the-20th-century.pdf.
28 For comments from domestic servants regarding their limited choices for employment, see W. Elliot Brownlee and Mary M. Brownlee, Women in the American Economy: A Documentary History, 1675 to 1929 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), 248–50. Surprisingly, in 1900, twice as many men as women worked in domestic service. However, it was an area of gainful employment more important to women than men; only one in ten male workers were in this category, while four out of ten women workers were. Joan Younger Dickinson, The Role of Immigrant Women in the U.S. Labor Force, 1890–1910 (New York City: Arno, 1980), 96.
29 Jensen, “The Candy Industry,” 24.
30 U.S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, Facts about Working Women: A Graphic Presentation Based on Census Statistics and Studies of the Women’s Bureau, Bulletin no. 46 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1925), 10. See also Michael Vinson, “From Housework to Office Clerk: Utah’s Working Women, 1870–1900,” Utah Historical Quarterly 53, no. 4 (1985): 326–35. Since 1980, Utah women have participated in the labor force at a higher percentage rate than the national average. See “Hard at Work: Women in the Utah Labor Force,” Utah Department of Workforce Services, accessed June 20, 2011, http://jobs.utah.gov/wi/pubs/hardatwork/ womenspub.pdf.
31 In her 1914 survey, Madeline Lambert noted that nearly one-fifth of the adult women in Salt Lake City were wage earners. About 40 percent of them worked as domestic servants. Others were stenographers and office clerks (1,600), candy workers (250), knitting factory workers (65), box factory workers (26), milliners (50), laundry workers (550), and telephone operators (295). Lambert did not survey professional women, such as teachers and health workers. Lambert, “Women at Work in Salt Lake City,” 5.
32 “Chocolate Girls Organize Union,” Salt Lake Tribune, January 23, 1910, 1.
33 Ibid. A 1913 Senate report noted that “On the whole confectionery seems to show a lower age level than any other industry studies. It has the largest proportion under 16, the largest proportion aged 16 and 17, and the smallest proportion aged 20 and over.” Report on Condition, 18:19.
34 Report on Condition, Vol. 10, History of Women in Trade Unions (1911), 204.
35 Leslie Woodcock Tentler, Wage-Earning Women: Industrial Work and Family Life in the United States, 1900–1930 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 61.
36 W. Jett Lauck and Edgar Sydenstricker, Conditions of Labor in American Industries: A Summarization of the Results of Recent Investigations (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1917), 253.
37 Thirteenth Census; Fourteenth Census.
38 Salt Lake Federation of Labor Minute Book 2, January 28, 1910, box 19, Utah State Federation of Labor Records, 1919–1956, MS 13, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah. The Salt Lake Federation of Labor had been affiliated with the American Federation of Labor since 1905; it rechartered in 1908. It is significant that the men supported this union. Nationally men tended to be hostile toward women’s unions. Perhaps these men felt there was no competition for jobs assumed to be women’s work. See Kessler-Harris, Gendering Labor History, 26–30.
39 Salt Lake Federation of Labor Minute Book 2, February 11, March 11, and April 22, 1910.
40 “McDonald Chocolate Co.,” Utah Payroll Builder, August 1918, 17.
41 See Owen Franklin Beal, “The Labor Legislation of Utah: With Special Reference to the Period of Statehood” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1922), 54–57.
42 H. T. Haines, Utah’s Minimum Wage Law for Females, Passed by the State Legislature of 1913, Became Effective May 13, 1913 (Salt Lake City: Imperial, 1914).
43 Beal, “Labor Legislation of Utah,” 117. A letter from J. J. Sullivan, Utah Federation of Labor, is also referenced as reporting that about 25 percent of all wage-earners in the state belonged to unions.
* For tables please view this article on a desktop.
