WIVES AT WORK

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 118, 21 May 1928, Page 8

WIVES AT WORK

AMERICA TO-DAY CASE OP SHEER "NECESSITY." :.• (From "The Post's" Representative.)1 NEW YORK, 18th April. One out of every eleven married in the United,, States is now working outside of the home, and from sheer necessity, except in a few. isolated cases. Miss Mary Anderson, head of the Women's Bureau of the Labour Department, states that 9S per cent of the 2,000,000. married women who are in employment work to assist in supplying their families with food, clothes, and shelter. "Very few women choose to carry two jobs for the pleasure of doing it," Miss Anderson reports. "Only about 2 per cent, of the employed married women work for luxuries or a career.l There are now more than 8,500,000 employed women in the United States. One of every four of the women wage-earners is married. Women are in American industry to stay. "They take employment young, when they leave school, and if they stop work to get married it is only a short time before circumstances force them back to their tasks again. Failure of husbands to make adequate income is the cause." Miss Anderson .said that the Labour Department lists 572 occupations, and that women are employed in all but thirtyfive of' these. The largest percentage of employed married women'are engaged in agriculture, domestic, manufacturing, clerical, and sales pursuits. "Too many people, however, blamrf the married woman who goes out of the home hi this fashion, failing to realise that dire necessity makes her do it. The women themselves suffer, as well as the families and society. A whole new Set of social problems—not really new in age, but i unique in this generation—is the result."