WORKING FOR OTHERS

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVI, Issue 96, 27 August 1913, Page 4

WORKING FOR OTHERS

The-women's group of the London Fabian Society has tor some time past been occupied in an attempt to ascertain what proportion of women workers are partially or wholly maintaining other people. Since the existing difference between the rates of pay to men and to women is mainly justified by a prevailing opinion that men do, whereas women do not, support dependents, it is evident, says a writer in the “Manchester Guardian,” that such an inquiry is of considerable economic importance. Fifty-six units are represented by the thousand re- ! plies upon which the report is based, and the variety of persons covered ranges from the university graduate earning £SOO a year to the sweated industrial worker earning 6s a week. The salient fact emerging from this brief tabulation of eight groups of women is that the industrial women workers of Great Britain are, in the proportion of nearly 49 per cent,, paying out of their (generally inadequate) earnings towards the maintenance of one citizen or more, other than themselves.