WOMEN'S WAGES IN 1888

It is sad that if you could not make it in the city on $4.00 wages and a cheap boarding house room of $2.50 a week, you had to go back to the farm or become a prostitute.

Now prostitution was semi legal in Minneapolis from the 1870-1910. They paid month fines to the court and were allowed to work in certain districts.

A news article states:

Not long ago I overhead a woman belonging to the large class of outcasts who swarm our streets. She and a companion were on a shopping tour, and their talk turned on the life of working girls. "I used to be a respectable working girl myself," she said. "I tried for three years to support life on the wages I was paid as a cashier in a big store. It didn't seem as if anybody cared what became of me. The patrons of the store disdained to speak a kind word to be because I was a working girl. There were temptations on every side. So I gave up the struggle at last, and it always makes me shiver, to see a girl dying by inches in these stores. They call me unworthy of any decent person's notice now, but I don't starve and freeze since I quit being respectable," was her story and probably many others of her class could tell the same sort of tale.

I large stores, I found the wages of cashiers to range from $6 to $8 a week. Of course, the absence of evening work makes their life more pleasant than it otherwise would be.

We know that in the hotel business the highest paid positions was a cook at $4.00 and the least paid was 'common help' at $2.25 a week.

In the restaurants assistant cooks made $5.50 and Dish washers $3.83.

At the boot and shoe factories the vampers made $8.50 and the table girls made $5.10. Vampers put the shoes together on machines.

People who made pants earned $5.84 and the shirt makers made $3.36. Old Trunks thinks shirts are harder to make then pants!!!

Women who collated books in book factories made $6.75 and those who sewed them together made $4.73.

Imagine working in a laundry. Operating a machine, such as a mangler earned $6.20; those who starched received $5.55. All other positions such as ironers, washers, sorters were between those dollar amounts.

My grand mother worked as a domestic in Thief River Falls. There was a general spirit of dissatisfaction. Although, others interviewed said, some girls take about as much interest in the management of a house as the mistress of the house herself and that kind of servant could be left in charge of the house.

However, girls were not allowed to use the front door. I like to think my grand mother used the front door and did a really good job!

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