Unfinished Jobs

I

ANNIVERSARIES are not always joyful occasions. Sometimes they are desperate ventures, like a leap from the tried and found wanting to the utterly unknown.

Five years ago I celebrated my twenty-fifth anniversary as ‘a leading business woman’ by just such a leap in the dark. In other words, I gave up my job, though I knew perfectly well that in doing so I was burning my bridges behind me and could never return. A woman of forty-five is old in the business world. If she is in she may sometimes stay in, but very rarely may she go back again, however successful she may have been. There were no congratulations to spur me on, no rallying of friends, no pension even. There were only grim resolution and a prayer to the high gods, after which I sat down to survey the past and take stock of my earthly possessions.

It did not take long. The past held but one experience — the struggle for support. As for earthly possessions, that quarter of a century of hard labor had netted me exactly six shares of company stock (totaling less than three thousand dollars) and seventeen hundred dollars’ worth of participation in a heavily mortgaged coöperative apartment — a participation that ensures us a comfortable home as long as we continue to pay our ninety dollars a month of the upkeep. For that ninety dollars, and for the business of daily living, I had exactly nothing at all and must depend upon my sister’s salary. Yet resign I must. There was an imperative family need that made my woman’s services in the home even more necessary than my head-of-the-family activities outside.

That need was my immediate reason for giving up the job. The other — the long-distance reason — was that financially it was getting me nowhere. I could not possibly have saved one thousand dollars more than I did in all those twenty-five years. Never once had my salary touched the five-thousanddollar mark, though one paper intimated in glaring headlines that it was fifty thousand at least. During my salad years it was scarcely a salary at all, yet even then I had to meet the requirements of business in the matter of good dress; to pay off the debts for my education and provide — as my sister and I still do — a home for ourselves and our widowed mother. For many years we have sent a monthly check to a family Negro too old to work. We educated a younger sister and then kept her under the care of specialists for years before her death. After that there was another accumulation of debts to be paid before we could even begin to save.

Those few years of saving were the only years of financial peace that we have ever known. It was then that we bought the apartment and the company shares, and had the luxury of a servant for a little while. Even now our mother refers to those few peaceful years as a traveler might refer to a blessed oasis he had lingered in and never forgotten.

But they did not last long. The end of the war came, and with it the demobilization of women. Only business women realize how long that demobilization has lasted, and understand its real significance. As the manager of one of New York’s best employment agencies said not long ago, ‘ More than half the leading women in Wall Street have now, for one reason or another, been let out. That means that there are men enough to fill the executive positions.’ It means something more, something permanent: younger women are in demand, and the supply is constantly increasing.

My sister and I saw clearly enough what was coming. Our salaried years were numbered, so we decided to try that desperate venture of launching out alone. I was to take the first leap and do what free-lance work I could in the time spared from home.

The five years since then have been weathered somehow, but we have ceased to live on the edge of safety — we are merely dangling over it. Soon after my venture my sister saw opportunity and she too started on her own, so that at present there is a six-thousand-dollar debt, plus interest, taxes, and insurance, for the advertising business she and her partner have bought. One by one my shares have been pledged against loans for family necessities, and the shadow of rent day is forever ahead. The larder has never been empty — quite, and clothes of a kind have been bought at end-of-the-season sales. Hospitality, though, has come to an end. Club memberships, so valuable to self-supporting women, have been withdrawn, and contact with old friends and associates is rarely possible now, since we cannot afford the downtown luncheons and dinners at which busy women are accustomed to meet. Hardest of all, our mother is feeling the strain at last and we cannot provide the comforts she needs. She may get well without them. She has accomplished everything else through sheer force of will, and has succeeded in making a very real home for us during all these years of our breadwinning preoccupations.

If she weathers the storm the other hardships can be borne cheerfully enough. Perhaps it is true that ‘we develop by what we buck up against.’ At any rate we have untried abilities within us, new and interesting ventures ahead — if! That is where the great fear lies — if we continue our hold on the edge; if no accident occurs. For the first time in all my life I begin to be haunted by the fear of accident. What if I am run over coming home? What if I lose my hands, my sight? I am not getting morbid; but I should be a dependent all my life, forty years or more perhaps, so small is the insurance I have been able to carry.

II

Now all this drab bit of financial history would be of no interest whatever if it were my history only. It is, at one point or another, the history of thousands of women thrown into the selfsupporting class. Even then it would not be told if it began and ended with them. Unfortunately it does not. The great majority have dependents, and the thousands mount. It is these dependents and their peculiar relationship to the self-supporting woman that make her problem not only one of personal difficulty, but important in its relation to society as a whole.

It is not always easy to define just what a ‘dependent’ is, though sociologists and tax experts strive hard to be exact. Children, of course (if they are one’s own), and wives — a fact that is usually recognized by a raise in salary when a young man is ready to marry. Mothers too fall under the heading of ‘closely related to you and living in your household.' Yet it is the dependents not closely related, and those living out of the home, who absorb so much of women’s slender earnings and yet cannot win for them the sympathy, the larger salaries, or the head-of-the-family exemptions that help so much.

A striking illustration of this came to my attention a short time ago — the case of a New York professional woman who was earning six thousand a year. While she was putting herself through college her father married again. For a few years all went well. Then he lost his health and his business, and from that time on Miss X had to come to the new family’s aid. Fortunately she was succeeding, for very soon her sister was widowed and left with a young baby, and for several years she kept both of them with her. The sister is carrying her own load now, but in the meanwhile a young brother married, without waiting for college or success, and a third family came upon the scene and was soon looking to ‘Auntie’ for help through its numerous financial crises.

This case is extreme, of course, but it is surprising how many women are carrying burdens for which they are in no way responsible — ‘the burdens of the past,’as one of them put it. The income tax collector tells us how many women are heads of families,over 157,000 in our United States alone, — but even he knows nothing of certain types of dependents that are rarely mentioned. Most women arc too loyal to talk of them and of family tragedies. They dress as well as they can, smile gallantly, and tell nothing about the father who is failing in business, the mother in a sanitarium, or the brother who cannot hold up his too heavy load. Such domestic tragedies are no more numerous than they have always been. They are merely more numerous among the gently bred, where the greatest financial pinch is now felt. That is why more and more women are faring forth, not merely, as they would have us believe, to seek independence and the rainbow’s end, but because someone they love has fallen by the way and they must take over his unfinished job.

There, I think, is the whole thing in a nutshell — other people’s unfinished jobs. It is these jobs, these pathetic and not-to-be-mentioned dependents, that make the salaries of most women so much too small for the demands that are made upon them, especially when those demands are for invalids or the education of children.

For the salaries of women are small. In spite of all the success stories with which the public is regaled, comparatively few, even of the officer class, receive more than five thousand a year. I was one of the many who made even less — who, again and again, took over ‘men’s work’ only to find that by some strange and elusive alchemy it had become ‘women’s work’ and was rated accordingly. Yet, in spite of my low financial status, I was considered a successful woman. Colleges, chambers of commerce, clubs, asked me to talk about my work, while magazines and newspapers ‘told how I did it’ and syndicated my words of advice. Of the young men who started with me, and who were of the same intellectual and social status, not one is getting less than fifteen or twenty thousand a year at the lowest, not one but is considered in his prime at fifty.

III

The thing that has brought all this so vividly back to me is the visit of my ‘twin cousin ’ to New York. In spite of a few years’ difference at the start, we began our business lives under exactly similar conditions, with the same background and mental equipment and the same kind and amount of education. As soon as I saw that cousin I sensed the atmosphere of — shall I call it affluence, or merely peace of mind? We talked of his business, his travels, his home, and his car. His wife’s expensive simplicity added lustre to their apartment in a Fifth Avenue hotel, to the excellent dinner that regaled us, and to the play that we saw later on — from the very best orchestra seats. A quick mental calculation showed me that the evening had cost nearly fifty dollars, a sum that was a mere gesture of hospitality to that business man; to us the equivalent of half a year’s income on our savings of twenty-five years.

Of course he had obligations. They all have, these men with whom I have been associated — wives and sometimes other relatives to support, children to care for and educate, fraternal and philanthropic enterprises to finance. The youngster who ran errands for me a few years ago has obligations, but he also has a car and is buying a home of his own. In contrast is the librarian in the next apartmeat. She is educating her young sister and doing her own sewing and washing at night. Her janitor is earning a larger salary than she, and providing happily for his own child. I could cite cases without end, of educated, selfsupporting women struggling to finish the job of others on the slenderest of salaries, before their earning years come to an end. As for those salaries, one case will suffice — that of an able teacher entrusted with a class of mentally deficient boys, two of whom left her care to begin earning, at once, wages larger than hers had ever been.

There is another side to this question — one, it seems to me, that gets too little consideration. What does one get in return? Is everything that one earns swallowed up in daily living, or is it investment in the future, with the hope of easier conditions as the years go on? Men — young husbands, let us call them — have a long term of earning years with constantly increasing earning capacity. Hardships and denials they have without doubt in this time of complicated living and high costs. Their wives must choose carefully, even painfully, when there are so many needs in proportion to the earnings, but — the crux of the whole matter lies here — they can choose. Even when the earnings are only fair, there is the boon of choice, and it is being able to choose that makes life interesting and really worth while. They have all been able to choose marriage. Most of them, presumably, were free of obligations during their youth and could marry the men they loved. In spite of cares and anxiety while their children arc young, they can look forward to the durable satisfactions of useful, welleducated sons and daughters given to the world.

Nearly every business woman I know feels, deep in her heart, the incompleteness of a life without children, yet very few people realize that she really wants the home and the emotional satisfactions so necessary to business men. A few have been able to adopt children, but for the great majority even that is financially impossible. It has been impossible for us. We have been forced to admit it at last and to face the fact that we cannot make our woman’s contribution to even one little life, though the thought of the thousands in asylums is — or should be — a constant reproach to us all.

Young men usually marry as soon as they are on their financial legs, so the care of the older people or the sharing of their burdens gradually falls to the daughters. I have no statistics to prove this. It may be a case of ‘all generalizations are false, including this one,’ but personal observation and a mass of testimony force me to believe it. A by no means uncommon instance is that of a former coworker, who postponed her marriage for eight years to help her mother support the home and bring up three younger brothers, every one of whom married before she was finally free. She and other ‘ brain workers ’ rank among the business and professional women, who are supposed to be more fortunate than women in the industrial groups, but they are all moved by the same family considerations and use their money in the same way. For that reason it may not be out of place to quote the following paragraph from a recent report of the United States Department of Labor, on the share of wage-earning women in family support:—

Comparing single men and single women, the women contributed more extensively, both actually and relatively. In every age group more daughters than sons contributed all earnings. At the younger ages (less than twenty-eight) there was a greater proportion of women than of men who contributed all earnings.

During my quarter of a century in the business world it has amazed me to find how many women — young girls even — were supporting themselves and their mothers. Usually these girls do not marry, and who can wonder, for where are the young men who can keep their heads above water if they start life with a dependent mother-inlaw?

But about the women — my sister, myself, and our hosts of fellow workers who are in a fair way to become dependents ourselves if sickness or accident occurs. The all-important question is, dependent upon whom? Since we have no husbands and no children the burden will fall, if fall it must, upon the children of others, for everyone who drifts into old ladies’ homes, hospitals, or rest cures, will be a tax upon the charity, or the public funds, of the coming generation — more ‘burdens of the past’ for the young to carry.

This mention of old ladies’ homes is not ‘sob stuff’ by any means, but the result of thoughtful consideration, based upon what is already happening. Several of our most valued older friends are already immured. One is a woman who, in a well-known university, gave us the technique and the inspiration for the work that we have done. Her woman’s earnings, even with constant extra work, were never more than enough to support herself and her mother and help with the upbringing of an orphaned niece.

Since this question of dependence is a matter of such far-reaching concern, the most progressive self-supporting women are giving it thoughtful consideration. Their salaried years approximate the number of years it takes to prepare the younger children for life or to care for the older people. Given a sufficient number of working years after that, they could build up their own reserve fund, but it must be borne in mind that their earning years are limited — are, in fact, becoming more limited all the time. This is not because of ill health or decreased ability, but because able and well-trained young college women can be had in increasingly large numbers. Practically every employment agent for women tells of the consequently decreasing demand for the older women — ‘older’ women, they say, now meaning those over thirty. After forty or even fifty there is ample time to embark upon independent business ventures if a woman has been able to accumulate capital enough. It is needless to say how few have been able to do it.

There is another thing that handicaps the efforts of women — they are so often breadwinner and ‘mother of the family’ as well. The home makes a great many demands upon women — demands that retard and even end the career. A well-known New York lawyer told me that in his opinion this was one of the chief causes of the continued prejudice against women in the legal profession; that for his part he would never admit a girl into his group of apprentice lawyers until the demands of home no longer caused women to break their contracts.

One of the most useful women I know may be called upon any day to break her contract. She is a young and able college woman who went into her brother’s home, adopted his orphaned children, and brought on an elderly relative to care for them while she earns the money for their education and support. As a father she is a decided success, but she may be called upon in any crisis to be a mother as well. Several crises would seriously interfere with work as important as hers. These children may, when they are older, provide for her future, but it is by no means certain. I have personally known six women — of course that may be coincidence — who have educated brothers or nephews who married young and without the slightest attempt to repay the money spent upon them. The return of the money seems never to be expected. A physician, a woman who is supporting herself and educating two nieces on a four-thousand-dollar salary, put it succinctly when she said, ’I think every one of us should make her contribution to the oncoming generation.’

IV

‘Every one of us should make her contribution to the oncoming generation.’ That has rung in my ears persistently,— almost like a prophecy,— till I am beginning to wonder if the child pension, or child insurance, is not after all the solution to this problem that is becoming so increasingly difficult for men as well as women.

Let us put the problem in its simplest terms. The father has always been the head of the family, his responsibility its financial support. Until lately he has been able to carry that responsibility alone. Several generations ago, when the family was large and land and rents cheap, it was quite possible for the man of average ability to support a family of ten or more. Not so to-day. The costs of living have risen to such an extent that a man cannot carry more than one fourth of the load that was carried by his grandsires. If the cost of living and the cost of children continue to mount we are threatened with a future in which no one will be able to do more than support himself. Even now the signs are pointing that way. In the so-called working classes, for instance, nearly two million wives have had to come to the rescue, every one of whom, according to the Department of Labor, is contributing her entire earnings to family support. Among the professional groups the strain is so great that not only are unmarried women pulling their own weight and that of others, but wives as well are leaving the home in order to help to support it.

The cost of children is staggering. Not only the cost of getting them safely started in life, but all the costs of health building, education, and training that follow. To reduce, or rather to share, these costs we have been experimenting with such aids as public schools, free clinics, and recently education insurance. Whether we are yet communityminded enough to take the next step and establish the child pension —a joint responsibility of the entire reigning generation for the one to follow — is an open question. As it is, in spite of all the good half measures already launched, a child is still subject to every change in fortune, every weakness or mistake, that overtakes his parents. The loss of a father’s job, an accident, or a mother’s unfortunate investment, may cut short his education and handicap his entire future, unless someone not responsible for him volunteers to take on the ‘ unfinished job.'

Taking on another’s unfinished job too often means leaving our own best talents unused or becoming a ‘job’ in time to others. Finishing up, patching, curing, — spending millions on the fallen-by-the-way and the dependent old, — that is what we are doing all through the civilized world, but never

yet have we tried the simple experiment of guaranteeing everyone a fair start in life. This would have to be done, of course, by holding every citizen equally responsible — even though not equally concerned — for the children; in other words, for the nation builders. Is n’t that the writing on the wall to-day, the nearest and cheapest solution of the growing problems of support? Would it not do more than anything else to protect the young from the accidents and the violent turns of fortune that jeopardize their future, and at the same time free the overburdened from those unfinished jobs that continue the vicious circle of dependence instead of bringing it to an end?