George J. Stigler

English

Research Papers in Economics

This PDF is a selection from an out-of-print volume from the National Bureau
of Economic Research
Volume Title: Domestic Servants in the United States, 1900-1940
Volume Author/Editor: George J. Stigler
Volume Publisher: UMI
Volume ISBN: 0-87014-339-5
Volume URL: http://www.nber.org/books/stig46-1
Publication Date: 1946
Chapter Title: The Wages and Hours of Servants
Chapter Author: George J. Stigler
Chapter URL: http://www.nber.org/chapters/c2735
Chapter pages in book: (p. 12 - 20)I
consistent, for they imply that average income rises more rapidly
with community size in the northeastern than in the North Central•
An alternative, and perhaps more plausible, explanation is
that the large cities in the Northeast and West have relatively large
immigrant populations.
3THE WAGES AND HOURS OF SERVANTS
Increases in Wages, 1899-1939
A detailed study of the movements of servants' wages would be of
great interest if only because domestic service is the one very large
occupation whose wages have never been significantlyaffected
either by employee or employer combinations or by social legisla-
tion. Information on wages is unfortunately so inadequate, how-
ever, that cyclical movements must be ignored and only the terminal
years of our period can be studied.'4
There is only one comprehensive study of servants' wages in the
early period: a sample of the money wage rates paid general house-
hold servants in 33 states about According to it, the mean
weekly wage was $3.16. In 1939 the average weekly money earn-
ings of full-time female servants in these same states was $7.22.16
If the early data on servants' wages are representative—and this
is questionable—servants' money wages increased about 130 per-
cent. The value of 'in kind' income increased less, if we judge by
the smaller rise in the cost of living indexes, but the change in the
proportion of. servants who received such income at the two dates
is unknown, although its direction was very probably downward.
The increase in weekly earnings in other industries employing
large numbers of women is equally difficult to determine. The
average weekly earnings of all wage earners in manufacturing ap-
14The data on servants' wages are discussed in Appendix B.
15SeeGail Laughlin, Domestic Service, Report of the United States Industrial Corn-
missiott, XIV (1901); this study is described in Appendix B.
10All female servants cannot properly be compared with. fe'male servants doing general
housework, although it is not certain which way such a comparison is biased. The
Laughlin study covers only urban areas, where in 1899 there were relatively fewer
servants (but probably with relatively high wages), for this and other reasons discussed
in Appendix B, the increase in wage rates is probably underestimated.
12parently rose about 175percent.'7The uncertainty surrounding both
figures is so large that it is unsafe to say more than that the increase
in weekly earnings in domestic service was probably somewhat less
and almost certainly no larger than in manufacturing.
The Webbs entertained an even more favorable conclusion (on
even less evidence) regarding the rise of servants' wages in England
in the nineteenth century, and their reaction is interesting.18 They ar-
gued that it was improper to infer, as some economists did, that com-
petition leads to satisfactory wages and labor unions are unneces-
sary. The domestic servant, the Webbs replied, is a very special
case: all the bargaining advantages are on her side. For example,
"in the all-important matter of carrying out the bargain, it is the
mistress, with her lack of knowledge, her indifference to details,
and her preoccupation with other affairs, whose own ease of body
and mind is at the mercy of the servant's hundred and one ways of
making herself disagreeable." A footnote makes it clear that Beatrice
Webb wrote these passages, and she claims for them an authority
(although she was possibly an atypical housewife) that, as she says,
the untutored male cannot challenge.
Geographical Pattern of Money Earnings
The pattern and extent of the geographical differentials in servants'
earnings are brought out by a map showing the mean annual earn-
ings of full-time female servants in each state in 1939(Chart3).
REGION MEAN EARNINGS MEDIAN EARNINGS
Northeast $527 $504
West 473 419
North Central 375 335
South 248 205
The general pattern has apparently persisted for some time, prob-
17 The percentage increase is the same whether calculated from average annual earnings
reported in the Census of Manufactures or by splicing Paul Douglas' series of weekly
earnings (Real Wages in the United States, 1890-1926; Macmillan, 1930; p. 130) to
that of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (Handbook of Labor Statistics, 1941, II, 14).
18 See Industrial Democracy (London, 1902),pp. 674 if. W. T. Layton was the £rst
to measure the trend of servants' wages in England, Changes of the Wages of Domestic
Servants during Fifty Years, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, LXXI (1908),
5 15-24. His various series indicate that servants' wages rose about 140 percent from
1824 to 1900, while wages of women in factories rose 70 percent.
i32
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0ably since the latter.part of the nineteenth century along the eastern
seaboard.'9
The effects of race and size of community on servants' earnings
are difficult to segregate from the effects of regional location. The
censusreports do not allow a direct calculation of the mean earnings
by race or by size of community except for cities over 250,000, so two
complementary approaches were used to estimate the effects of these
complicating factors.
The first approach consisted of correlating, on a state basis,
average earnings of full-time female servants in rural areas and
cities of less than 250,000 with (1) the percentage of female
servants in cities over 10,000, and (2)thepercentage of non-white
servants. The statistical analysis. confirms the expectation that earn-
ings are higher in a state, the greater the proportion of servants
who live in cities over 10,000, and the smaller the proportion of
servants who are non-white.2° These findings go far to explain the
observed regional, pattern, as we can see by the four
regions (again excluding cities over 250,000). Of course one cannot
conclude from this evidence that all regional variation would dis-
PERCENTAGE OF SERVANTS
REGION MEAN EARNINGS Non-WhiteIn Cities over 10,000
Northeast $489 16.2 50.5
West 436 9.5 43.1
North Central 337 9.6 40.4
South 225 79.8 40.5
19 The 1899 study described in Appendix B yields the following averages ofwages per
week: Northeast, $3.34; West, $4.13; North Central, $2.97; South, $2.22.
The difference in the order of the. Northeast and West in 1899 and 1939 is partly
explicable in terms of reduced immigration. The wage structure in 1860 seems to have
been very different in one respect: in the East wages were highest in Louisiana, Florida,
Mississippi, etc. (see E. 'W. Martin, The Standard of Living in 1860; University of
Chicago Press, 1942, p. 413). The explanation is probably that ordinary domestic
service in the South was provided by slaves.
20 Let X1 be average 1939 earnings of full-time female servants, Xa the percentage of
servants who are non-white, and X8 the percentage of servants in cities over 10,000; in
all cases excluding servants in cities over 250,000. The regression equation with the
corresponding standard errors are:
X1=204.1 —1.58X2 + 4.38 X3.
(.32) (.81)
The coefficient of multiple correlation is .731; the other correlation coefficients are:
ris=.527 .627
.045 .402
15appear if full account- could be taken of race and size of community.2'
The second approach in estimating .the importance of regional
variations is a direct analysis of earnings of servants in cities over
250,000. The over-all pattern agrees with the previous findings
(see Table 8): earnings were larger, the larger the city; and they
were smaller, the larger the percentage of non-white servants.
There is no evidence of systematic regional differences when com-
parisons are confined to cities of- similar size and similar ethnic
composition of servants.22
TABLE 8
Mean Annual Earnings of'Female Servants
by Size of City and Percentage of Non-White Servants, 1939
PERCENTAGE OF NON-WHITE SERVANTS
0-20 20-40 40-60 60-80 80-100
SIZEOFCITY -
ANNUALEARNINGS
250,000-500,000 $452 $438 $389 $298
500,000-1,000,000 547 $488, 411 465
& over 521 622 511
- NUMBEROF CITIES
250,000-500,000 9 7 6
500,000-1,000,000 4 2 1 2
1,000,000 & over " 3 1 1
Our finding that regional differences in earnings, other than those
correlated with race and size of community, are relatively unim-
portant for servants is in keeping with other studies of occupational
incomes. In addition to the general explanation that American labor
is highly mobile, in the case of servants differences in living costs
are relatively less important because a quarter to a third of all
servants receive food and lodging from their employers.23 On the
other hand, 'it is worth noticing that the employers of servants are
very immobile: probably in no other line of private employment
21 Regional regressions were not computed because the state is a crude unit of analysis
and the results would still be ambiguous.
22 The ratio of the variance between regions to the variance within regions is 1.86, with
7 and 18 degrees of freedom respectively. This ratio lies at the 10 percent level. San
Antonio was omitted from the calculations (but not from the averages in Table 8) be-
cause the ethnic composition of its servants cannot be measured (see below).
23 In 1930, 524,000 families without lodgers had one or more servants •living in
(Census of Population, 1930, VI, 26). In 1940, in urban and rural non-farm regions
about 675,000 servants lived in (ibid., 1940, IV, Part 1, P. 26).
16does the wage structure have less influence on the location of the
employer.
inequality of Earnings
We commonly look upon domestic servants as relatively homogene-
ous in training and tasks, and if this attitude were shared by the
housewives who hire servants we would expect to find relatively
little dispersion of earnings. Yet in the Northeast there is greater
equality in the heterogeneous groups of service workers (including
charwomen and artists' models), clerical workers (including li-
brarians and check girls ["except hat")), and manufacturing op-
eratives (including folders in envelope factories and shoppers for
factories) (Chart 4) •24 Another bit of evidence is the comparison
of weekly wages of servants in middle and upper income group
families (Table 9): the wages paid by the upper income group are
from 70 to 200 percent higher. -
TABLE9
Weekly Wages Paid to Full-Time Domestic
Servants by Employers at Two Income Levels, 19354936
WAGES PAID BY FAMILIES WITH INCOMES OF
$2,500 to $3,000 $7,500 to $10,000
Atlanta, Ga. $4.17 $8.04
Chicago 5.13 8.83
Columbus, Ohio 3.63 8.12
New York 6.09 10.14
Omaha, Neb. 3.41 10.59
Portland, Ore. 3.86 7.48
Providence, R. 1. 4.75 , 9.05
3 Middle.size East Central cities 3.76 5.69*
From Family Expenditures in Selected Cities, 1935-36 (Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Bulletin 648).
* Incomes of $5,000 and over.
24 A Lorenz curve is constructed by plotting the cumulative percentage of aggregate
wages received by workers against the cumulative percentage of workers, ranked from
those receiving lowest to those receiving highest wages. A diagonal making a 450angle
with the base is commonly taken to represent perfect equality, and the greater the
distance between the actual curve and this line the greater the inequality.
The national distribution for servants is much less equal than the regional distribu-
tions because of the large number of servants in the South, where wages are low; the
distribution is also less equal in the South. In order to eliminate the large number of
entrepreneurs and unpaid family workers in other occupations, the frequencies in each
$0-99 income group were reduced to the same proportion of the $100499 frequencies
as ruled among servants.
17CHART 4
Lorenz Curves of the Distribution of Annual Earnings
of Women in Selected Occupations
Northeastern States, 1939
Two explanations of this considerable dispersion of servants'
(earnings are possible. On the one hand, we may retain our belief
:inservants' homogeneity and attribute the wide differences in
earnings to the unorganized market for servants (in the sense of
lack of information, facilities for bargaining, etc.), the inexperience
.of the bargainers, and the personal relationships (leading to gen-
.erosity) that constitute an obstacle to competitive bargaining. Or
-we may infer that the differences in qualityof various servants are
(to the employer) much greater than casual observation would
18
PercentQge of employeessuggest. The correct explanation no doubt lies between these poles,
but where we do not know.
Houfs of Wofk
Of the various explanations offered for the dislike of domestic
service, one of the most common is the length and irregulaxity of
the hours. The conditions at the beginning of the period are more
or less reported (see the accompanying tabulation) in a
fashion that brings out also their characteristic uncertainty.25 A
AVERAGE HOURS ON DUTY
REPORTER On Call Busy
Employers 11 hr. 59 mm. 9 hr. 05 mm.
Employees 13°00" 12 12
survey in Maine in 1908 indicates a median and mode of 10 hours
on duty—as reported by employers.26 If these hours seem long by
recent standards, they were less so in contemporary eyes. In manu-
facturing hours worked per week averaged 60. Women worked an
average of 55 to 60 hours per week in retail stores, hotels, and
restaurants.27 Hours in commercial employments were reported ex-
clusivè of meal times; those in domestic service seem usually to have
included meal times.
Turning to the end of the period, there are detailed censUs data
on hours workedthiring the week, March 24-30, 1940—a trifle
early, let us hope, for spring cleaning. The median hours and the
percentage of workers with short and long hours in domestic service
and certain industries that are plausible employment alternatives
are presented in Table 10. The general impression of the length.
of hours is confirmed: the median hours are equal in domestic
service, hotels and lodging places, and eating and drinking places,.
but all are about a fifth longer than in the other industries. Both
25 See Gail Laughlin, Domestic Service, bc.cit., p.756.
26 This is based on 117 cases where hours were reported; 34 additional replies did not
specify hours; and 67 used a phrase of former days, 'as many as duties require". See
Maine Report of Industrial and LaborStatistics(1910), p. 333.
27 See Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin 116 (1912),pp. 15, 33 if.; Bulletin 160
(1914), pp. 14, 23; Bulletin 91 (1910), p. 893. In hotels and restaurants they worked
7 days per week more commonly than 6. As the dates indicate, these studies were made
more than a decade after the beginning of the century when hours may already have
declined somewhat.
19TABLE 10
Hours Worked by Women in Selected Industries, March 24-30, 1940
PERCENTAGE WORKING
Less than 60 or more
INDUSTRY MEDIAN-HOURS40 hours hours
Domestic service 48.3 25.2 24.8
Hotels and lodging places 48.2 14.7 13.1
Laundering, cleaning and dyeing 40.9 21.0 4.1
General merchandise and variety stores 42.7 17.4 1.8
Eating and drinking places 48.1 20.4 10.9
All female workers 40.8 26.4 7.9
Census of Population, 1940, The Labor Force, III, Part I, p. 260.
extremely short and long hours are common in domestic service.
In general the evidence suggests that hours in domestic service have
fallen in about the same proportion as hours in these competing em-
ployments. The widening gap between hours in domestic service
and the general average of female employment is due in part
to social legislation which has never covered servants.
4FACTORS AFFECTING THE INCOME OF SERVANTS
The ratio of servants to families fell a third between 1900 and
1940. Nevertheless, th.e increase in servants' wages has not exceeded
that in manufacturing, and may have fallen short of the rise in na-
tional income per worker.28 These facts imply a decrease in the
desire of American families to hire servants. What are the facts
that have contributed to this decrease?
We begin by describing changes in the characteristics of the
employer, the American family, then indicate relevant technologi-
cal changes in household operation and shifts of activities to the
market. Finally, we examine the effects of family income, number
of servants, and wages in competing employments.
Changing Characteristics of Families
Of the family characteristics described in Table 11 one is dominant
in importance and clear in its effects: the more than doubling of
28 The increase in national income per member of the labor force (employed and un-
employed) rose about 140 percent from 1899 to 1939, compared with 130 percent in
money earnings of full-time female servants Almanac, National Industrial
Conference Board, 1941-42, p. 334).
20

Domestic Servants in the United States, 1900-1940

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