THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
349
answer. That she is in the labor market today as a permanent factor is apparent even to the most superficial observer, and the next question is, How to improve her economic and financial condition so that life may be made at least worth the living. This may seem but a poor ambition, but it is, after all, the highest possessed by the great majority: that their life may be fairly comfortable, and passed under such conditions that the next generation may be a little better and a little wiser.
There is no more patent sign of the times than the fact that woman is attracting the attention of the financial world, and that her large property interests are being recognized as an integral part of the so-called “ Woman Question.” She has always been recognized as a worker, but as a worker along the lines in which her financial rewards did not render her an object of special consideration in the moneyed world. Now, however, all this is changed, the money or the savings which she accumulates are invested in moneyed institutions, as building and loan associations, real estate, and mortgages on real estate. The amount thus invested is in the hundred millions.
Mr. Ethelbert Stewart, of the Department of Labor at Washington, sends me the following report:
“ The relative numerical position of men and women as investors in building and loan associations is as one to four. That is to say, twenty-five per cent of the building and loan shares of stock in the eastern and middle western states are owned by women. In New Jersey every fourth shareholder is a woman, as is seen from the figures: Total, 78,725 shareholders; 58,496 males, 19,341 females; nine hundred and eighty-eight corporations and firms: percentages, seventy-four per cent., twenty-five per cent, and one per cent, respectively. The “ present value ” of the shares held by women in New Jersey is $6,401,593. By present value is meant dues paid in, together with accrued profits. Of the borrowers, or those who are securing homes for themselves by means of building and loan associations: In New York State 32,699 women hold 126,874 shares of stock, having a present value of $5,935,554, and a maturity value of approximately twenty-five million dollars.
The total membership of these societies in New York is composed of twenty-four per cent, women, though only about twenty per cent, of the stock is held by women.
In the city of Philadelphia 34,4000 women hold stock valued at $10,059,861, while the stock matured and withdrawn, either in money or in canceled mortgages, equals $15,000,000 more, within the past “ maturing period” of eight years.
In the State of Pennsylvania $22,200,000 worth of building and loan stock is held by 92,000 women. Of the $960,000,000, representing the net assets of building and loan associations in the United States, $192,000,000 worth is held by 2,400,000 women.
The law of Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and probably many other states, makes building and loan stock taken out by women, and when the dues upon said stock is paid by them, to be theirs in every particular, and not subject to attachment or execution for their husbands’ debts.
The question of the source from whence the dues come which are paid on shares held by women, is one that can not be answered in a very comprehensive way. One association, in New York City, visited by the writer, had sixty-three chambermaids among its membership, each earning by her own labor the money invested.
In a teachers’ building and loan association in New York City ninety per cent, of the members were women earning their own money, and many of them having built several houses for rent through the association. In Buffalo, N. Y., I asked twenty- seven women who came in to pay their dues how they got the money. Twelve replied their husbands gave it to them.
One said her husband supported the family and she swept a large house for a wealthy lady twice each week and invested the earnings in building and loan stock. Another baked bread for three different families, and thus earned the money invested in dues. Five others earned the money themselves by various extra domestic jobs, such as sewing or washing for a neighbor. In all, seven married women earned their own funds; twelve did not. The remaining eight were unmarried and worked for their living.