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Show Keeping Up WitiSciene 0 C Scicnc StTVire.-WNU Service. Hand That Rocks the Cradle Also Brings Home Racon Woinon lVotluoo 1 ig lut of the Familv laying Washington. The liand that rooks the cradle not only rules the world but brings home the bacon. Voiv.o:i in America tod.iy, whether wheth-er t!'ey pound a typewriter or cook the family dinner, produce a large share of the family living. Miss Mary Elizabeth Fidsoon. chief of the research division of the Women's Wom-en's bureau. United States Department Depart-ment of Labor, has found. Her investigations in-vestigations of woman's economic status and contributions are contained con-tained in a report just made public. Women are at the head of one out of every 10 families in the United Unit-ed States, she found. Probably more than one-tenth of the nearly 11.000.-000 11.000.-000 employed women are the entire support of families of two or more persons. More than a third of these are home-makers as well. High .Money Value of Her Work. The housewife herself, working at least a 50-hour week every week of the year, makes an enormous contribution con-tribution to the family income, but one that is difficult to put into dollars and cents. The cost of her labor in preparing the family meals according to one estimate is $1,167 a year. This is based on 15 cents worth of labor per meal a very cheap estimate. Miss Pidgeon points cut. If preparing the family meals represents about one-third of the housewife's services, then the money mon-ey value of her work would run to ever S3.500 a year. Women, by goir.g into industry and taking jobs outside the home, have not forced men out of jobs, it appears from Miss Pidgeon's findings. find-ings. Women found employment outside the home primarily because cf the shift from household to factory fac-tory manufacture or from hand skills of women to machine processes. proc-esses. It is not a question of women's wom-en's taking jobs from men but of the adaptation of the sexes to the work of the world. "Ordinarily the jobs performed by the two sexes diiler and hence replacement re-placement as such daes not occur." she states. When employment of women does increase though that of men may decline, it is due. Miss Pidgeon finds, to changes in process and the lower wage customarily paid women. |