148 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



LIMITATION OF THF \VO:\IAN WORKER IN T?IE LUMBER INDUSTRY 



There are certain limitations which will always prevent women from 

 supplanting men in the lumber business. The first of these is her gen- 

 eral lack of strength, which prevents her from doing most of the heavy 

 work connected with the handling of green lumber and timbers, or 

 general work, where the prime requisites are weak heads and strong 

 backs. The second is her constitutional weakness, which imposes the 

 limitations of shorter hours than men, with relatively more frequent 

 rest periods or positions at which she may work while seated. In gen- 

 eral, it has not been found wise to work a woman more than eight hours 

 at heavy tasks, as the overdoing of her strength reduced her efficiency 

 to a niarked degree. Of course, there are always present a few women 

 of the Amazon type, to whom the heaviest kind of work comes with 

 ease and to whom long hours and heavy work has no terrors. Such 

 women may be employed in any place where men may be used and 

 where she develops skill and care enough to be trusted around ma- 

 chinery. 



WAGES PAID 



Before woman had been placed in those lines of work which she could 

 handle she was paid much less than men in the same class of work ; 

 often but half that paid the men. Boys and women were on a parity 

 as to wages, and often a woman received less than the boy. This has 

 gradually changed, till at the present time women receive in the mill 

 but one or two cents per hour less than the man formerly employed. 

 In the yards and in the docks women in the clean-up gangs and push- 

 ing dollies receive on the average about five cents less than men work- 

 ers. In the woods and on the railroad women receive the same wages 

 as men where the work is piecework — that is, the same rate per thou- 

 sand and the same rate per trip by rail. In other lines of endeavor 

 they receive about three-fourths of the standard wages paid men. For 

 track work in railroad construction they average 25 cents a day less 

 than men workers, which holds true for the wage received for work in 

 machine logging. Where employed as teamsters they receive the same 

 wages as the men. 



White women in general receive the same wage as those paid men 

 whom they replace. As checkers, scalers, machine workers, and in the 

 office they are given the same pay men received as soon as their fitness 

 for the work is demonstrated. Usually in many of these places these 

 women are placed in an apprenticeship status for an indefinite period. 



