WOMEN IX SOUTHERN' LUMBERING OPERATIONS 149 



depending on the individual. In the wood-using industries, when she 

 has found her place, she is given the same pay as the men for the same 

 work. 



FUTURE OUTLOOK 



How successful women are in the lumber industry in the South is 

 reflected in the wages paid them. At the start, when only a few women 

 were employed at occupations for which they were unsuited, a strong 

 feeling of antagonism to the woman worker was apparent, but this 

 was later lost when the work and the women had adjusted themselves 

 through the employer studying his help with the idea of finding the 

 work at which they could be utilized. 



This was easier with the white women than with the negro because 

 of her greater adaptability. Negro women work better in groups than 

 when employed singly with men around, and while there always will 

 be a more or less general loss of labor from the combination of sexes 

 in the black race, this loss has not resulted in any great reduction in the 

 work accomjilished as compared to the new labor supply opened up. 



White women in the South are not employed to the extent that negro 

 women are used because, in general, manual labor in the weaker sex is 

 looked down upon by all classes. Indeed, it was late in the fall when 

 women were used to any extent in the elevator, in the hotels, or in 

 other lines of similar work, while the rest of the country had been 

 using them for at least six months. Once this prejudice has been 

 broken down it will be comparatively easy for women to obtain em- 

 ployment generally. The white women, so far where tried, have proved 

 themselves superior to men in a few lines of work, due to their quicker 

 brain and quicker grasp of mechanical operations, and far superior to 

 the black men in whatever place she has found herself. 



The negro women have been tried in positions which largelv involved 

 manual labor rather than skill or application. In these positions they 

 have not been as successful as men, and their deficiencies have been 

 due entirely to the lack of physical strength, and this has been met in 

 large measure, where possible, by the employment of a larger number 

 of workers. 



