Young
Women Enter the Labour Force
Between 1891 and 1931, the number of female clerks in Canada rose
from 5,000 to 120,000. The demand was especially acute during the
First World War (1914-1918), when women filled in the gap left by
young men off to the battlefields of Europe.
Most women earning
wages in 1900 were young and unmarried. Many of them wanted work
that would tide them over until marriage. Some needed to earn money
to help their families. Others needed a living
wage to support themselves independently. Unlike today, married
women ventured from their work in the home to take on paying jobs
only when necessary.
Young women
who could not afford to stay in school often worked for low wages
in factories. Here they performed monotonous, exhausting tasks in
badly heated and ventilated warehouses. They could barely make enough
money to support themselves, and often had to live at home. Factory
work was, however, preferable to domestic
service, where employees had little independence and even lower
wages.
Given
the poor working conditions in factories and domestic work, young
women preferred office work because it provided a very positive
opportunity. With a minimum of training, they could earn enough
to live on (if they had no family obligations) and they got to work
in a clean and pleasant office environment. Moreover, the wages
were much better than what they could earn in the factories. (In
1901, female clerks earned 45 percent more than the average female
wage.) However, only the few young women whose families could afford
to send them to school, and who were looking for a career and not
just a job, became professionals.
One such young
woman was Lottie Betts.
Lottie
was born in Ottawa on September 25, 1889, the oldest child of Isaac
and Nellie Betts. Mr. Betts worked as a boilermaker for the Canadian
Pacific Railway until he lost his sight in an industrial accident.
In 1902, the family moved to Toronto. Lottie probably realized early
on that she would have to take on a job to help her family.
We do not know
where Lottie studied for her future career, but she must have taken
a business course either at her secondary school or at one of the
numerous private commercial and business colleges in Toronto at
that time. A complete course lasted six months, and cost around
$85 for tuition and books. In the business course, Lottie would
have learned to take notes in shorthand, or stenography,
as it was called. However, most of the course was devoted to mastering
the typewriter.
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