Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-x4r87 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-29T13:14:19.272Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Tempest on the Hudson: The Struggle for “Equal Pay for Equal Work” in the New York City Public Schools, 1907–1911

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Robert E. Doherty
Robert E. Doherty*
Affiliation:
Cornell University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Since the civil war there have been more women than men public school teachers. Before then, with the exception of the so-called infant or dame schools, “keeping school” was thought to be properly a masculine enterprise. The war changed that. Between 1860–1895, male teachers, most of whom were unable to buy their way out of the draft, were conscripted by the thousands. Few men returned to the schools when the booming economy of the late 1860's and early 1870's brought them employment opportunities at significantly higher wages than school officials were able or willing to match. In some states the percentage of male teachers declined by more than 20 percent during the war period alone. In 1870 the percentage of female teachers in U.S. public schools was 61.3 percent. This percentage dropped slightly during the next decade, but then climbed steadily until the mid 1930s when it reached approximately 80 percent. The ratios of men and women teachers were highly uneven between the states, however. Utah, for example, had 65 percent female teachers in 1935, while Vermont had 90 percent. Since 1964 the percentage of women teachers has hovered around 65 percent.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , Winter 1979 , pp. 413 - 434
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 by History of Education Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1 Elsbree, Willard. The American Teacher (New York, 1939), pp. 17–31.Google Scholar

2 Monroe, Paul, (ed.) Cyclopedia of Education (New York, 1913), Vol. 5, p. 513; National Education Association, Progress and Problems in Equal Pay for Equal Work (Washington, D.C. 1939), p. 20.Google Scholar

3 See National Education Association Summary of Selected Statistics on Workforce Characteristics, mimeograph, 1976, p. 9.Google Scholar

4 The School Review, (1896):687–88.Google Scholar

5 National Education Association, Report of the Committee on Salaries, Tenure, and Pensions (Winona, Minn., 1905), pp. 190–205; Strachan, Grace C., Equal Pay for Equal Work (New York, 1910), p. 152.Google Scholar

6 Research Bureau, Public Education Association of Buffalo, A Study of Salary Schedules of City School Systems (Buffalo, 1916), pp. 55–56.Google Scholar

7 National Education Association, Salary Differences Based on Grade Level of School Taught (Washington, D.C. 1939), p. 7.Google Scholar

8 The Grounds of Opposition to the White Bill, The Association of Men Teachers and Principals of the City of New York, 1907, p. 19.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., p. 16.Google Scholar

10 The teacher salary schedules, which evidently remained unchanged from 1900–1912, are contained in Sec. 65 of the By-Laws of the Board of Education of the City of New York, 1911, pp. 121–127. A review of the “want ad” section of the New York Times for the month of June 1907, leads one to conclude that early elementary female teachers at the entry level received about the same salary as women who worked in offices. Most jobs advertised for women bookkeepers, for example, were in the $12.00 to $15.00 range, $600 to $750 for a 50-week work year. Of course teachers required more training (two years of normal school), but they had longer summer vacations and were practically guaranteed automatic incremental salary increases.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., p. 124.Google Scholar

12 Strachan, , Equal Pay, p. 91; U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Digest of Education Statistics: 1975 Edition (Washington, D.C. 1976), p. 37.Google Scholar

13 Flexner, Eleanor, Century of Struggle: The Women's Rights Movement in the United States (New York, 1970), pp. 251–52.Google Scholar

14 “The Equal Pay Meeting,” School (December 9, 1909): 136.Google Scholar

15 Strachan, , Equal Pay, pp. 569–70. The biographical sketch of Miss Strachan contained in her book is rather vague on dates. Since these events have little or no bearing on the narrative it was not thought worthwhile to track them all down.Google Scholar

16 “Equal Pay for Equal Work,” Outlook, 92 (April 1910):737. The board remained steadfast in its opposition to the equal pay principle. In 1910 the board voted 23 to 16 against any change in the salary schedule, three of the four women members voting with the majority. One board member characterized the resolution supporting equal pay as “equal pay for equal age.” Google Scholar

17 Education Review, 34 (September 1907):211–13.Google Scholar

18 The Association of Men Teachers and Principals, pp. 14–15. The substance of arguments, pro and con, on the equal pay issue did not change during the four-year period that the equal pay bill was under consideration. Thus no attempt has been made in this paper to place the statements of partisans in chronological order.Google Scholar

19 Ibid., p. 15.Google Scholar

20 “The Teachers' Salary Hearings,” School (June 16, 1910): 401.Google Scholar

21 The Association of Men Teachers and Principals, p. 39.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., p. 42.Google Scholar

23 Ibid., pp. 42–43.Google Scholar

24 Maxwell, William H., A Quarter Century of School Development (New York, 1912), p. 243.Google Scholar

25 Cited in Maxwell, , A Quarter Century, pp. 244–45. See also Spencer, Herbert. The Study of Sociology (New York, 1890), pp. 379–80.Google Scholar

26 Maxwell, , A Quarter Century, pp. 246–47.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., pp. 247–48.Google Scholar

28 Quoted in Educational Review, 39 (February, 1910):209–10.Google Scholar

29 New York Times (June 27, 1907) 16:1.Google Scholar

30 New York Times (June 30, 1907) 16:1.Google Scholar

31 New York Times (November 12, 1907) 6:4.Google Scholar

32 New York Times (October 23, 1907) 9:5.Google Scholar

33 New York Times (November 12, 1908) 6:4.Google Scholar

34 School (April 29, 1909):317.Google Scholar

35 Strachan, , Equal Pay, p. 39.Google Scholar

36 Ibid., p. 35.Google Scholar

37 “The Teachers' Salary Hearings,” School, June 16, 1910, p. 401.Google Scholar

38 Strachan, , Equal Pay, p. 71.Google Scholar

39 Ibid., p. 118.Google Scholar

40 Ibid., p. 200.Google Scholar

41 Ibid., p. 81.Google Scholar

42 Ibid., p. 86.Google Scholar

43 Ibid., p. 87.Google Scholar

44 Ibid., p. 48.Google Scholar

45 Ibid., pp. 69–70.Google Scholar

46 Ibid., p. 117.Google Scholar

47 Ibid., p. 120.Google Scholar

48 Evening Sun (February 27, 1907): 8.Google Scholar

49 Wall Street Journal (February 26, 1907): 1.Google Scholar

50 New York Times (February 17, 1907): 8.Google Scholar

51 Strachan, , Equal Pay, pp. 36–52.Google Scholar

52 New York Times, (April 27, 1907) 6:3; New York Times (May 12, 1909) 16:1.Google Scholar

53 Strachan, , Equal Pay, p. 420.Google Scholar

54 School (December 9, 1909): 136.Google Scholar

55 New York Times (May 12, 1909) 16:1.Google Scholar

56 Strachan, , Equal Pay, p. 549.Google Scholar

57 New York Times (March 7, 1908) 5:4; New York Times (June 21, 1908), part 2, 8:5; and Letter to White from Lewis, Merton E. (February 21, 1907).Google Scholar

58 1911 N.Y. Laws Ch. 902.Google Scholar

59 Bylaws of the Board of Education of the City of New York, 1911. pp. 122–23, 128.Google Scholar

60 New York Times (January 7, 1909) 16:1; New York Times (February 12, 1909) 2:7.Google Scholar

61 New York Times (May 4, 1909) 8:3.Google Scholar

62 New York Times (March 5, 1911): 10.Google Scholar

63 Data supplied by the New York State Education Department, Office of Manuscripts and History, based on Annual Reports of the Commissioner, 1910 to 1930. In 1976 male teachers constituted about 40 percent of the teaching staff of the city's public schools, well above the 35 percent average for the nation. New York Times, November 14, 1976; 4:1.Google Scholar

64 Journal of the New York State Teachers Association, 11, no. 1, (February 1924), 35.Google Scholar

65 1924 N.Y. Laws Ch. 614. A less than exhausting search of the pertinent state statues leads one to believe that New York was one of the first states to provide equal pay for men and women teachers similarly situated. Although Texas provided for equal pay for all those “performing public service” of the “same kind, grade, and quantity” as early as 1919, the law was not specifically directed at teachers; they were beneficiaries of a law covering all public servants. California mandated equal pay in 1929, Illinois in 1959 and Wisconsin in 1961 provided for equal pay in state-wide antidiscrimination statutes. Tex. Civ. Stat. Art. 6825 (1963), Calif. School Code §5.730 (West Supp. 1976), Ill. Ann. Stat. Ch. 122 §§10–20.7 (Smith-Hurd 1976–1977 Pocket Part), Ore. Rev. Stat. §342.970 (1975), 43 Pa. Stat. Ann. §336.3 (1964).Google Scholar

66 1947 N.Y. Laws Ch. 778. Under the minimum schedules legislated at that time, the starting salary for a teacher in districts of less than 100,000 students would be no less than $2,000; between 10,000 and 1,100,000 students, $2,200; over 1,000,000 students, $2,500.Google Scholar

67 The Public and the Schools, no. 457 (January 1947): 2.Google Scholar

68 “Should a Salary Schedule Give More Money to Men?” The Nation's Schools, (January 1954): 58.Google Scholar

69 Boyd, Miller E. Jr., “Wanted: Negro Male Teachers to Fight Ignorance and Hate,” School and Community 55 (February 1969): 17.Google Scholar

70 Heim, John and Perl, Lewis, The Educational Production Function: Implications for Educational Manpower Policy (Ithaca, N.Y. 1974), p. 30.Google Scholar