EXPLORATIONS IN ECONOMIC HISTORY 17, 323-341 (1980) Determinants of Working Women’s Wages during the Progressive Era* MARK ALDRICH Smith College AND RANDY ALBELDA Universify of Massachusetts, Amherst A central issue which defined Progressivism as a social movement concerned the wages, hours, and conditions of labor for female workers. These concerns led to a great outpouring of literature on women workers by such eminent economists and sociologists as Frank Taussig, Carroll Wright, Edith Abbott, Sophonisba Breckinridge, and others.’ We return to this subject in the hope of advancing the discussion by employing some economic theories and statistical methods which were unavailable to these earlier writers. I Our study makes use of the enormous amounts of numerical data and other information contained in the Labor Bureau 1Pvolume study of women workers published in 1911, Report on Women and Child Wage Earners in the United States (hereafter referred to as Report). The Labor Bureau gathered detailed information on 3434 unmarried adult (over 16) women who worked in the silk, cotton textile, and glass industries during * This paper is part of a larger study of the wages and conditions of labor for women workers during the Progressive era. The research is being financed in part by grants from the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women and from the Mellon Foundation. We wish to thank Robert Buchele and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this work. I No effort will be made here to survey the vast outpouring of Progressive literature on women workers. Most of it can be found in Soltow et al. (1972). 323 0014-4983/80/040323-19$02.00/O Copyright @ 1980 by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.