The person making a statement of this sort always glibly quotes at least one case of a wife who works, so that she can spend her vacation at an expensive resort, and who is brought to work by her husband in a palatial motorcar. But these outstanding cases — what percentage of married women do they really represent?
And, to take another controversy, do the majority of working women spend their money on themselves, or do they have dependents and responsibilities, as it is assumed that the majority of men workers have?
The minimum wage is supposed to give a woman a living wage for herself alone. No thought is given to the possibility of the working girls having dependents. And yet, it is economically just, as matters are today, to assume that she has no one but herself to take care of, and that therefore her thin pay envelope really equals a man's fat one?
These questions are argued back and forth, but facts have always been hard to locate. There has never been a national table showing the personal and family liabilities and assets of men workers, and no such table of women workers has been made in the last 20 years, so that the controversies about women workers cannot be settled at present.
But just to show what the tendency is, the women's bureau of the Department of Labor has made a study of the family status of women bread winners in one representative city, Passaic, N.J.
Census Data Used.
The woman's bureau went to the census bureau and obtained permission to use the punch cards of Passaic working women for statistical study.  . 