"To Barter Their Souls for Gold": Female Clerks in Federal Government Offices, 1862-1890

Abstract

I S. S. Kelty to John W. Noble, Feb. 18, 1892, file 1890-2208, Applications and Appointments Files, Appointments Division, Records of the Office of Secretary of the Interior, RG 48 (National Archives). Application files maintained by the Treasury Department in the four post-Civil War decades and by the Department of the Interior from 1879 to 1905 constitute the major sources for this essay. The Department of the Interior (which in the nineteenth century included the Patent Office, Pension Bureau, Census Office, General Land Office, and Bureau of Education, among others) and the Treasury Department were two of the largest federal agencies and the primary employers of women during this period. These application files contain personnel dossiers which document the lives and work histories of thousands of federal employees. Letters written by female applicants not only requested jobs, but also discussed family and financial problems and sometimes delineated the specific situations or crises that brought them into the federal labor market. In describing their qualifications, female job aspirants furnished information on their education and previous work experience, often revealing as well their family background, social status, and perception of what being a clerical worker entailed. This study is based on a reading of more than 2,000 files of such female applicants. The social and demographic profile of these women is based on statistical analysis of all women who applied for clerical jobs in the Treasury Department in 1862/1863 (the years when women first worked in Washington's bureaucracy) and 1870 and all women who applied for clerical jobs in the Interior Department in 1880 and 1890. In 1862/1863 there were 128 women who applied; in 1870 there were 101; in 1880 there were 598; and in 1890 there were 812. (These totals include 115 women who applied for jobs but who may not have been successful in their quest for work. When I examined these women separately I found that they did not differ significantly, in social or demographic characteristics, from the women who clearly did receive jobs.) To augment the data available in the federal application files, I also searched the 1880 District of Columbia manuscript population census schedules for the 598 women who applied for work in 1880. I successfully located 256 of them, and all information on household structure is based on an analysis of these 256 women. The following figures provide a rough indication of how many women clerked in all Washington federal offices in the years 1862/1863, 1870, 1880, and 1890, and indicate what proportion of the total number of female clerks I have accounted for in my analysis. There are only 176 women clerical workers listed in the entire 1863 official register of federal employees. See Register of Officers and Agents, Civil, Military, and Naval, in the Service of the United States, on the Thirteenth September 1863 (Washington, 1864). The 1870 census reported that 943 women were Officials and Employees of